Norway to track all supermarket purchases?
lifeinnorway.net
lifeinnorway.net
For example, all health/hospital records of deceased Norwegians are digitalized ten years after death and added to a national register. No way to refuse. In my opinion, that is much more invasive, yet it hasn't been discussed at all by the public
Everyone's salary is publicly available online. (So's the fact that you looked!) https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239
In that situation, I'm happy that government has access to the same data because it gives it a way to balance the private sector power.
Now what is needed is the ability to opt out.
Corporations are no stranger to violence. They're no stranger to organized crime dealings and tight relationships with governments. Coca-Cola for example has straight up assassinated union leaders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)#H...
The leaders of governments can and do act like that.
Another thing that sets the government and private sector apart is that the government is under (mostly, even if indirect) democratic control, or otherwise accountable to the public, whereas the private sector can get by with bad press, so long as they can continue to operate. As an individual of average wealth, it is far less difficult to influence government policy and politicians as opposed to doing the same to a private organization.
Really, this is not about choosing between "good" and "evil", it is about choosing which evil you are most likely to be able to contain.
I'm not a hard disagree, but I think it's easier (though not easy!) to democratically will your government to regulate private companies than it is regulate itself.
Imagine living in a state where abortion laws now allow individuals to sue other individuals who have had abortions. A corporation could use grocery data to find and sue individuals who are likely to have had an abortion. The analysis would be a bit more complex than this, but just looking at grocery data, scan for people who bought pregnancy tests, bought fewer tampons than usual, and aren't buying baby food a year later. No violence, totally legal, and absolutely devastating to the individuals involved.
It is a core concept of law and statehood; if you consider it nonsense, you consider statehood of your country to be the same.
Things look different in a small high-trust country with multiple political parties. Because the country is too weak and insignificant to change the world, the government tends to focus on administering the country. Because there is a lot of trust in the society, the people who want to serve in the government are usually ideologically motivated to serve the best interests of the public. It's not a particularly lucrative or high-status career, so people with other motivations tend to go elsewhere. And while people may disagree on what exactly are the best interests of the public, there are many viable political parties to choose from.
Private firms are allowed to be evil in the sense that they can put their private interests ahead of public interests. Most of them are. And because they are private, the public has only limited means to regulate them when they misbehave blatantly. They can't, for example, vote the directors and shareholders out and replace them with people who promise to serve public interests.
Given that it's already out there, there's not much more to fear in terms of a slippery slope. All that's left is to at least force the public sector to disclose more of what's going on and regulate how private interests are allowed to use it.
Otherwise, we already have the dystopia you're imagining, we just don't see it as well.
The government has the monopoly on violence. It always has access to the data held by private parties. The government and the people serving it may choose to respect laws and other promises. They may choose to avoid accessing private data without a valid reason. But if the government chooses otherwise and requires private businesses to hand over their data, the businesses will most likely comply. If you don't want to give a government-turned-bad access to some data, that data must not be allowed to exist in the first place.
Which country are you talking about? Surely not Norway, which is a monarchy.
Yes, it is a constitutional monarchy which was introduced by vote, and given its support in the population, removing the monarchy would be quite undemocratic. One of the more radical parties in parliament has raised the issue many times; in 2019 their suggestion to abolish the monarchy got a record of 36 votes in parliament (against 130)
The article says that a number of people uses «loyalty programs». It mentions tracking though «debit card», and last time I checked Norwegians still have circulating cash. It does not mention Google, but surely there will be Norwegians that do not share data with it. Let us highlight that surely, some do not share at all.
I do not understand, contextually, the idea of «balanc[ing] the private sector power».
Debit, or mobile payments are the norm, to the point that even kids having a cookie stand will expect mobile payment.
Within a Paretian framework, anything good is an outlier. What you need is a system that allows the minoritarian good to be preserved.
So, within your sentences: "using it is an outlier for most people below 60 and for privacy conscious individuals".
Blending in is generally what a privacy minded individual wants for their data.
"Blending in" is very different from "giving away one's data" - which defies the purpose. You are confusing the two situations, of a dissident trying to conceal his position to survive, and of a normal individual that lives by the natural stance, "a citizen and a free man, never a subject".
The one intending to survive will act "in the shadow"; the one intending to defend his own Dignity will be very open in the stance "do not even try".
> With a tad more paranoia, why couldn’t ... surveillance cameras
Of course they could, and they would have to bear the consequences of facing determined lucid bersekers if they did.
May I interest you in a past submission, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31360319 , "Study finds the SARS-CoV-2 virus is not viable on cash banknotes".
About the special numbers of Sweden and Norway: this is what happens when living in Sweden and Norway, you get the false idea that reality is like Sweden and Norway look.
So don't buy booze and cigarettes on credit if you don't want your health insurance company to buy that data from your credit processor.
I’ve hunted down estranged family members before and I was kind of concerned because I was able to find a ton of information about them I wouldn’t want out on the internet
The purchases made by an individual, already public? That on that day you were in that place? That you read "The Lance" instead of "The Spear", that you read Comte instead of Hegel?
Sorry, what? You’re saying a digitised deaths registry is more invasive than tracking all supermarket purchases?
They're saying that digitising the health records of the deceased is much more invasive.
But to be honest, I don’t care what happens 10yrs after I die. I don’t want to be surveilled for the whole time I’m alive…
> AS A MEMBER OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION: > ... > I WILL RESPECT the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died
To me, financial information seems less private. Furthermore, I can use cash or ask a friend to buy things for me, but I cannot have a friend seeing the psychologist or having an abortion in my place. If I was struggling with some taboo-ish condition (say, pedophilic thoughts), the idea that this information would be kept and possibly leaked in the future, would heighten the bar for seeking help. And although I will be dead, my health records may contain information about the living, say information about heritable conditions.
Personally I agree we need statistics, data in general, but to be collected with EXTREME care and transparency because yes, we might spot health issues in advance and so save lives, we might anticipate needs and so satisfy them better with better forecasting/planning BUT we might also do nasty things.
Try to imagine if a day resources start to be scarce, a dictatorial government rise supported by most people self-(propaganda)-convinced that that's the sole option to sort the situation out and such government start the old: it's not that bad but some work to make it bad against us, we need to took the down. So a social score born, became spread, with much general data on the population: how easy can be selectively killing or just addressing careers of various people thanks to the mass of data on them, accordingly to dictatorship NOT social needs?
More "lighter" and general example: how can we prevent a cohort of people taking advantage of such big mass of data for their own profits at the expense of another cohort?
It's not just a mere matter of privacy: if we ALL know anything about anyone or nothing about anyone we are on fair and equal conditions, some will take advantage some others not because some will be smarter, just more active etc than others, but overall situation should remain in a normal fair balance. If just very few know very much on almost anyone and most others know next to nothing about those few...
Just imaging simple things like knowing with enough precision what people eat anywhere in a country: those who know can organize "better" (commercially) shelves and gain competitive advantage on competitors to a point perhaps of pushing them to the margins and then abuse the gained position to establish de-fact price policies on pretty anything. Even if data are public and collected only by the public, no one is corrupt etc those who can process such public data at scale can grab competitive advantages against all the rest.
In fairness terms: just imaging you came from a bad health family: you might be drop for many job offer because of such legacy, pay more for some health insurances etc. You might say "hey, that's true but still fair", well, it's not. It's not because potential employers know something about you, you do not equally know something about them up front.
At social scale we need a certain degree of incertitude to let the society evolve by nature instead of by planning because we MUST plan and we might even be good planner BUT nothing beat natural evolution in the long term and as a society we MUST think at the long terms. Individuals have, rightly, to think about their own life, so short an mean terms, but at a society, so State level we must also weight the very long terms. Our individual life is, unfortunately (well, for some at least) a not-that-short/not-that-long timeframe, States, populations can potentially last millennia. Planning even for a single century for us is well... More fantasy than science, and that's why we have to allow nature do it's job with a certain level of "background noise"...
I'm certainly not going to be feeling outraged by medical records disclosure when I'm dead. Do with me what you will when I'm gone--I care more about my experience when I'm alive.
For free (payed by the taxes)
I was imagining some sort of anonymized records database—turns out you can look up specific names which I agree yields some undesirable outcomes.
Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can create policies to control your behavior to our liking.
(Really, HN? Voting down something that is 101 microeconomics to negative scores without one single argument?)
I don't want to be tracked by anyone, without my explicit consent, which I should be able to withdraw anytime.
You don't? Nor me.
Governments presume to have authority over everything in their domain. The belief in the false idea of 'government' by the majority is what sustains their power.
It is actually immoral and fraudulent. They are meant to serve us - and a servant is less than a free man/woman. That is not how they see it though - they are only serving themselves.
The people in Norway have a clear and simple choice; they can sit and do nothing, or they can do something. Action might entail moving the hell out of the country and complain from a distance. They could also vote in a new government, but it's up to them.
As far as that BS idea that "They are meant to serve us", no you are quite wrong. The Government serves the people who voted it in, and gave it control of those resources. That Government, in the end, has no obligation to _anyone_ else . Its only obligation is to those who voted it in, and it uses that granted power as a proxy for those people (and corporations) to enact their will. Don't' like it? Fine, do something about it, rather than complain here about big, bad Government.
You implicitly agree to some measure when you participate in the society set up by government.
There is today a very common attitude that governments are intentionally only serving a small elite. This populist - perhaps even intuitive - rhetoric is exaggerated for most of the Western world.
If you’re living on your own out in the wilderness, I can see your argument. But this actually does exist to some degree in how uncontacted peoples[0] are generally not subject to the laws of the government whos jurisdiction they fall under. This isn’t a lifestyle most of us would choose but perhaps there is some merit to making this path easier to take for those who desire it.
Correcting it I would rephrase it to say that massive components of society are directly facilitated by the government as one example: (roads -> shipped goods, travel experiences, etc)
Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now?
> Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now?
Government is allowed to occasionally make the wrong decision. Perfection is an imperfect standard.
A radical relatively recent notion is that democratic systems of government which allowed the public to elect representatives to the decision-making positions within the government would alter this historical dynamic and would eliminate the concentration of real power in the hands of a small group of elites. This notion hasn't really worked out in the USA as it's rather clear that American politicians today almost universally serve as the equivalents of corporate middle managers within a larger power structure controlled by entities like large banks and hedge funds, industrial conglomerates in energy/tech/pharma/ag/etc, military industrial contractors and affiliated government bureaucracies, and corporate and state propaganda organizations, who funnel wealth up to a tiny minority (quite similar in proportional structure to say, the House of Saud's ~15,000 affiliates relative to the Saudi population of what, ~35 million?)
The alternative approach of communism has merely replaced one set of elites (inherited aristocratic wealth) with another (members of government bureaucracies selected by internal bureaucratic politics, see China for example), where the general population doesn't even have the illusion of being represented in a democratic process. In some cases (Cuba) this has indeed raised the average standard of living for the majority of the population, which is an uncomfortable fact for many, although repression of all dissent tends to be the price for that.
Now, maybe equalizing technology can get us out of this mess to some extent, but it truly dates back to the origins of what we call civilization. Kings and priests weren't really possible until farmers figured out how to grow far more food than they themselves needed; some narcissitic types figured out they could control this excess and use it to set themselves up at the top of the social pyramid (rather literally as in Egypt, Mesoamerica, etc.), and that's continued relatively unchanged right on up to the present day (with some improvements of course, for example the elimination of chattel slavery in most places).
In the past, it was really hard to sever ties with one society and government and go form a new one, but you could actually find places where nobody would immediately chase you away (even then most expansion was at the expense of natives, though). Nowadays that's impossible. A small number of people could maybe live in Siberia undetected, but that's more like partisan warfare than establishing a new country: The moment Russian government finds out anyone's there, they're getting deported. Your best bet for not living in an existing state is amassing an army (likely illegal in your home country) and invading a weak state. Good luck.
Also >You don't get to use any of society's infrastructure if you don't opt in, though. You don't represent the rest of us, so why are you pretending to the authority to make stipulations like this? I'd imagine if there were any outlands left to retreat to, you would at least have some bartering going on there at the fringes.
You can't pick any parts. Choice has nothing to do with it. You serve the government, it does not serve you. You are a slave.
But you can pretend that you picked what society is asking you to do, if you like - that you picked how much tax you paid, that your government borrowed so many trillions, the way they spend that money, which wars they fight, etc, etc. If you don't believe me, try and change something.
I personally think that's an example of Stockholm syndrome, but each to their own.
https://vividmaps.com/non-private-land-in-united-states/
But you should check what you can do in it. It will be probably legal to park a vehicle there and very probably illegal to dig a moat around it (public means "of everyone", not just "free").
You can go to live in a forest. Your obligations to the jurisdiction remain.
Technically (in at least some systems), you do when you ask for residency - when you leave the parent's house to live somewhere defined in the territory, and make that formal. That is the "signature of the contract".
The simile of the "service" holds credit. Of course, do not forget that many other models were drawn in History (e.g.: Hobbes, "better compromise than the insecurity which comes with anarchy", etc).
And that's to say nothing of the fact that, at least in the US, about 50% of the entire population at any given time tend NOT to believe that the government has their best interest in mind
If I was an evil mastermind dominating you for my own nefarious purposes, I probably wouldn't start by monitoring the pasta in your pantry.
With cash and no store "loyalty" app - no.
> wouldn't it be better to be tracked by someone who at least tries to have your best interests at heart
But this is not the case here.
Several stores track your phone inside the store. Some also use facial recognition.
I haven’t seen any store use automatic license plate readers on customer cars but It wouldn’t surprise me if some do.
phones made in the last few years have mac address randomization to thwart this type of stuff. It's not perfect, but it suffices to prevent them from building a profile of your purchases between visits.
>Some also use facial recognition.
good thing covid made face masks socially acceptable ;)
Oh, but you are. You are lumped in with other folks using cash and no loyalty card. There is a demographic like you, in other words. You might very well be tracked through the store so that they can study where you go and what you stop at as well.
> wouldn't it be better to be tracked by someone who at least tries to have your best interests at heart
Ok. Except that they might just use it to do good overall too. I very highly doubt you can be any more sure than the rest of us.
More than that you’re lumped in with other folks who have the same habits and brand preferences as you, which may very well be a lump of exactly one person.
Assuming no facial recognition, phone tracking or license plate reading, all that means is they aren't tracking you between visits. Certainly the items purchased together are tracked. And they get lumped together into the "cash, no card" group. And if you buy any age restricted products where they can see your ID, your birthdate is entered into the system, which is probably unique enough among cardless cash users in any grocery store.
I don't know if that was sarcasm or you being really naive.
For that to change, privization needs to stop focusing on minimizing its alignment for personal gain and has to look at shedding a bit back towards society, realigning more at a slight loss of gains, not capturing gains purely for itself.
If that doesn't happen, you're going to continue to see surges of support for government, ideas of socialism, etc.
But there’s no precedent for personal data being misused mishandled or abused right?
At least with the government, you have a ton of elected representative who can help you if the government does something dumb with the data.
What is the worst realistic consequence for a government (which has orders of magnitude more power than a lowly supermarket chain) tracking all grocery purchases? As many other posters have noted, it's reasonable to imagine a progressive sin tax: for example, your sales tax rate increases as your purchase more meat or liquor. This has a much more profound impact than anything the supermarket is powered to do as a result of tracking your purchases.
Government tracking has the potential to be much worse than corporate tracking.
(I think I'm agreeing with your post, but I'm not sure)
if the government fails, corporations can and will put you in jail.
"Sin tax" is the name for a targeted excise tax to discourage consumption. The name goes back to the 1500s when the Catholic Church used such a tactic (or at least justification) to tax certain activities.
Whether we current use a moral framework to distinguish what goods to tax, it's become an accepted term.
I'm sure it has, it's just done in a subtle manner you don't notice.
> What is the worst realistic consequence for a government...tracking all grocery purchases? As many other posters have noted, it's reasonable to imagine a progressive sin tax:
That was determined by a democracy. And if a government wanted to do that today, it would be trivial to do via fiat. No need to build a database or even track what exactly is purchased. Just swipe your "tax setting" card before you swipe anything else.
How do you figure? In all grocery stores I’ve visited, loyalty card discounts are clearly noted on the item's price tag. I've never seen any hidden discounts (or surcharges) that pop up only at checkout.
>Just swipe your "tax setting" card before you swipe anything else.
Very true, but decentralizing progressive sales tax collection is rife for fraud. Without centrally tracking everyone's cumulative tax burden, there would be no way to prevent people from using hacked Tax Setting cards that grossly underreport their income or cumulative meat consumption. Hacking notwithstanding, this would also be a lot more expensive that centrally tracking everything, since each Tax Setting card would have to maintain its own memory of cumulative purchases (otherwise, just ring up your massive meat order one steak at a time).
Yes. A surcharge won't show up there. The most common way to do things is to have a very high base price and give people variable discounts.
> decentralizing progressive sales tax collection is rife for fraud.
So is distributing sheets of paper that I can exchange for goods and services. It's pretty cheap and easy to do this and I bet it can be completely done offline with security good enough that the biggest issue will be retailers letting people skip the excise tax.
As a sidenote - why are people concerned with the government putting a sin tax on meat?
David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel "The Pale King" (which is set within the context of an Internal Revenue Service Regional Examination Centre and the people working there) contains something like that – at some point a supposed 1977 progressive sales tax experiment in Illinois is mentioned, which of course went horribly wrong and caused lots of chaos because people began splitting up their purchases in order to stay within the lowest tax band, and so it had to be repealed again after four months.
Concentration camps, extrajudicial killings, racial violence, anti-labor violence, mass surveillance, and torture have all been done by democracies too.
"We're a democracy" in Europe and the US, generally speaking, means a tiny subset of the government is democratically elected and responsible for setting high-level policy goals. It doesn't mean the government as a whole carries out the will of the people on an even regular basis or always has their best interests at heart. We should be very careful about giving any powerful organization, government or corporate, more power (and information is power) regardless of its nominal method of governance.
Much more worrisome image rather than taxing ie chronic junkfood eaters who will inevitably cost health system easily 100x compared to healthy persons.
Imagine if this was happening in America before and then during the Prohibition era and how grape juice and yeast sales would look.
Or abortifacients and birth control pills today, given the relevant news story in the US (consider what could plausibility happen not just what actually has happened) and certain politicians describing the latter as the former.
It's more likely that there is a side to the art of tracking that you do not account for, than the idea that the grocery stores are so benevolent.
The way it works in Norway at the moment is that you can get a membership at any of the grocery chains, download an app and what not. Then you register your debit card in that app, and it monitors what you buy, and you get discounted prices on stuff you buy the most of and/or benefits in general.
Personally I have no problem with this, because it's an opt-in thing.
In other words, the staus quo.
I'm way less concerned about someone who just wants to sell me more than about the government. It's trivial for me to not buy a new package of sugar-snacks no matter how much they advertise it, whereas governmental actions can ruin my life.
This sounds like a fantasy. I much prefer the supermarket getting my data and trying to sell me more because their motivations are _clear_ to me.
The government is supposed to have my interests at heart yet, it is impossible to even come close to knowing everyone's interests. It is even more difficult to simultaneously satisfy them unless this "everyone" happens to be incredibly homogeneous in culture, values, and lifestyle. Kinda like a small northern country. Additionally, this assumes an altruistic leadership in the first place.
In reality what happens is the interests of the factions in power are what are held up by government at any given time. In democracy those factions change routinely and so do the things they care about. This creates uncertainty and risk. So yeah I prefer the predictability of a corporation to the ever changing and ever more powerful politics of government. At least I know what I am dealing with.
Realistically, only you can have your own interests at heart. Obviously, exceptions in the form children and mental handicaps comes in, but, well.. does government and corporations see the population at large as children?
In other words, being tracked is not good for the individual regardless of who is tracking you. It doesn't matter if government tracking is better or worse. They are both bad and they erode your ability to do things as you see fit.
Oh man, if somebody with the power of a state tracked everything I did in order to improve my life, and for no other reason than that, I would love it. Sounds like a guardian angel. Sign me up.
But... what if they didn't care about me very much, never really thought of me at all, and really just saw me as one person among tens of millions? What if instead of helping me, their main motivation was to get re-elected?
And what if the government in power was somebody I actively didn't like, and had even protested against? Maybe I felt they were evil and irresponsible. Would I still want them tracking me and trying to change my behavior?
I can think of people I would want to give that kind of power to, but it's the people I don't know about yet that worry me.
This reminds me that thanks to credit/debit cards and IT, supermarket chains, banks and corporation have a detailed information on what I buy.
And we have no idea how they use this information. We may only assume and I don't think we would be happy if we would found out.
Not that I want the government to know too.
How about this phrasing instead?
_"The more we know about you, the more efficiently we can create policies to control your behavior to *YOUR* liking."_
Not all governments are unfriendly to their people. Or, should I say, not all people imagine their government is evil. I'm looking at you USA.
If it is to get the feedback that government (kybernan) by definition requires, you use aggregates, not nominal data.
When you get child tax credits or pay a carbon tax very explicitly the point is to control what you do, that's not new, secret or particularly sinister.
Theoretically, it seems possible, if the data is never stored against the SSB, but only stored pre-aggregated against demographic markers such as location, age, etc.
If so, wouldn't it be a net win that the government has data to better plan import/export or anything else and maybe make this data public so people can use this data to come up with new businesses in the right locations without compromising individual privacy.
More likely a new way to tax stuff that the government does not like. Eating too much red-meat from methane-producing cows? Extra climate change tax for you!
No, because the (sinisterly clever) idea of ekianjo allows the implementation of something which is sought by some: progressive taxation of limited resources or externalities etc, as opposed to fixed one. It's akin to rationing. You drive 10000 miles/y, pay 1/u or 1000; if 20000 miles/y, pay 2/u or 4000...
Problem is hypocrisy is hardly a reason that you can use against those in power.
That's the recipe for the abolition of individual freedom.
There should be some opt-in assistance for making better lifestyle choices, I think. More walk, less talk. There are already self-help ideas that center around promising other people that you won’t do X, or that you will do Y, and then having to pay them money or something if you do/don’t. Why couldn’t the government help you do the same thing? As a not-for-profit alternative.
EDIT: I don’t mean that the disincentive should be that you give the government money if you fail. That would be a bad incentive for the government.
This is definitely not a “great thing”. There are much less invasive ways to influence behavior and nudge consumers to consume fewer harmful products. Like simply using product-specific taxes or labeling requirements. Or targeting the producers directly.
We don’t need to increase government surveillance, ever.
You don't get to dectiate what people eat, imagine the other side, you are not eating enough meat, we will tax vegetables more in your purchases.
I won't speculate on whether this would apply to everybody but my hypothesis is my health issues stemmed from gut biome disregulation caused by - way too many causes to list - and somehow only total elimination of carbohydrates and plant matter fixes it.
I haven't really tried with vegetables (not interested taste-wise), so it might be the carbs / fruit sugars that weren't great for my gut biome, which I suspect is messed up as it is for many people nowadays.
However, I’ve identified many people that were vegans just by their looks before they (inevitably) announced it. You’re supposed to be able to supplement your way in to what you need but either the majority don’t or they’re still missing something.
There's no need for belief, all over the world vegetarians live around a decade longer. There could be any number of confounding factors of course but the burden of proof concerning health and diet is definitely on the pseudo-carnivores consuming their packaged flesh.
Controlling for wealth, total calories consumed, and a number of other known and suspected positive and negative contributors to longevity, quantity of meat eaten seems to end up positively correlated with longevity across the board.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8881926/#!po=26...
The better conclusion might be that vegetarian is an elite affectation that is not as bad for you as the competing elite affectation of overeating.
All other “C footprint” is a consequence of poor farming practices, not meat. Blame the process (and the energy source) not the product.
> Vinmonopolet (English: The Wine Monopoly), symbolized by Ⓥ and colloquially shortened to Polet, is a government-owned alcoholic beverage retailer and the only company allowed to sell beverages containing an alcohol content higher than 4.75% in Norway.
Higher percentage, "normal" alcoholic products are sold in government-run Systembolaget[1]. And there's almost no cash in Sweden.
I volunteered at an addiction and methadone clinic for awhile. I recommend you try it then come talk about what “hard drugs” are.
Heroin, meth, etc. might kill you quicker and be more unpleasant to administer with more noticeable withdrawals, but if we're talking about ultimate cost to society they're not the worst offenders.
Secound, methadone is an awful drug primarily prescribed for it's much longer half-life (compared to diamorphine/heroin). This makes it more convenient for the ones who are tasked with controlling the traumatized persons intake of the medication. Diamorphine is less physically addictive than methadone and features considerably fewer side effects.
Alcohol is more damaging to the body and harder and more risky to quit than diamorphine. This fact is easily overlooked because the drug is so ubiquitous and socially accepted in our culture. The recreational and casual use that we observe in everyday life makes us believe that alcohol is a less dangerous drug.
Alcohol and tobacco are among the hardest drugs we have, it's just that we are so habituated to their use that we falsely believe they are safer, less addictive and easier to quit once physically dependent.
Do they close early? Sure, but that's easy to work around. Are they expensive? Sure, but I don't drink heavily so it isn't a big deal.
Plenty of places have such a solution, including some US states.
The question is whether we’re willing to inconvenience ourselves today to protect future generations - and the answer is looking like no.
Those "business contributions to climate change" exist because they're producing goods that consumers want; you can't significantly reduce that without also affecting consumer lifestyles, by reducing the options for the number of goods, or making them more expensive.
Further research in clean energy is all very nice, but that's what I've been hearing for 25 years, and if we look at what has actually been accomplished then I think it's a pretty big gamble to bet that "further research" will all make things work out.
The last 100 years or so have been quite exceptional in many ways; I think the expectation that younger generations will have it at least as good as the previous one is just not realistic.
Whether or not this is true (it very well could be although we won’t know for a while) I think the idea that younger generations will just accept that is unrealistic.
But affecting peoples lifes without actually tackling industries and corporation that do way more harm is just stupid and basically serves Oil companies targets, they created the "carbon footprint" just to distract people from focusing on them.
>without actually tackling industries and corporation that do way more harm is just stupid
I think you're missing the parent poster's point, which is that consumers ultimately pay for everything. "tackling industries and corporation" ultimately means affecting consumer's lifestyles.
Did consumers plan the massive road infrastructure in America? Did consumers make public transportation a fifth-rate form of transportation? Did consumers plan American Suburbia post-WWII? Did consumers decide that housing in central locations should be so expensive that they have to live a driving-distance from work (see: bad public transportation)? Did consumers decide that the goods that they consume have to take multiple trips around the world?
Why blame the output sink for so much?
When the era of plenty that we currently live in ends, I feel that a lot of people are going to be in for a rude awakening.
Which seems unlikely. The future is long.
But in reality, the people in charge are a complete opposite of that.
If you have any objection you can take them to the court and face their multi million legal teams.
Sure, there are illegal ways around all laws. That does not make laws useless.
Unfortunately, Sweden is in the EU and Norway is not so there's quite a lot of customs rules on that border.
You can just say, 1KG per person, and voilla its done.
During WWII it was done with state-issued ration tickets and a crackdown on the inevitable black market that emerged. That's a good alternative to this.
You gotta be committed enough to hand over a twenty dollar bill alongside a quarter, when paying a $19.17 bill for example. Rather than take in 83 cents you take in 8 (and score a dollar.)
I change those coins into 5 euro bills whenever possible, stores always want change. Small coins go into a big jar that we use to tip people like the pizza delivery guy.
If the jar gets too full I simply donate the jar as is to a charity I know.
some random articles: https://sweden.se/life/society/a-cashless-society https://interestingengineering.com/sweden-how-to-live-in-the...
Talking to her, she'd often bemoan that the prejudice that Nordic societies are very conformist is true.
Which is in line with what Ive experienced with Nordics
It's a social glue that holds every culture together, and it never has to make much sense.
What differs between them is not how much crap you'll be in, but the shape of the cow. You like it, I dislike it, and you'll feel like you aren't pressured to conform, while I'll feel like the world around me is utterly insane.
The woman I mentioned speaks six languages because shes lived in as many countries, including the African and the European Mediterranean coast. Her's was a comparison.
Also, all of the countries you listed are Nordic except for India. India, of course, is an extremely rich country, three times the size of Europe with lots different sub-groups. Who were you with in India? The ruling class Brahmins? The English educated children and grandchildren of the mandarin class? Or amongst the day to day laborer?
It's kind of exasperating how little people think about the difference between voluntary participation and forced participation when it makes a world of difference. Maybe we have just lived in good times too long and we have become soft, weak and amnesiac about what happens when the other aspects of human nature gain dominance in society.
I guess I was more curious if the main point of contention was the mandatory part of it or whether it was more about the fact it was coming from the government. I think some people distrust government so much that even if it were offered as opt-in, using a similar approach as a private company, some people would still trust a private company more than their government.
It is totally exasperating when folks excuse corporation tracking you as 'voluntary agreement' when the only alternstive to tracking is forgoonf essential services like mobile phones and living like a hermit
Oh, no, no. They report so much more:
Merchant name
Purchase amount
Date
Billing zip code
Sales tax amount
Tax indicator
Merchant postal code
Merchant tax ID
Invoice number
Order number
Customer code (if purchasing cards)
Item commodity code(s)
Item description(s) (SKU)
Unit price(s)
Quantity
Unit of measure
Extended price
Discount per line item and line item total
Debit or credit indicator
Discount amount
Shipping amount
Duty amount
> Level 3 credit card data involves large transactions that take place primarily with B2B or business-to-government (B2G). These transactions take place using corporate purchasing cards, which allow the companies or government agencies to monitor purchases and have access to detailed spending reports.
Instead, it seems that level 1 would be what most businesses that sell to consumers would use
> Level 1 data primarily refers to small business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions. This level only requires the following information for credit card transactions:
Merchant name Purchase amount Date Billing zip code
I'm not in Norway, but my local cafe has a rewards program that is automatic. It's linked to my credit card number; so long as I pay with that card, it happens. I get a decent discount on a sandwich every now and then.
Even if they didn't offer the reward thing, though, I would still assume that my purchases were being linked to my CC#. I'd assume it's being done so across merchants, too, where merchants use the same payments processor.
(And I'm not fond of this. To me, it's a good example of why privacy regulation matters: I shouldn't need to give up privacy for the sake of being able to have the convenience of a CC; the processor's fees are there to pay for the convenience. One shouldn't be forced to go through cash, and even then, there are places — and government places, too — that don't accept cash.)
The United States isn’t a democracy, it’s a democratic republic. Unfortunately, most of that was thrown out with the 17th amendment, and we’re paying for it now with increased federal control.
Don't turn your country into a prison on the hope that the warden will remain benevolent. There's no shortage of past and present examples of that suddenly changing.
As long as I don't break the law, it's no one's business what I do.
Both are bad.
People don't like governments tracking their every move because, governments have sometimes done bad things with that information, both historically and even today.
People allow tech companies to track their every move because they're offered something in return: Free access to an app, automatic coupons at the supermarket, etc.
I don't envision the government lowering people's taxes in exchange for more information. Even though this program could help the government craft health policy and save millions on medical care for its people.
Don't make me confirm Godwin's law about democratically elected government.
Now another question: what the best a government is likely to do with this data? What is the best a private company is likely to do with it?
I find it unlikely that my local supermarket is going to sell my purchasing habits to China or Iran. I'm far more worried about my local government getting their hands on it, but at that point I don't see the distinction.
>to insurance companies that in some countries can prevent you from getting a credit card, a loan or even a job.
In what country are insurance companies determining whether you can get a credit card/loan/job? Are you sure you don't mean credit bureaus?
Oh really? Do you think they run an ethical check on people who propose to buy their data? I a sure China is home to a lot of cheap backend services and their clients don't think twice about it.
> Are you sure you don't mean credit bureaus?
Probably yeah, I am not used to that American thing. People think the CCP invented the reputation score but US' private system predates that.
Is this true? I thought only if you joined a rewards program.
i.e. You can probably spot trends like person X spends a huge amount of their pay on nappies and babyfood...probably could do with some additional social help.
Nordic countries probably come closest to said hypothetical but still seems kinda dicey
It depends on the area and the people working on it, I also know of good institutions, but I can see, why the so called underclass is sceptical of the common state institutions.
Most help that comes, comes with hard obligations, that mainly keep them down. Give a struggeling person a bunch of paperwork to fill out and he or she will just struggle more. And only once they are down enough, they get a certain label and then they get a more or less competent government helper, putting them totally into dependent state. Most have accepted their state as retarded by then and rarely make it up again.
I did feel kept down at that time.
I understand salaries are already public in Norway. Why shouldn't they be? Unless you can't justify your earnings, for some reason.
I understand the 'big brother!' response to this kind of thing, I'm also squeamish about it. It does rely on a government that is trustworthy and accountable. But I don't think secrecy, paranoia, etc, is beneficial, compared to more openness.
I won't say one way is better than the other, but it's telling that almost every major IT Security standard that deals with Privacy (absent NIST of course) takes its guidance from the EU.
Thank God.
An app/website/whatever-service which allows the scanning of a receipt/UPC code - which takes the scan data and the price for ITEM.'
Then allows me to track ITEM $ over time, and between vendors / stores.
Ideally I also want to be able to track ORIGIN, thus if I am tracking the cost of an ITEM which has an ORIGIN of non-US-country, I can track over time the cost of a product that was made over-seas.
The reason this is of interest to me - is I like to see where the inlfation of costs is occurring.
As an example, there is a juice that I like to buy which was $1.34 per half-gallon.
It quickly became $1.50 during the pandemic, pre-gas price hikes etc. It was a product that was standard stock forever, its made in the US, and I am convinced that this item was just price lifted, but not because of economies of delivery...
As compared to a product which , say, comes from Thailand - which is shipped over-the-sea, and there are no price hikes.
This can give you insight into where profits are being harvested.
Additionally, one would do well to know ImportYeti ; a service to examine the source ORIGIN of products that you find which are made in China, in order to get the actual mfr for a product - such that if you want to cut out all middle men, you can contact the factories directly.
EDIT
> SSB claims they want a less time-consuming way of collecting and analysing household consumption statistics in order to inform tax policy, social assistance and child allowance.
That does seem plausible. Inflation statistics, for example, are notoriously vulnerable to arbitrary changes in the "basket of goods" economists define. If economists could access the entire shopping list, including volumes, then there'd be no need to try to guess what a representative basket looks like.
It is getting worse and worse all the time. Curiously, 20 or 30 years ago people would have being angry and governments would have had to resign as even suggesting such privacy killer things would be offensive. Now most people would not even care...
Just to let you imagine the future, in France, with the current 'ecological bullshit', some idiots suggested that households could have a quota of consumption of everything to save the planet: that much water, electricity, food...
That will be more easy with shops transmitting all your shopping info directly to the gov...
"When the purchases are linked to a household, it will be possible in the consumption statistics to analyze socio-economic and regional differences in consumption, and link it to variables such as income, education and place of residence."
One example of this is when our national newspaper (NRK) did an investigation[1] on "anonymized" GPS data, and could easily find the identities of the persons they belonged to.
[1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/xl/avslort-av-mobilen-1.14911685
I think you can trust the government more in Scandinavia than in the US. Both dispositions are relatively rational.
(Massive privacy implications aside, I don't necessarily disagree with progressive sales taxation.)
When people have nothing left to loose, that's where real change happens.
Some might say 'I don't care' or 'only those who have something to hide have anything to worry about', but I respectfully disagree. For the same reason that I have curtains in my bedroom I want to have agency over my data.
What baffles me is that I'm fairly sure that similar views are shared by many in the HN community, yet the 'crypto/web3' communities receive almost undivided scorn. Yes, it's ridden with scams, but those are still the communities that do the most overall to push zero knowledge and similar privacy-preserving technologies (and contrary to the popular claim here that 'web3 doesn't do anything innovative', some of the zk stuff like STARK/SNARK/PLONK... they already put in production are pretty cutting edge).
Even if you trade on exchanges your entire order flow is immediately sold to the highest bidder, or if you're unlucky the exchange itself is trading against you. It's pretty horrible for privacy.
Even if the current offering isn't enough for your needs, how can 'there's not enough of it yet' be an argument against building more of it?
Every receipt is sent to federal taxes office instantly, every cash register is connected to the internet.
It could be a dual edged sword for the banks, as a more informed consumer might budget more carefully and spend less, but the data collected would be quite valuable. It would not be a hard sell to consumers - "Shop with blank and you never need to worry about paper receipts again!".
On a separate note, thermal receipt paper is a terrible source of BPA/BPS plastics. There are alternatives that use vitamin C, but they are rare.
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/green-chemistry/bpa-thermal-pape...
Which begs the question: how come today’s Norwegians are ok with this? How is this normal in a liberal democracy? Is this what modern liberal democracy was all along? I.e. a dystopian State infringing more and more on one’s basic liberties, all in the name of the “greater good”? That’s nuts.
I agree data collection can be positive. I think next they should start collecting any tweet, comment, or text file citizens write so they can see how good the public education system is doing. Actually the state should run an SSO service. Every computer, phone, tv and device must use the states SSO so that the person behind the device is tracked. State should also run an MDM solution. Every Smart watch should send all vitals to see how good nutrition is. Add microphones and camera everywhere to see if any crime is happening. (If you can’t tell by now I’m not being serious.)
“I see that you are made of approximately 23% cheese.
That is above the state limits for health reimbursement, so I am sorry we cannot support you at the moment until your diet fits within government guidelines.”
Once you have the data exactly on how unhealthy someone’s choices are, you can lean their behavior towards better behavior(according to those that want government to help people behave better).
Advertisers would pay insane money to get ahold of data to link exactly what a consumer bought (basket item details).
As for monitoring - as said elsewhere, if monitoring of supermarket sales will happen or not depends not only on what that particular office wants (SSB - central statistics bureau), but what politicians decide on. And, despite many comments here believing otherwise, it is actually quite common for Norwegian politicians to listen to massive resistance from the people, particularly when the reasoning behind the whole suggestion is quite questionable, as in this case. In any case, whether alcohol is sold here or there it wouldn't make any difference to the monitoring. And cash is still legal tender in Norway, even if there are some that don't like that fact. As for myself I believe only Mastercard really know how much money I use on wine. I don't think they know my preferences though (Italian, as it were)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_sta...
How do they feel about being responsible of delivering poison to people then? Somehow I can rationalize it if it's a transaction between private parties, but if the government acts as the drug dealer it's no better than a cartel.
Amazon can not compel you to buy from them, and Amazon can not throw you in jail if they don't like you as a customer.
Mining personal data and using it against the interests of the individual is bad in both cases, but it is far more dangerous when done by the State.
Of course they can, by becoming a monopoly and driving all other options for things you need out of business. Also by manipulating you with advertisements and propaganda. Coercion has many forms.
Now, who can break the Government apart if it starts abusing its power?
States fall for many reasons, but primarily causes are war and revolution (which are sometimes the same thing.)
> States fall for many reasons, but primarily causes are war and revolution
So, the way to get rid of Amazon would be to get the Government to simply start a judicial process against a company. The way to get rid of the Government would require bloodshed. Can we agree that that n corrupt and power-abusive Government is far more dangerous than Amazon (or any other corporation) could ever be?
You're moving the goalpost and still wrong [1]. I don't know why you want to talk about this so badly if you don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, as I said, it's discretionary regulation and power comes in many forms.
> The way to get rid of the Government would require bloodshed.
You don't need to get rid of "the government" if you control the state and everyone's minds via lobbying, corruption, propaganda and other means.
> Can we agree that that n corrupt and power-abusive Government is far more dangerous than Amazon (or any other corporation) could ever be?
Absolutely not. "The government" is the puppet, the owners of companies like Amazon are the puppeteers. Power comes in many forms. Coercion comes in many forms.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
(Also, let's not get into the fact that the news are about changes in Denmark and you are using an wikipedia link to argue about US Antitrust Law. The world does not spin around D.C)
So, yeah, we can drop the talk about monopolies.
> power comes in many forms.
I'm not arguing about power by itself. I'm arguing about how dangerous an institution can be if they abuse the power they do have. You and I might dislike all the data collecting from Amazon (and Google et caterva), but none of them can put me in jail. The Government can. And since you want to think of terms of American politics: think of all the abuses that were made in the name of "The War on Terror" and "The War of Drugs". Don't forget the Obama administration getting the IRS to go after Tea Party organizations.
Mind you, this is no way a defense of the corporations, and I already have an idea of how I would like to see people fighting the concentration of power [0]. But I find weird seeing people who understand how bad it can be when power gets too concentrated in the hands of a few, and yet they just want to put it all in the hands of the government, the one entity they have no recourse against. To me, those wishing to give the government more power than it already has shows a case of naivety at best and a serious authoritarian inclination at worst.
Let's generalize the question: what makes you uncomfortable about the government tracking all your (non-cash) purchases? They already know your income for tax purposes, and much of your large purchases, also for tax purposes. And if you need a pinch of stuff that's illegal, you're not going to swipe your debit card anyway. I suppose a court order will show all your bank operations history, should the government need it for lawful purposes.
So, if there's still anything left to preserve, we need to clearly articulated first, what that is.
They know that it's happening and don't like it, like how they won't like the Norweigan government's decision. But they'll likely put up little resistance and move on to other things.
You dont buy only food in supermarkets these days.
Citizen #83238201: You have exceeded your yearly purchasing quota for condoms and thrush medication. Please report to your nearest moral re-education camp.
It's not like your cash purchase of 58.32kr has a match 578.32 kr withdrawal; that cash was taken from an ATM in a large, round-number bundle.
If you ever misremember the amount cash in your wallet, and, rather than just abandoning your basket at the checkout when you discover this, you pay with a card just one time, for that exact basket, when there is no cash customer for that basket on that night, they can now be pretty certain about who customer #5678 is, and can then link you to 95% of your historic purchases too.
OpSec is hard, yo.
For example, store POS system tracks nearby MAC addresses (simplest to do, very archaic). You always have your phone on you. Game Over. Even if you pay cash, if you've ever paid with a bank card connected to your identity next to that phone a logical inference can be made that the cash transaction XYZ is related to pseudonymous ID ABC if phone P's identifier was present at time of purchase.
That's what the entire point of things like Google Wallet/Pay is. Another means of directly attaching payment methods to your ID. Once that bank card is connected to you all transactions for that card from any source is also connected to you. From that every ID present at time of purchase is one step removed from you.
And so it goes...
...or, for the kind of analyses they say they are looking to make.
The moment I left we were receiving soft real-time Pos log data (anonymized) and we’re building some consumer groceries basket stats.
The logical conclusion of their beliefs is to enslave people “for their own good”.
https://www.connectontech.com/2016-2-19-hungary-condemned-fo...
Touch some grass.
'Its perfectly fine for governments to know this info'.
The end of banks, and central bank digital currency and social credit systems are just around the corner.
Anyone standing in the way of this have failed to stop it entirely and we will end up co-existing with these things in a few years or so.
So it is not a surprise at all to see Norway do this. A new world order of CBDCs, IoT and more invasive tracking, etc led by members of the World Government Summit.
Oh dear.
If anything, blockchains mighg be the things that end government control over finance. And not all cryptocurrencies are public, monero and zcash exist.
Though maybe at least if it's government-tracked that's better than only being corporate-tracked.
And there have to be escape-hatches.
I believe in the system and I believe Norwegian state will do the right thing
Case in point - look at the tech platform docs for NAVs tech teams - https://nais.io/
It starts with the voices of reason ("Isn't there a danger this data could be abused?") being slowly pushed out, through lack of promotions or being transferred to other departments where they are a "better fit".
Then this government body starts to attract the naive zealots ("Just think of all the good we can do! How could anyone see a problem with us collecting more data?") which becomes self-reinforcing.
The final step is when the ambitious and malicious take notice ("This data must be worth a lot of money to the right people, and I could make sure my political party never loses another election") at which point the entire process is captured and corrupted from the top down.
Avoiding building these systems in the first place is good civic hygiene, and societies need to develop an instinct that if you allow data and power to accumulate in one place for too long, it will start to attract pests.
The Norweigian government has specific plans for this data. Engage those plans. Concrete adversarial scenarios are in fact helpful from a policy and planning perspective.
Generic narratives are not.
Cheers.
Right, and I'm saying that an agency which is tasked with gathering all this private data about innocent citizens, without a warrant, is going to attract people who will want to abuse it, just as other mass surveillance agencies have abused their powers in the past.
How much more concrete do I need to be? Do I need to give the names of actual Norwegian threat actors who I think might want to infiltrate this agency, and specify who they would sell the data to, or which of their ex-partners they would spy on, or which opposition politician's spending habits they would leak to which paper?
Sometimes it is wise to look at the past and learn from it.
Datensparsamkeit ftw!
Sadly, I think regular people have lost the class war. As a libertarian this should drive me nuts, but as a practical matter I tend to accept the world as it is, and plan my life accordingly. In other words, 'play the current position on the chessboard.'
I guess I think most of us, if we were actually in that position and wanted to stay in that position would have to choose interventions that are less than ideal.
In the predatory capitalist US, the number of private companies- not subject to any real regulation, or supervision, or action on the part of citizens- that have exactly this data and more numbers literally in the thousands.
And while a lot of attention is paid to government data collection, it is very hard for various parts of the government in the US to get this information for administrative purposes- as distinct from criminal investigations- and even if government could, it would serve no purpose because except for policing, education, highway maintenance, delivery of mail and healthcare for military veterans, US government entities perform virtually no services.
In Norway, which has extremely high quality of life and a very competent government that runs things like a sovereign wealth fund to the express and explicit benefit of citizens, where the goals of data collection are further improvement of quality of life, the intent and capacity of delivery for which by the government is proven over and over again-
IOW, to be concerned about data collection by an entity that over and over again has demonstrated its competence, especially in the context of alternatives like the US-
WTF are people thinking.
Make an actual argument.