I've found that industries irrationally oppose reasonable legislation on principle. Do you remember cell phone number portability? (In the US?) Cell phone carriers vocally opposed it, and then the day it was passed they all put up signs saying you could keep your number if you switched today.
There comes a point where the public's best interest outweighs a corporation's best interest.
Or are you of the opinion that profits matter over everything else?
An extreme example I expect you'd agree with to illustrate the structure:
* Individuals shouldn't just be able to take corporations' property without compensation. Individuals' being able to obtain a TV just by taking it from Best Buy would undoubtedly be a benefit. However, it would mean no sane retailer would stay in business. Having a functioning retail economy is more important to me than getting a free TV.
The equivalent argument here is:
* Developing cars is hard, expensive work that benefits the public (improved safety, reduced emissions, etc.). If retail car prices were just a bit lower, many more people could afford them, allowing them to access jobs and escape poverty. One way to lower retail car prices is to allow manufacturers to sell telemetry data from cars. They'll still need to compete on price for customers, but since they'll have this new data revenue stream, they'll be able to lower consumer prices further while still covering their costs. If you care more about poverty than you do about data privacy, you should support letting manufacturers sell usage data.
I happen not to buy that argument and voted Yes on this measure, but I hope it clarifies how conceptually, people can be for corporations on issues where giving corporations more or fewer rights is at issue.
To the people that would seriously make this argument though, I ask them this:
If the location or other telemetry data is so valuable that the manufacturer selling it can have a real impact on the purchase price of the car, then doesn’t that value have to come from somewhere? Other companies wouldn’t buy that data if they didn’t think they could use it to make more money than the data is worth. That money the data buyers then are hoping to make would come from the very people that the data did, in most cases, right? So the consumer has ended up with less money compared to if they didn’t have their data sold, even if they got some trinkets in return.
Moreover, for the general public, money flow is good, even if we think car owner #75834 got duped in how he spent his $100. Buying an extra trinket creates trinket-making jobs, who eat at restaurants, which hire cooks, etc. Estimates vary, but suggest $100 of flow generates an additional $50-$250 in economic activity [0].
[0]See Table 1... https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-....
I don't think that the point of corporate vs public best interest is "unconditional", but we skew way too far to the corporate side than is good for our society
In effect, your suggesting they be double counted as both the owners and members of the public.
That being said, an individual's share of the "public interest" is incredibly miniscule, and there's relatively few owners, so it's not like it's equal on both sides. In fact, that's ultimately the problem; that we constantly bend due to "corporate interests" that are subject to the whims of an incredibly small fraction of society that is, in general, massively disconnected from the norms of society.
Add on to that, generally having a large amount of money and privilege means that most of the things that are in the "public interest" aren't really of significant concern to you because you can simply buy your way into a completely different system (see public vs private education)
To some extent, an organization is a host for emergent behavior. An organization (like an ant colony) may behave in ways that are counter to the best interests of, and incomprehensible by, any given isolated individual in that organization.
I'm struggling to understand why this should be the case. I understand this is how it works now, but this seems like a flaw, not a desirable aspect of life.
Edit: To clarify, I meant I don't understand why it's a good thing we expect corporations to look out for their best interests while ignoring the best interests of society/individuals.
If an individual does it, their known for being selfish, egotistical, maybe even narcissistic. There's a natural push back from society to this behavior.
Corporations should be disincentivized from doing this as well. Society would benefit as a whole. The fact that people expect selfishness out of corporations and see it as a good thing is concerning.