[shurcooL]

Thanks for a constructive and very insightful response.

This definitely seems to be a valid reason why people would be against being tracked. We don't want to be more easily manipulated (through the data that the ones doing tracking are able to acquire) and coerced into buying things we don't want/need (but the ones doing tracking want us to buy).

Would it be accurate to describe it like this: the consumers' interests are to be rational, less easily manipulated and "unhackable", and being tracked is a threat to those interests.

On the other hand, the store owners are trying their best to get their products sold, so their interests are opposite of the consumers, to find ways to sell as many things as possible.

If that's accurate, I find it interesting that there are these underlying "wars" occurring within a single species. In fact, a single person may wake up and go to work one morning, serving in the position of the one doing the "tracking" and fighting against the interests of consumers, then in the evening they may go shopping and end up on the other side, fighting against the interests of the ones doing tracking.

Pretty fascinating.

[Alex_MJ]

That's decently accurate. We're all doing what's in our best interest, in the role that we play in that time.

In general - I want to give people who don't know me personally (and especially people trying to sell me anything) less power to catch my attention and pull at my impulses, not more.

[Tloewald]

There's a ton of evidence we aren't doing what's in our best interest at minimum a significant minority of the time. In any event, the claim of economics isn't that people act in their best interest, but that they try to maximize happiness* -- whatever that is (it's rather recursively defined -- happiness is produced by voluntary transactions, which in turn are voluntary because both parties believe that the exchange will make them happier).

* or whatever it is makes transactions pareto optimal.

Meanwhile, behavioral economists have shown humans aren't even great at pursuing happiness; perhaps they have reached their high water mark, but they're certainly not completely wrong.

[_greim_]

> Would it be accurate to describe it like this: the consumers' interests are to be rational, less easily manipulated and "unhackable", and being tracked is a threat to those interests.

In my view, yes. Being rational is by definition the only way to make my life better. The harder it is to be rational—to perceive the truth through all the layers of bullshit and manipulation—the less I trust my own conclusions, and free markets in general.

[pjc50]

underlying "wars" occurring within a single species

Have you met any humans lately? We all have divergent interests, differently expressed in different aspects of our lives. The entirety of law and politics is this.