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Accountability Sinks

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Re: Accountability Sinks

#241

Post by rocqua »

dendodge wrote: post #208
lmz wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incentives are very different - private garages would be very incentivized to find nothing wrong with your car and business would gravitate to those with the least checks. The government stations would not have that incentive (actually maybe incentivized the other way - to make up problems that can be waved away with money, depending on how corrupt things are there)

I'd have thought the private garages would also be incentivised to find problems - that they can then offer to fix for an additional fee. As it is, I think most garages that offer MOTs in the UK are fair and honest, as the test is relatively strictly regulated, but I'm sure people do get ripped off.

The Netherlands has private garages do the yearly recertification inspection (APK here). There was a recent rise in 'remote inspections' where the garages had figured out tricks to avoid spot checks. This involved tricks like 'file the inspection very close before 17:00' or 'file the inspection result right before an actual true inspection' because apparently spot checks look at the last inspection.

They noticed the tricks as patterns, and are handling it. My point is, there is an incentive for private garages to do fraud here.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#243

Post by cckolon »

Reminds me of a Rickover quote:

"If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible."

Re: Accountability Sinks

#244

Post by photonthug »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #178
Rhapso wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly is is just like Insurance. You understand the value of things you are protecting (and simple compliance has a value to you in penalties and liabilities avoided) and make sure it costs more than that to break into your system. At a corporate level, it is contractually almost identical to insurance, with the product being sold liability for that security, not the security itself.

Right. I sometimes call it meta-level insurance, because it's structurally what it is. Funnily, actual insurance is a critical part of it - it's the ultimate liability sink, discharging whatever liability that didn't get diluted and diffused among all relevant parties. And, I guess it's fine - it's the general way of dealing with impact that can be fully converted into dollars (i.e. that doesn't cause loss of life or…

It’s really not fine. Expensive and useless security theater isn’t just inefficient and corrupt, it’s way more actively harmful than that because there’s a huge opportunity cost associated with all the wasted time and money AND the incentivized deliberate refusal to make obviously good/easy/cheap improvements. Even in matters pertaining purely to dollars.. Spreading out liability can’t erase injury completely. it just pushes it onto the tax payer because someone is paying the judge to sit in the chair and listen to the insurance people and the lawyers.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#245

Post by sillysaurusx »

I don’t see anyone mentioning it, so: I was disappointed that an otherwise interesting post was turned political.

> This is why even the well-off feel anxious and restless. We may have democracy by name, but if the systems we interact with, be it the state or private companies, surrender accountability to the desiccated, inhuman processes and give us no recourse, then the democracy is just a hollow concept with no inner meaning.

> You can't steer your own life anymore. The pursuit of happiness is dead. Even your past achievements can be taken away from you by some faceless process. And when that happens, there’s no recourse. The future, in this light, begins to feel less hopeful and more ominous.

> It’s eerie how much of today’s political unrest begins to make sense through this lens.

No, your past achievements aren’t taken away from you. When you’re wronged, you almost always have recourse, up to and including making a big stink on social media. Private companies aren’t meant to be political democracies. They’re in fact almost explicitly designed to be authoritarian, because it works well. You don’t suddenly live in a not-democracy just because the companies have a CEO and middle managers that set up processes.

I wish the rest of the post wasn’t called into question by this hyperbole, but it is. It makes some interesting points, but ultimately it feeds into a natural desire to be pessimistic. Which means it’s entertainment rather than an analysis.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#246

Post by Nebasuke »

rocqua wrote: post #237
op00to wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the importance of driving in the US (right or wrong), drivers licenses are used as the primary identification document. It looks like there’s a similar use of the DL in the UK for buying tobacco. In the US, you need to prove both residency and identity. To prove your identity in the US, many people don’t have passports, so they bring a tranche of documents to the DMV office. To prove residency, we typicall…

You hit uppon an important difference between the US and most of Europe/the UK. An system for tracking who your citizens are. In the Netherlands, where I live, the municipalities cooperate to keep track of all citizens, and their address (or lack thereof). This means that you never need to convince any beaurocrat that your identity exists. You might need to authenticate that you are indeed who you claim to be, but th…

The UK should not be included in here. There is no official national system for keeping track of citizens and municipalities barely cooperate. This means you have to keep proving your address for things like an opening a bank account.

This is due to a historical political issue and repeal of a national identification system, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#247

Post by cbsmith »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #245

I don’t see anyone mentioning it, so: I was disappointed that an otherwise interesting post was turned political. > This is why even the well-off feel anxious and restless. We may have democracy by name, but if the systems we interact with, be it the state or private companies, surrender accountability to the desiccated, inhuman processes and give us no recourse, then the democracy is just a hollow concept with no in…

There's also the nice sidestepping of the whole issue of human judgement comes with the baggage of ignorance and prejudice. Yes, the article acknowledges that processes can be largely beneficial, but it focuses on the horrors of the processes, while glossing over the horrors of NOT having the processes.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#248

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

In my experience, the credit card example is _usually_ solved in a practical way which is still somewhat bad, but allows the person to at least get a card: They abbreviate one or both names in some way for the card.

As crappy as the system with its max length for people's names, it's common to allow first initial + surname. It also works very badly for non ASCII names - to my understanding, I _think_ people in East Asia just have to use romanisations if they want to have a Mastercard. This all sucks, but it's a bit more than "the card design" - it's quite fundamentally baked in to how the whole system works. There aren't a lot of systems out there which are based on more aged and legacy technology than card networks.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#249

Post by cbsmith »

franze wrote: post #47

I'm now in a stage of my consulting career where I sometimes really get called into big organisation just to find out, that whatever they need to do is already panned out and they all want to do it! Still they call me cause ... it's a big decision and the "higher ups" (which quite often are not even part of the workshop/session then) want an external expert voice. cause the responsibility for this decision lies with…

So basically, you're adding formal processes to ensure accountability. ;-)
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