Hacking Society

by Barrett D. Brown

From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:

  holding
      n 1: the act of retaining something [syn: {retention},
           {keeping}, {holding}]
      2: something owned; any tangible or intangible possession that
         is owned by someone; "that hat is my property"; "he is a man
         of property"; [syn: {property}, {belongings}, {holding}]

  action
      n 1: something done (usually as opposed to something said);
           "there were stories of murders and other unnatural actions"
      2: the state of being active; "his sphere of activity"; "he is
         out of action" [syn: {action}, {activity}, {activeness}]
         [ant: {inaction}, {inactiveness}, {inactivity}]
      3: a military engagement; "he saw action in Korea" [syn:
         {military action}, {action}]
      
	  ...

Everyone is familiar with what holding actions are; we experience them every day of our lives.

What many people may not know is that holding actions can be very carefully planned using statistics, making them a powerful tool of manipulation.

First, let's acquaint ourselves more specifically with what a holding action is:

Scenario One:  Let's say, for example, that you are trying to get a refund for some small item you bought but which you received in the mail broken.  The item cost $30.00, but you paid for it, and you want to get what you paid for.  You call the company and are greeted by a phone tree.  The phone tree is the first step in the company's holding action against you.  You spend forty minutes navigating around the tree, and you finally reach a customer service representative, who informs you that in order to get a refund or exchange, you need to have the original receipt, fill out some forms they send you in the mail, and send your item back to them.  You wait for your forms in the mail, but three weeks later they haven't come.  So you spend another forty minutes on the phone tree to reach another representative, who apologizes and says the forms will be sent to you.  This step can be repeated as many times as necessary until you get so tired of wasting your time that you just give up on the refund entirely.  This is an example of a successful holding action by the company against you.  Through the use of phone trees and red tape, the company avoided spending money on you.  In fact, because time is equal to money in most people's lives, they made you spend even more money.

Scenario Two:  Now let's say, completely hypothetically, that you are an American president.  Oh, I don't know, how about Ronald Reagan.  And you are two weeks away from your re-election day.  Something bad comes out in the news - for example, Reagan molests a Girl Scout - that threatens your numbers in the polls, and you need to distract the public just long enough to ensure your re-election.  There happen to be U.S. prisoners of war in Iran, and you make a secret deal with the Iranians that if they release the hostages the day after re-election, you will give them some guns or drugs or something.  Then you go on TV and promise that if you get elected, the hostages will be released.  This is another form of holding action which uses the media.  The president does not need to prove the Girl Scout wrong or clear his own name.  He just needs to hold the people's attention for two weeks, until he gets re-elected.  Distraction holding action.

Scenario Three:  You are a homeless heroin addict.  You are sent to jail for a crime you did not commit.  While in the city jail, awaiting trial, you are in excruciating agony because your body is suffering from opiate withdrawal.  Every day that you are incarcerated is a day in agony.  Your public defender tells you that you can plead guilty and get out in two days, or you can fight to prove your innocence, which will take months.  You are caught in a holding action (as well as a holding cell), and most people in these conditions fold under the pressure.

Holding actions are used on us every day, in ever-increasing numbers.  Major companies actually have statistics which tell them exactly what percentage of customers will hang up or reach the wrong person when calling an automated phone tree, and they count on those numbers.  They save money with every customer that does not reach them, or so their logic goes.  The main commodity which a holding action manipulates is time.  Whether we realize it or not, time is money, and since corporations, private interest groups, and wealthy individuals have much more money and time than the average person, these large entities will always win any given holding action.

Let's examine scenario two again.

A customer in this scenario who is somewhat poor may not have forty minutes to spend on a phone tree.  Either they are busy working for minimum wage, or they are spending their free time doing laundry and shopping.  A poor person often does not have the time to spend on red tape and will give up early, thus saving the manipulative entity in question from replacing their defective product.  A wealthy individual in scenario two would have more time to wait on hold, or even a secretary to make the call instead, thus increasing the chances that they will end up getting what they paid for.

Now that we understand a little about how holding actions are used against us, let's think about how they can be used to our advantage.  The basic idea is to stall for as long as possible until your enemies either give up, forget or lose the paperwork regarding you, or decide that it is costing them too much money, or until you are in a better position to resolve the matter.

The poor soul in scenario three could have fought his own holding action by insisting on a trial, but not a speedy one.  The judicial system in the U.S. functions primarily on to "plea bargains," which are deals made with the District Attorney.

Most courts have no interest in trials because they cost too much money and time.  So in the case of scenario three, assuming the charge was small and the person had no prior record, they could insist on a trial.  It would take a few months, but chances are good that the charges would be dropped when the DA realized that their own holding action was not working.

A friend of mine did exactly this, going to court every month for three years, stalling the case.  Every month the DA would offer a new deal, and every month my friend would say, "I want a trial."

Finally, after they had postponed the trial to the farthest possible legal time limit, the DA made one last offer, which was fair.

Have an ugly looking credit report?

File a dispute on every single bad mark you have.  Companies, especially creditors, are routinely bought by other companies, and many times paperwork or data is lost in the transition.  When you dispute a claim on your credit report, the burden of proof is on the company.

They only have a limited amount of time to prove that you owe them money, or they have to drop the claim from your report.  Because these companies are so busy, it is very common for claims to be dropped simply because the creditor did not have the time to find your file and send it to the credit reporting agency.

In addition, if your Claim is small, it costs the company more money to prove that you owe them than it does to just drop the whole matter.  This is using a holding action to your advantage.

Another example is lawsuits.  Part of the reason why large companies routinely settle stupid lawsuits for large sums of money is that they are aware of how much more money, time, and publicity it would cost them to go to trial.

Time and information are the two most important commodities in our world today.

The more information you have about your opponent and about how their time is allocated, the better your ability to contrive ways to distract your opponent from using time against you.

The more control you have over an opponent's time, the less they have over yours.  The ever-growing complexity in bureaucracies, aided by the growth of technology, ensures that manipulating people's time is a trend which will only continue to grow and be refined in the years to come.

The more you are aware of these processes, the better-equipped you will be to use them to your advantage.