Comment by Reedx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Reedx | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This appears to be happening in China with electricity quotas. Running AC and machines in empty factories to make quota.

"Local companies and officials are fraudulently boosting electricity consumption and other metrics in order to meet tough new back-to-work targets"

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Lights-go-on-but-no...

"Video evidence. In #Wenzhou, factory manager told they must consume 3000 kWh electricity by midnight, as the authorities use electricity usage as a criterion of re-open rate. Even this factory has not re-opened for lack of supply and manpower due to #COVID2019, manager had to.."

https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd/status/1233793672497573894

"Argh. A Wenzhou-based factory owner tells how district officials are telling him his closed factory (he has no workers) must turn on the machines and consume electricity or he’ll get “a visit”. Higher ups are watching the electricity numbers."

https://twitter.com/You_Shu_China/status/1233535925185122305

When a metric becomes a target

Aren't all metrics targets?

I think what he is trying to say is that the metrics were meant be a check, a measure of knowing, for whether we are going to meet our vision/target.

Just yesterday, at our dev team at a trading firm, we went through our OKR review for the quarter. The metrics were the target yesterday. It was all about clicking those check boxes and not about delivering the bigger picture.

No, they are supposed to measure progress in one dimension towards a target. They are often misused, but it’s not necessary to conflate the improper use case with the original intent.

Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

They used the wrong metric, but an easy one to measure. The right metrics (are the factories producing things correctly? Are those making it to consumers? Are the consumers paying for them?) are too difficult to measure discretely. And so we end up here.

Reminds me of "the 'return 200' health-check endpoint is working; how can the site be down?"

And THIS is why crypto markets are dropping, because China is flooding the network with miners to meet energy quotas

IMO mining costs are dominated by chips, nobody has idle data centers on standby for such an occasion.

Just because a cost ain't a large share of the pie doesn't mean it ain't worth shaving anyway.

You need to look up China mining operations. They pop up “data centers” anywhere there is free or cheap electricity. Sounds like a perfect operation for factories that must use electricity

I wonder what this will do to the method of estimating Chinas economy via Electricity/Coal usage. What is next on the line that isn't being actively tampered with.

> I wonder what this will do to the method of estimating Chinas economy via Electricity/Coal usage.

I think the causality goes the other way. I think that they are doing this because that is how their economy is measured.

Im pretty sure that before this electricity usage was not the primary measure of productivity. I think the news is that this Is a new "easy" way of attemting to force ramp up

But if you know that people are using this method, so do the party leaders. It would be no surprise they are juicing their metrics.

Same happened on this "New Silk Road" track:

"Empty trains on the modern Silk Road: when Belt and Road interests don’t align"

https://pandapawdragonclaw.blog/2019/08/23/empty-trains-on-t...

Also in US https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/24/3381238/microsoft-power-w...

Not also in the US. They're entirely different situations with entirely different goals by the people doing it.

Microsoft was trying to avoid a penalty for itself, one company.

The businesses in China (not all obviously) are conspiring with the bureaucracy to fake economic activity on a massive scale, to put on a veneer for the outside world. This is about appearances to the world, because China is very scared right now.

How about you stop with the nationalism?

People in China are actual human beings, not part of a hive mind. They react to individual incentives.

Yep, they are human beings forced by the government to hide the truth under the guise of “harmony” with the threat of much worse.

Also, you can criticize the Chinese government without having any issues with Chinese people. Learn the difference or life is going to be hard.

You're literally just agreeing with me, but in a condescending tone. My point is that not literally every Chinese person is "conspiring" to "fake" a "veneer" because they're "scared", because people != government. It's GP who needs to learn the difference.

If they work with the government to participate in this data taking scheme, they are conspiring to fake a veneer. They just have no choice.

I think the thrust of the comment above was that this is not a class of behavior restricted to China or to communist states.

Microsoft was secretly wasting electricity to avoid fines -- gaming an economic system designed to encourage efficiency under bureaucrat-designed rules that make sense within market capitalism, and Chinese companies are secretly wasting electricity to avoid a loss in confidence, ie. business, under the direction of bureaucrats -- gaming a larger economic system designed for efficiency, but here specifically for efficiency of labor to product spend, versus efficiency of product sale.

Curiously, the need to maintain this appearance of productivity is only likely for the sake of capitalist clients who buy the services -- c.f. the classic entrepreneurial slogan, "fake it till you make it!"

Some people are saying in response to this, "only under communism", and in the specifics of who and how and why they may be correct, but waste to satisfy bureaucratic systems is not unique to any economic or social system. People are going to juke the stats under every regime, at all scales, under all circumstances.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com