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Comment by inetknght | Hacker News Reader

> They are looking out for their best interests, just as they should be.

There comes a point where the public's best interest outweighs a corporation's best interest.

I personally believe that "point" is unconditional. This may or may not be a popular opinion on a website built around glorifying corporations, but corporations - try as their lobbyists might to insist otherwise - are not people. Their "rights" and best interests are, in my opinion, always secondary to the rights and best interests of, you know, actual people. Any inversion of that is corporatist tyranny.

I think it's important to be clear, the "rights" of corporations are the rights of their owners/shareholders. It's jaded, but it's best to assume that a "corporation's best interest" equates to what makes them the most money; nothing more, nothing less. And of course, it's to make more money for ownership that already has money.

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

As members of the public the interests of the owners are already being counted when you look at the ‘public interest’.

In effect, your suggesting they be double counted as both the owners and members of the public.

You're completely right, but I'm not really suggesting it; they are being "double counted".

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)

Where double counting is most noticeable is economic arguments. Framing the debate around what maximizes GDP lets the RIAA for example make arguments like “good for the economy and good for musicians.”

I think it's important to be clear, the "rights" of corporations are the rights of their owners/shareholders.

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'd nitpick and say a corporations best self-interest is achieving what it's charter states as its purpose. Or it should be. If that's purely making money, fine. Though often pursuing financial gains first and foremost in the long term loses on actual value produced and therefore ultimately lowers it's lifelong monetary value too. E.g. SpaceX looks to be a very valuable company, but it's primary goal is to make it to the moon.

Would love to hear at which point you think that is? Like, in which cases do you feel a corporations best interest outweighs the publics? Do you have some examples?

Genuinely curious - how does one begin to answer such a broad question? The parent comment is reasonable. It is easy for carriers to let users keep their number. It isn’t going to eat into their profits, so why not do it? Especially when bank accounts, two factor authentication and a bunch of other stuff are tied to your phone number.

Or are you of the opinion that profits matter over everything else?

janpot, I think you maybe reacting to a strawman. It's clearly never in the public's interest to favor ANYTHING over the public's interest. There are, however, many cases when it is in the public's global interest for a corporation's local interests to outweigh individuals' local interests. Most arguments people make in support of corporation's rights can be reduced to 1) identifying the anti-corporate interest as a local one, 2) identifying the public benefit created/maintained by supporting a corporation's rights, and 3) say 2)>1).

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.

I understand you don’t agree with the cheaper cars argument, and I don’t either.

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.

>then doesn’t that value have to come from somewhere? It's not necessarily zero-sum. The trinkets may well be worth more to people than the privacy benefit. In fact, if the car owner saves $100 and buys a trinket, they presumably think the trinket IS worth more than $100. Many might happily trade vehicle telemetry for a properly autonomous vehicle that means they could sleep during their commute time.

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-....

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