[wooter]

banning prostitution and the drug war have both proven to be counterproductive.

> The individual is not held sacrosanct,

By you perhaps, but those are the principles of the Enlightenment and modern western society and have served us far better than collectivism.

> especially when he/she acts against the group.

Right, sharing my data with another individual or company isn't "acting against the group" or even involving the group.

> What remains to be decided here is whether the collection of data by "surveillance capitalists" is corrosive enough to society to be forbidden or restricted as well.

Not if you respect individual, natural rights. Furthermore, scientific/medical research, traffic prediction, spam detection, self-driving all are arising out of voluntary submission of data by free individuals. I don't see any sense in hindering innocent, positive efforts out of a desire for retribution against "surveillance capitalists" based on the "guilty until proven innocent" model of preemptive regulation. Thankfully the principles of individual, natural rights have been codified into the US Constitution to a large degree.

[rdiddly]

I spoke very plainly. Banning prostitution and drugs were decisions made by a society, to restrict individuals. How productive they were, you can talk about with someone who wants to change the subject to that. The point was only that those restrictions were made. It happened. Same with myriad others. "The individual" was not held, by those people who enacted those laws, or by the majority of people who voted for those people, to be above the rule of law.

Nor was the individual held to be above the rule of law in Enlightenment thought. The law was thought to be made by individuals acting collectively (a departure from having a single individual, i.e. monarch, doing it), so if anything the Enlightenment introduced the "collectivism" by pushing lawmaking down into a demographic that was much more populous. What do you think voting in a constitutional convention is? Individuals collectivizing! Just like Soviet farmers!!!!! Oh no!

[wooter]

> "The individual" was not held, by those people who enacted those laws, or by the majority of people who voted for those people, to be above the rule of law.

Correct. And had individual rights been upheld we could have avoided the costly lessons and lives destroyed by those rights-trampling laws.

> Nor was the individual held to be above the rule of law in Enlightenment thought.

The theory of natural rights, which was central to the Enlightenment, held that the laws and governments were formed only to secure individual rights and could not be made to supersede them. A constitutional convention is voting on how to best uphold and respect those rights, not overrule them.