Unaccountable systems · WhyNotHugo (雨果)My mum visited not long ago. I paid for her flight and a few other expenses and<br>she refunded me for that in US dollars in cash. I needed to convert these into<br>Euros before I could use them. Today I went to the currency exchange, “GWK<br>Travelex”, to exchange these dollars into Euros.<br>The lady at the desk was friendly and polite. She asked me for the amount, gave<br>me a quote (which, honestly, was pretty bad, but it’s not like there’s any<br>better choice in the Netherlands). She then inquired about the funds, requested<br>my ID, address and a few other bits of personal information. She then started a<br>phone call, asked me to wait for a bit. I waited for twenty-something minutes<br>while she herself was on hold. Eventually she told me that she could not proceed<br>with the operation. She explained that the phone call is part of the regular<br>procedure, where she calls their offices in the UK, sends all my personal<br>information, and the folks from the UK then approve or reject the operation. In<br>this case, they’d told her that she was not authorised to offer me any exchange<br>or any transaction. They refused me service.<br>The next people in line were there for the exact same transaction as I was, and<br>completed their operation swiftly. I approached the desk again and asked the<br>same lady more details about my situation. She was not given a reason, even<br>after asking further, and was simply the messenger here: this faceless<br>corporation had decided I was on a “do not serve” list and I was not welcome as<br>a client there. As I inquired further, she indicated that I should not come<br>back, since they would refuse to provide me any sort of service, for any amount,<br>in future.<br>Considering that this is the only currency exchange office in the city (and in<br>this province), I’m appalled and unsettled that they would simply refuse to<br>serve me, without explanation of recourse. Why? The employee explain that she<br>had no way of knowing, and she did not believe that I could determine why<br>either.<br>We can only guess what might be the reason. Are some of my friends of the wrong<br>ethnicity? Maybe those close to me are voting for the wrong parties? Your guess<br>is as good as mine. There’s no accountability here, and financial institutions<br>can simply decide that any of us are not welcome and that’s the end of it.<br>This isn’t my first encounter with such arbitrary systems…<br>Dangerous ethnicities[permalink]
Back in 2019 I met this girl at a friend’s birthday party. She worked at a bank<br>in the software development sector, and told me about the project on which she’d<br>been working. Their system collected data from various sources on people<br>applying for financial services (e.g.: loans) and would indicate if someone was<br>eligible, or raise a red flag. In the latter case they would have to deal with<br>substantial additional bureaucracy, and often times would not be able to access<br>these services anyway.<br>She seemed quite proud of her work, and told me her team had demoed it the<br>previous week in front of the whole office. They’d shown the report that the<br>system generated for each person in the team. In her case, the system flagged<br>her as “dangerous”, and she was not eligible for a loan. Her grandmother was<br>from Iran, and because there’s frequently cases of money laundering or other<br>irregularities in Iran, she’s immediately flagged too. Despite her being a Dutch<br>citizen, born and raised in the Netherlands, and working in this Dutch financial<br>institution, her bloodline was “too risky” for her employer to lend her<br>money.1<br>I was confused, and honestly, heartbroken. This person was telling me how proud<br>they were of their work, building a system that discriminates them based on<br>their bloodline. I questioned what she thought about it, and she explained<br>“well, the rules are there…” —she paused a few times— “the rules are there…”. I<br>remained silent and she eventually finished her sentence after repeating it a<br>few times “the rules are there to protect us”. Even though this was six years<br>ago, every time I remember this situation it brings me great sadness. Here was a<br>person who’d worked hard to build a system which would discriminate against<br>them, and yet stood proudly defending their work.<br>I don’t think this situation is a complete outlier either. In this<br>corporatocracy that is the modern world, a large proportion of the population<br>works hard to sustain and enforce the same system that oppresses them.<br>Generally, because there’s no other choice. Either work doing that, or starve.<br>Frequently, it’s not even obvious that this is the case, given the layers of<br>indirection.<br>It’s hard not to think of The Matrix (1999). Anyone in this society is<br>unknowingly an agent which enforces its rules, despite it being the system that<br>keeps them trapped. When an outlier tries to change the...