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> It’s a real tragedy of the commons Seems more like a real tragedy of private enterprise. We used to assume that the surveillance world would be built by gov
by mat_b 12d ago
> It’s a real tragedy of the commons
Seems more like a real tragedy of private enterprise.
We used to assume that the surveillance world would be built by government (1984). But it turned out to be equally likely to be built by the free market.
- TeMPOraL 12d agoThe government has few uses for total surveillance, and almost all are obviously bad. Private enterprise has a million uses, most of them various degree of bad, but as a society we've been blind to this kind of badness for many decades now - for at least as long as lying in the face of your fellow humans and trying to hurt them materially has been considered a respectable profession.
- titzer 12d agoIt's because capitalism won the (absurd black-and-white framing of the) cold war, with America as its the biggest winner. We don't even recognize the level of propaganda that has gone into convincing us all that "markets" are the best optimizer ever designed and that profit equals morality--we just accept these as base principles without questioning them. Surveillance produces profit? Well let's have more then.
- sssilver 12d agoTurns out the entities you control / regulate less, tend to do things that are less in your interest and more in their own.
- mitxela 12d agoWell, currently the free market is the government, while the nominal government is something less powerful than that.