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Comment by MontyCarloHall | Hacker News Reader

Realistically, what is the worst possible consequence of a supermarket being able to track you? At worst, I suppose you be could be charged more for purchasing a certain item at that particular chain. I highly doubt this has ever happened, since it's bad for business. The usual consequence for getting tracked at the supermarket is getting a discount on certain groceries via a loyalty program, with zero downsides for you.

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.

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The worst case scenario is that the country changes its mind about morality (happens a lot and not just as a result of invasions and coups), and suddenly a particular group which can be identified by shopping preferences is now at risk.

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.

Corporations cannot put me in jail. Corporations cannot (for the most part) just take my money. Other than denying me service, corporations have little power over me, except that which is granted to them by the government itself.

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)

Yes, we are in 100% agreement.

In theory, a democratic government is supposed to be beholden to its people, but the problem you are describing occurs when the government is no longer under the power of the population.

Or if you’re part of a disfavored minority.

This, so much. Slavery and segregation are prime examples of this.

corporations cannot put you in jail if law enforcement works.

if the government fails, corporations can and will put you in jail.

The worst outcome is those private entities treat my data as their property, to do with as they wish, without any accountability, transparency, or recourse.

In other words, the staus quo.

I do not think it likely that e.g. grocery stores are expending capital to develop and implement systems to give there customers leverage to pay them less money, with no benefit (never mind net benefit) to the grocery store.

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 think the idea is that if one in a loyalty program, and it provides them with some discount/benefits, then they are more likely to shop there instead of at some other chain. This way they spend their money at that chain, and that is good for the store. It's just one more way stores are competing with each other. It also provides the chain with some data, but I am uncertain of its utility. I don't really believe it to be useful for them in general for anything other than targeting.

The benefit to the store is that they can more closely monitor consumption patterns across time (e.g. people buying X will also frequently buy Y, but not necessarily on the same grocery trip). I don’t see how this is harmful to the consumer.

> I suppose you be could be charged more for purchasing a certain item at that particular chain. I highly doubt this has ever happened, since it's bad for business.

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.

>I'm sure it has, it's just done in a subtle manner you don't notice.

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).

> 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.

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?

> otherwise, just ring up your massive meat order one steak at a time

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.

> That was determined by a democracy.

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.

You completely forgot that those data can and will be sold to anybody interested, anywhere.

Much more worrisome image rather than taxing ie chronic junkfood eaters who will inevitably cost health system easily 100x compared to healthy persons.

I also can refuse to give my data to any corporation I please. Yet any data the government requires I am forced to provide and am unable to opt out.

If we are concerned about the health care costs of people eating too much junk food I would also think we _must_ curtail any other unnecessary risky or dangerous behavior that can lead to increased health care needs like drinking, biking on a busy road, rock climbing, skiing, skateboarding, endurance sports that slowly destroy your joints, skydiving, motorized racing of any kind, horseback riding, suntanning... I could go on.

> Realistically, what is the worst possible consequence of a supermarket being able to track you? At worst, I suppose you be could be charged more for purchasing a certain item at that particular chain.

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.

I may be getting hung up in semantics, but calling this a sin tax is stupid. Who cares if alcohol is a “sin” or not? That’s irrelevant, what matters is that it’s a highly addicting poison that harms everyone.

> calling this a sin tax is stupid

"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.

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