A vent: why is it any of your business why I had X months without work? Maybe I had enough money not to work for a bit and felt like doing something different. Why am I obligated to continuous labour even when I don't need it. Why am I subject to your judgement for not renting out my life at every possible moment?
Corporations want obedient wage slaves, so if they find out that you may have some "Fuck you" money that you can use to stop working for them at your whim, they will avoid you.
I understand what you're saying, but corporation is made of people. How is this communicated to my hiring manager and why do they agree to play this stupid game?
In complex systems, no one sits down and does this. It's the revealed preferences and aggregate outcome when budgeting decisions, or hiring decisions are made. It's the equivalent of stereotypes in organization behavior.
I get the concept and use case - but equifax has a reputation on par with klan members and pedos...at least be self aware enough to know to conceal your true form! Phillip Morris became Altria or whatever.
Plus, I can verify for employers that I am a real human with a real employment history snd I can prove it...by giving them my SSN and Mother's Maiden name? What stops a bad guy from speed rushing the dark web, registering these things en masse and selling access to DPRK?
There are pros for employers, they can hire based on whether a candidate has been punished by other employers before and keep punishing them based on an objective social credit system. And there are cons.
Except in the credit report they only list your lenders and how much money you owe, and your payment history, and it's technically possible to not get any credit and have no information, or at least no recent information, in your credit report. In The Work Number, they not only list your employers, but also all your paychecks, and it's hardly possible to opt out.
When you apply for a software job in the US and go through a background check, most of your former employments are verified through The Work Number. As an employee, I'm not aware of a way to opt out of this data collection, and I assume if there is a way, it will surely make the future background check harder.
Now that they allow to look at your personal report, I went ahead, registered and requested a copy. This is just wow.
First of all, I noticed that American Express casually requests my report a few times per year. Well, I guess, if I lose my job, they will know soon! Besides Amex, the only other requests were the background checks when I actually applied for jobs, so everything else is fine.
But you know what else is there? All my fucking paychecks for all companies I used to work for here in the US. Nowhere in my employment agreements I did explicitly agree to my paycheck information to be transferred to Equifax, and yet, here we go.
Looking forward for the moment when all this data is leaked, because, you know, Equifax has some history [1].
Funnily enough, if you go to the FAQ, under the heading "Can I opt out of having my information on The Work Number?" it straight up starts with "No.", full stop and all.
Interesting, it looks like you can only get your own data, if you have an American postal address. So if you moved abroad (or never lived there), you can not get your data, even if they have it.
I'm sure there are ways around this. I'm not an American, and I was just trying to figure out whether they have data on me, because I used to work for American companies in the past.
Sure, not all good laws are given. Must take a good public campaign or maybe a big leak for the law like that to appear. I would think California will be one of the first states to adopt a law like that, similar to how they now forbid to ask about your current salary when interviewing you for a job [1].
Being an American is so undignified—humiliating, even.
I lived in what's known as a food desert. It was a place which required a car to get food. We drove on roads which crumbled and destroyed our car. The insurance (which we paid a pretty premium for) covered the fix. Lucky us! We found a garage, which took some time, but they scammed us. While we waited for the insurance to believe us, and we had no car, we tried to walk to get food. Technically, it was a 10 minute walk there, but the trucks (which were very large) made the 8-lane road impassible. We only realized this after trying. Our neighbors doorbell informed the police of this, and we were briefly detained for questions. It wasn't lost on me that the police's main suspicion was that we were homeless. Though not technically a crime, it is very incriminating. After our release, we asked an app to bring us food. It was a weekend, so there was an additional convenience fee. We also left a tip which "went directly to" pay for the human. We didn't hear them or see them, but the app told us the food had arrived and showed a picture of bags on a porch which wasn't ours. It was our neighbor's, whose doorbell had—once again—dispatched police for the intrusion. On Monday, we had no car to drive to the industrial park for work. The bus, which incidentally stopped on the other side of the 8-lane road, arrived once every 50 minutes, but must have had issues since it simply never arrived—though the app had no explanation for this. Nevermind, we called in "sick," which was laughable because being "sick" and taking a personal day were one in the same, but at least being "sick" avoided the shame of being desperate. We did eventually get our car back, not entirely the same, but we could at least move beyond the house again. The insurance app insists our case is settled, but we had to pay out of pocket (a credit card) and we needed reimbursed. We received a letter from the police not long after. A 300 USD fine for disorderly conduct in crossing the road. The date and time were wrong, but the social security number wasn't. We will take a sick day and go to court at 8:20AM next Thursday to appeal.
What if you spent 10 years building a business abroad?
I remember early in my career being send by my employer on 'contract' assignments to other companies for 3 or 6 months. When I left that company and went interviewing, everyone was extremely concerned that I had been an independent contractor, some even saying they never employed such people. As though, once you've broken the chains, you're no longer employable.
In what kind of anarcho-capitalist utopia do you live? Have you seen how many regulations they have over in the US? The Dodd-Frank act alone was 2,300 pages. And that's hardly the only rule they have on the books.
You can complain that the regulations are bad, sure. But 'no regulation' is a stretch.
Yes, that's definitely a valid complained you might have.
There's also what you might call 'economics of scale in compliance'. Ie in absolute terms, the big guys suffer under the rules just as much as you do, but they can amortise the necessarily effort and billable lawyer hours over a bigger business.
Big banks growing up around a central bank is not capitalism, it's financialism.
Mandate that any fresh new currency be apportioned and distributed to only living citizens, and a capitalism becomes possible again. As it stands now it's the money printers, and those adjacent, who hold the power.
Giving everyone fresh currency, and taxing those of significant wealth to sop up inflation (corporations and individuals), is how business entities get forced into serving the people again. As it stands now they serve those who have the ability to leverage the printing press, and that's not you or I.
Addendum: finance is not capital. Capital is the structures used to produce goods. Finance in our system is contractual trickery used to represent capital. To pull from Baudrillard: if capital is the land, finance is the map.
> Mandate that any fresh new currency be apportioned and distributed to only living citizens
> Giving everyone fresh currency, and taxing those of significant wealth to sop up inflation (corporations and individuals), is how business entities get forced into serving the people again.
I don't agree with the mate's weird ideas, but capitalism is fairly adaptable and works reasonable well even in fairly weird systems. Have a look at eg Germany's social market economy.
I'm not sure we can blame the Stasi. Well, at least not blame them alone. West Germans were protesting and boycotting a census when East Germany was still her own country.
A vent: why is it any of your business why I had X months without work? Maybe I had enough money not to work for a bit and felt like doing something different. Why am I obligated to continuous labour even when I don't need it. Why am I subject to your judgement for not renting out my life at every possible moment?
Corporations want obedient wage slaves, so if they find out that you may have some "Fuck you" money that you can use to stop working for them at your whim, they will avoid you.
I understand what you're saying, but corporation is made of people. How is this communicated to my hiring manager and why do they agree to play this stupid game?
In complex systems, no one sits down and does this. It's the revealed preferences and aggregate outcome when budgeting decisions, or hiring decisions are made. It's the equivalent of stereotypes in organization behavior.
Because hiring managers and HR have different incentives and it's therefore in their interest to play the game.
See: every manager and CEO that gets a bonus from cutting down head count or keeping the hiring budget as low as possible.
Similarly, having a mortgage and dependants is seen as a "reliability plus point" let's say. Skin in the game.
You may have developed the capacity for independent thought in that period.
The US is rapidly catching up with China in the field of authoritarianism.
china doesnt have anything like this
I'd call it dystopianism, this page reads like an episode of Black Mirror
I get the concept and use case - but equifax has a reputation on par with klan members and pedos...at least be self aware enough to know to conceal your true form! Phillip Morris became Altria or whatever.
Plus, I can verify for employers that I am a real human with a real employment history snd I can prove it...by giving them my SSN and Mother's Maiden name? What stops a bad guy from speed rushing the dark web, registering these things en masse and selling access to DPRK?
I see no way this could go wrong at all.
Seems like a souped up credit score? With pretty much all the pros and cons of that existing system.
You can't mention that there are pros and cons and not mention that the cons vastly outweigh the pros, with any credibility.
I already don't like what I hear about standard American credit scores (but I don't live in the US anyway.)
This seems mostly like more of the same.
There are pros for employers, they can hire based on whether a candidate has been punished by other employers before and keep punishing them based on an objective social credit system. And there are cons.
Except in the credit report they only list your lenders and how much money you owe, and your payment history, and it's technically possible to not get any credit and have no information, or at least no recent information, in your credit report. In The Work Number, they not only list your employers, but also all your paychecks, and it's hardly possible to opt out.
Only fair if they also tell the candidate what the company pays other workers in similar roles. Transparency shouldn't go only one way.
I think in the US workers' rights to talk about salaries is already protected by law.
Many credit reports contain work history.
When you apply for a software job in the US and go through a background check, most of your former employments are verified through The Work Number. As an employee, I'm not aware of a way to opt out of this data collection, and I assume if there is a way, it will surely make the future background check harder.
Now that they allow to look at your personal report, I went ahead, registered and requested a copy. This is just wow.
First of all, I noticed that American Express casually requests my report a few times per year. Well, I guess, if I lose my job, they will know soon! Besides Amex, the only other requests were the background checks when I actually applied for jobs, so everything else is fine.
But you know what else is there? All my fucking paychecks for all companies I used to work for here in the US. Nowhere in my employment agreements I did explicitly agree to my paycheck information to be transferred to Equifax, and yet, here we go.
Looking forward for the moment when all this data is leaked, because, you know, Equifax has some history [1].
[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/refunds/equifax-data-breach-...
Funnily enough, if you go to the FAQ, under the heading "Can I opt out of having my information on The Work Number?" it straight up starts with "No.", full stop and all.
Interesting, it looks like you can only get your own data, if you have an American postal address. So if you moved abroad (or never lived there), you can not get your data, even if they have it.
Reason number xxx that I never plan to return permanently. The longer I'm away the more bonkers things seem there.
Oh, the form also expect you to have a US social security number and US mobile number.
There are mail-receiving companies that you can use. You can easily get your data if all you need is an American postal address.
I'm sure there are ways around this. I'm not an American, and I was just trying to figure out whether they have data on me, because I used to work for American companies in the past.
Dear Equifax,
Add to my report that I said: You suuuuckkk!
>Nowhere in my employment agreements I did explicitly agree to my paycheck information to be transferred to Equifax, and yet, here we go.
Nowhere in US law does it say your employer has to keep any of that information private.
True. It's very funny how many employers will prevent employees discussing pay and then leak all the pay information to the panopticon.
Sure, not all good laws are given. Must take a good public campaign or maybe a big leak for the law like that to appear. I would think California will be one of the first states to adopt a law like that, similar to how they now forbid to ask about your current salary when interviewing you for a job [1].
[1]: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
Really? Anf if they took your paystubs, and posted them online? No problems? Nary a one?
Why is Equifax special?
Because they kind of did what you described and the reason the data never surfaced is either because it's too valuable or too worthless
What is your S̶o̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ C̶r̶e̶d̶i̶t̶ Work Number score?
Should not be legal.
No, it shouldn't be. I agree with you.
Some more background on this here… Equifax gets the data directly from America’s biggest companies https://www.fastcompany.com/40485634/equifax-salary-data-and...
Being an American is so undignified—humiliating, even.
Like a slavery index?
What if you spent 10 years building a business abroad?
I remember early in my career being send by my employer on 'contract' assignments to other companies for 3 or 6 months. When I left that company and went interviewing, everyone was extremely concerned that I had been an independent contractor, some even saying they never employed such people. As though, once you've broken the chains, you're no longer employable.
I guess you don't need to be an authoritarian country. Just capitalist with no regulation...
State consolidates power or a few megacorps. Unfortunately the middle ground (approximate balance of power) is always tenuous
> Just capitalist with no regulation...
In what kind of anarcho-capitalist utopia do you live? Have you seen how many regulations they have over in the US? The Dodd-Frank act alone was 2,300 pages. And that's hardly the only rule they have on the books.
You can complain that the regulations are bad, sure. But 'no regulation' is a stretch.
Sure, depends for whom.
“Rules for thee, not for me”
Yes, that's definitely a valid complained you might have.
There's also what you might call 'economics of scale in compliance'. Ie in absolute terms, the big guys suffer under the rules just as much as you do, but they can amortise the necessarily effort and billable lawyer hours over a bigger business.
Ineffective non-enforced regulations are to me the same as no regulations.
'No regulation' would be preferable over regulations selective enforced only against people the selectors don't like.
Big banks growing up around a central bank is not capitalism, it's financialism.
Mandate that any fresh new currency be apportioned and distributed to only living citizens, and a capitalism becomes possible again. As it stands now it's the money printers, and those adjacent, who hold the power.
Giving everyone fresh currency, and taxing those of significant wealth to sop up inflation (corporations and individuals), is how business entities get forced into serving the people again. As it stands now they serve those who have the ability to leverage the printing press, and that's not you or I.
Addendum: finance is not capital. Capital is the structures used to produce goods. Finance in our system is contractual trickery used to represent capital. To pull from Baudrillard: if capital is the land, finance is the map.
> Mandate that any fresh new currency be apportioned and distributed to only living citizens
> Giving everyone fresh currency, and taxing those of significant wealth to sop up inflation (corporations and individuals), is how business entities get forced into serving the people again.
This doesn't really sound like capitalism, mate.
I don't agree with the mate's weird ideas, but capitalism is fairly adaptable and works reasonable well even in fairly weird systems. Have a look at eg Germany's social market economy.
That is generally considered to be "less capitalist", precisely because less of life is in the market economy.
Also since the Stasi Germans have been very twitchy about privacy, which fed downstream into GDPR.
I'm not sure we can blame the Stasi. Well, at least not blame them alone. West Germans were protesting and boycotting a census when East Germany was still her own country.
Dystopian