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Comment by headhasthoughts | Hacker News Reader

Why should they give you a "deal" that they do at a loss or near-loss if you aren't willing to sacrifice the necessary currency for it?

Allowing people who don't care about their privacy to sell it seems like a fair transaction. Sabotaging capitalism & markets by not allowing consumers and producers to engage in barter seems inadvisable.

I personally care about my privacy, so I choose not to use overbearing services. I don't think that I should rob others of the ability to trade their privacy for better deals.

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It's not a loss or near-loss.

I see it as a dodge around unit pricing. Every price has the price per item and the price per 100ml/100g/whatever is appropriate. It's the law that applies to all shops that aren't small.

Easy to compare, until you come to the discounted prices which don't have unit prices printed. They can be multi buys, Clubcard offers, bundles, or whatever.

Anyone who cares can pull out their phone and use the calculator

> I don't think that I should rob others of the ability to trade their privacy for better deals.

by allowing the practice, the people that are fine with being tracked are imposing a tax on everyone else.

No. By allowing the practice, people who are okay with being stalked get compensated for their value. People who don't consent to the transaction in question are not a party to it, and are not being taxed; they're paying the regular price.

don't be silly, they're being upcharged, the people getting stalked are paying the regular price.

No. The "regular" price is whatever people not opting into stalking are paying. Capitalism is based around supply and demand, and people who don't want to be stalked are willing to pay more. That's not an upcharge. That's the default price.

They jack up the ‘normal’ prices to ludicrous levels so the ‘discount’ price looks like a discount.

Really, the ‘discount’ price is the original price.

It’s a shell game.

A fundamental principle of capitalism is that goods will sell for what they will be bought for. That's part of the deal.

What is your point exactly?

Part of the deal everyone's living under is that we live under a system of rough supply and demand. Selling something for what people will pay for it is not a shell game, it's basic economics. The price for people who choose not to be stalked is the default price.

When pretty much no one pays the ‘default’ price it loses relevance.

In fact, when almost everyone pays the ‘stalking’ price, even when they obviously don’t want to be stalked and go out of their way to screw with the program and attempt to stop the stalking, your comment seems to completely ignores actual reality, which is heavily influenced by marketing, social pressures, price pressures, etc?

You know, actual market forces in a capitalist environment?

A shell game is one where misdirection is used to point someone towards an option which benefits the person running the game if the other player chooses it, by hiding the actual choice they want through confusion and obfuscation.

Seems like a perfectly appropriate description here?

> Allowing people who don't care about their privacy to sell it seems like a fair transaction. Sabotaging capitalism & markets by not allowing consumers and producers to engage in barter seems inadvisable.

This seems intuitively free and fair, but the same sentiment is the centrepiece of John Stuart Mill's (problematic but fascinating) examination of Harm Principle and limits of personal liberty.

Namely; not being able to sell yourself into slavery.

Ordinary people (in the technological age) are not really capable of understanding or valuing their privacy and weighting the consequences of trading it. For the same reason we don't allow children to enter contracts I think it could fairly be said the average adult doesn't have capacity to "trade their privacy".

Why shouldn't they? Are they not people?

Why should the fact that they haven't thought things through take away natural rights?

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