Cory Doctorow

And when a nurse signs on to get a shift through one of these apps, the app is able to buy the nurse's credit history.

And the reason for that...

is that the U.S.

government has not passed a new federal consumer privacy law since 1988, when Ronald Reagan signed a law that made it illegal for video store clerks to disclose your VHS rental habits.

Every other form of privacy invasion of your consumer rights is lawful under federal law.

And so among the things that data brokers will sell, anyone who shows up with a credit card

is how much credit card debt is any other person carrying and how delinquent is it?

And based on that, the nurses are charged a kind of desperation premium.

The more debt they're carrying, the more overdue that debt is, the lower the wage that they're offered on the grounds that nurses who are facing economic privation and desperation will accept a lower wage to do the same job.

Now, this is not a novel insight.

Paying more desperate workers less money is a thing that you can find in like Tennessee Ernie Ford songs about 19th century coal bosses.

But the difference is that if you're a 19th century coal boss who wants to

figure out how much the lowest wage each coal miner you're hiring is willing to take.

You have to have an army of Pinkertons that like are figuring out the economic situation of every coal miner.

And you have to have another army of guys in green eye shades who are making annotations to the ledger where you're calculating their pay packet.

It's just not practical.

So automation makes this possible.

And you have this vicious cycle

where the poorer a nurse is, the poorer they become, the lower the wage they're offered.

And as they accumulate more consumer debt, their wage is continuously eroded.