One step is to stop creating entitlements that are ripe for AI-fuelled claims. Britain’s Employment Rights Act and Renters’ Rights Act open avenues of legal challenge for workers and tenants. Not only are they misguided, but ministers put little thought into how they would burden the courts.
Is the Economist seriously suggesting we should roll back workers and renters rights because AI makes it too easy for the average Joe to actually get those rights?
Rather than just handling locals’ objections, a new Ai-driven planning system could decide for itself whether a housing development meets a zoning code. Rather than processing benefits claims, it could devise personalised welfare interventions.
And this sounds like it's going to work just grrrreat.
Is the Economist seriously suggesting we should roll back workers and renters rights because AI makes it too easy for the average Joe to actually get those rights?
Yes, both of these pieces of legislation are extremely badly designed feel-good nonsense, which I personally hope will be shown to be so by an avalanche of claims automated by AI.
The employment rights legislation we have at the moment literally abolishes the market for labour - the final decision as to if your salary is "fair" is made by a judge.
The employment rights legislation we have at the moment literally abolishes the market for labour - the final decision as to if your salary is "fair" is made by a judge.
Can you explain this? I can't find anything on this from a quick google. Employment rights act seems to say very little about salary beyond the minimum wage.
Ah, I see, an argument that there was gender discrimination in pay for 'equal value' jobs despite the actual job being different. I agree this decision seems like a bit of a strange reach, but it's far from saying it abolishes the market for labor entirely.
(Also, this is more part of the Equality Act, a piece of legislation that is in pretty dire need of redrafting for a bunch of other reasons, as opposed to the Employment Rights Act)
That has nothing to with the recent legislation referred to in the article. The principle (which I disagree with BTW) has been part of equality law for decades.
The reality is that curtailment of abusive zero hours contracts provided by the employment rights legislation was direly needed and renters desperately needed protection against landlords who would habitually jack up rents and kick you out.
These are probably the only two good bits of legislation done in the last few years.
The renters rights act has led to buy to let landlords selling up all over leading to a decline in property prices. It's hardly feel good - it means first time buyers can get on the property ladder easier and renters cant be kicked out as easily.
The UK rental rights don't really have rent controls as they're normally conceived: the two limits are rent can only go up once a year and that it must be roughly in line with similar properties in the market or area, i.e. explicitly rents follow the market.
The renters rights act is already seemingly leading to distortion in the market - it's not really the price controls as per se but the inability to do things when the tenant is in place.
Some landlords believe that because it brutally eats into their profits and because it's a band aid which addresses the cost of housing without magically fixing supply shortages that it ought to be scrapped with extreme prejudice.
"Sure, it would be a tragedy if I tossed the nurse out of her apartment but has anybody considered the plight of the junior investment banker looking for a place to rent who could pay me more?"
People not being able to be evicted from their homes arbitrarily is a bad thing?
There's a counterparty to that transaction, and presumably has some reason to want to cancel it, so they're being harmed in some way. Even if you don't have sympathy for landlords though, there's still the second order effects where all landlords discriminate against tenants more, because they know that getting rid of bad tenants is going to be a pain. It's similar to the employment situation in Europe. Making workers harder to fire might sound like a great idea, but it also makes employers more reluctant to hire, especially if they can't easily get rid of them afterwards.
Does “The final decision is made by a judge” mean “workers rights can ultimately be arbitrated by a judge when escalated”, or “judges arbitrate all workers rights complaints”? If the former, i believe that’s reasonable; if the latter, thats nuts - and I might not balk at a statement like yours (“abolishes…”).
Yes the economist is arguing that. Most of the rights of this sort were granted under the assumption that most people eligible for the rights would not be able to actually get them. If they can get them, that will be extremely inconvenient for politicians who will have to deal with a large deficit, by either cutting back rights or raising taxes on the wealthy, both of which are career suicide for a politician.
The article is suggesting that there was an assumed dynamic in designing these mechanisms for petitions and claims - that there is a threshold of cost (time and effort, mostly) that the petitioner is willing to pay for petitioning the government, and that this cost is, at least to some extent, minimizing frivolous or "lets try it even if it's a long shot" claims.
When the cost of such claims goes to zero, that assumed dynamic will no longer work.
Is the Economist seriously suggesting we should roll back workers and renters rights because AI makes it too easy for the average Joe to actually get those rights?
I don't know about the Economist nor about the UK, but in the USA most programs that could benefit the poor are specifically designed to have very onerous processes to qualify and requalify with the intention of discouraging people from applying and to reduce success rate in obtaining the benefit they are on paper qualified to receive.
It's kind of easy to abuse too. I think if you want benefits for life you just claim clinical depression which can't really be disproved. Welfare has exceeded income tax for a while https://fullfact.org/economy/income-tax-versus-welfare-spend... I think we may be a test case for UBI when everyone stops working.
A lot of "rights" were created with the assumption that they would be used sparingly and would never have been enacted if everyone was going to use them. You just don't have a working civilization if everyone is collecting disability, renters don't pay rent, and nothing can be built.
No : rights were put in place because poor people struggled to get them ; the governments then placed hurdle to "control" expenses. On garanteeing housing, the only thing that works to get people out of the streets is state controlled housing. But maybe getting things built is more important ?
The problem then doesn't have to do with AI specifically, it requires human intervention and vetting. If the problem is "someone submitted an AI-written request that got rubberstamped", the problem is the stamp, not the AI.
Interesting, your observation on societal structures changing is very close to mine regarding laws: A lot of "laws" were created with the assumption that they would be applied as warranted by circumstances, and I think universal AI surveillance and perfect enforcement of laws will be a huge problem in the coming age.
It's not a binary. If you expect to receive 90 meritorious complaints and 10 bad ones, a review procedure with no false negatives and 10% false positives will give you the wrong outcome 1% of the time. You might be OK with that depending on the cost of a false positive. But if the rise of AI means you get 100 meritorious complaints and 100 bad ones, and you apply the same process, now your processing costs have doubled and your error rate has quintupled.
But if it requires human vetting, and AI massively increases the volume of requests, then it also massively increases the effort to properly vet those requests.
There's neither a right nor a "right" for everyone to collect disability, to not pay rent, and to stop anyone from building.
The British state is being flooded with requests for things that people are actually entitled to, but enough administrative hurdles were intentionally placed in the way of to make sure that no one would get.
I think that's basically true, but the barriers exist because the state can't realistically afford a 100% take-up rate. Adding friction means people who don't really need say the extra £100 a month often won't bother with the hassle, while people who genuinely need it are more likely to decide it's worth the effort.
Obviously that's a very messed up and broken system. I'm not defending it at all.
The state absolutely can afford a 100% take up rate. It chooses not to for ideological reasons.
The usual reality with these kinds of payments is that the downstream social costs of not paying them - the strain on emergency services, increased crime and vagrancy, and other negative economic multipliers - are much higher than the nominal sticker cost.
But the UK and US particularly run on the moral assumption that the weak and poor must be punished for being weak and poor, because you can't be weak and poor without also being immoral. It's an entirely reactive and emotional mindset.
This isn't exaggeration. This is exactly the attitude you see in regular editorials and articles from the far-right press.
Someone has to get the big stick, and it's either the disabled, the poor, immigrants, or small groups who don't fit in in other ways.
You also don't have a civilisation if the extremely rich ignore climate catastrophe, sidestep democracy, and enclose so much of the economy that financial freedom becomes a distant dream for most of the population.
Renters and the disabled are not the problem here.
I think of the legal system in the US. It's easy to find statements about how the entire legal system would collapse if people stopped taking plea bargains because nothing is actually funded or operated in a way that actually guarantees the right to trial in any practical way.
Supposedly, there is a right to a speedy trial, and supposedly, if it is violated, they have to let you go without a trial. Don't know if it is really tested often.
We would run out of room in jails, hastily contract out construction for rapid expansion, and then people would die en masse in the shoddy camps the contractors deliver.
Of course they are, The Economist is to the City of London (the unaccountable pseudo-local authority that is effectively a lobbying group for banks) what Pravda was to the Soviet Communist Party. How dare the little people demand the same privileges the feudal aristocracy expect, as do the oligarchs assimilated with them?
Comments
Is the Economist seriously suggesting we should roll back workers and renters rights because AI makes it too easy for the average Joe to actually get those rights?
And this sounds like it's going to work just grrrreat.
Yes, both of these pieces of legislation are extremely badly designed feel-good nonsense, which I personally hope will be shown to be so by an avalanche of claims automated by AI.
The employment rights legislation we have at the moment literally abolishes the market for labour - the final decision as to if your salary is "fair" is made by a judge.
Can you explain this? I can't find anything on this from a quick google. Employment rights act seems to say very little about salary beyond the minimum wage.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0817jd9dqo
The judge decided that, despite prices suggesting otherwise, the two types of labour here were the same.
Ah, I see, an argument that there was gender discrimination in pay for 'equal value' jobs despite the actual job being different. I agree this decision seems like a bit of a strange reach, but it's far from saying it abolishes the market for labor entirely.
(Also, this is more part of the Equality Act, a piece of legislation that is in pretty dire need of redrafting for a bunch of other reasons, as opposed to the Employment Rights Act)
That has nothing to with the recent legislation referred to in the article. The principle (which I disagree with BTW) has been part of equality law for decades.
Why are these cases only happening now? The article is clearly talking about the wider principle anywwy
The cases have been happening for decades. I recall studying one in the early 90s so it probably happened in the 80s.
I think the article lacks evidence that anything has changed recently.
Scrooge would probably agree wholeheartedly.
The reality is that curtailment of abusive zero hours contracts provided by the employment rights legislation was direly needed and renters desperately needed protection against landlords who would habitually jack up rents and kick you out.
These are probably the only two good bits of legislation done in the last few years.
The renters rights act has led to buy to let landlords selling up all over leading to a decline in property prices. It's hardly feel good - it means first time buyers can get on the property ladder easier and renters cant be kicked out as easily.
Rent controls are great if you already have a place
The UK rental rights don't really have rent controls as they're normally conceived: the two limits are rent can only go up once a year and that it must be roughly in line with similar properties in the market or area, i.e. explicitly rents follow the market.
The renters rights act is already seemingly leading to distortion in the market - it's not really the price controls as per se but the inability to do things when the tenant is in place.
the distortion is the slow euthanization of the parasitic buy to let landlord class and a decline in property prices to more affordable levels.
Scrooge would agree wholeheartedly.
Some landlords believe that because it brutally eats into their profits and because it's a band aid which addresses the cost of housing without magically fixing supply shortages that it ought to be scrapped with extreme prejudice.
"Sure, it would be a tragedy if I tossed the nurse out of her apartment but has anybody considered the plight of the junior investment banker looking for a place to rent who could pay me more?"
Controlling real estate supply should be in every local government playbook.
They already do, you need permission from local government to build almost anything in Britain.
What part of ending no fault eviction is feel good nonsense? People not being able to be evicted from their homes arbitrarily is a bad thing?
There's a counterparty to that transaction, and presumably has some reason to want to cancel it, so they're being harmed in some way. Even if you don't have sympathy for landlords though, there's still the second order effects where all landlords discriminate against tenants more, because they know that getting rid of bad tenants is going to be a pain. It's similar to the employment situation in Europe. Making workers harder to fire might sound like a great idea, but it also makes employers more reluctant to hire, especially if they can't easily get rid of them afterwards.
Does “The final decision is made by a judge” mean “workers rights can ultimately be arbitrated by a judge when escalated”, or “judges arbitrate all workers rights complaints”? If the former, i believe that’s reasonable; if the latter, thats nuts - and I might not balk at a statement like yours (“abolishes…”).
Yes the economist is arguing that. Most of the rights of this sort were granted under the assumption that most people eligible for the rights would not be able to actually get them. If they can get them, that will be extremely inconvenient for politicians who will have to deal with a large deficit, by either cutting back rights or raising taxes on the wealthy, both of which are career suicide for a politician.
A tacit agreement that while people _should_ have these rights, they all can't have them.
They can, but only if the ultra-rich were less powerful, and that's not allowed.
The article is suggesting that there was an assumed dynamic in designing these mechanisms for petitions and claims - that there is a threshold of cost (time and effort, mostly) that the petitioner is willing to pay for petitioning the government, and that this cost is, at least to some extent, minimizing frivolous or "lets try it even if it's a long shot" claims.
When the cost of such claims goes to zero, that assumed dynamic will no longer work.
I don't know about the Economist nor about the UK, but in the USA most programs that could benefit the poor are specifically designed to have very onerous processes to qualify and requalify with the intention of discouraging people from applying and to reduce success rate in obtaining the benefit they are on paper qualified to receive.
Same in the UK. The application process for disability benefits is many pages, and impossible for most people without expert help.
The 'undeserving poor' insanity haunts the ruling class like a decomposing vampire scarecrow.
It's kind of easy to abuse too. I think if you want benefits for life you just claim clinical depression which can't really be disproved. Welfare has exceeded income tax for a while https://fullfact.org/economy/income-tax-versus-welfare-spend... I think we may be a test case for UBI when everyone stops working.
A lot of "rights" were created with the assumption that they would be used sparingly and would never have been enacted if everyone was going to use them. You just don't have a working civilization if everyone is collecting disability, renters don't pay rent, and nothing can be built.
No : rights were put in place because poor people struggled to get them ; the governments then placed hurdle to "control" expenses. On garanteeing housing, the only thing that works to get people out of the streets is state controlled housing. But maybe getting things built is more important ?
The problem then doesn't have to do with AI specifically, it requires human intervention and vetting. If the problem is "someone submitted an AI-written request that got rubberstamped", the problem is the stamp, not the AI.
Interesting, your observation on societal structures changing is very close to mine regarding laws: A lot of "laws" were created with the assumption that they would be applied as warranted by circumstances, and I think universal AI surveillance and perfect enforcement of laws will be a huge problem in the coming age.
It's not a binary. If you expect to receive 90 meritorious complaints and 10 bad ones, a review procedure with no false negatives and 10% false positives will give you the wrong outcome 1% of the time. You might be OK with that depending on the cost of a false positive. But if the rise of AI means you get 100 meritorious complaints and 100 bad ones, and you apply the same process, now your processing costs have doubled and your error rate has quintupled.
But if it requires human vetting, and AI massively increases the volume of requests, then it also massively increases the effort to properly vet those requests.
So it’s not implausible that the “justice” system is automated, using AI, to enable it to cope with the deluge of claims.
This mirrors the current increases in open source pull requests and CVEs driven by low-effort AI-aided submissions.
There's neither a right nor a "right" for everyone to collect disability, to not pay rent, and to stop anyone from building.
The British state is being flooded with requests for things that people are actually entitled to, but enough administrative hurdles were intentionally placed in the way of to make sure that no one would get.
I think that's basically true, but the barriers exist because the state can't realistically afford a 100% take-up rate. Adding friction means people who don't really need say the extra £100 a month often won't bother with the hassle, while people who genuinely need it are more likely to decide it's worth the effort.
Obviously that's a very messed up and broken system. I'm not defending it at all.
The state absolutely can afford a 100% take up rate. It chooses not to for ideological reasons.
The usual reality with these kinds of payments is that the downstream social costs of not paying them - the strain on emergency services, increased crime and vagrancy, and other negative economic multipliers - are much higher than the nominal sticker cost.
But the UK and US particularly run on the moral assumption that the weak and poor must be punished for being weak and poor, because you can't be weak and poor without also being immoral. It's an entirely reactive and emotional mindset.
This isn't exaggeration. This is exactly the attitude you see in regular editorials and articles from the far-right press.
Someone has to get the big stick, and it's either the disabled, the poor, immigrants, or small groups who don't fit in in other ways.
You also don't have a civilisation if the extremely rich ignore climate catastrophe, sidestep democracy, and enclose so much of the economy that financial freedom becomes a distant dream for most of the population.
Renters and the disabled are not the problem here.
the economist is in the market for plausible-sounding prose. much like a large language model, the substance of the argument is a side effect.
That would be on brand for The Economist.
I think of the legal system in the US. It's easy to find statements about how the entire legal system would collapse if people stopped taking plea bargains because nothing is actually funded or operated in a way that actually guarantees the right to trial in any practical way.
I wonder if the system would actually collapse or people would just sit in jail for 10 years.
Supposedly, there is a right to a speedy trial, and supposedly, if it is violated, they have to let you go without a trial. Don't know if it is really tested often.
The practical legal definition of "speedy" might not match peoples' intuitive definition.
We would run out of room in jails, hastily contract out construction for rapid expansion, and then people would die en masse in the shoddy camps the contractors deliver.
The US has things like the right to a speedy trial.
The Economist publishes opinion pieces which are just the educated echo of right wing populism.
They are infinitely tolerant of the vagaries and missteps of capital, and hold the state to a standard of perfection no business can attain.
They will never support greater rights for workers or renters. They see those people as the enemy.
Of course they are, The Economist is to the City of London (the unaccountable pseudo-local authority that is effectively a lobbying group for banks) what Pravda was to the Soviet Communist Party. How dare the little people demand the same privileges the feudal aristocracy expect, as do the oligarchs assimilated with them?