That is appalling. $42 for a parking ticket is too much to begin with, let alone when citations are automated. That a private company is getting more than the municipality is disgusting. Private companies should not be able to get money on a per ticket basis with these systems, the state needs to restrict any contracts with these companies to flat rate. This trend has to stop, it's Orwellian.
I don't like automated enforcement systems in general but due to the overarching realities of labor in the future I don't see how to avoid them, but they can't look like the stuff we've seen so far.
Does MSP stand for Michigan State Police? It seems wrong that a private company can take funds from parking enforcement tickets. I agree that a meter-"maid" should be a real "maid" a human with a job. I remember the actual year 1984 when we thought the book was just a scary story, there was none of this Orwellian stuff YET!
MSP is just a typo, it's MPS, Municipal Parking Services, I think it's the same company that does the smart meters.
But yeah, the stuff with all the Flock cameras and automated enforcement is scary to say the least, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. The internet and AI could be the greatest thing for the real democratization of power and wealth in human history if it can sneak under the nose of regulators long enough, or if concentrated in the hands of existing power it will make for a world way more oppressive than any dystopian author could have imagined. It's so depressing to watch it all unfold.
Yes, I wrote a comment on FB defending the cameras. Guy replied to me and basically said "I agree with all of that, but a human should be doing it". And I don't theoretically disagree, actually, and hiring more officers (police or PACE) is the rare thing I'd actually be happy to pay higher taxes to get. But, the way things are going, as you say.
I was shocked to find out how many tickets the humans are already writing - about 40,000 per year for East Lansing, about 80,000 per year for MSU. At least that's what the internet tells me, I'm trying to decide if I can believe it. (East Lansing writes 2 tickets per hour on average over the whole year? I guess I can believe that.)
My main argument with these private cameras is that the municipality should buy or lease the hardware and license the software on a monthly/annual/set amount of time agreement, not on pay-per-citation basis, it sets the incentives all wrong. There's no justification for over half the fine to go to the private operator. The data from such cameras should not belong to the companies, ideally no data should even be kept unless there's a citation, it'd be preferable if each municipality ran their own database without feeding it all back to the company. There's so much wrong with what's going on.
More generally speaking, parking tickets are not to make the government money, they're supposed to be for keeping people from hogging parking spots in high-demand areas and push long term parkers to the appropriate lots/ramps. Traffic tickets aren't to make the government money, they're to incentivize people to follow the laws. And those traffic laws, such as speed limits, aren't supposed to be arbitrary, hopefully they're simply designed to keep people safe.
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Installed by MSP, so it costs the city nothing. A ticketed person pays $42. MSP keeps $25 or that, the city gets $17.
https://eastlansinginfo.news/east-lansing-city-council-approves-usage-of-automated-cameras-to-boost-parking-enforcement/
I don't like automated enforcement systems in general but due to the overarching realities of labor in the future I don't see how to avoid them, but they can't look like the stuff we've seen so far.
But yeah, the stuff with all the Flock cameras and automated enforcement is scary to say the least, and it's just the tip of the iceberg. The internet and AI could be the greatest thing for the real democratization of power and wealth in human history if it can sneak under the nose of regulators long enough, or if concentrated in the hands of existing power it will make for a world way more oppressive than any dystopian author could have imagined. It's so depressing to watch it all unfold.
Yes, I wrote a comment on FB defending the cameras. Guy replied to me and basically said "I agree with all of that, but a human should be doing it". And I don't theoretically disagree, actually, and hiring more officers (police or PACE) is the rare thing I'd actually be happy to pay higher taxes to get. But, the way things are going, as you say.
I was shocked to find out how many tickets the humans are already writing - about 40,000 per year for East Lansing, about 80,000 per year for MSU. At least that's what the internet tells me, I'm trying to decide if I can believe it. (East Lansing writes 2 tickets per hour on average over the whole year? I guess I can believe that.)
More generally speaking, parking tickets are not to make the government money, they're supposed to be for keeping people from hogging parking spots in high-demand areas and push long term parkers to the appropriate lots/ramps. Traffic tickets aren't to make the government money, they're to incentivize people to follow the laws. And those traffic laws, such as speed limits, aren't supposed to be arbitrary, hopefully they're simply designed to keep people safe.