
Who needs democracy when you have data? - raleighm
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611815/who-needs-democracy-when-you-have-data/
======
_bxg1
There is nothing in the world right now that I fear more than the creep of
Chinese surveillance/authoritarian practices into the rest of the world's
society. They are a rapidly growing superpower, and while I hold no fantasies
of U.S. supremacy, this specific trend in the use of digital technology
terrifies me.

There won't be a war, by the way. I honestly think we're past the point as a
species where superpowers duke it out in such a literal fashion. It's just bad
for business. (Military might today is usually directed from superpowers to
third-world countries, but that's a topic for another day).

China's influence and dominance will happen through the private sector,
ironically. They have their own versions of Google and Facebook: Baidu,
Alibaba, and Tencent. These are the tech giants through which the Chinese
government gets most of its data on citizens. They are even more ubiquitous
than ours - people do everything from getting loans to scheduling medical
appointments through them - and they've begun trying to break into the western
markets. Tencent in particular has been investing billions in everything from
Blizzard to Tesla. At the same time, Google, Facebook, and Apple are also
trying to break into the Chinese market. Those companies have already
compromised their values for the sake of that opportunity by blocking VPN apps
on app stores, censoring content, etc. For now those policy adjustments only
apply in China itself, but once it becomes an established (and massive) market
- they have four times the population of the U.S. - do you really think the
companies would stand up against pressure from the Chinese government to apply
those policies elsewhere?

Between the spread of the companies it effectively owns, and the deals being
made with the rest of the world's most powerful tech companies, China will
soon wield more influence than the U.S. I don't think it'll be long before
surveillance-states are the norm.

~~~
wilsonnb3
> I honestly think we're past the point as a species where superpowers duke it
> out in such a literal fashion. It's just bad for business.

It's bad for business until it's not. Isolationist economic policies will over
time make war more likely.

> Between the spread of the companies it effectively owns, and the deals being
> made with the rest of the world's most powerful tech companies, China will
> soon wield more influence than the U.S. I don't think it'll be long before
> surveillance-states are the norm.

I'm not sure about China wielding more influence than the U.S. That sort of
thing is really hard to predict accurately, especially from the perspective of
someone who isn't a world leader privy to all available information.

I do agree that surveillance states will be the norm, though, at least
everywhere that doesn't currently have a democracy functioning well enough to
prevent it.

~~~
_bxg1
"I'm not sure about China wielding more influence than the U.S. That sort of
thing is really hard to predict accurately, especially from the perspective of
someone who isn't a world leader privy to all available information."

I think at the end of the day it just comes down to the numbers. With four
times the population, they have four times the market of consumers and four
times the workforce to create value. The U.S. is still in the lead for now,
somehow, but China has recently taken up a very potent type of hybrid economic
development, where free-market startup-culture is encouraged, but guided and
pruned by the government.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> but China has recently taken up a very potent type of hybrid economic
development, where free-market startup-culture is encouraged, but guided and
pruned by the government._

I don't think the USA gets enough credit for _inventing_ this hybrid economic
development system. Good examples include:

* Military computing -> Intel, IBM, etc. -> Moore's law

* DARPA cash -> early networking/PC projects at universities -> hacker/hobbyist culture -> Microsoft and Apple

* Gov't really emphasized "finding information" in CS the 1990's -> NSF grants at Stanford -> Google.

* The Human Genome Project -> Illumina, Solexa, etc. -> Moore's law-shaped cost curve for sequencing

And less R&D heavy examples like the national railways and the interstate
highway system.

This pattern continues today. Self-driving cars started as several decades of
NSF-funded research projects that turned into a DARPA-funded competition a
decade-ish ago that turned into an industry-funded goal rush today.

~~~
Fnoord
Google and Apple and Microsoft and Facebook and Amazon are each American
companies who do business in Europe. I, as European, get very little out of
that though because they dodge taxes.

------
mortenjorck
_> Uighurs are required to install government-­designed tracking apps on their
smartphones, which monitor their online contacts and the web pages they’ve
visited._

Appalling as this is, I'm surprised the government needs to do this at all,
given the assumption that WeChat or Tencent would already have all this
information and be required to make it readily available. Then again, maybe
the visible intrusiveness is the point: Han get spied on invisibly through
social media and mobile carriers; Uighurs have mandatory app installs to
constantly remind them who's in charge.

~~~
jhayward
It may be simple expediency: there are many stories of Uighur people being
stopped by police and having to show them their phones.

The app may be a pragmatic way to facilitate that interaction without need for
central monitoring (which is probably also used).

------
PakG1
Democracy is good because it basically allows for a peaceful revolution if a
populace is dissatisfied with its government. Democracy is bad because the
government risks enduring endless bickering and nothing getting done.

Etc, etc. I don't know what the right answer is anymore.

~~~
dfjliasjg
I've always thought that deadlock was a feature instead of a bug. If half the
population is for it and half is against it then nothing should happen
legislatively.

~~~
vorpalhex
Federalist paper #10 contains a lot of thought on this topic, and it's worth
reading. Like all documents of this type, it should be read as a kind of
argument between two competing sides.
[http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp](http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp)

------
Millennium
Data is nothing; interpretation is everything. That's why democracy is needed
even in the presence of data: the people still have a need to choose how the
data is interpreted and who will do the interpreting.

~~~
weberc2
It's particularly easy to mislead by only collecting data that supports a
given position. This is why heterodoxy is so important in the academy, and why
it's so concerning that certain fields are so hostile toward unorthodox points
of view.

------
bumholio
A more apt story would be "Who needs democracy when you have economic growth".
It's strange how the exceptional economic circumstances of China are glossed
over in such social analyses.

China has had average 10% growth rates for 3 decades, it's economy has grown
by a factor of 40 since 1988. It's hard to explain just how powerful this
positive economic shock has been. The Chinese people have seen, during their
recent lifetimes, the country transitioning from abject poverty into a world
superpower in the medium income range. Their quality of life and paychecks
have grown every year and the political leadership is addicted to this growth,
it's how they stay in power and easily quench all discontent.

As soon as this incredible growth cycle is exhausted we will start to see the
first chinks in the armor of the Party State, we will see the public demand
democracy and official accountability. Look for example to Hong Kong, where
the growth has been much slower (they already had a high level of development)
and the dissenting voices are multiplying. And that's exactly what will happen
in the rest of China in the next 10-20 years; growth becomes much harder once
you have picked the low hanging fruits and you get closer to the advanced
countries.

------
falcolas
Appropriate background for any claims of unbiased decision making based on
statistics:

[https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/LieStat/](https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/LieStat/)

The numbers can be completely accurate, but the interpretation will always be
biased. Also - "USA Temperature: can I sucker you":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17744886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17744886)

------
MichaelMoser123
<< systematic falsification of data on everything from GDP growth to
hydropower use pervades Chinese government statistics.

So what's the use of all this fancy data if they can't have accurate
statistics? That should have been the basis of scientific management?

~~~
lainga
Columbus kept two logbooks, one with his ships' real positions, and another
with falsified positions to show his men so they wouldn't become discouraged.

~~~
MichaelMoser123
Columbus was one man, here you have an enormous organization: Are you sure
that all decision-makers know the correct statistics and not the falsified
one? Are there more than two levels of truth here - does the academy of
sciences have the same figures as the central committee? What about the
ministries and regional authorities? This madness must be creating its own
challenges, so to speak. You never know if the numbers that one is looking at
are correct - the job of Mandarin is not an easy one.

~~~
etrevino
The Soviet Union kept two sets of historical archives, allowing only the most
reliable and/or senior people inside the "real" one (for example, accurate
data on Stalin's purges). They also kept two sets of economic statistics. As
you suggest, it caused a lot of confusion. And, yeah, no one knew who had the
correct information.

------
simmanian
This might be slightly off topic, and I’m really all for democracy, but I do
worry that the system is losing its competitive edge in the age of reputation.
It’s just way too easy for an organized party to spread maliciously fake
information and sow discord among the populace. We saw this at work with
Russia’s Twitter accounts that claim to be from Texas, England, and other
Western worlds, writing subtle hate tweets against refugees, Muslims, BREXIT
proponents/opponents, etc. Thing is, it’s not just Russia that’s doing this.
There is a German study that found social/political bots that root for Japan’s
nationalist agenda [1]. South Korea has been having similar issues on their
biggest websites. And I’m willing to bet there are organized parties within
America that benefit from social division as well.

A non-democratic society is probably better equipped to move forward amidst
all the chaos (and in preventing chaos in the first place), whereas a
democratic one may be much more likely to tear itself apart from inside out.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29182493](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29182493)

------
pnathan
An interesting perspective. I would like to understand more in depth the
history in China of how influence has been gained and how ordinary people were
able to affect the local politics. In the English/Germanic tradition, we might
have a parley-ment, or a town hall, or a Thing.

I wonder what the comparable system in China was? Does anyone have some in
depth knowledge here? (happy to rtfm if one is available)

~~~
lainga
All governments need some method of contact with the governed to assert their
legitimacy. It's telling that in North Europe we had _parliaments_ \- places
to speak your mind - because speaking your mind was how we did that. Oratory
was, and is, seen as a necessary quality in a good governor, since at least
ancient Greece and certainly since the days of Rome.

In China, on the other hand, there is no major oratory tradition. The way
Chinese government contacted the people was by being everywhere and nowhere -
omnipresent, through the imperial civil service, and yet unseen. If you wanted
to gain influence in the government, you took the imperial examination, became
a bureaucrat, rose through the Nine Ranks, and hopefully, by the time you
reached the top, you had enough governing experience to see merit in the old
way of doing things.

~~~
pnathan
> The way Chinese government contacted the people was by being everywhere and
> nowhere - omnipresent, through the imperial civil service, and yet unseen.

What does everywhere and nowhere, mean, specifically, in the context of a
society without telephony and electronic surveillance? What were the means for
a local official to adapt policy in the face of pressures and demands from his
local stakeholders? How were these pressures transmitted?

Again, happy to read scholarly works well versed in the way of Chinese
governing here, this is probably "Basic Chinese government history 101" stuff.
:)

------
efields
The people inside the democracy. They need democracy.

~~~
beat
Do they? Can you really establish a rational need for democracy, or are you
just running on cultural reflex?

If you take this question as me saying we shouldn't have democracy, maybe it's
reflex.

It's an interesting question. Democracy isn't an end in itself, but rather a
means to an end. What is that end (or those ends)? How else can those ends be
achieved?

~~~
bopbop
A rational need for democracy for you would be so that I don't govern you
according to my wishes.

A rational need for democracy for me would be that you don't govern me
according to your wishes.

A rational need for democracy for the uyghurs would be that Xi Jumping doesn't
govern them according to his wishes.

I've always understood this to be what is meant by democracy is the worst form
of governance, apart from all the others.

~~~
gknoy
But ... we currently (in the US) have a direct example of the rulers in power
governing the populace in a way which is "not according to the wishes" of
roughly half the population. (I think this is a direct result of our 2 party
system, as compared to Britain's multiple parties, but I've no idea how to fix
it.)

Any time you vote on the losing side of an election (whether it's for who to
elect, or approve a tax, or legalize (or ban) certain acts, you end up being
governed by _every one else's_ wishes. On the bright side, at least in a
democracy I mostly have the trust that such changes CAN happen, over time, if
enough people come to believe similarly as I do about things.

~~~
liberte82
I was always taught that representative democracy is the rule of the majority,
with respect for minority rights. This is where a rational court system comes
into play, and why not all questions of rights are left to a referendum.

It's what distinguishes it from populism, which is also a rule of the
majority, but is a tyranny in that it scapegoats the losing side rather than
tries to establish a peaceful way of life for everyone.

------
abfan1127
people who's data has noise seems like a compelling group.

------
known
"Politics is an art by which politicians get money from the rich and votes
from the poor in the pretext of protecting each from the other" \--Oscar

------
coldtea
> _It helps that a tumultuous couple of years in the world’s democracies have
> made the Chinese political elite feel increasingly justified in shutting out
> voters. Developments such as Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, the rise of
> far-right parties across Europe, and Rodrigo Duterte’s reign of terror in
> the Philippines underscore what many critics see as the problems inherent in
> democracy, especially populism, instability, and precariously personalized
> leadership._

In other words, that a democracy might actually function as one -- oh, the
horror -- reflecting what people want, instead of what the elites and the well
off 10% wants them to want, or present as TINA.

~~~
fcarraldo
If Trump, Brexit and Duterte are what the people want, perhaps we live in
societies that are incapable of self-governance. I'm no fan of centrist
neoliberal politics, but regimes and decisions which destabilize economies,
marginalize minorities and villainize immigrants are clearly not a better
alternative.

~~~
goatlover
> clearly not a better alternative.

To what, though? What's the choice here? Give a few people even more power
without having to be voted in? Who decides which people get all the power?
What if they're worse? How do we get rid of them? Is a bloody revolution or
decades of dictatorship really the same as having elections where the votes
don't always make the best choices?

~~~
fcarraldo
I don't know. I didn't offer an alternative, and I'm not sure that there is
one. I only pointed out that from the GP's viewpoint, these examples of
democracy reflecting the will of the people (Trump, Duterte, Brexit) are not
having positive impacts on society. I don't believe they should be held up as
examples of democracy at work, but rather as unfortunate failures of
democratic systems.

~~~
InfiniteBeing
Failure only because you disagree with the outcomes. Many of us supported
Brexit and Trump. Democracy does not guarantee the outcome you want, and to
believe that democracy has failed when it does not go your way means that you
have a wrong idea of what democracy is and perhaps are anti-democratic.

------
andyzweb
This is heavily reminiscent of Project Cybersyn, a project of the Chilean
government in the early 1970's.

------
ttflee
The gov't has already been so difficult to get with. With algorithms, doubly
so.

------
harshreality
Why does MIT Tech Review insist on an incognito-hostile and tor-hostile
mechanism to try to limit free views (to 3/month)?

~~~
VierScar
What extensions/privacy settings do you use? (Chrome or another browser?)

------
SamuelAdams
_The northern city of Rongcheng, for example, assigns a score to each of its
740,000 residents, Foreign Policy reported. Everyone begins with 1,000 points.
If you donate to a charity or win a government award, you gain points; if you
violate a traffic law, such as by driving drunk or speeding through a
crosswalk, you lose points. People with good scores can earn discounts on
winter heating supplies or get better terms on mortgages; those with bad
scores may lose access to bank loans or promotions in government jobs._

Some parts of this seem analogous to USA's Credit Score system. A total
surveillance state isn't a great idea but this small part of it seems
reasonable, no?

~~~
nathell
$deity forbid, no.

The problem with this is that once you get beneath a certain threshold, you
find yourself on a self-reinforcing spiral which it's hard to get yourself out
of; a spiral not unlike that of homelessness.

Watch Black Mirror's S03E01 for a glimpse of where this can take us.

~~~
CaptSpify
Additionally, what someone considers positive, someone else may consider
negative. If I attend an anti-gun rally, who gets to decide if that makes me
gain, or lose points?

------
namedlambda
I remember watching an anime, around 3 or so years ago, called "psychopass".
It was about a dystopian country that was governed by technology.

The system would decide what would be the best position for somebody in the
government if they desired to go there. It'd also monitor people and evaluate
in real time their psyche. People who were predisposed to psychopathic and/or
sociopathic behaviour were flagged and monitored. The police would use guns
that tranquilized flagged people and disintegrated people deemed public
danger.

This article painted China as a predecessor of the country presented in the
anime.

As for the ranking / credit system. I don't believe that such an idea is
feasible, as it resembles elo. We know from online games such as League of
Legends that elo is not an appropriate metric as it's often governed by
multiple variables out of the individual player's control. While in the 'long
run' it evens out, it often creates the illusion that a player stuck because
of their environment and not themselves, which while may be true in a few
cases, in most cases is false.

