I'd say it's a bad thing: a lot of consumption is a result of people's desire to show off. When everyone knows who makes what anyway, trying to show off will be

I'd say it's a bad thing: a lot of consumption is a result of people's desire to show off. When everyone knows who makes what anyway, trying to show off will be stupid, so that activity will stop - severely hitting consumption, business revenues, profits, and the economy in general, probably resulting in a vicious cycle as people's incomes will be hit by bad business. Scandinavia may be exception from that because showing off isn't in their mentality anyway, so benefits (main of which is that more and more reliable information makes things better for economic agents) outweigh disadvantages. Not going to work well for most other countries.