Blame as a Service

Davies writes: "For an accountability sink to function, it has to break a link; it has to prevent the feedback of the person affected by the decision from affecting the operation of the system."

For a good short overview, see this piece by Mandy Brown: https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks

[1] https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo252799...

> Charging the $1,000+ market-clearing price would eliminate scalping, maximize revenue, and maximize aggregate consumer welfare. But it would also destroy the artist's relationship with their fans, as they would be seen as the greedy artist who priced out their true fans.

> Artists and sports leagues know the market-clearing price for their tickets is $1,000+. They know that direct pricing would eliminate scalping and maximize revenue. But they also know that directly charging these prices would destroy their carefully cultivated relationship with fans. Nobody wants to be seen as the greedy artist who priced out the true believers.

Moreover, the content of the article seems very superficial and not grounded in reality. To my cursory understanding with a few minutes of research into the topic, Taylor Swift tickets do not, in fact, retail for $1000+ with the help of Ticketmaster. It is the scalpers who charge that. Taylor Swift does not see any of the additional money when a prime seating ticket retails for $300 and is then re-sold for $6000. The premise that an artist allows Ticketmaster to get a cut in order to sell a ticket at the market-clearing rate seems factually incorrect, and therefore the entire posited relationship between artist and Ticketmaster is incorrect.

As far as I understand, Ticketmaster has deals with the most valuable venues in the US such that if you want to perform at the venue, you must use Ticketmaster. It is not that you as an artist choose to use Ticketmaster to inflate your ticket prices for you while deflecting the blame, but rather that if you aren't willing to give Ticketmaster their cut you don't get access to desirable venues at all.

I'm open to correction if someone who is more informed on the topic wishes to chime in, but I would hesitate to take this article at face value. It seems crafted to sell an emotional narrative rather than making accurate observations of reality.

Unfortunately this was much more nefarious. I do see why some would pay for, I just wish they wouldn't/didn't have the option to

I also had a client this week have a physical server catch on fire and burn down everything. Backups don't count when they're in the same room.

Also fitting that McKinsey (and by extension, most “business consultancy” companies) get the first shoutout as a prime example of BaaS. Despite lending their support to decades of awful, and at times morally evil decisions, the arrangement allows both business elites and McKinsey themselves to escape blame via simple finger-pointing, the masses largely unaware that said negative outcomes were the goal all along.

To fix broken systems, we must find ways of distilling complex and nuanced topics into simple-to-communicate concepts, vocabulary, and slang. Blame-as-a-Service accomplishes that nicely, and will hopefully allow a redirection back towards the core point of many such discussions: accountability, or lack thereof.