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Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

politico.eu

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Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#171

Post by BlueTemplar »

sfifs wrote: post #133
Kaotique wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand one of the main triggers for this whole operation was the mass fraud by people from Bulgaria who netted a lot of benefits by gaming the system. They traveled to the Netherlands, applied for benefits and then went back to Bulgaria and used Dutch bank accounts and debit cards to get the cash. The tax office never wanted that to happen again and started this program to find fraudsters but ended up clas…

Perhaps the problem is setting the wrong incentives. The way to deter fraud is not necessarily to make the benefits administration overly strict but to directly dis-incetivize fraud through stiff penalties. For instace if benefits fraud had a penalty of say 10 to 20 years imprisonment if convicted, the number of people trying to commit fraud would very likely go dramatically down.

Law has to be proportional - you can't deal out similar punishment for benefit fraud and for murder !!

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#172

Post by BlueTemplar »

orwin wrote: post #95
Kaotique wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood me. I am not saying they don't deserve support. I am saying that the government can support people in a way that is not so bureaucratic. Pay the institutions like schools, daycare, etc directly and don't burden the parents with requesting benefits and sending around enormous amounts of money. The institutions can apply for government money for each child they have to take care of. And the pa…

This is why I really dislike social solutions that involves money. I understand that you have no choice but to use money in a developed economy (because if you just give services, it doesn't count toward GDP), but this is peak 'indicator became the target' dumbassery.

> (because if you just give services, it doesn't count toward GDP)

And considering GDP as the most important metric isn't peak dumbassery ?

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#173

Post by BlueTemplar »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #78
mschuster91 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…

>Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Which IMHO the European pension system is massively flawed as it's basically a Ponzi scheme that requires more and more people to keep the system going, more people that will consume more resources and need mo…

Sure, but using this logic civilizations themselves are also basically Ponzi schemes.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#174

Post by BlueTemplar »

jokoon wrote: post #167

I'm on welfare in france, and sometimes I wonder if the government is going to find some excuse to stop giving me money. Could be "not applying to enough job offers", while most employers are always complaining about candidates not being skilled enough, which is why unemployment is so high.

This is happening to my half-sick mother, right now, 6 months before retirement (!), because Pôle Emploi is seemingly unable to both check its own database for the presence of a recent job offer she was rejected from and also to reply to (or even read ?) the (e-)mail pointing this out that has been sent to it. Going to have to seize the Ombudsperson now...

Some related levity :

Nistoire, professeur de chômage - Groland - CANAL+ :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Yck-aO4Ww (fr)

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#175

Post by jacquesm »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #99
mschuster91 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…

In theory, the Dutch pension system is ALSO backed by the stock market, which is why they will cut down on payments if the stock market isn't doing very well (according to their own calculations). The more I hear about things like that, the more I'm inclined to just handle my own pension fund. But that's where things get tricky, because an employer's pension contributions are tax-free, if they were to be paid out, in…

The way I deal with this: make a good profit, pay myself a decent salary and the remainder as dividends, invest those in very low risk asset classes myself. It isn't quite as tax efficient as a pension scheme would be but the chance that the money will be there when I need it is about 100%.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#176

Post by anamax »

Jensson wrote: post #113
cjrp wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the required budget vanish? People are greedy. Why claim UBI for just you when you could claim for your fictitious family of 6?

How would you manage to register 5 fake family members with the government? Governments already track its citizens in basically every country, it is really hard to trick them into thinking more people than that exists.

It's actually pretty easy in the US.

There are special protections for illegal immigrants so it's reasonably easy to invent a family of them to collect benefits.

In addition, various US govts or even agencies within the same govt, often don't talk to one another.

So, when an old person dies, friends/family can keep collecting benefits.

See https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/mar/16/social-securit...

"Social Security records show that 6.5 million people in the US have reached the ripe old age of 112. In reality, only few could possibly be alive. As of last fall, there were only 42 people known to be that old in the entire world."

It's not just dead people.

"One Social Security number was used 613 times. An additional 194 numbers were used at least 50 times each."

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#177

Post by vanderZwan »

rocqua wrote: post #132
einpoklum wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People vote because of a combination of issues. Perhaps the main opposition parties also merit punishment-by-not-voting for other actions. My point is that one cannot lay the responsibility in a once-per-4-years parliament seat assignment.

I blame people who did not weigh this problem heavy enough in their decisions. I also personally blame people who voted VVD and CDA in general, but that is a wider and more personal judgement.

I'm with you. The fact that we can't even blame FPP voting systems, gerrymandering or other voter suppression tactics for any of this makes it all so much more frustrating. Apparently a significant part of the population either doesn't care about this, or worse, approves of the systemic racism.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#178

Post by vanderZwan »

jacquesm wrote: post #2

This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…

> This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues

The article doesn't even list all of the issues. For example, on top of the things you rightfully pointed out, this article also fails to mention is that (at least) 1115 children were taken away from their parents as a result of this, and despite this being known for more than half a year, not a single child has been returned to their parents[0]. There just seems to be zero interest by the authorities to help the people who went through life-destroying tragedies as a result of all this.

To paraphrase one comedian from the Dutch version of Have I Got News For You[1], "if one child would go missing tomorrow the entire country would be upside down, there would be search parties, the media would go crazy with the story. And yet at least 1115 children have been wrongfully taken from their families, we've known this for half a year, and nothing seems to happen."

[0] https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/10/over-1100-children-of-...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JIejxvgjz0

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#179

Post by einpoklum »

rocqua wrote: post #132
einpoklum wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People vote because of a combination of issues. Perhaps the main opposition parties also merit punishment-by-not-voting for other actions. My point is that one cannot lay the responsibility in a once-per-4-years parliament seat assignment.

I blame people who did not weigh this problem heavy enough in their decisions. I also personally blame people who voted VVD and CDA in general, but that is a wider and more personal judgement.

Well, I lean Anarchist and am not a Dutch citizen, but while living in the Netherlands for a couple of years as a post-doc, I was also disheartened to see the Dutch right-wing that dominant in national politics. Do you believe that, say, a GroenLinks-led coalition would have handled this much better?

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#180

Post by fallingknife »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #42
fallingknife wrote: post #5

> Authorities penalized families over a mere suspicion of fraud based on the system’s risk indicators This is the real story here. The algorithm is incidental.

Can't agree with this. Even if it was just feeding a list to human investigators, who fairly investigated each case, there's still the significant issue of how the list is determined. For example, the tax authority in your country right now catches a small portion of overall fraud. I give them a list of "hot leads" of fraudsters that's really just a list of all the ethnic minorities I hate. Obviously, even if they fa…

OK but are poor people and minorities more likely to commit benefits fraud? Because if so, I think that's fair game as an input, (obviously not if it's the only input).
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