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> If you're unwilling to pay anything more than zero for something you claim you value I'm willing to pay something for it. That doesn't imply I'm willing to p

> If you're unwilling to pay anything more than zero for something you claim you value I'm willing to pay something for it. That doesn't imply I'm willing to pay an unlimited amount for it. Google accounts are not in the top 10 things I care about with regard to schools. > You mentioned homeschooling yourself. In our current environment, unless you are very lucky in what school district you happen to live in, that is probably the only option to avoid giving up your kids' privacy. My mention of homeschooling was intended to drive home the point that the only way to avoid Google in this situation has incredibly high cost, out of proportion to its benefit. If you truly think that a parent should homeschool to avoid giving data to Google, that's an extreme view. That does not mean I don't think giving data to Google is harmful! > No, that's my point: governments do not solve collective action problems. They grab power using the excuse that they are going to solve such problems Real Soon Now, but they never actually do. Apparently your solution to collective action problems is that individuals must take action, without coordination, even when it's individually counterproductive. And you view failure to do so as indicative that they place no value on the problem getting solved. In other words, you seem to dismiss the notion of the "collective action problem" as a phenomenon at all. Frankly, I find this view absurdly naïve.

pdonis 4y ago
> you seem to dismiss the notion of the "collective action problem" as a phenomenon at all No, I'm just objecting to the claim that governments can solve such problems. > the only way to avoid Google in this situation has incredibly high cost, out of proportion to its benefit That's because the current situation was created by a collective action failure, one which governments have not done anything to help and have in fact made worse, by doing the same thing individuals have been doing: shortsightedly taking advantage of "free" services from Google without considering the actual (non-monetary) costs. Governments are not going to fix this situation. The only way to fix it is to invert the collective action that caused it in the first place. I agree that, because of the depth of the hole we have dug ourselves into, climbing out of it is a huge effort. That doesn't change the fact that the problem won't be solved any other way.

pdonis 4y ago

> you seem to dismiss the notion of the "collective action problem" as a phenomenon at all No, I'm just objecting to the claim that governments can solve such problems. > the only way to avoid Google in this situation has incredibly high cost, out of proportion to its benefit That's because the current situation was created by a collective action failure, one which governments have not done anything to help and have in fact made worse, by doing the same thing individuals have been doing: shortsightedly taking advantage of "free" services from Google without considering the actual (non-monetary) costs. Governments are not going to fix this situation. The only way to fix it is to invert the collective action that caused it in the first place. I agree that, because of the depth of the hole we have dug ourselves into, climbing out of it is a huge effort. That doesn't change the fact that the problem won't be solved any other way.