People whose livelihood currently comes from businesses whose primary source of income is in selling people's data don't want to even think about the idea that

People whose livelihood currently comes from businesses whose primary source of income is in selling people's data don't want to even think about the idea that doing something else might be a better idea. There are a lot of people in tech (and, quite likely, on HN) who work for companies with such a profile. (Just for instance, everyone working for Google, Facebook, etc.) I doubt it's a majority, which is why the comment appears to have returned to a positive score, but there's certainly a strong contingent that could very well feel threatened by the idea that we might, as a society, have to abandon profiting off other people's data as a business model.