Lin

“Containment in the physical institution of a county poorhouse had the unintentional result of creating class solidarity across race, gender, and national origin. When we sit at a common table, we might see similarities in our experiences, even if we are forced to eat gruel. Surveillance and digital social sorting drive us apart as smaller and smaller microgroups are targeted for different kinds of aggression and control. When we inhabit an invisible poorhouse, we become more and more isolated, cut off from those around us, even if they share our suffering.”
― Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

“But its outwardly neutral classifications mask discriminatory outcomes that rob whole communities of wealth, compounding cumulative disadvantage.”
― Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

“The digital poorhouse is hard to understand. The software, algorithms, and models that power it are complex and often secret. Sometimes they are protected business processes, as in the case of the IBM and ACS software that denied needy”
― Virginia Eubanks, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

“Is there no virtue among us?” asked James Madison, rhetorically. “If there be not, no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea.”
― Robert B Reich, The Common Good