Are hackers saving the world?

[moon]

The TV show Mr. Robot tells about a huge conglomerate called E(vil)-Corp who controls the world, basically. A group of hackers try to bring them down by erasing every record of people owing them money. Basically, everybody's debts would suddenly be gone. Chaos ensues, or freedom?

Can the activities of hacking organisations, and the art of hacking itself, be justfified?

Mind, I'm not quite talking about ROM Hacking, but rather the activities that intrudes upon the lives of others.

 

[gimmepie]

Hacker groups like Anonymous have done some wonderful things but also some extremely immoral ones. I don't think that their presence has made the world any worse but I'm hesitant to say they've caused any improvements.

Government run programmes I'm less fond of. They're needed to ward of cyber attacks from foreign nations or cyber terrorism but ultimately a lot of what they do comes down to invading the privacy of innocent citizens.

In the corporate setting though it's interesting because a whole industry has been built upon hiring people to hack you so you can improve your security. That I'd suggest is a really good thing because it provides another outlet for these people to legally ply their craft.

 

[Ivysaur]

The TV show Mr. Robot tells about a huge conglomerate called E(vil)-Corp who controls the world, basically. A group of hackers try to bring them down by erasing every record of people owing them money. Basically, everybody's debts would suddenly be gone. Chaos ensues, or freedom?

HELLO I'M STUDYING A MASTERS IN ECONOMICS SO EXCUSE ME IF I RANT :(

I don't know how it works in the series- I mean, maybe the corporation is literally forcing everybody to take loans from them through forced purchases at extortionate prices in company stores or something. But in most of the mordern-day world, the only people who get into debt do so voluntarily to purchase some big asset you normally can't buy on cash (say, a car, a house, machinery for a factory you are setting up, etc.). If hackers were to delete all those records, you'd get chaos, in three different flavours depending on how it goes:

a) the cancellation means the debtors get to keep the things they bought with their borrowed (not theirs) money and the lenders lose their money, meaning that the gain for the borrowers equals an identical loss for the lenders, and the lenders would probably refuse to ever lend money again, which would suck for the next generation of people who want to borrow money to buy cars or houses.
b) "the banks" shoulder the losses, unless they cannot, at which point the shareholders lose all the money they invested in the bank through no fault of their own and, if that is not enough, the Government (aka everybody) will have to bail out the bank, meaning everybody loses money. Oh, but the borrowers get to keep the stuff they bought with the borrowed money, at the expense of everybody else.
c) the borrowers get their debts cancelled and the banks/lenders get their loaned money back, at which point you get massive inflation, causing the value of all money to drop, making everybody else worse off (except for the borrowers yadda yadda yadda).

In general, I think hacking is equivalent to wiretapping and other sorts of illegal espionage, which really isn't nice. I mean, if we are talking about a dictatorial outfit called "Evil Corp" or "Republic of Evilonia" that needs to be torn down, it could possibly be justifiable... but luckily, we aren't there, so I'm sure there are other legal ways available to settle arguments.

 

[Somewhere_]

HELLO I'M STUDYING A MASTERS IN ECONOMICS SO EXCUSE ME IF I RANT :(

I don't know how it works in the series- I mean, maybe the corporation is literally forcing everybody to take loans from them through forced purchases at extortionate prices in company stores or something. But in most of the mordern-day world, the only people who get into debt do so voluntarily to purchase some big asset you normally can't buy on cash (say, a car, a house, machinery for a factory you are setting up, etc.). If hackers were to delete all those records, you'd get chaos, in three different flavours depending on how it goes:

a) the cancellation means the debtors get to keep the things they bought with their borrowed (not theirs) money and the lenders lose their money, meaning that the gain for the borrowers equals an identical loss for the lenders, and the lenders would probably refuse to ever lend money again, which would suck for the next generation of people who want to borrow money to buy cars or houses.
b) "the banks" shoulder the losses, unless they cannot, at which point the shareholders lose all the money they invested in the bank through no fault of their own and, if that is not enough, the Government (aka everybody) will have to bail out the bank, meaning everybody loses money. Oh, but the borrowers get to keep the stuff they bought with the borrowed money, at the expense of everybody else.
c) the borrowers get their debts cancelled and the banks/lenders get their loaned money back, at which point you get massive inflation, causing the value of all money to drop, making everybody else worse off (except for the borrowers yadda yadda yadda).

In general, I think hacking is equivalent to wiretapping and other sorts of illegal espionage, which really isn't nice. I mean, if we are talking about a dictatorial outfit called "Evil Corp" or "Republic of Evilonia" that needs to be torn down, it could possibly be justifiable... but luckily, we aren't there, so I'm sure there are other legal ways available to settle arguments.

To add to your points, with all of these potential possibilities, time-preference rates throughout the population would probably increase substantially, if not skyrocket to space with no return. For wealth to be created in the long-run, there needs to be investments and the possibility of future capital, which is the direct result of lowered time-preference rates. Society has evolved and grown more wealthy due to factors contributing to lowering time-preference rates (this is why we aren't hunter-gatherers anymore). For society to progress, it is necessary for time-preference rates to slowly fall for generations, trying to reach the asymptote (a T-PR of 0 - no consumption - is impossible because that is literally starvation).

In short, most hacking sucks cause it will almost always result in increasing time-preference rates or, at the very least, imposing costs upon society by increasing the demand for protection and such.

 

[Esper]

Activism is usually best when it's not done in secret by people whose identities and motivations are unknown to the public. We complain (often rightly) about the lack of transparency in business and government because we (have reason to) believe that they are doing things for the good of themselves at the expense of the public. Hachtivists aren't any better, generally, because they keep their own activities secret as well and give us no more reason to trust them.

Of course it depends on the situation. If there is a real fear of reprisal by said business/government, like say for someone living in China where merely disagreeing with the government can get you in trouble, then anonymity is much more justified, but in an open society one is usually only hiding because of fear of being caught for breaking the law. That's still a reason to hide, of course, but again it depends on how much you believe we live in a police state and/or how much your hacktivism is real activism for the public good vs. just being a dick for the lulz.

 

[hoboNEET]

It all comes down to what they do...

...sure, removing debt is nice, but it doesn't really accomplish anything. That's like sweeping your garbage under the rug, it is still there, you just can't see it. Even though the debt is gone, the damage and knowledge that it even existed still remains. Even more than that, I doubt we would get out of debt anyways, us human beings are becoming a materialistic race, it wouldn't take long to go back into debt. Hell, we spend more money on entertainment than we do on healthcare.

In the words of Agent Smith [from The Matrix]:

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet."