[throwaway29292]

If the root cause of this problem is that

-companies violate privacy rights to gather more big data

-more data translates to more investment (I'm seeing this happen at my current company right now)

-VCs, who are the top of the food chain, are the ones pushing for higher returns (like any rational actor would do)

-then shouldn't the government step in and regulate this area?

Define standards that would limit the amount of funding/valuation based on 'user as product'?

[alphonsegaston]

The root of the problem is the authoritarian structure of modern enterprise. I know many good people who work at bad companies, who, were they given the chance to have their say, would change things wildly for the better.

[HarryHirsch]

You'd rather say that at-will employment and especially the tight labour market outside tech enables the authoritarian structure of the modern workplace.

[alphonsegaston]

No, I meant expressly what I said.

A democracy cannot function when it harbors inside itself a system in which the survival of most people is determined by something organized like a dictatorship. The poor conditions in the modern labor market have been engineered by these authoritarian systems in collusion with the governments they corrupt with their outsized wealth and power. It's intended to disenfranchise people politically and economically to ensure a small class of oligarchs maintains control of both systems.

[dredmorbius]

At-will employment, tight labour markets, etc., are a significant part of that engineering.

I suspect you and HarryHirsch are in violent agreement.

[eli_gottlieb]

Eh, I can totally imagine a cooperative that monetizes user data.

[matt4077]

Of course the government should do something about it. But I'd bet most people would agree that killing or stealing are immoral, even in the absence of laws against it. In fact, every one here has, on innumerable occasions, not stolen something even though they could have been sure they wouldn't be caught.

Your game theory applies to people as well: if you find a wallet on the street, it doesn't make sense to give it back to the owner.

And yet, you'll find many people who do give it back. That's because we have evolved emotions such as altruism, or empathy. Those are still useful, even when most of morality has been formalised into criminal law, because societies tend to work better (and are more fun) if you can trust people, at least for the small stuff.

There's no reason we shouldn't expect corporations to follow a similar path,

[throwaway29292]

True, some corporations might be altruistic, but probably not all. Murderers still exist in society, and for those we need laws to guide everyone. If all laws and police disappeared suddenly, I think it would take less than 5 years for societies to descend into complete chaos. Laws still seem necessary?

[matt4077]

Absolutely – and in the case of corporations, I'd say there is still a lot to do to improve the law governing their behaviour. But since chances for that seem to be quite low currently, and because even a perfect legal system cannot always capture every eventuality, there should be certain behaviours that are generally frowned upon, just as there are for people.

One example I recently heard was from a woman who was fired after attending her husband's funeral. That probably happens less than a dozen times per year, and might just not warrant a law. It still shouldn't happen.

(The problem, of course, is that with people our sense of morality is largely guided by other peoples' reaction to our behaviour. Corporations will never have the same sense of shame, and the closest analogy – boycotts – rarely work)