https://squareup.com/us/en/making-change
(I work for square but wasn’t involved with this project)
Unfortunately this is not the world we're living in :) it's often both cash and cards OR just cash. Berlin is a really good example of that, you always need cash on you which tricks the many tourists who come from countries were cash is not really a thing anymore.
- it needs to be manually reconciled at the start/end of each shift
- staff can steal it
- robbers can steal it
- it takes time to count out change (and to ensure you have enough small bills and coins)
- it takes time to deposit it at the bank
- it costs money to deposit it at the bank (even if Walmart is ok accepting cash for an iPad, I'm guessing Apple requires Walmart to pay by bank transfer)
I'm not sure about the US situation but, the last time I checked, UK banks charged 0.3%-0.5% for accepting a cash deposit from a business customer.
Also, in some countries it is very easy to lock person's bank account even without a trial, for example if person is suspected in financing terrorist or extremist organisation.
Also new cards have RFID chip in it and it can be used for example to get information about people going through the doors.
The law is the law. If it's a good law, then its efficient, universal, automatic enforcement should be a good thing. If not - then it's the law that needs to be changed. You're complaining about the enforcement - but what you actually don't like is the law itself.
Hell, maybe efficient and automatic enforcement will force us to confront bad laws, rather than relying on discretion at the enforcement stage to water them down tolerably. Better they not be on the books at all.
https://moxie.org/blog/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide/
Sure, if every federal crime were enforced through automatic fines, this could be a mess due to the complexity of the law.
But what's your objection to a fine for changing lanes without indicating?
Edit 1: I realized what you meant with your question so disregard the first sentence. Edit 2: Also, it's worth stating that it follows that these concerns are completely independent of the complexity of the law.
- perfect accuracy (no FP; no FN)
- automated enforcement via a fine, without knowing the identity of the perpetrator (just assume it's possible; I know it's hard)
- no potential for the device or underlying technology to be used or repurposed for any other form of surveillance or enforcement
Would such a system (and automated enforcement) be OK?
Your second example (speeding) doesn't incur a fine because in this hypothetical example the automated enforcement is only used for signalling violations.
For your third example (self defence), maybe you are forced to change lanes without signalling. How often? Once per year? What if the fine were $2, and people like you had to pay it once per year, but people who persistently refuse to signal end up paying 1000s of $2 fines per year?
Seems like a reasonable trade-off.
My point is that by automating fine dispensaries, you are subversing the underlying idea itself (automatron can't know what or why is it enforcing) and reasonability.
Would there be a mechanism in place to remove your fines and points? Would that system be automated? Would it be susceptible to lying? How long would it take to get the record corrected? Would the effort cost more than the fine?
Just from a technical/automated point of view, removing the moral and societal aspects, the real world is currently just way to complex and ambiguous to automate things like this.
Also on a side note: "...the fine could be small enough (e.g. $2) to be insignificant for most of us..." -> I once said something like that to someone and he pointed out that statements like that was very hurtful to hear, especially coming from someone who does not understand his financial struggles.
Yes. But as you pointed out, `automated enforcement via a fine, without knowing the identity of the perpetrator` is hard.
And as others have pointed out, Point 1 and Point 3 are also difficult to accomplish.
Question for you is, are you okay for the government to roll out a mechanism to detect and prosecute people changing lanes without giving you any guarantee of respecting the 3 points you mentioned above?
If your answer is no, you are not okay with it, then we are all on the same side.
If your answer is yes, then you should read the article above by moxie (very interesting article)
I'd be happy to compromise a bit on point 1. I could accept a high (20%) false negative rate. If the fine were small enough then I'd be OK with a small number of false positives (as long as they're randomly distributed, not hammering one person who happens to live near a faulty camera).
I wouldn't want to compromise on point 2 or 3, particularly for this example (catching impolite drivers).
But what if the example were about a highly accurate system for detecting kidnappers or people traffickers or something? It seems harder for me to argue against enforcement on the grounds of privacy or slippery slope.
That is always the argument for total surveillance state. In Singapore, crime rates are close to 0, but to be effective it means no privacy and everybody is monitored. I'm not okay with this.
You sound like you think you're arguing with me but I agree!
Nit picking aside - that surveillance state is maybe 5 years ahead of the west. I'm continually amazed that western governments have allowed strongly encrypted private communications to become a thing, even an expectation - this is totally unprecedented and a radical upset to the balance of power between the state and its citizens. I expect it's only a matter of time before strong end to end encryption is totally banned in the west, too.
People in places like Flint aren't dead either.
I'm glad you mentioned Flint though. I assume most Americans here know about Flint's issues - but they realise the USA is a big place and that's only one town. Well, China's a big place too. Yeah, it can improve, a lot. But this godforsaken hellscape that people seem to imagine all the time is just not real.
As for pollution, only 84 out of 338 cities reached the national standard for air quality [1]. That's not exactly "a few bad cities". The government has been working on improving it, but they still have a long way to go.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China#Air_polluti...
100% of them drink boiled tap water. But isn't this proving my point? Not like it's poisoned with heavy metals?
As for pollution, of course they have a long way to go, but the dystopian picture you paint is hardly fair. It's not perfect but you make it sound like Blade Runner 2049. It's not. I live in Bangkok right now and it is WAY worse than Shenzhen or Shanghai. But I never hear Thailand invoked in one of these "pollution hell" threads.
Look, what you said isn't technically incorrect but your level of hyperbole irked me. I always come across as defending China or something in these threads but I'm not really, I just want it to be fact based. China is not THAT bad. Yes, I know a lot of Chinese people, and they express no pressing desire to leave. It is very far from the worst place on earth to live.
Clearly not 100%. Not a huge fan of these random percentages haha. And we don't know if the tap water isn't poisoned with heavy metals. The effects aren't immediate so it's not like locals would necessarily notice. There's at least one source that claims they are indeed poisoned with heavy metals [0]
> As for pollution, of course they have a long way to go, but the dystopian picture you paint is hardly fair. It's not perfect but you make it sound like Blade Runner 2049. It's not. I live in Bangkok right now and it is WAY worse than Shenzhen or Shanghai. But I never hear Thailand invoked in one of these "pollution hell" threads.
I dunno man, Shanghai on a bad day is pretty comparable to Blade Runner. When I go to China, I get a headache, my mouth tastes metallic and I definitely have a reduced lung capacity. Also, I was actually impressed by Bangkok's lack of pollution. Maybe I caught it at a lucky time, but the air was very refreshing compared to Wenzhou. Even right now, the air forecast is decent [1] compared to Wenzhou [2] or Shanghai [3].
China is definitely not the worst place to live, but it's dramatically different from most western countries. In most western countries, you can talk about Winnie the Pooh without getting banned, while enjoying a nice refreshing glass of tap water :D.
[0] https://www.purelivingchina.com/blog/what-pollutants-are-chi... [1] https://aqicn.org/city/bangkok/ [2] https://aqicn.org/city/wenzhou/ [3] https://aqicn.org/city/shanghai/
Well, frankly, most Chinese I know will boil their water regardless of where they live. They do it in Australia and Singapore as well. Cultural norm?
I guess I'm not invested enough in the argument to dig up actual water pollution statistics but I'd be pretty surprised if Shanghai water was actually toxic.
> Shanghai on a bad day is pretty comparable to Blade Runner
I guess I've missed those days. I know Beijing can be hellish but most of my China experience is down south. I've never been to Wenzhou but I know Shenzhen very well and I can categorically tell you that air pollution in Bangkok is worse.
But look. The whole point of my comments has been to not generalise local data points to a whole country. As other commenters have mentioned, you can't drink the tap water in Flint, Michigan either - and that's in the so-called richest country on earth. LA smog is awful too. But that's just those places. The USA is huge. So is China.
As for Winne the Pooh - that's ridiculous. I read a good quote the other day: "the nation that is afraid of humiliation will soon humiliate itself" and I agree 100%. I'm not trying to defend China. I'm just trying to defend fact.
Then it's correct, yes?
> China serves some kind of convenient narrative
I have to agree. If china were an economically unimportant tiddler or have lotsa oil, the west wouldn't care nearly as much.
> the so-called West has exploited for the last few centuries
And china had a pretty repressive feudal government for a very long time. That is, the pyramid's peak freely and often brutally exploited the pyramid's broad base. For a very long time. And Uighurs - like to comment on them? Perhaps you'd like to list some chinese atrocities here?
Seriously, list some.
I'm aware and not proud of the opium wars. That shit should be taught in school, as well as the way brits treated the irish, the welsh, the scottish... Not as a guilt thing but as a way of saying, let this not happen again.
No, it's exactly disproving your point, or at least strong evidence against it. To be explicit: if 100% drink boiled tapwater then 100% feel pollution is present which strongly suggests pollution isn't localised.
As for introducting heavy metals, you're trying to fudge the issue: pollution may include, but is not limited to, heavy metals.
> I always come across as defending China or something
I take your point and will accept you're arguing in good faith, but a sloppy post like this simply undermines yourself.
The tap water quality varies from place to place, but it's generally good enough, granted it is not as good as the first world countries such as the US or Japan or much of the Europe, but after all we are still a third world country.
We are a surveillance state and it's worth discussing and condemning in every aspect, but talking about tapped water just dilutes the topic.
1. see the Wikipedia page for largest cities in China
2. Yiping XIAO, Yan SONG and Xiaodong WU, “How Far Has China’s Urbanization Gone?”, in: Sustainability 10.8 (Aug. 2018), p. 2593, DOI: 10.3390/su10082953