This is not height of ignorance, this is the basis of much good policy: understanding that most people in most cases will not be able to fully evaluate the bene

This is not height of ignorance, this is the basis of much good policy: understanding that most people in most cases will not be able to fully evaluate the benefits & tradeoffs. Say you buy the same food every week and get a discount code. Awesome! Say you buy the same food every week (sweets, chips and other healthy food) then turn diabetic and change your diet The company, aware that you used to buy those products tries in every way possible to push you again to buy them (vouchers, targeted in-store advertisements, ...). Still good? I guess you have a choice but they certainly increase the temptation they would risk your health. Research shows its not that says - and mentally draining - to resist. But of course you're not aware of this effect as you simply skim through your voucher booklet. Picture the same but with alcohol/an alcoholic. Picture the same but they don't just use this but their own data firm resells this data to all other supermarkets in the area and now each shop bombards you with junk food/alcohol/... ads when you're trying hard to stay clean. Say you are a young woman and start buying wet wipes, creams, baby products. The company concludes that you are pregnant. They pass this info (not the actual sales but the data they derived - which you are not in control of!) on to a data firm in semi-anonymised format. The data firm de-anonymises you (after all that's their the expertise), combined this with your credit score and public records information and sells it on. For example a prospective employer does a 'due diligence' check and finds info that you are pregnant. They conclude that you are likely to go on maternity leave soon and decide not to hire you. It doesn't even matter whether the original purchased were for you, the processing and re-processing of data has just cost you a job. Or shopping data reveals that you regularly but adult diapers and a data firm concluded you are incontinent. This shoes on an employer's background checks and you lose out. Shopping data reveals you support children. A potential landlord refuses your request for apartment info because they don't want noise. You are renovating your parents' apartment. Shopping data reveals you bought a lot of glycerin in the past year and the FBI gets interested... And none of these even touch on data from pharmaceutical products (would you have gotten your current job if your employer had known you regularly take antidepressants?). These might be more or less stretched scenarios, but there are a billion of these. And some either are or will probably in the future become true. My point is: you have no idea how the data you produce is used, reused, interpreted, reinterpreted, sold, resold, etc. You don't actually know what the 20c saved on wet wipes has on your life in the near or far future. That's why policy needs to intervene and put a stop to the massive data collection and processing going on today. It's not going to increase prices - on the contrary, if this is not anymore an angle companies will put their prices back down to regular levels and don't need to artificially inflate them in order to give loyalty program members a 'discount'.