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> it's nothing to be ashamed What? Am I reading this on HN? The place where people like talking how privacy matter all day and how annoying the fallacy of "if
by patrickaljord 9y ago
> it's nothing to be ashamed
What? Am I reading this on HN? The place where people like talking how privacy matter all day and how annoying the fallacy of "if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't worry about the government/corporations spying on you" is? I'm puzzled.
- foo101 9y agoWhat makes you think salary is a matter of privacy? In a lot of countries, many government jobs come with publicly disclosed salaries. Why do you think a job in a private sector should maintain secrecy for salaries? Privacy applies to private data. Whether salary should be considered private data is the point of argument here. Nobody is arguing about doing away with privacy altogether. So what is your point?
- patrickaljord 9y agoMy point is that what two consenting adults contracts is part of their privacy unless you're an authoritarian State.
- foo101 9y agoExcept most contracts in the private sector (IT, finance, etc.) are not between two consenting adults. They are usually between one consulting adult and a huge corporation, a corporation that can choose to pay a certain class of people unfairly and still survive in business. It is in the interest of such corporations to maintain this asymmetry of information where they can know your salary and all your colleagues' salary but would discourage you from knowing your colleague salary. If you think salary being private data is the obvious assumption, then think again, maybe you have been conditioned by years of employment in the private sector to believe that salary is private data. In many cultures and in many type of jobs, it is not considered private data.
- patrickaljord 9y agoI see that you hold the belief that consenting adults willingly working are being forced to do so, I do not share this belief that corporation are forcing anyone to work for them. Maybe you have been conditioned by years of State education to believe that employment does not imply consent between two parties but is a forced procedure. Many philosophers do not agree with that and consider work contracting to be consented between willing adults.
- ithkuil 9y agoMaybe you have been conditioned by your own luck to believe everybody actually has a choice
- patrickaljord 9y agoPoint me to anyone who has had a gun pointed at them to be forced to take a job and I will agree with you.
- foo101 9y agoThe parent comment never implied that anyone was forced to take a job at gun point. Why are you putting words into our mouths? The parent comment implies that not everybody has a choice. This is true and this is not necessarily the same thing as being forced to take a job, much less at gun point.
- patrickaljord 9y ago> The parent comment implies that not everybody has a choice. That's where we disagree I guess, I think you always have a choice unless force is being used against you (such as in rape, murder, armed theft etc).
- foo101 9y agoYou don't have a choice when every corporate in your city would try to lowball prospective employees belonging to a certain class into accepting a lower than market rate salary.
- krona 9y agomany government jobs come with publicly disclosed salaries. Knowing what public servants and politicians earn passes the most basic of public interest tests. What I earn, however, doesn't.
- foo101 9y agoFair point. I chose a poor example there. A better example would be: Engineering jobs (not the IT or software kind but licensed engineering jobs) in many European and Asian companies have publicly disclosed salaries.
- Matumio 9y agoPublishing a taxable income (not the source of this income) is surely not "government spying on you" because government needs those numbers anyway. You could maybe argue it's "corporations spying on you", but I think it's still far from being in the same league as tracking your mobile phone location or logging your web searches.
- Godel_unicode 9y agoYou can opt out of the latter, but not the former. Makes a big difference.
- Noos 9y agoEuropean-style authoritarianism seems extremely popular for some reason.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago"You can do what you want as long as it's not measurably sub-optimal for the community as a whole" is the dominant attitude around here.
- dghughes 9y agoOr "privacy isn't hiding".
- Too 9y agoBecause, opposed to other government spying, this service goes both ways; you can also see how much your politicians earn.