How do laws, algorithms, and data infrastructures encode inequality?

These systems are often framed as neutral—but they’re built on historical bias, power asymmetries, and exclusionary logic. Rather than correcting inequality, they frequently amplify and automate it.

Laws

• Tax codes favor capital: Wealthy individuals and corporations benefit from loopholes, deductions, and offshore shelters.
• Criminal justice laws: Sentencing disparities and over-policing disproportionately affect marginalized communities.
• Zoning and housing laws: Reinforce segregation, limit access to public resources, and protect elite enclaves.

Laws reflect the priorities of those who write them—often influenced by lobbyists and elite interests.

Algorithms

• Facial recognition: Misidentifies darker-skinned individuals up to 34% more often than lighter-skinned ones Catalyst.
• Hiring tools: Replicate bias by favoring resumes that match historically privileged profiles Do Better.
• Predictive policing: Uses biased data to target minority neighborhoods, creating feedback loops of surveillance Catalyst.
• Image generation: AI systems associate white people with high-paying jobs and Black people with low-wage roles Do Better.

Algorithms don’t just reflect bias—they systematize it, making discrimination scalable and harder to detect.

Data Infrastructures

• Data collection gaps: Marginalized communities are underrepresented or misrepresented in datasets.
• Platform design: Engagement metrics prioritize outrage and visibility for dominant narratives.
• Access inequality: Who gets to collect, analyze, and monetize data is shaped by wealth and institutional power.

Data infrastructures encode whose lives are visible, valuable, and actionable—and whose are not.

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• How do laws, algorithms, and data infrastructures encode inequality?
• How do financial flows reinforce elite influence?
• Structural Definition: Usefulness as Economic Utility
• Why do we “spell”?
• Myths, narratives and the labor of consent
• How the Elite Maintain Control
• 10 Elite Patterns Worth Naming
• The Myth of Scarcity: 10 Interesting Facts