[HN Gopher] Togo made a digital government stimulus system in t...
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Togo made a digital government stimulus system in two weeks
Author : 1cvmask
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-11-14 12:18 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| yalogin wrote:
| In the US there seems to be nothing that people don't make money
| on or exploit. No level of human suffering is left alone. Even
| school shootings are exploited by charlatans to make money and to
| benefit politically. In such a setting stimulus is the last thing
| we would get right, because stimulus has always been politicized.
| djbusby wrote:
| Smaller countries are like startups, can move fast and fix
| things. USA is bogged down legacy provider in this case taking
| ages to get a small change through the bureaucracy
| masklinn wrote:
| The biggest impediment to modernising anything is that one of
| the US two parties is resolutely against anything government-
| related working better, and the other one is at best wishy-
| washy about it.
|
| EBT doesn't have to be a disaster, and programs don't have to
| be means-tested, they're designed that way on purpose.
| galfarragem wrote:
| Major takeaway:
|
| "evidence has accumulated that in many circumstances, cash
| improves the life of poor people more than equivalent spending on
| aid programs or goods."
| ctdonath wrote:
| US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Absolute numbers don't matter. Purchasing power matters.
| rmah wrote:
| Global PPP uses USD purchasing power in the US as the
| baseline.
| ctdonath wrote:
| That's accounting for PPP adjustments.
|
| Poverty line is a published official statement.
|
| Percentile of world incomes, PPP adjusted, are easily
| found. Find and compare them.
| retention456 wrote:
| Purchasing power parity (PPP) is accounting for both
| absolute exchange rates and differential purchasing power
| across different countries
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/09/how-
| america...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| In part because we have used regulations to require you to be
| rich.
|
| In India the cheapest new street legal car is the Tato Nano,
| around $2500 (maybe small electric cars from China even
| less). But the cheapest new car in the US is the Chevy Spark
| at $13-14k.
|
| Building codes and zoning regulations mean there's a minimum
| price you have to pay for housing in the US that's around a
| factor of 10 higher than in much of the world (less than
| $100/month for a single bedroom apartment in a city in India
| vs around $1000/month in the US in a city... median is
| currently around $1200/month). And if you can't afford that,
| and try to live in a tent even with the permission of a
| landowner, you can be arrested because sleeping in a tent is
| illegal and against code. It's illegal to be poor.
|
| Luckily we at least have some social programs. But we make
| people jump through hoops to get access to them. A time tax
| and something that becomes a lot harder or next to impossible
| if you have literacy problems or aren't good at forms.
| refurb wrote:
| Some social programs? Don't be a jerk.
|
| I currently live in a country where covid caused a shutdown
| and the government said they'd help and completely failed
| to do so.
|
| We're talking barely subsistence wages going to zero and
| the government promising relief but failing forcing people
| to beg and rely on charity.
|
| The US social program for Covid were _fucking generous_.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"In part because we have used regulations to require you
| to be rich."
|
| I understand the sentiment, but I feel like this line of
| reasoning puts oneself into a catch-22. The first reaction
| would be to say "well, let's start slashing regulations".
| However, I suspect people who support the idea that there
| are regulations that "require you to be rich" would recoil
| at the idea of trimming things like ADA accessibility,
| needing GCFI outlets in homes, energy saving fixtures,
| mandating a certain level of green construction materials,
| et cetera.
|
| In essence, the people who fear that our regulations
| require a certain level of wealth would not, in my mind,
| want to actually deregulate the market because they see the
| each regulation individually as being a positive thing.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > In part because we have used regulations to require you
| to be rich.
|
| ...
|
| > Building codes and zoning regulations mean there's a
| minimum price you have to pay for housing in the US that's
| around a factor of 10 higher than in much of the world
| (less than $100/month for a single bedroom apartment in a
| city in India vs around $1000/month in the US in a city...
| median is currently around $1200/month).
|
| That's a pretty incredible take. Somehow so many people
| live in an ideological bubble, that no matter how varied
| the situation their explanation of the cause of the problem
| is exactly the same.
|
| In the US, where the minimum wage is 10x that of India, the
| real value is land likely more than 10x that of India the
| explanation for why housing is more expensive is because of
| building codes. The claim is that 90% of the cost of
| housing is due is building codes.
|
| I really wish people on got out of their ideological bubble
| more frequently. Some mantras get repeated so much people
| start believing they are true no matter how contradictory
| the evidence. It's not good for long term outcomes.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| But land is not where people live. Buildings are.
| Buildings which can be built higher. Building materials
| are global commodities. So why doesn't the US just build
| more stories than India if the land is more expensive but
| the commodities to build buildings, relative to cost of
| land, are cheaper? Answer: zoning codes, "local control,"
| and regulations.
|
| (Also, the land density per person is actually MUCH
| higher in India than the US, over an order of magnitude
| higher, which OUGHT to bid up the price of land even
| more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and
| _dependen... )
|
| The reality is we make it illegal to be poor, whether
| intentional or not.
|
| And then put meanstesting in social programs to target
| them, which has the perverse effect of making it harder
| for those who are poorest (ie least able to navigate
| bureaucracy) to get access to them.
|
| And as far as ideology, both the left and the right seem
| to conspire to make this happen. It's worse in cities
| than rural area due to obvious reasons, but within a city
| itself, both the mainstream left and mainstream right
| seem to back the regulations that make it illegal to be
| poor.
| ctdonath wrote:
| The "bubble" accusation works both ways.
|
| "Building codes" is used here in a very broad stroke.
| Yes, minimum wage is 10x that of India, which means the
| basic cost of construction labor is already 10x. If
| you're going to quibble the point, you make the point:
| 90% of the cost of construction labor is due to building
| codes insofar as you can't pay less than that, and that
| labor payment requirement exists deep into the supply
| chain. Insofar as minwage doesn't account for all the
| high cost, there are thousands of other laws edging up
| the price of housing. Insofar as that cumulative burden
| doesn't explain all the high price, there's more.
|
| Having driven the price of housing up just thru laws
| directly & indirectly related to home construction (which
| can colloquially be referred to cumulatively as "building
| codes" for purposes of casual discussion), there's the
| psychological factor of "if I'm going to pay $X for that,
| I may as well pay a bit more and get more." Ergo the
| price bumps up further.
|
| Having seen all that direct & indirect increase of price
| due to laws, we then get to the land. Again, psychology
| intervenes: if the price of the building itself has
| grown, the value of the land shifts too. One can casually
| assume that a house of some cost will typically be placed
| on land worth 1/10th that price. One is not inclined to
| put a $500,000 house on a $1000 property. Ergo, houses
| will tend to be built on land valued commensurate thereto
| - and housing & population growth will tend to get
| located on such property. There _is_ "dirt cheap" land in
| the USA, but few are inclined to live there.
|
| Further discussion would call for combing thru an
| itemized invoice for building a home, starting with land
| and labor, then similarly examining why each component is
| chosen vs legal requirements, and breaking each component
| similarly for legal and labor costs. I expect there'd be
| little surprise that, after analysis, US and other first-
| world homes cost as much as they do - given that the very
| starting point of labor is an obligatory 10x, and the
| same legal sensibilities permeate all of construction.
|
| Consider that I could, tomorrow, buy a lot in my state
| for $1000 and put a new $10,000 camper on it. Instant
| home, owned outright. Can't do that because, broadly
| speaking, building codes.
|
| If you're going to make the "bubble" accusation, please
| explain what's wrong with it rather than equally
| flippantly dissing the original assertion.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| If you are going to bring China and India to the
| conversation, you have to talk about the amazing range of
| high quality smartphones for $150
| cturner wrote:
| This would be a powerful point with a reference - can you
| cite it?
| ctdonath wrote:
| Poverty line = $12,880/yr :
| https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-
| mobility/povert...
|
| "A $12,880 income in the United States has enough buying
| power to put you in the 84th percentile globally for per-
| person income" : https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/20
| 18/business/global...
| dls2016 wrote:
| Why is it important to reflect on that?
| reidjs wrote:
| I think it's important because it sounds incorrect, but in
| reality it works out like that. In my experience most people
| think that if you give a poor person money they are just
| going to spend it on things which make their life worse, like
| drugs. It's one way to justify not giving a few quarters or a
| dollar to a homeless person on the street when they ask.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Yes, but another way to justify it is that it's your money,
| and the utility you get from spending it on that random,
| asking person is less than you would get from the next best
| expenditure (opportunity cost).
|
| That's not to say I don't give charitably or believe in it.
| I just don't think that anyone has to justify not giving
| money to some random when asked.
|
| I don't believe it's the government's job to hand out money
| to people in need. I think private charities and churches
| do a lot better job of spending it than a bureaucratic
| government, and the auditability of where the money goes is
| way, way more transparent so long as you're not dealing
| with a shady organization (which you can easily vet).
| shakna wrote:
| > I don't believe it's the government's job to hand out
| money to people in need. I think private charities and
| churches do a lot better job of spending it than a
| bureaucratic government, and the auditability of where
| the money goes is way, way more transparent so long as
| you're not dealing with a shady organization (which you
| can easily vet).
|
| There are many "popular" charities for which auditing is
| as far from transparent as can be, where the majority of
| their spending never reaches the target audience. To the
| point where this is the _norm_.
|
| Government programs, on the other hand, are required to
| account for every dollar spent, and issue regular public
| reports.
|
| How would one go about vetting the Salvation Army's
| spending, for example? They say they have regular
| independent audits, for none of those are public. So when
| they say 82% of donations go to the intended target, you
| must simply trust them.
| shakna wrote:
| > Anyway I suspect if we change the meaning of "poor people"
| from African centric to West centric results may be less clear.
|
| > In 2009, when Michael Faye co-founded the New York-based
| nonprofit GiveDirectly, whose mission is to alleviate poverty
| by providing unconditional cash transfers, skeptical
| development experts and philanthropists told him the sums would
| be misspent. But in the following decade, evidence has
| accumulated that in many circumstances, cash improves the life
| of poor people more than equivalent spending on aid programs or
| goods.
|
| Did you miss that the evidence from GiveDirectly's efforts
| isn't African-centric? They operate on a global scale,
| including programs that run within US borders.
|
| > GiveDirectly is the leading global NGO specialized in
| delivering digital cash transfers. We've worked in challenging
| contexts across 9 countries, from Houston after Harvey to the
| most remote parts of Uganda, and launched 15 experimental
| evaluations (RCTs) with independent researchers documenting the
| impacts on recipients and on the local economy.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| The comments don't make sense wrt to the OP: has this post
| been majorly re-edited?
| shakna wrote:
| The first line of my above comment was a direct quote that
| was removed from the above parent's post. Making my comment
| now somewhat pointless, yes.
| shakna wrote:
| > In Togo, a nation of about 8 million people where the average
| income is below $2 a day, it took the government less than two
| weeks to design and launch an all-digital system for delivering
| monthly payments to about a quarter of the adult population.
| People such as Bamaze, with no tax or payroll records, were
| identified as in need, enrolled in the program, and paid without
| any in-person contact.
|
| 10 days from inception to rolled out. There was a slight hiccup
| with fraud, which was then handled almost instantly.
|
| That kind of speed of development is absolutely possible,
| especially in richer nations. The key difference seems to be not
| the fraud prevention systems, but the desire to help those in
| need.
|
| > "It's a strong belief of mine that just because someone is poor
| doesn't mean he's irresponsible--he's just poor," she says. "So
| if you give him money, there's no way he's going to waste it. For
| me, it's linked with dignity."
|
| That perspective isn't one you'll find popular in the nations
| that should be able to deploy programs like these, but don't.
| Their voters don't see them as helping the poor, and don't see
| the poor as likely to invest any protective income into survival.
| So the politician follows the culture of looking down on those
| with less, and perpetuates the cycle.
|
| It's a self-inflicted cultural attack on the most vulnerable part
| of the population.
|
| Who could be helped, in the space of weeks.
| hkt wrote:
| You're right about the desire to help. I would add that
| contracts and tendering are unlikely to have been involved,
| which probably means they built it in house. That helps
| enormously: I spent some time at the UK's ministry of justice
| and when they in sourced they built great, high value stuff in
| an incremental, iterative way which addressed the greatest
| pain. Rollouts were quick and testing was central. Nobody was
| padding a contract to inflate their pay or performance ratings,
| instead preferring to regularly demo to peers and test with
| users to demonstrate value.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > The key difference seems to be not the fraud prevention
| systems, but the desire to help those in need.
|
| Do you have any inside-information that this is true? Maybe
| there is a difference in cultural attitudes, but I'm sure there
| are lots of other differences too. Why is this the most
| important?
| galfarragem wrote:
| > That perspective isn't one you'll find popular in the nations
| that should be able to deploy programs like these, but don't.
| Their voters don't see them as helping the poor, and don't see
| the poor as likely to invest any protective income into
| survival.
|
| That political discourse is easy to explain: while it is
| certainly helpful to "give the fish" to the starving one, it's
| less clear when you give the fish to "the idle" one instead of
| teaching him to fish.
|
| The main difference is the meaning of "poor". The meaning of
| "poor" in Africa is someone that may eat once a day or not even
| that. In the west, the poverty line is way above that.
| shakna wrote:
| > The difference is the meaning of "poor". The meaning of
| "poor" in Africa is someone that may eat once a day or not
| even that.
|
| The company mentioned that found cash programs work,
| GiveDirectly, works not only on a global scale, but within US
| borders, with similar results.
| Aunche wrote:
| GiveDirectly's studies in developing countries are quite
| compelling, but I don't believed they've published any
| studies about the US yet.
| shakna wrote:
| Temporarily correct. I am eagerly awaiting the
| publication of results from "Evaluating one-time cash
| transfers to U.S. households during the COVID-19
| pandemic", which has the trials completed, and analysis
| underway.
|
| However, they have had previous programs of their own
| that ran in the US, such as their Hurricane Harvey relief
| programs. (Which haven't turned into research papers).
| typon wrote:
| Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping someone
| who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice the well
| being of millions who do
| refurb wrote:
| Unemployment in CA went $23B in debt because of Covid
| (spent more in benefits than collected).
|
| $11B is estimated to be fraud.
|
| Your statement is quite trite to be honest.
| xphilter wrote:
| So are the fraudsters poor people (before the payout
| obviously) or are they just fraudsters? Maybe we just
| need a better system.
| tylerhou wrote:
| What are you trying to advocate for; making it much
| harder to receive unemployment benefits? Then your
| statement demonstrates the exact point the parent
| commenter is trying to make.
|
| 89% of payments weren't considered fraudulent. I.e. it
| seems like you're suggesting that you'd rather sacrifice
| the well-being of the millions of people who received
| legitimate unemployment benefits just to prevent payments
| to a relatively small percentage of people who don't
| deserve them.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-25/calif
| orn...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Indeed. And our definition of "deserve" is perverse as
| well. It tends to mean "people like me".
| complianceowl wrote:
| The mistake you make is assuming that your supposed 'noble
| intentions' justify what you are proposing; they do not.
| Your noble intentions are absolutely hypocritical and fake.
| If you really cared about the poor, you would voluntarily
| donate money from your own pocket; you don't need a law for
| that. Instead, you want to use the legislator to compel the
| others to the involuntary distribution of their hard-earned
| money.
|
| A nation can just as easily 'accidentally help someone' to
| its own demise. What happens when you incentivize idleness
| on a national scale? What happens tax rates have to keep
| going up and up to fund the benefits of the idle? What
| about all the vast social welfare programs we already have
| in place here in America? What about the worker shortage
| that unemployment benefits caused just recently during the
| pandemic? A worker shortage I saw everywhere, first hand.
| Whatever country you're from, you're doing a bad job
| representing it.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| "the idle" are almost universally those at the top of the
| wealth chain, doing nothing whatsoever and living
| handsomely off of rent, their ancestor's wealth and so
| on.
|
| This myth of the idle poor has to die. Poor people are
| overwhelmingly working, and the vast majority are working
| much harder than the upper middle class, and almost
| universally harder than the 0.01%.
|
| Unfortunately, most poor people made the mistake to work
| on crucial jobs such as nursing, teaching small kids,
| cleaning up, maintaining infrastructure, building
| buildings and so on. All jobs that are not deemed
| inprotant enough to deserve a living wage.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I agree with the stuff you say, but feel the last
| sentence is a bit of a personal attack.
| johnday wrote:
| > If you really cared about the poor, you would
| voluntarily donate money from your own pocket; you don't
| need a law for that. Instead, you want to use the
| legislator to compel the others to the involuntary
| distribution of their hard-earned money.
|
| Why "instead"? Why can this person not both donate
| directly _and_ wish that everyone else were obligated to
| do the same?
| galfarragem wrote:
| Obligating people to do things that they don't agree with
| never lasts.
| egypturnash wrote:
| The US' military budget says otherwise.
| johnday wrote:
| Not sure what you mean by this. Taxes are so ubiquitous
| that there's literally an idiom about it.
| hellojesus wrote:
| Our nation is founded on liberty.
|
| > Why can this person not both donate directly and wish
| that everyone else were obligated to do the same?
|
| You are proposing the imposition of your ideals onto
| someone else, via theft, under the penalty of
| governmental violence/incarceration.
|
| The poster suggested that you take on the personal
| responsibility for righting what you perceive as an
| injustice in the world. I agree with them.
|
| Anything else would be tyranny, as others have pointed
| out.
| [deleted]
| pdonis wrote:
| If anything is sacrificing the well-being of poor Americans
| who deserve better, it is the fact that helping them is
| punted to government bureaucracies instead of being done by
| private individuals and charitable organizations who are
| both able and motivated to exercise much better judgment
| about who needs help and what help is needed than any
| government bureaucrat can possibly do.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Quite the opposite. Our instincts surrounding charity are
| to help when it won't directly hurt us -- but if
| everything is commoditized, all charity directly hurts
| us. A dollar we give to the poor today is a dollar we
| can't use to shelter our family on a future rainy day.
| Directly incentivizing against individual action and then
| insisting on individual action as the only path forward
| is a guaranteed recipe for continued failure -- which is
| exactly what we observe. This is a collective problem and
| collective action is the only viable path to solving it.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> A dollar we give to the poor today is a dollar we can
| 't use to shelter our family on a future rainy day_
|
| So is a dollar you pay in taxes, ostensibly to help the
| poor but in reality it won't (see my post elsewhere in
| this thread on government bureaucracies). At least if you
| spend the dollar directly on a poor person, you know it's
| going directly to that poor person.
|
| _> Directly incentivizing against individual action_
|
| The only thing doing that is the government--by taking
| away our money in taxes, whether we agree with how it's
| spent or not, the government is preventing us from
| spending it on things we believe are justified, such as
| charity.
|
| _> continued failure -- which is exactly what we
| observe_
|
| We observe continued failure because people _think_ that
| they have already paid to help the poor, by paying taxes,
| but most of that money doesn 't actually help the poor.
| If people understood that either they have to help the
| poor directly or the poor won't get helped, you'd see
| many more people actually helping instead of punting it
| to the government in the mistaken belief that the
| government will take care of it.
|
| _> This is a collective problem_
|
| This is the excuse every collectivist uses to commandeer
| other people's resources and then squander them.
| Basically, what you're saying is that you don't want to
| do the work yourself of helping the poor, so you'll
| outsource it to government bureaucrats. Who are even
| _less_ motivated to actually help people than you are.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > instead of being done by private individuals and
| charitable organizations
|
| Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves
| help and who does not is _feudalism_ , not democracy. We
| already have this issue with religious/-associated
| organizations denying help to LGBT or nationalist
| organizations denying help to non-Whites.
|
| Government-ran operations may have their deficits, yes,
| but at least they are mandated to be available equally to
| all persons meeting the democratically decided criteria!
| pdonis wrote:
| _> Private, un-accountable entities deciding who deserves
| help and who does not is feudalism, not democracy_
|
| No, it isn't, it's freedom. Your definition of
| "democracy" is basically that if a 50.1% majority feels
| like it, they can commandeer your resources as they see
| fit. That is tyranny, not democracy.
|
| _> We already have this issue with religious
| /-associated organizations denying help to LGBT or
| nationalist organizations denying help to non-Whites._
|
| If you think there are people who deserve help and are
| not being helped by existing organizations, _you_ start
| an organization to help them. If a democratic majority
| agrees with you that those people deserve help and aren
| 't getting it, you'll have no trouble getting donations.
|
| _> Government-ran operations may have their deficits,
| yes, but at least they are mandated to be available
| equally to all persons meeting the democratically decided
| criteria!_
|
| And if you think government-run programs actually do what
| the "democratically decided criteria" say they are
| supposed to do, I have some oceanfront property in
| Nebraska I'd like to sell you. Anyone who has actually
| had to deal with these government-run programs (as my
| wife and I have for years, both on behalf of friends who
| are constantly getting the runaround from bureaucratic
| screw-ups and from my wife's experience as a social
| worker) will tell you that they are terrible at actually
| helping people.
| alexilliamson wrote:
| Yes this the tradeoff we need to make more explicit in
| these discussions. Is it better to err on the side of
| feeding too many people? Or do we err on the side of
| extensively validating peoples' hunger status, knowing that
| for every inch of red tape added means another hungry
| person left in need.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Americans are so concerned with accidentally helping
| someone who doesn't deserve it that they'd rather sacrifice
| the well being of millions who do"
|
| This reads like hyperbole and cynicism. Americans as a
| whole donate a large amount to charity each year and the
| United States already has wide-ranging social welfare
| programs. I challenge the use of the word "accidentally",
| because there are legitimate concerns about dependency,
| freeloading, and quite frankly, fairness. It is easy to
| declare that some population is being "underserved" but the
| funds for that service need to come from _somewhere_. Why
| is it such a negative thing for I, as a contributor, to
| look at the system critically and with reservations?
| WarChortle wrote:
| I am speaking in generalities because I don't know your
| exact stance on everything.
|
| The American military budget is so massively over-bloated
| its sickening. No only that, they made 35 Trillion
| dollars in adjustments in 2019 alone. The year before
| they made 30 Trillion dollars in adjustments.
|
| In 2018 the pentagon failed its first ever independent
| audit, instead of releasing the report, they changed
| their own rules to hide the report under the guise of
| "national security".
|
| I shudder to think how much money is being skimmed from
| the pentagon budget, but no one seems to care.
|
| > Why is it such a negative thing for I, as a
| contributor, to look at the system critically and with
| reservations?
|
| Its not, but I find it disturbing how, in general, even
| the smallest whiff of fraud from a social program, brings
| all sorts of regulations and cuts. But the Pentagon
| making 65 trillion dollars in adjustments to its budget
| in 2 years is meet with silence.
|
| For me, I would rather every single person in this
| country go to bed with a full stomach, even if it meant
| some amount of fraud, then to let the pentagon piss away
| more money.
|
| If people really cared about not wasting their tax
| dollars they would be outraged over the pentagon. Doing a
| proper audit of that would probably get back so much
| money any fraud in social programs would be statistically
| insignificant.
| creato wrote:
| 35 trillion is almost double the entire GDP of the US,
| and almost 10x the entire federal budget. I don't know
| where you are getting that number.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Accounting adjustments, see
| https://taskandpurpose.com/news/pentagon-35-trillion/
| (one of many sources)
|
| "It means money that DoD moved from one part of the
| budget to another," Clark explained to Task & Purpose.
| "So, like in your household budget: It would be like
| moving money from checking, to savings, to your 401K, to
| your credit card, and then back."
|
| However, $35 trillion is close to 50-times the size of
| the Pentagon's 2019 budget, so that means every dollar
| the Defense Department received from Congress was moved
| up to 50 times before it was actually spent, Clark said.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"If people really cared about not wasting their tax
| dollars they would be outraged over the pentagon."
|
| Personally, I am. And at large, just about any American
| will agree that we spend too much on the military
| industrial complex. The barriers to reducing military
| spending are different from the pressures put on
| politicians to manage social welfare programs.
| WarChortle wrote:
| > just about any American will agree that we spend too
| much on the military industrial complex
|
| That's not my experience, Can't tell you the amount of
| people I've meet that have no problem with the military
| having a blank check.
| amelius wrote:
| > That kind of speed of development is absolutely possible
|
| And every time I say on HN that I can do something in a
| weekend, I get downvoted.
| adventured wrote:
| This premise can't be done quickly in the US, and it's
| bordering on comically absurd that anyone here would dare to
| suggest otherwise.
|
| The US bureaucracies, federal and states, and the criss-cross
| between them, is extraordinarily large, complex and
| inefficient. The US Federal Government all by itself is a
| spending machine larger than Europe's biggest economy.
|
| To pretend a system like Togo's could be implemented quickly
| in the US, one would have to pretend the US government system
| isn't presently constructed as it is. It would be necessary
| to invent an elaborate fantasy, where you start from a blank
| slate and have to deal with none of what presently exists.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| And every time you say it, you're almost certainly wrong if
| it's about anything but a proof of concept. Every single "I
| can do that in a weekend" post I've ever seen basically
| ignores all the complexity of software development and would
| result in a completely useless system except for, at best,
| the optimal happy path.
| Bayart wrote:
| >The key difference seems to be not the fraud prevention
| systems, but the desire to help those in need
|
| The key difference is the complete lack of regulation and data
| policies. The potential for malevolence in a country the size
| of Togo is limited, but I'd rather not have the same processes
| in my own country.
| hkt wrote:
| If size of country is a determinant of public sector
| efficiency, there's an easy answer to many of the supposed
| problems of the public sector - secession.
|
| Alternatively we could accept the role of outsourcing and the
| effects of the broken social fabric and the system-wide
| problems that remain unresolved in the anglosphere countries.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Or just decentralization.
| shakna wrote:
| > The potential for malevolence in a country the size of Togo
| is limited, but I'd rather not have the same processes in my
| own country.
|
| The potential for building more advanced fraud protection
| systems also scales with the nation being discussed.
| Especially when you consider that the world's largest fraud
| protection experts are already operating within the borders
| of most of those richer nations.
|
| Why not partner with MasterCard or VISA?
| gruez wrote:
| >Why not partner with MasterCard or VISA?
|
| Because the problem domain is different for credit card
| transactions compared to covid stimulus?
| shakna wrote:
| The problem domain is identity verification, by and
| large. Something that we have many, many very large
| multinational corporations solving on a transactional
| basis that absolutely dwarfs stimulus' programs needs.
|
| Yet, somehow, the stimulus programs still require
| exorbitant amounts of their budget to verify known
| persons, and use this as a way to deny access to those
| who are most vulnerable.
| hpoe wrote:
| Having worked with the "fraud prevention" departments of
| the most advanced nation on earth in cases where they
| screwed up I can guarantee you they aren't that advanced.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| One of the (if not "the") triumphs of the Trump administration
| was getting payments out to millions of people in a couple of
| weeks.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >That kind of speed of development is absolutely possible,
| especially in richer nations
|
| The richer you are the easier it is to justify pissing away
| resources inefficiently catering to stakeholders way down the
| totem pole.
|
| Compare/contrast pretty much any publicly funded endeavor in
| the US/Canada/rich western Europe vs similar projects
| elsewhere. Sure the rich places get 10% more but they pay 90%
| more to do it.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The issue is that in the west, and particular in the US, being
| poor is considered a character flaw. Rudger Bergman goes into a
| bit of detail on the history of that perception, which he
| attributes to the opposition against Nixon's UBI (at least in
| the US).
|
| So what we now have in many western nations is a huge
| bureaucratic body to prevent fraud on social security systems
| which at the same time significantly increase hurdles to apply
| for the programs and what can be done with the help. On the
| other hand, the bureaucratic support to fight tax evasion
| especially by the super rich, is typically tiny.
| gerbilly wrote:
| > The issue is that in the west, and particular in the US,
| being poor is considered a character flaw.
|
| This is the Just world hypothesis in action.1
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| Voltaire's "Candide or the Optimist" is a classic literary
| novella with this subject as backdrop. Short and wonderful,
| a must read.
| marijnz0r wrote:
| Rutger Bregman https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutger_Bregman
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > in the US, being poor is considered a character flaw
|
| The (modern) meaning of this is hard to discern without
| knowing if "poor" means the same in the two contexts. Is it
| not possible someone in the US who is considered to be "poor"
| (by wealth or QoL) might not be in Togo?
|
| > bureaucratic support to fight tax evasion
|
| Do you mean actual (legal) tax evasion, or tax fairness?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Do you mean actual (legal) tax evasion, or tax fairness?"
|
| Many tax schemes exist in a weired gray area and have not
| been tested in court sufficiently, because of how complex
| they are, how difficult they are to invetigate and
| expensive to prosecute
| siruncledrew wrote:
| The difference Togo has going for themselves is that they are
| like a startup country that _has_ to be lean and resourceful
| because they just don't have the money or - for lack of a better
| phrase - bureaucratic structures in place.
|
| The article is calling Togo "poor" but that's from the
| perspective of the West. Poverty is the norm, not the exception
| in such countries, which means that everybody is in the same boat
| trying to use what they have to make it work.
|
| I think in the US, there's much more hesitation to dive into new
| things with a willingness of accepting potential failure ahead of
| time and pivoting if needed.
|
| Put another way, if Togo tried this and failed, they can just say
| "well we're back to where we started, let's try another way",
| whereas if that happened in the US it would be seen as a major
| fault and carry a lot of political consequences.
|
| Put into a tech perspective, a new tech startup might be willing
| to live with their business logic running cheaply off clever
| "hacks" that suffice, but if you approached a big company with
| that solution there would be like 10 levels of managers all
| critiquing it and running CBAs to assess the risks firsts.
| wtmt wrote:
| The speed of doing this is astonishing for sure, though the
| article also states that many people were excluded because they
| didn't have (or refused to have) the newer voter ID cards (issued
| after 2018) and also because they had to physically verify the
| cards due to fraudsters misusing lists obtained from polling
| stations. Exclusion is a larger issue that negates claims of
| equality or non-discrimination.
|
| Tangentially, and moving a bit off topic, what was surprising to
| me is that biometrics wasn't mentioned (but I'm sure some
| influential people, companies and "banks" would soon push for
| it). In contrast, even though India has large (on paper) programs
| of direct cash transfers and subsidized food supplies, they're
| all tied to the exclusionary irrevocable/non-changeable biometric
| based number (called Aadhaar). That the poorest people would be
| living and/working in conditions that support destruction or
| rapid change in biometrics has been completely lost on all
| bureaucrats and politicians. On paper, alternative
| identifications are to be legally accepted, but practically
| nothing moves unless biometric authentication succeeds.
| vsskanth wrote:
| I think in India iris scans are used in addition to fingerprint
| as biometric markers. Doesn't cover all cases but more robust
| than just relying on a finger or an eye.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| No, Iris scans are used in the Aadhaar ecosystem during
| enrollment. But for authentication usecases (such as ration
| disbursement) - it is almost exclusively OTP/fingerprint
| verification.
|
| Iris scans can be used, but are rarely used in practice
| anywhere except enrollment due to the higher cost of devices,
| the "creepyness factor", and speed of usage.
| roenxi wrote:
| I dunno, is looking to "One of the World's Poorest Countries" for
| economic advice really the best start? Even if they've done this
| well it seems risky to start trying to learn from the
| "successful" programs of poor states on the theory that maybe the
| things they are successful at are holding them back.
|
| I still haven't seen a definitive article on how the Chinese are
| running Shenzhen. There are probably useful and general lessons
| there about how to make people wealthy at an indecent speed.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| given that this rollout happened over the pandemic, it's not
| likely to be the cause of Togo's poverty.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "Even if they've done this well it seems risky to start trying
| to learn from the "successful" programs of poor states on the
| theory that maybe the things they are successful at are holding
| them back."
|
| You should always looking at what others are doing and draw
| your own conclusions. I think one thing that may cause or is
| already causing problems for the US is the refusal to look at
| what other countries are doing, for example in health care,
| social programs or drug policy. You don't have to copy what
| others are doing but having a good understanding is very
| helpful.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Poor countries are riddled with fraud, corruption, etc... It is
| a challenge just doing what we take for granted in the west.
|
| For example, if you have a toll road, you can expect most
| people to bribe the guy at the toll booth instead of paying the
| fee, and the little that is collected will probably line the
| pockets of whoever is in charge instead of maintaining the
| road.
|
| Having a government program that actually works is extremely
| impressive in these conditions. It is not about economic
| advise, it is about being able to build something under such
| adversity.
|
| Note: I don't know about Togo specifically, maybe it is
| different, with poor countries, that's the general idea.
| havkd wrote:
| You'll get flagged but coming from a poor country you are on
| point.
| guerrilla wrote:
| You comment only makes sense if you assume that they are poor
| of their own fault rather than due to a history of severe
| exploitation and other uncontrollable factors; and if you
| assume that the strategy can't be considered independently.
| roenxi wrote:
| But the alternative you put is to assume that their failures
| are due to external forces and their success due to policy
| choices.
|
| China also has a history of severe exploitation and other
| uncontrolled factors. They got wealthy with breathtaking
| speed. It is unwise to look past that to Togo.
| beaconstudios wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming that we should only look
| at Togo and not other nations that have implemented
| successful policy. On the contrary, governors should look
| around the globe to find examples of success stories in
| order to build a corpus from which to learn about the
| realities of policymaking.
|
| Shenzhen seems to be an example of making a small number of
| extremely wealthy individuals and a large number of
| sweatshop-tier factory labourers; I wouldn't class that as
| an example to follow unless you only care about creating
| millionaires.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > But the alternative you put is to assume that their
| failures are due to external forces and their success due
| to policy choices.
|
| I'm not assuming it, but I think someone should make that
| argument given that the country was subject to over 300
| years of brutal colonialism which included being the
| literal capital of the slave trade and later
| neocolonialism. China's a different story because they
| eradicated foreign ownership and interference before any of
| its success and still has pretty heavy capital controls and
| other mechanisms in place including local ownership
| requirement laws.
|
| In any case, there are many other factors that could
| influence any countries development starting from simple
| geographic luck. To assume that it is a self-made problem
| (or isn't) without argument is not useful.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Then instead of absolute (global) measures, we could look at
| relative improvement rates instead?
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| innovation comes from thought diversity. Just a different
| culture and set of circumstances can certainly bear fruits of
| positive systematic change. Most important is to vet the
| concept, not the country.
| roenxi wrote:
| How do we know that the concept is isolated and able to be
| vetted separately? Needing stimulus is usually a sign of
| other policy failures in my book.
|
| People like to act as though big economic crashes are random
| and unpredictable like a weather event. They aren't, they are
| generally a result of policy too.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| By analyzing and researching the idea and context, not by
| dismissing them because "they are poor".
| dotdi wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Qp2hB
| samstave wrote:
| Togo!
|
| I did my very first class report in 5th grade in 1986 on Togo!
|
| We had to pick a country in Africa to look up and do a report on,
| I chose Togo, and while sadly the Togo Ministry Of History will
| not be able to receive a copy of my report, as its been sealed in
| my archives which are under audit...
|
| Every single time I see Togo, I think back on that report and
| learning about Togo.
|
| Looks like I still have more to learn about Togo.
| throwuxiytayq wrote:
| I don't care about Bamaze, please stop telling me about Bamaze.
| Jesus. Journalist writing needs some kind of a reboot.
| tomhunters wrote:
| It would definitely great if the article is not locked on a pay
| wall.
| cassianoleal wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29227187
| Aachen wrote:
| That explains why this revelation couldn't be put in the
| headline. But yeah like a sibling comment said, someone else
| posted a mirror 30 minutes before you.
| wtmt wrote:
| I wondered why I was able to read the article, and then I
| realized that I have this extension installed on Firefox called
| Bypass Paywalls. I'd recommend trying that.
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