[causality0]

That's one of the odder things about the HN user base. How much we care about things seems to have little to do with how much they affect our lives. Most of us exist with a magic shield carefully affixed to our every point of contact with the electronic world that fully insulates us from anything we don't want to see, but it is maniacally important to us that Google doesn't know it was John Smith who searched for "sexy ostriches" eight years ago.

[matheusmoreira]

So because it doesn't "affect our lives" surveillance capitalism is okay? No.

It's about principles. We simply don't want corporations knowing anything about us unless absolutely necessary. It's bad enough that governments have to know about us. We really don't need the private sector mass surveilling the entire globe and exploiting our data for god knows what purposes.

Data should be a massive legal liability. It should cost them money to hold onto any piece of data about any person. They should be scrambling to forget all about me the second the transaction is finished.

[jokethrowaway]

I agree in principle - but you need a centralised government to punish them. You could in theory have third party auditing and user reviews but almost nobody would care and they wouldn't have much power.

In practice I'd prefer a world without government and with companies tracking me over a government that steals half of my income and protect me from "evil" trackers.

Same thing with abortion. Of course wasting a human life is a tragedy, but it's hard to imagine economic model where you can guarantee the life of a foetus nobody knows much about, without needing a centralised entity. (you could in theory have protection agencies - as in The Machinery of Freedom - which guarantee your safety have you sign a contract saying you won't do that or else - but that would be hard to enforce).

[mvc]

> In practice I'd prefer a world without government and with companies tracking me over a government that steals half of my income and protect me from "evil" trackers.

What does "in practice" mean here?

I get the sense that when people say things like this, they think folks would have the lifestyles they currently have in the US, but much better because they don't have to pay any tax. In reality, a world without government would be run by the type of people who run Russia right now.

Great if you're connected to enough strongmen to be an oligarch I suppose but not that great for anyone else.