Image source: indiatogether.org

To be clear, the Lokpal Bill (Ombudsman Bill) proposed by the lawmakers in India as a mechanism to fight corruption is a sham and is designed to encourage, rather than discourage corruption. In the lawmaker’s version of the Lokpal bill, the office of the ombudsperson is appointed by the government (at its own pleasure) and the office will serve only in an advisory capacity with no powers to actually pursue corruption charges in court. Furthermore, the jurisdiction of the office will be limited to politicians and not the civil servant and other officers who are responsible for running the government machinery; of course, the office will not have the authority to investigate the Prime Minister. Also, while the office of the ombudsperson do not have the authority to actually press charges against the politicians they deem corrupt, they do have the authority to penalize the citizens who make the corruption accusation (in the event that the office finds their target of investigation innocent). [source: India Against Corruption]

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this bill is a toothless tiger which will only foster the moral bankruptcy and the rampant corruption that is the Indian government.

Now, we come to the Jan Lokpal bill that is being proposed by the India Against Corruption lobby. The Jan Lokpal bill proposes that the office of the ombudsperson be an independent institution much like the supreme court or the election commission. It is to be appointed by a selection committee consisting of judges, ‘meritorious’ citizens who have won awards like the Nobel prize, Magsasay award, the Election Commission, Auditor General, and others. The bill proposes that central vigilance commission (which investigates corruption by the civil servants and government offices and departments) and the division of the Central Bureau of Investigation be folded into the office of the ombudsperson, so that there is a single office that investigates the charges of corruption in all branches and levels of the government. The bill also proposes that the office be an investigatory body with authority for law enforcement which allows the office to pursue criminal charges against the individuals who the office finds guilty. The bill also sets a time limit of one year to complete the investigation and one year for filing charges against the accused if sufficient evidence is available. The bill also have provisions for whistle blower protection, and a provision to recover the money or value lost by the government from the individual who was found guilty of corruption (which resulted in the aforementioned loss). [source: India Against Corruption]

On the face of it, the Jan Lokpal bill looks like a great idea, but reflecting on it, I am disturbed by the assumptions made in the bill. My objections are a little different from the kind I have seen online. For example, here are objections by [Rohan], [Offstumped], and [Business Standard]. I have both practical and philosophical objections. I present one of each.

On a practical level, the bill says little to address the issue of “who watches the watchman”. How do you ensure that the integrity of the ombudsperson’s office is not compromised, and if it is compromised, then how do you recognize and then fix it? Given the level of corruption in India, this is a real concern. Until this issue is addressed sufficiently, I am not too comfortable throwing my support behind it.

On a philosophical level, I have deeper concerns. The office proposed by the Jan Lokpal bill is a meritocratic institution which monitors a the government, a democratic institution. To put it differently, the bill makes a democratic institution accountable not to the people who voted, but to a meritocratic institution which can potentially exert it’s influence on the outcomes of the governance. The risk here is that such a meritocratic institution could develop the attitude of “people don’t know what they want, but we know what’s good for the people”, and use it’s authority to enforce an agenda that might not be the will of the people.

While I grant you that the current “democracy” in the India is really plutocracy in disguise, simply making it answerable to a meritocracy cannot be a solution to the problem at hand.

IMHO, the solution to this problem of corruption can only come from democracy itself. Not because democracy is somehow sacred, but because the institution that is corrupt is supposed to be democratic in the first place. Initiatives like “I Paid A Bribe” is a great example of such efforts. Another example of involving the citizenry was proposed by India’s chief economic advisor Kaushik Babu in which he proposed decriminalizing bribe giving and keep bribe-taking a crime. This will provide an incentive for the bribe giver to not conceal the fact that the bribe was given and even co-operate to ensure that the bribe taker is caught.
I wish I had something more constructive to offer, but unfortunately I don’t.

UPDATE: Realitycheck provides credible objections to the Jan Lokpal bill..

Afridi. Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/charaka/

The fury that came out of the Indian online community either in support of or against Afridi had the usual Aman-ki-Asha defense or Pakistan-is-a-terror-supporter attack. I will not comment on either side of the arguments except that I saw many good arguments on both sides. However, I do wish to make a point about “Pakistan is a terrorist state” versus “Pakistanis are terrorist sympathizers” argument that seems to have conveniently folded itself into the argument associated with Afridi’s statements.

On one side, while many agree that the political establishment in Pakistan sympathizes with and actively supports terrorist acts against India, they caution that one should not claim that the state’s support for terrorism is the same as the people’s support for terrorism much like Muage vs. Zimbabweans. On the other side, there are many who argue that a state establishment cannot function without an approval from the masses (even a tacit approval through silence is sufficient). In the latter camp, Greatbong argues that assassination of moderates like Taseer points to a popular sympathy (albeit a tacit one) for Islamic fundamentalism.

I agree with the sentiment that one should not equate the actions of the political establishment with the people of the state. This statement is easy to defend when talking about the people of the state, but the same arguments do not hold when you are considering individuals. The difference is the similar to how statistical inferences, while applicable to a large dataset, become irrelevant when considering the outcome of a single event. Let me explain. While the American public may not favor massive human rights violations in Iraq and may even be against the war in Iraq, you cannot claim the same to be true of some American individual. I know many Americans who actively support America’s invasion of Iraq and deposing of Saddam Hussain. I also know many Americans who oppose it.

The American I know who oppose the Iraq war are quick to blame their political establishment and, if pressed, are willing to offer their apologies to Iraqies and an outright admission that they oppose their goverment’s actions.

Let’s go back and consider Afridi’s comments specifically with respect to this argument ”Pakistan is a terrorist state” versus “Pakistanis are terrorist sympathizers”. Reacting to Gautam Gambhir’s statement that India’s victory over Pakistan will help soothe the pain over 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Afridi said: “I think they were very stupid comments by Gautam Gambhir. I was not expecting this from Gautam. This is all politics, what do you know about who carried out the Mumbai attacks?” [source]

Despite overwhelming evidence that 26/11 attacks received support from Pakistani establishment, Afridi asserts that there is no knowledge of the perpetrators of 26/11. He could have distanced himself from the whole thing by simply saying “This is just politics.” and stopping there. But he did not. For some reason he felt compelled to defend the Pakistani establishment. That sounds like Afridi is batting for the Pakistani establishment. So I cannot give Afridi a reprieve on the ”Pakistan is a terrorist state” versus “Pakistanis are terrorist sympathizers” schism.

Recently, Jon Stewart did his piece “I give up” on the fact that while the conservative political machine has been painting the public workers (like teachers and firemen) as the greedy ones who are bleeding the nation dry, in reality it is corporations like GE who are the problem because despite a $9B profit, GE paid $0 federal income tax and got a $3.2B tax benefit. Now, it is considered common or ‘folk’ knowledge that corporations exploit all kinds of tax loopholes and lobby heavily to ensure that tax laws leave open several such loopholes to be exploited by these corporations. So why are Stewart and other so-called pundits (including news organizations) ‘noticing’ this only now and then pretending to be salient critics of such incongruities while at the same time depending on, and profiting from, the very same incongruities.  This is a real conflict of interest! One that hasn’t been adequately explained. My discussion on Facebook yielded the following.

Acting as an apologist for Stewart and co, it may be argued that while they do not contribute anything for affecting a change or reform, at least they enlighten us on how we are being screwed over. Many times we already know of it, and at other times it is news. But through it all, at least we are laughing. Then again, isn’t it a little bit like Elle Driver reading to Budd “Sidewinder” about the effects of the venom of a Black Mamba, in Kill Bill Vol. 2, after the Black Mamba has bitten him?

Consider the following hypothesis: This country has been and continues to be run by corporations. The political parties and the politicians are simply the means by which the corporations accomplish this task. There is little by means of democracy or “the system” that can be done to change this fact. So the only way out is perhaps a revolution. And the existing power brokers want to ensure that it never happens. They do this by drugging the entire population, intellectually speaking, of course.

The population in question can be broadly classified as the “vulgar” (and by vulgar I mean “Of or associated with the great masses of people”) or the “intelligentsia“. The vulgar have the numbers and the ability to affect such a revolution, but they lack the knowledge and understanding to accomplish this; the intelligentsia, on the other hand, have the knowledge and the intellect to use the abilities of the vulgar to affect the revolution. So together, the population can make the change. But they will not, by design. And here’s why.

Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and others serve as the ”opiate of the vulgar” in ensuring that the masses focus their frustrations, anger, and action against all the wrong issues and attribute the problems to all the wrong reasons. Simultaneously, Stewart, Colbert, and others serve as the “opiate of the intelligentsia” by convincing their audience to simply resign to the status quo and not advocate for any change. Between the two, the existing power structures ensure perpetuation.

The reaction to such recruitment has ranged from outrage to ambivalence to resignation. But the effect of recruiting felons into the military has not been sufficiently illuminated. The military has been accused of hiding any moral or pragmatic ill effects that may have been precipitated by such large numbers of felons in the military. Incidentally, the evidence of such ill effects and complacency of the military have traditionally been anecdotal.

We may finally be seeing the effect of such “moral waivers”. Recently, a court martial in Washington sentenced a US soldier to 24 years in prison for murdering Afghan civilians with intent.It looks like unlike with Abu Gharib and Iron Triangle murders, the US military has stopped protecting soldiers who commit crimes (while in active duty). While there is no evidence to say that the soldier was a “moral waiver” recruit, I don’t think that matters. As Dr. Stjepan Mestrovic argues in his book Rules of Engagement, certain events, behavior, or tolerance creates a social atmosphere which affects the moral compass to the individuals in that society so that acts that would otherwise been considered immoral or wrong suddenly becomes acceptable, is rationalized, and condoned. The murder of Afghan civilians by US soldiers could well point to the creation of such an unhealthy social environment that has metastasized the soldiers’ moral inclinations and driven them to misanthropic acts that have occurred almost beyond the individual’s volition.

I hope I am wrong. But I seriously doubt it.

Even though there is a lot of noise about privacy issues, there isn’t really anyone with a clear picture on where things are, where they will be heading, where they should be heading, and how do we as individuals adapt to these changes. I think the problem is that of methodology. People are trying to solve new-age problems with old-age tools; it’s not going to work. In this post, I attempt to explain my foregoing sentences.

Fatalists and conservatives. Let us take a look at the two major camps on the issue of privacy today. On one side you have the likes of Mark Zukerberg, David Thomson, and Samy Kamkar who believe that privacy is dead (the fatalists), and on the other side you have the likes of Future of Privacy Forum and Bruce Schneier who believe that maintaining our privacy is only a matter of setting up the right legal/economic framework of incentives and disincentives within the present (and future) context (the conservatives).

Both camps have valid points. Despite all the brouhaha about privacy issues with facebook, facebook continues to add more users, and current users continue to treat facebook as their repository of their social life and social interactions. So maybe privacy really is dead! But the very fact that there is such a backlash reveals the fissure in society where you have a significant faction that jealously guards many of its actions and its information, but finds that it is not able to maintain its privacy because ‘other entities’ (friends, banks, credit card companies, and such) are making them public. And there are still others who simply do not realize that what they think is private really is not. So the question is, what is the state of the art on this issue?

Privacy vs. Security. The first problem that you encounter when trying to answer that question is that there no common understanding of what privacy really is. Often people bleed their concerns of security into the issue of privacy. This is muddying the waters to the point where no coherent narrative emerges. While security is and should always be a grave concern, it an orthogonal issue to privacy. One possible consequence of loss of privacy is that the security of our property and resources is at jeopardy, but that is not a basis to conflate privacy with security. There should be separate discussions on each issue. They may complement each other but one should not supplement the other. Remember, a secure life does not guarantee a private life!

Privacy through public obscurity. Now that we know we talking exclusively about privacy and not security, we can move forward. In the past privacy has been protected largely due to the technological limitations that made several tasks intractable. Such intractability lead to privacy through public obscurity. For example, before the advent of telegraph and telephone, there was very little to worry about legitimate information about your activities (that you deem private) to your relatives in a different state. Why? Because of what I like to call Chinese-Whispers effect. But that changes with the ubiquity of telephones. Similarly, before the advent of the internet, at any point in your life, you were free to ‘reinvent’ yourself by simply moving to a new town, getting a new job and simply not citing individuals from your old life as references. There was very little anyone could reasonably do to dig up your past life (of course, you could always hire a private-eye, but that would constitute an unreasonable effort).

In fact, the privacy of your online communications with your bank are established by privacy through public obscurity. Worried? Don’t be, not for now at least. All `secure’ online communications use what is called public-key cryptography which involves dealing with numbers that have 100-200 digit prime numbers as their factors and encrypting messages with these numbers. In order to decrypt the message, one has to be able to factorize the large number into its constituent large prime numbers. The fastest-to-date mechanism to factorize a number is still by brute-force, and hence intractable. For even the fastest computers, this task could take years, by which time the contents of your private communication will be (hopefully) irrelevant. Thus, privacy through public obscurity.

I bring up the example of public-key encryption for a reason: the task of factorizing large numbers, although intractable right now, might not be so in the future (it wont be because the computer got faster, it will be because either quantum computers become a reality, or the answer to the famous P=NP problem in computer science is the affirmative). If that happens, then what do you think society’s response will be? Do you do expect two camps: one that says cryptography is dead, and another one that says all mechanisms to factorize numbers should be outlawed or disincentivised some how? Of course not. That’s an absurd proposition! The response will be to build a better cryptographic technique that works despite the state of the art.

We are facing a similar situation with privacy today, and the two camps that I referred to earlier are not helping. The fact remains that these days more often than not someone is hearing a tree fall in the forest, and so more trees are making a sound when they fall. So how do we deal with it?

First, learn to give up some of your privacy. Technology has made a lot of tasks tractable, and our physical and mental abilities and faculties are not evolving at a rate to match the pace of technology. Consequently, we are not able to make all our actions intractable to the new technology. So we have to give up some of our privacy. While this may be a ghastly notion for people in the western hemisphere, it is surprisingly common for societies in the eastern hemisphere to trade privacy for social support structure, security, and (more controversially) for happiness. Much like we have given up privacy for air flights but not for bus or train journeys, we may have to give up privacy in certain aspects of your life that we had otherwise considered to be private.

As for the natural follow-up question, what aspect of our privacy do we have to give up, I honestly don’t know. My speculations and proposals here are of methodological nature. I am not answering questions. I am just trying to figure out what the right questions to ask are! Isn’t that the first step in arriving at a resolution to our privacy issues?

Second, indulge in information overload. The less information you give out, the more useful every extra bit of information about you is. Inevitably, despite your best efforts, more information about you will leak out. So how do you counter that? With information overload. Take Hasan Elahi as a classic example. After he was erroneously put on the FBI terrorist watch list, and he had to endure a gruelling questioning by the FBI that took up hours of his time and ultimately to no one’s benefit, he decide to turn the tables on FBI. He put up a website called Tracking Transience where he has up up pictures, videos, and all sorts of evidence of where he has been and what he has been doing every hour of every day! Since there is already so much information about him available, any additional information about him is not so useful any more. Curiously, he doesn’t appear in any of this photographs. He is one behind the camera. So in a sense although he has given you so much information about him, he really hasn’t given you anything that is remarkably useful. Paradoxically, by revealing so much about himself online, he has secured his privacy. [For details, visit: http://memes.org/tracking-transience-hasan-elahi]

Ok, so Tracking Transience works for Hasan, what about the rest of us? Again, I am only showing you where to being asking the right questions; I do not have answers for you.

Are there any more tools of this or different kind that we can employ? Arguably, yes. One needs to look harder, and looks at different places. The new tools are different in kind, and presumably, in an ironic twist, an artefact the technology that has precipitated the issue of privacy in the first place.

In conclusion, my argument simply is that you cannot use old tools of fatalism, legal recourse, and economic regulation to frame the debate of privacy and expect a resolution. They are simply the wrong tools for the job! I will wrap this post up by continuing with the metaphor with which I started this article: if the tree falls in the forest and there are people to hear it, then let them hear it, but make sure that every minute sound made by the tree and the trees around it are perpetually amplified and broadcast to where the sound made by the falling tree become noise and simply irrelevant!

The resolution essentially says that the US Justice Systems are too irrepairably broken to admit a fair and just death penalty. In its own words:

.. more fundamentally Section 210.6 is simply inadequate to address the endemic flaws of the current system. Section 210.6, which in many respects provided the template for contemporary state capital schemes, represents a failed attempt to rationalize the administration of the death penalty and, for the reasons we discuss in greater detail below, its adoption rested on the false assumption that carefully-worded guidance to capital sentencers would meaningfully limit arbitrariness and discrimination in the administration of the American death penalty.

It lays out six important reasons for such disrepair [sourced from the actual text of the resolution (in PDF)]:

1. Section 210.6 advocates for an individualized determination of a crime (specifically murder, under certain circumstances) to be considered for death penalty as appropriate sentencing. However, several states have statutory identification of which murders should command the death penalty, and furthermore, such statuary discretion leaves the jury with a ‘formula’ to award the death sentence (rather than individualized determination).
2. Furthermore, the wide scope of murders/crimes that are currently eligible to extract the death sentence, under various state laws, is antithetical to the “spirit” and gravity of the punishment. The problem is that no state has successfully confined the death penalty to a narrow band of the most aggravated cases. Death eligibility in prevailing statutes remains breathtakingly broad, as aggravating
   factors or their functional equivalent often cover the spectrum of many if not most murders.
3. There is an almost unforgivable racial bias in the ratio of the number of minorities sentenced to death compared to the total number. Persistent efforts by various groups to address this issue has yielded little fruitful results in terms of a legal remedy to this issue.
4. The cost of administering the death-penalty is extremely high, and combined with the ineptitude of the defendants’ legal representation, the state incurs high costs in putting people to death who, arguably, do not deserve the punishment in the first place. The resolution noted: “Despite the fact that “effective assistance of counsel” is a recognized constitutional right, the scope of the right and the nature of the remedy have precluded the courts from being able to ensure the adequacy of representation in capital cases.”
5. In light of DNA evidence and upcoming forensic technologies, the acceptable risk of having some persons sentenced to death later, and perhaps too late, be shown to not have committed the crime for which they were sentenced. This issues is highlighted in House v. Bell, in which, the petitioner sought federal review with substantial new evidence challenging the accuracy of his murder conviction, including DNA evidence conclusively establishing that semen recovered from the victim’s body actually came from the victim’s husband, as well as evidence of a confession to the murder by the husbandthe Tennessee Supreme Court refused to consider whether new DNA evidence presented during death penalty appeals necessitates a new trial, and declined to answer other questions posed.
6. The politicization of judicial and gubernatorial elections has made death penalty a campaign issue, which leads to populist-style administration of the death penalty. Additionally, the politicization of the issue of capital punishment in the legislative sphere limits the capacity of legislatures to promote and maintain statutory reform. The kind of statutory reform that many regard as the most promising for ameliorating arbitrariness and discrimination in the application of the death penalty is strict narrowing of the category of those eligible for capital crimes.

In light of these observations, the resolution concludes: “these conditions strongly suggest that the Institute recognize that the preconditions for an adequately administered regime of capital punishment do not currently exist and cannot reasonably be expected to be achieved.”

No, I am not going to make the same pedestrian arguments against such a ban that you have read/heard all over the place; ranging from ‘if they want to keep people from smoking, then they should ban cigarettes’, to ‘my nicotine habit is my business’. In fact, I think those arguments do not hold water, and I will demonstrate why.

Ban cigarettes… uh, no.

Consider the ‘ban the cigarettes instead’ argument. There have been widespread calls for banning alcohol since it is a social evil, and a similar argument is made for cigarettes as well. Cigarette cause severe health problems. Unhealthy youth put a strain on the society’s (rickety) health care system, and their unproductivity make them a liability to the rest of the society. Hence they should be banned. Well, actually no. because banning them will only drive them underground, and the society (and the government) will lose all regulatory control over them. Consequence is that now there is no way to regulate the processing of tobacco (since they are going to be processing it in some dingy backyard, there is a good chance they may be contaminated with some lethal chemical, like illegal arrack sometimes is); there is no way to control the sale to tobacco (one the most addictive substances known to man) to minors; there is no way to control the supply of tobacco, and hence no way to control people’s addiction to it.

It’s a victimless crime… uh, no.

Another argument is ‘it’s my body, and I can do what I want with it’. Well, while that argument may apply to drug abuse, it does not apply to smoking. Why? Because there is such a thing called second-hand smoke. Even if you are a smoker in a den of smokers, you have no right to damage the health of another smoker through your second-hand smoke. Every smoker’s lung cancer is her/her own business, and no one else has the right to expedite that.

Smoking increases health care costs… uh, no.

Third argument is ‘smoking increases the health cost, and puts strain on the health care system’.  If you look at this study in the New England Journal of Medicine, it’s conclusion is:

Conclusions If people stopped smoking, there would be a savings in health care costs, but only in the short term. Eventually, smoking cessation would lead to increased health care costs.

So there you have it! The whole lower health care costs argument is dubious as well. Then what does this mean? It simply means that banning cigarettes is not the smartest idea.

Now coming to the actual smoking ban going into effect from October 2nd: it wont help either. Why? Because of many reasons:

1. Air Quality: If people are forced to smoke outside, it will affect the air quality around all work places. So not only are the smokers at risk, so are all employees, visitors, and bystanders.
2. Ascetics: Smoking outside means more cigarette butts outside, which affects the ascetics of the common places like roads (assuming they were clean to begin with) and sidewalks (assuming they exist). Now you have the increased costs to keeping them clean, and not to mention the stink of burnt cigarette butts.
3. Accountability and responsibility: Requiring the employers to provide facilities for smoking, and have mechanism to ensure that they do NOT affect the air quality (with special filters on ventilators to absorb cigarette smoke), will induce a sense of responsibility and accountability to the employers, thus incentivize them to encourage non-smoking. On the other hand, with the new smoking ban, employers no longer have to bear the burden of having smokers in their staff, all the burden now shifts to the state because all the employer has to do is say smoking is banned indoors, but you can go outside to smoke. If you want to keep people from smoking you need to include as many stakeholders as possible, and this ban just lost the employers as stakeholders!
4. Accessibility: One way to disincentivize smokers is make cigarettes less accessible (by controlling the price and distribution). With this ban, I can see more office buildings sporting cigarette hawkers outside offering cigarettes to smokers, who have little choice but to come out to smoke. Now this only serve to enable the smokers some more, rather than curb the practice.

Besides, if you want to control the amount of smoking people do, the only way you can do it is to control the supply and distribution of cigarettes and invest more on education, prevention, and rehabilitation program. Introducing a ban on indoor smoking simply wont do any of that, and fails to address the root cause of the issue to begin with.

The groups opposing net neutrality — like Hands Off The Internet Coalition — argue that heavy regulation of the internet runs against free market economics, and that such restrictions slow down the rate of innovation on the internet. They argue that different kinds of internet traffic have different requirements. For instance, live chat requires less bandwidth, but the traffic cannot be delayed, on the other hand streaming video requires high bandwidth, but can afford some delay because the video is buffered at the viewing computer, downloads can withstand occasional delays and low bandwidth. It makes sense treat each of these traffic streams differently in order to provide a better user experience, but net neutrality prohibits this.

Lets see how the arguments for and against net neutrality really stand up to criticism.

Now, if net neutrality was implemented as a strict regulation, this can give rise to a lot problems. For instance, how do network providers treat spam under net neutrality? Currently, network providers can block spam at the entry point into their network. If the networks are expected to treat all traffic equally, then they have to treat spam the same as other traffic. Which implies that they are having to bear the cost of routing spam on their networks with no income from it. Guess who they will pass that cost on to: the consumers. So is net neutrality really what the consumers want?

If customers subscribed to a pay-per-view service over the internet, then customers have every right to be guaranteed a satisfactory viewing experience. However, the network provider cannot do that under net neutrality because the provider is not allowed to allocate bandwidth for the pay-per-view service. So is net neutrality really helping?

On the other hand, if net neutrality wasn’t implemented then this would allow network providers to treat different kinds of traffic differently, thus providing a better user experience. But if that were truly an issue then how do different classes of network traffic work well today without so-called ‘tiered’ services for different classes of traffic. Answer: there is more bandwidth in the network core than the traffic consumes. As long as there is good admission control on the edge of the Internet, it doesn’t seem like you need such ‘tiered’ services. Wouldn’t that make the ‘tiered’ services argument too weak?

Consider the competition between VoIP services and traditional phone lines. Typically all your phone providers are also ISPs. And VoIP is very sensitive to delay in the traffic, more so than web browsing, streaming video, or downloads. So if the ISPs wanted to discourage their customer from using VoIP services, then they could do that by simply delaying packets for a few seconds randomly. For web browsing and other services, it would only show up as a few seconds delay in a page loading, or a delay in the video starting, which is easily tolerable. But with VoIP, this would show up as a jitter in a voice call. This would make VoIP unusable. Don’t we need regulations to protect the customers from such practices? Isn’t net neutrality a way out of this?

So net neutrality, while addressing some issues, opens up other problems which the Internet community will have to deal with. Worse, while it is easy to make a regulation like net neutrality, it is very difficult to enforce it. How do you detect a violation of net neutrality? If ‘bad’ ISPs are smart enough, then they can hoodwink any mechanism to detect such violations. It can range from delaying all traffic for a few seconds so that only VoIP services are affected, to dropping only certain kinds of traffic during periods of traffic congestion. The above two techniques is indistinguishable from situations where a `good’ ISP is having traffic management problems and so is forced to delay traffic, or is forced to drop traffic during congestion. So how do you distinguish ‘bad’ ISPs from ‘good’ one and penalize only the ‘bad’ ones? Its not always possible.

So, if net neutrality is more a regulation in theory, than something which can be enforced successfully, and people do realize it, then why do we have groups advocating for it so strongly? What could be gained from it, other than a rhetorical stand on the ideals that they strive for? The answer might surprise you.

Ironically, the arguments being made on both sides of net neutrality fails to address the real issue. In fact, it serves to hide the real issue of why net neutrality has become such a focal point of conflict on the internet today. To understand this better, lets see who are the corporate entities involved in the net neutrality debate. The supporters of net neutrality include the likes of Google, Yahoo, eBay and AeA. The opposers of net neutrality include the likes of 3M, Cisco Systems, Qualcomm, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner. Note that there is a clear division of the functional roles of each camp. The camp which supports net neutrality are all content providers where as the camp which opposes net neutrality are all network infrastructure providers.

Why do content providers like net neutrality? Because it allows the content providers to innovate and come up with new applications and solutions without having to worry about how these application will be treated by the network. Why do network infrastructure providers oppose net neutrality? Because this will aloow for innovation and diversity in network infrastructure to accommodate new applications and solution which can evolve from the Internet. What does this mean? This means that net neutrality is no longer about free speech, or democracy, or free market, or any ideals. Its all about who gets to control the internet and the innovation in it. Net neutrality, under the hood, is an ongoing battle between content providers and infrastructure providers over who controls the web and the innovation in it.

Morality vs. Legality

The corner stone of Narayanan’s argument is the following: “The point is that drug consumption is NOT right”, and hence has to be illegal. My understanding of the argument is that recreational drugs are immoral, and hence have to be illegal, regardless of unfavorable economics. While that line of reasoning sound, its application for this case, in my opinion, is not. I question the premise that recreational drugs is immoral. I do not base this on the victimless crime argument, nor on the personal freedom argument. It is based on something entirely different.

During world war II, American farmers were encouraged to grow hemp for the war, and after world-war hemp was banned because it has the same psychoactive ingredient as marijuana (a fact which was known for a long time). So growing hemp was legal (and moral) before the end of world war II, and after it was made illegal, it has suddenly become immoral. This is just one example of how (im)morality of drugs actually follows its (il)legality, and is not the other way ’round.

Going back Narayanan’s post, it can be argued that drugs are considered ‘NOT right’ simply because they have been made illegal. That also explains why Hindu have been sadhus using marijuana for hundreds of years now, and that hasn’t been considered immoral (until now). In fact, the same argument holds for practices like sati. Up until the time sati was banned, only a minority considered it immoral. After it was banned, the immorality of sati was a universal opinion. So this opens up the possibility that legalizing drugs might make its use moral after all.

All drugs are not the same

Another argument Narayanan makes is that drugs are more injurious (than cigarette and alcohol), and hence should be illegal. The critical failure in this argument is that all recreation drugs are assumes to be equally harmful, and hence should be made illegal. Unfortunately, its far from the truth. Recreational drugs can be loosely categorized as hard drugs, and soft drugs. In general terms (at the risk of oversimplification), hard drugs are more harmful than soft drugs. In fact, soft drugs like Marijuana, Hashish, and opiates were found to be less harmful than cigarettes and alcohol. Even surprising that coffee was found to be more addictive than marijuana, hashish, and psychoactive mushrooms! So the argument that drugs all bad just doesn’t hold water. If we talking about hard drugs, then its a different debate altogether (so lets not go there, not in this post).

Economic Viability

Narayanan makes an argument that the economic viability of drug laws cannot be a reason for legalizing it. A legitimate statement, but a misapplied argument. This argument was supposed to be a rebuttal of Jug Suraiya’s argument that drugs are not a moral issue, but an economic issue. But Jug Suraiya’s point was that recreational drugs are illegal (despite its widespread use) is that the large demand for drugs has driven the trade into the hands of underworld mafia. The nexus among law enforcement personnel, politicians, and mafia makes it profitable for law enforcement and law making officials to maintain the status quo of criminalizing drugs. Note the subtlety in the argument. The argument does NOT say that drugs should be legalized because it is too expensive to enforce existing laws and that there is money to be paid. The argument is that the reason why drugs are still illegal is that law enforcement agencies and law makers have a lot to gain (economically) by keeping drugs illegal. An entirely different argument which hasn’t been rebutted at all!

So from what I can make of it, Narayanan’s arguments are more an attempt at justifying one’s prejudice against drugs, and not than an exercise in interrogating Jug Suraiya’s arguments.

From what he had to tell me, based what I heard from others, and my own research: it seems like wait staff are one of the most abused in the service industry, and in general. They are abused by customers and by the management. They considered completely expendable, and hence have no job security. Its the worst here in Texas.

Minimum Wage

In the state of Texas, by law, the wait-staff can be paid as low was $2.13 an hour (The minimum wage in Texas is $6-something an hour). The wait-staff are expected to make up to minimum wage through tips (which are at customer discretion). Now if the tips don’t meet the minimum wage, the restaurant is expected to make up for it through additional pay. But wait-staff seldom report lower tips because that gives the restaurant the message that the waiter/waitress is under-performing, and will find an excuse to fire them. To keep their jobs, the wait-staff resigns to live with sub-minimum wages.

In fact, Barbara Ehrenreich has written a book titled “Nickled and Dimed” which goes into the life and lifestyle of wait-staff in America. She worked as a waitress in New York just to see how it is like to be a waitress in America. She quickly found that she had to take another job just to make ends meet. In fact, majority of waiters and waitresses have two, and sometimes three, jobs to support themselves (and their family).

Non-paying Customers

If a customer leaves without paying, the guess who ends up paying for that meal? The waiter/waitress. That’s right! Its taken from their $2.13/hr wage! The restaurant pays only the first time. After that, all unpaid bills are taken out from the wait-staff’s pay. So next time you walk-out not paying you bill, you are not robbing the restaurant of anything, you are robbing the wait-staff off their hard earned money.

Customer and Management Abuse

Wait-staff are one of the most abused employees in all industry today. Not only are they severely underpaid, they are ones who bear the brunt of everyone’s mistakes. No matter who screws up int he restaurant, its is the wait-staff who are yelled at by the customer. As far as the customer is concern, they don’t see the cooks, the bar-backs, or the expos. They see the waiter/waitress, and they unleash all their displeasure over late seating, badly made drink, incorrect order, or anything that isn’t up to their expectation. This often translates to poor tips as well. So in the end, anyone screws up, it means that the wait-staff is going home with less money. No one else is ever affected. And the Management doesn’t care because wait-staff is expendable! They can always hire someone else.

For whatever reason, if the customer calls the manager to complain about anything, you can be assured that the wait-staff responsible for that table are going to be chewed up for having the customer call the manager. It doesn’t matter who is at fault. It is often an unreasonable customer who calls the manager, and is often the customer’s fault. But that doesn’t matter. The customer is always right, so the customer gets their food for free, and the wait-staff has to pay for it. Both, in terms of paying the tab, and in terms of being shouted at for bad service.

So at the end of the day, a waiter/waitress is often overworked, underpaid, abused, yelled at, stolen, physically and emotionally drained; and what they have to look forward to is their second job just to make ends meet.

Lifestyle

Imagine a job, where at the end of the day, you are made to feel like you belong to the bottom of the power hierarchy, constantly abused, robbed of all self-respect, barely make enough pay the bills. Imagine the mental, physical, and psychological health of that person. What do such people often resort to, just to keep their sanity? Drugs.

That’s right, many wait-staff are heavy drug abusers, because that’s their only respite form the unending misery that goes on day-after-day-after-day. Often, wait-staff are uneducated, single parents, who are trying to raise a family while hold two or three jobs. What quality of life could they possibly expect?

Often they don’t make enough to pay their bills, so they have bill collectors knocking on their doors. They move from house to house because they are being evicted coz’ they can’t pay the rent on time.

Think of the children raised in such an environment. They cant afford a decent education, so what do they do? They end up having to quit school and take up a low paying job like their single-parent. This is a classic case of poverty breeding more poverty.

My friend often remarks: “Waitressing is the closest thing we have to slavery in America today.” And that statement is not far from the truth. So remember, the next time you don’t tip adequately (15% is considered polite), or walk out on a bill, or call the manager because you thought you order didn’t arrive in 10 min on a busy evening: You are robbing someone of their dignity, their means of livelihood, and worse, playing you part fostering the cycle of poverty.