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LPE Originals

Are We Prisoners of Technological Fate?

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The Meritocracy Trap’s account of the relationships among elite education, skill-biased technical change, and rising economic inequality is, in my mind, one of the book’s most important arguments, even as it is undoubtedly one of the least discussed. I’m therefore delighted and grateful that Gordon chose to focus his attention on these matters.
LPE Originals

In Praise of Blindspots

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Economic models produce blindspots, compressing qualitative differences into quantitative measures. Yet, this vice is also the source of their power.
LPE Originals

The Second Wave of Algorithmic Accountability

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Over the past decade, algorithmic accountability has become an important concern for social scientists, computer scientists, journalists, and lawyers. Exposés have sparked vibrant debates about algorithmic sentencing. Researchers have exposed tech giants showing women ads for lower-paying jobs, discriminating against the aged, deploying deceptive dark patterns to trick consumers into buying things, and manipulating users toward rabbit holes of extremist…
LPE Originals

Reclaiming the Right to Future Tense

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By now, many of the societal, political, and distributive harms caused by large technology companies and so-called “social” media companies (Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc.) have been surfaced.  They invade our privacy, decrease market competition, erode our sense of self and, despite their euphemistic label, our sense of community.  Shoshana Zuboff’s new book—The Age of Surveillance…
LPE Originals

Privacy Legislation, not Common Law Duties

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The value of Balkin’s fiduciary framework, I argue, resides not in providing an enforceable legal relationship but providing a framework for privacy legislation. The existing frameworks – the Privacy Principles adopted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1980 which rely heavily on notice and consent and the property framework introduced by Louis Brandeis in “The Right To Privacy” (both of which I discuss in this privacy white paper) – have significant limitations. Balkin’s proposed fiduciary framework provides a model for legislation that recognizes that the nature of the relationship between information collectors and aggregators requires imposing additional duties and restrictions to adequately protect consumers, while still enabling commerce and facilitating competition.
LPE Originals

The Uber/Lyft “Workers’ Association” Debate: A Response to Dubal

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I share Dubal’s worries about Uber and Lyft’s proposed “workers’ associations” and agree about the indispensable role played by independent, exclusive-representative unions. But I am more open to the possibility that we ought not necessarily reject workers’ associations of the sort being contemplated in the California debates.
LPE Originals

Gig Worker Organizing for Solidarity Unions

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The “gig economy” is one place where organizing outside of traditional trade unions is undoubtedly happening in surprising and perhaps unexpected ways. For example, on May 8, 2019, a group of independent app-based drivers in Los Angeles called the LA Rideshare Drivers United organized and launched an unprecedented international picket and work stoppage against Uber…
LPE Originals

Solidarity Unionism v. Company Unionism in the Gig Economy

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The CEOs of the two top-competing gig firms—Uber and Lyft—penned a June 12, 2019 OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle in which they claim that after over six years of local, state, federal, and international law-breaking, ignoring the concerns of drivers, and viciously fighting any efforts to achieve living wage and benefits, they are ready…
LPE Originals

Radical Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries

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Khan and Pozen are right to note the fundamental conflict between “information fiduciary” duties and shareholder interests. I only wish to add two further points in service of a radical skepticism towards the information fiduciary concept.
LPE Originals

When All You Have Is a Fiduciary

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The concept of an “information fiduciary” is a helpful way of describing the privacy interests that users have in data about them held by online platforms. It provides a good starting point for thinking about platforms’ recommendations. And it has nothing useful to say about other urgent problems online platforms pose.
LPE Originals

Scaling Trust and Other Fictions

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The multiple, capitalist information fiduciaries of the Balkin proposal and the regulatory regime that Khan and Pozen appear to imagine seem to have little in common. But they are responses to the same problem: that of governing data-driven algorithmic processes that operate in real time, immanently, automatically, and at scale.