Anonimizing data to convince the public their information Is safe
instead of gathering accurate data is exactly the kind of inefficiency that must be expelled from government.
I worked census out of a duty of democracy. Overwhelmingly the people I interviewed thought it was completely useless, that the "government already knew", or that I was secretly the IRS. There are multiple instances of door slamming, hostile threats, and people who thought that I was somehow the representative of the president of the United States. A guy ran me down in the road to tell me I "ain't no fbi agent" after I left a census flyer on their door. Census bureau were almost trying to get us killed at this point since we were not allowed to have self defense with us. They wanted us to go to known meth labs, quote: "anecdotal comments are not justification.".
Multiple others on our team had a gun waved at them when they went to do reinterviews (checking others work) because the original worker got that information from a neighbor to avoid the threat. But the census system doesn't allow you to do that without attempting the actual location a number of times (annoying them).
There is one solution to all of this, and that is to return to the constitutional requirements. The single number of how many people live there. Nothing about money or jobs or anything else. But I'm afraid the census has already destroyed that opportunity, the 2010 "long forms" are now forever associated with the census.
There wasn’t a 2010 long form. The 2010 census had about 10 questions: sex, race, age, ethnicity, as well as your relationship to the primary homeowner and whether the home was owned or rented. Nothing about money or jobs.
There used to be a long form in 2000 and before, but this was spun off around 2005 to become a separate annual sample-based survey called the American community survey.
Yes, 2000's my mistake. A relative of mine did this in 2000's and before. It was quite invasive, requiring information about the number of types of rooms in households and plenty of other information people were not comfortable giving.
The solution to this is to not ask, and instead aggregate this data from open sources like the local tax assessor, or closed paid sources like the MLS or similar real estate transaction corpus.
This accomplishes whatever the objective is without putting census takers in danger due to unruly/belligerent interviewees.
This sounds very much like a society in slow collapse.
There is this book that I have difficulty getting through just because it depresses me so much. Your story reminded me of some if the issues discussed in this book.
I'll put it out there. Highly recommended if you want a sobering take: America: The Farewell Tour by Chris Hedges.
If you have already embraced the meme that “America is slowly collapsing” then your confirmation bias can make almost anything look like evidence of collapse.
Personally, I don’t see anything like that at play here.
It seems to me that if you went around asking invasive questions like this at any time in the country’s history you could have expected some subset of the population to react in the way that OP described.
If fact, given that the census conducts door-to-door interviews when people have not already voluntarily submitted the census form, it is to be expected that a good percentage of people interviewed just don’t want to answer the questions, and probably feel hostile towards the idea of cooperating with the census. That doesn’t mean that the society as a whole is hostile towards the census. There’s an overwhelming selection bias at play here.
I don't think I have embraced it, in fact I try to find reasons to consider the opposite just to keep me feeling in a positive mood. There is nothing else you can do when you have no control over the outcome.
The reason I brought up the book is because the stories told by the OP bear a very close resemblance to stories told in the book.
>It seems to me that if you went around asking invasive questions like this at any time in the country’s history you could have expected some subset of the population to react in the way that OP described.
Well yes, statistically this is more likely as the population increases. I also feel that people circumstances will contribute to their behavior. If they have felt betrayed by a government that has failed them in the past or they internally believe that the system does not work for them then these responses are to be expected.
>If fact, given that the census conducts door-to-door interviews when people have not already voluntarily submitted the census form, it is to be expected that a good percentage of people interviewed just don’t want to answer the questions, and probably feel hostile towards the idea of cooperating with the census. That doesn’t mean that the society as a whole is hostile towards the census. There’s an overwhelming selection bias at play here.
Fair enough. I don't have enough data to prove/disprove this conclusively.
I'm curious when and where that was. I was an enumerator for the 2000 Census in Los Angeles County and can't remember a single instance of hostility or even non-compliance once I explained what I was doing. The households I had to visit mostly didn't fill out the original form because they didn't speak English.
> Anonimizing data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering accurate data is exactly the kind of inefficiency that must be expelled from government.
Your proposal is also anonymized, by default.
I think you mean:
Anonimizing [extra] data to convince the public their information Is safe instead of gathering [only the data they need] is exactly the kind of [overreach] that must be expelled from government.
I worked census out of a duty of democracy. Overwhelmingly the people I interviewed thought it was completely useless, that the "government already knew", or that I was secretly the IRS. There are multiple instances of door slamming, hostile threats, and people who thought that I was somehow the representative of the president of the United States. A guy ran me down in the road to tell me I "ain't no fbi agent" after I left a census flyer on their door. Census bureau were almost trying to get us killed at this point since we were not allowed to have self defense with us. They wanted us to go to known meth labs, quote: "anecdotal comments are not justification.".
Multiple others on our team had a gun waved at them when they went to do reinterviews (checking others work) because the original worker got that information from a neighbor to avoid the threat. But the census system doesn't allow you to do that without attempting the actual location a number of times (annoying them).
There is one solution to all of this, and that is to return to the constitutional requirements. The single number of how many people live there. Nothing about money or jobs or anything else. But I'm afraid the census has already destroyed that opportunity, the 2010 "long forms" are now forever associated with the census.