> Any fair transaction should surely balance? I don't think that's true, because a company could have the means to do something profitably that an individual c

> Any fair transaction should surely balance? I don't think that's true, because a company could have the means to do something profitably that an individual couldn't. For example, I just changed the toner cartridges on my printer, and HP provided UPS stickers so I can send the old ones back for "recycling", which is obviously just them filling them back up and selling them to someone else. Let's assume they just made $20 on the deal. That doesn't mean I'd have $20 if I'd kept them, because to me, lacking a factory to refurbish them, they're just garbage. Same goes for all of that personal information Google and Facebook make money on -- you can't go down to the pawn shop and sell your own information, because it only matters in bulk.