Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can create policies to control your behavior to our liking.
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.
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.
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.
In other words, the staus quo.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Much more worrisome image rather than taxing ie chronic junkfood eaters who will inevitably cost health system easily 100x compared to healthy persons.
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.
"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 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.
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).
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).
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.
You can go to live in a forest. Your obligations to the jurisdiction remain.
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").
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But there’s no precedent for personal data being misused mishandled or abused right?
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.
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.
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.
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.
(Really, HN? Voting down something that is 101 microeconomics to negative scores without one single argument?)
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.
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.
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.