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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

So Bird was basically a constellation of small businesses, and all the people who were enthusiastically stealing from the 'faceless corporation' were really ripping off small businesspeople left and right. RIP all those poor people trying to be small-scale entrepreneurs.

One takeaway from the long-running US experiment with sky-high incarceration rates is that you can't imprison your way out of a crime problem. In spite of locking away so many people, there's a huge issue with criminality that's ingrained in many subcultures. It makes me think maybe China's social credit system might be more effective than what we have now.

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The business model was never economical. But Bird was able to bribe these contractors with large initial contracts to trick them into making unsustainable capital expenditures. Then when the funding dried up (after a "successful" exit) the contractors are stuck with equipment, staff, and leases while the tech company drops them.

If Bird was a "constellation of small businesses" those businesses could take their scooters to a competing network, or start their own local scooter share. Bird retained ownership of the scooters in what sounds like a very lop-sided and exploitative agreement.

> It makes me think maybe China's social credit system might be more effective than what we have now.

This whole Bird situation is horrible. Plenty unfortunate people made an investment in becoming fleet managers. Some are now bankrupt.

This is bad. However, if they were in the Chinese social credit system, their lives would be ruined forever. This black stain would follow them around everywhere, for the remainder of their lives.

In the US there is a liberal bankruptcy system. It allows people who for various reasons failed at their venture to have a clean start after some time passes.

Bankruptcy sucks. It’s a major life-impacting event, even in the US. But you can recover from it. You can have a fresh start.

I see the appeal of a social credit system. The US has some diminished version of it. But it is not as absolute and draconian as China’s, and that is a feature that many people fail to appreciate.

It’s not that hard to appreciate though. Imagine yourself failing at your business venture. Really picture it. Don’t make excuses that “I would be smarter than that.” Just imagine a really unlucky situation. And now think about which system would you rather be in.

This is like calling Uber "a constellation of small businesses". Arguably worse, because Bird still owned "the means of production" (the scooters). At least with Uber you own the car. Did any of these "small businesses" get to make decisions about hours, pay, pricing, or scooter design? Doesn't seem so.

Edit: Reading the parent post again, it's crazy how "anti-freedom" it is. Accepting corporate framing of labor-law violations as fact in one paragraph, then advocating for a surveillance state in the next. Crazy stuff to see on "Hacker" News.

> At least with Uber you own the car.

Uber is or was happy to refer you to a partner that will lease or rent you a car.

China's social credit system was developed decades after they had already established much lower crime rates than the US, and seems at best tangentially related.

At the point that the social credit system was conceived (2000-ish?), China's crime rate was like 2-4x lower than the US's most recent lowest year.

What they did have back then was a population rapidly getting richer (or at least pulling astounding numbers of people out of poverty). In the US we saw major shift in like 1975-ish when wage growth basically stopped, even though productivity continued to go way up.

Sounds more like Bird was abusing the contractor laws to avoid having employees (and at the same time silently pushing normal business expenses onto them) like so many other "gig" startups have done.

I think the US has a lot of property crime. Japan doesn't have a social credit system but people there don't trash vending machines the way we do so they have a lot of them

https://arigatojapan.co.jp/japans-unique-vending-machine-cul...

on the other hand we got this bad boy

https://www.telephonecollectors.info/index.php/browse/docume...

which was almost indestructible. (Back in the roaring 90's I saw a black man tear one out of an exterior wall somewhere in the West 50's in NYC)

Having lived in Japan, I agree with you.

But there was that spate of recent sushi shop licking incidents. Not the same type of destruction, but related, I would assert.

It’s called culture. Every culture is different. It takes generations to shape culture.

A system such as a social credit system can have an impact on culture. But it’s not a prerequisite. Regardless of what methods you use to shape a culture, it takes lifetimes to build the good aspects.

Can you be more specific about which subcultures have ingrained criminality? It's better to have the courage of your convictions and just state outright which groups of people have a criminal nature.

> Can you be more specific about which subcultures have ingrained criminality? It's better to have the courage of your convictions and just state outright which groups of people have a criminal nature.

Not op, but…

1. Very low SES folks.

2. Very high SES folks.

Different types of crimes, different levels and types of enforcement/convictions, but seems to be true from my experience.

The absence of race in my two groups is intentional — SES is typically a better predictor of behavior than race.

Exactly this. And not even all low SES folks, but particularly those with generational poverty are high risk.

Not passing judgment on that either, but I think the way to break that cycle is through high quality education combined with better security measures. The mental math is different for different people, when you believe that the risk of punishment for committing a crime is statistically low and the rewards are high (which will vary depending on your economic conditions). So make the rewards seem low by raising their economic conditions, and make the risk of punishment higher.

SES = Socioeconomic Status

Please clarify your recently self-invented TLA (three letter acronym) at least once in your response to reduce the cognitive load on your fellow reader.

Actually in this case the TLA would be more accurate as a TLA (two letter acronym) because Socioeconomic is just one word only...

You’d better notify https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/SES that this guy made it up and they should remove it from the dictionary

> Please clarify your recently self-invented TLA (three letter acronym) at least once in your response to reduce the cognitive load on your fellow reader.

“Self-invented”… hilarious.

This is a relatively common term of art used in discussions of social science (e.g., psychology, political science, economics, etc.).

I probably could have clarified, but I think the meaning should be easily inferred from the context. Plus, it’s easily confirmed with a quick look up (two taps on my phone) or search.

Example of source that shows that it’s not something I just made up:

https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education

Invented or not, it’s annoying when someone assumes people reading their comment will know what an acronym from another field means.

Charitable reading: in the "some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen" senses, with a heavier emphasis on the latter, though the former is more readily punished.

Male Arab and African population subcultures now firmly established in the Western hemisphere.

If you want to tackle the crime problem it starts at school --the educational system, parents, neighbors and strangers giving a hoot. Conformity in the form of social pressure is no longer there. Yes, we've always had small subsets who engaged in dishonorable activities, but they used to be a bit out of the public eye. Even in NYC in the 70s and 80s when there was high crime people at least knew they were doing wrong, they did not feel entitled to it. Sometime in the late 2010s it became noticeable that the taboo had been removed for a lot of people. Obviously there are many people for whom this behavior is till taboo. just not as many as before.

There is no reason we can't be like Japan --well, almost. It is harder to achieve in such a diverse population than in a less diverse population. Never the less, if we worked hard at it we could come somewhat close.

More like a constellation of gig workers suckered into being franchisees required to lease their equipment from the company that owns the brand, with the terms of the lease being unilaterally changed by said company.

Or the reality of most participants in an MLM.

> you can't imprison your way out of a crime problem

Paraguay conclusively proved that yes, you can.

You mean El Salvador?

Whoops, you’re right - thanks!

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