> Republican Rep. Chris Richardson, an Elbert County Republican, argued that the bill is too broad and could regulate standard analytic usage in the workplace, such as a human resources software that recommends a pay band for employees based on performance.
He does not think this is is just selling it further? Oh no, it might prohibit software automatically determining my wages, how could we even have a society if we don't let computers figure out the least they can pay me without me quitting.
Edit: He withdrew this morning and is running for the GOP chair now.
Bobert is quiet these days but I'm sure she'll ramp up after her primary closes.
The various school boards are perennial sources of my idiocy. My (former) board would go into public meetings and just openly and freely admit to crimes.
The county commissioners in DougCo recently decided to fine the victims of shoplifting from r not reporting it. No, you didn't read that wrong.
So, in summary, the GOP and many, but not all, of their state level membership aren't really sending their best these days.
Choosing a pay band based on performance and setting the pay bands as low as they can losing all their employees are orthogonal.
Suppose you are an employer and you have 5 junior engineers. You wish to promote one to senior engineer, which includes a move to a higher pay band. How do you decide which one gets the promotion?
Most companies are going to decide which one to promote at least partly based on performance data. Do they consistently finish things on time? What is the defect rate in their work? Do they work well with others? Do they need a lot of help compared to their peers or are the who their peers turn to when the peers need help? Does their work show skill above what would normally be found in junior engineer work?
From what has been quoted by or about the objects that one representative had it is that he thinks the bill has been written too broadly and could be construed as prohibiting using job performance data like that in deciding promotions.
“I absolutely agree that consumers and wage earners should not be exploited by the use of their data,” he said. “But it’s still overly broad and it’s still overly vague in very important parts. And I believe it’s overly simplistic in its definition of wage setting.”
I like the idea, but I'm not sure how enforceable it will be in practice. It seems like it would be relatively difficult to prove a company is using surveillance pricing, and companies may just accept the risk of paying a fine.
It's actually not that hard to prove. For example, PSN now has dynamic pricing for their games which can vary quite wildly and all it takes is a small number of consumers with price differences to prove it. The same is true for grocery stores or whatever else.
Enforcing it is another question though and you're right that companies will likely just accept the fine. It's all the more reason why this sort of thing needs to aggressively be legislated against and denied.
If you can do traffic interception, there's a pretty good chance there's going to be traces of price levels in the API and the analytics. Especially since it's probably going to be bolted on to the side of anything PCI compliant. If there isn't, then it's probably going to be really easy to subpoena to prove mens rea, because getting that right is tricky and requires a fair amount of review and coordination.
Is this the "electronic ink pricetags bad" thing that the UFCW keeps peddling because "it takes clerk work away"?
I still don't understand how they think we're going to change UPC pricing live per-person in the physical retail environment. Does the price tag change depending who looks at it? What if two people look at it at the same time? They obviously both can't be surveillance priced at that moment. The UFCW is mad they don't understand they can re-skill the worker that was trained to stick little paper labels up that they can now maintain pricetag batteries and hardware instead.
It's so damn dystopian that we're even toying with such things.
But have me an idea: for whatever reason, a person consistently gets lower prices, and offers to be your shopper. You end up paying less for groceries than you would if you went, but you have to pay your shopper. So pretty much same outcome, BUT, you didn't have to do the shopping
This is why I alway bring a street urchin with me when I shop for groceries. I make sure he has a cellphone & wifi enabled. We carefully walk down the aisle side by side and the e-ink price tags start flashing. They usually settle on a price that's halfway between the personalized price for him and I.
There are a lot of positive outcomes from this technology: more revenue in the pocket of the family who own's Canada's biggest grocer & REIT, and a deeper relationship with the neighbourhood vagabonds for me.
Going to be interesting to see how this affects Uber prices in Colorado. afaict Uber heavily engages in surveillance pricing but claims otherwise, deferring to 'discount' terminology.
The attorney general or a district attorney may bring a civil action on behalf of the state against a person that violates the prohibition against individualized price or wage setting based on surveillance data to seek the imposition of civil penalties. In addition, a person aggrieved by a violation of the prohibition specified in the bill may bring a civil action on behalf of themself or a group of similarly situated persons to restrain further violations and to recover damages, costs, and reasonable attorney fees.
A violation of the prohibition against individualized price setting or individualized wage setting is a deceptive trade practice under the "Colorado Consumer Protection Act".
Allowing private right of action means this will be weaponized by attorneys in the same way the ADA has. Just scanning the bill, any small business in the US using dynamic pricing, targeted discounts or "VIP pricing" on their website would be open to suits from Colorado residents. The definitions are extremely broad and there is no safe harbor for small companies either. Damages are also uncapped and apparently Colorado allows treble damages for CCPA violations.
Sounds great! The theory behind capitalism only works if prices are transparent and goods are transferable. These sorts of "special discounts" are fundamentally harmful to the economy as a whole.
> The theory behind capitalism only works if prices are transparent and goods are transferable.
The theory behind capitalism requires people to take into account what they know when making decisions.
Suppose you have a business where many customers expect to be able to try the product before committing to buy it so the cost of paying for shipping for "free returns" has to be incorporated into the advertised price. Then you notice that a subset of customers have a better idea of what they want and never trouble you with returns, so you want to give them a discount to try to get more of their business.
That's capitalism working the way it's supposed to. The customers who consume fewer resources get to pay lower prices. But it's the thing this bill prohibits, isn't it?
If capatilism was working the way it was supposed to, the customer could choose between paying more up front, but having the option of a "free" return, or paying less upfront byt having to pay for a return (or not be able to return it).
And for that matter, the customer would have enough information to know the quality of the product before purchasing, but that is often not possible.
I can see how say, a roofing business might have a “VIP” sale during a slow season, such that a discounted contract is signed and money is exchanged in the future when the weather doesn’t prohibit the work.
I can see how a roofing business might buy your online shopping history, deduce that you drive a Lexus, and bump up their prices. Then profile you as not very handy, and cut corners knowing you won’t spot the issues.
On the other hand, without private right to action, consumers may have no recourse if the AG doesn't wish to pursue action (possibly due to corruption, or lack of resources).
> any small business in the US using dynamic pricing, targeted discounts or "VIP pricing" on their website would be open to suits from Colorado residents
The solution is to use reasonable efforts to block Colorado residents if you can’t comply with the law. That’s a tradeoff a group of people are allowed to make for themselves.
The problem is that a small business in Florida or Massachusetts that does 95% of their business in their own state may have no idea that this Colorado law exists until someone sues them over it.
We don't really want small companies to have to start blocking people in other states by default. That's not great for interstate competition.
The article links to the law. Looks like this is an addition to the existing law about unfair or deceptive trade practices. That allows for a civil penalty of up to $20,000 per person or transaction involved.
He does not think this is is just selling it further? Oh no, it might prohibit software automatically determining my wages, how could we even have a society if we don't let computers figure out the least they can pay me without me quitting.