[HN Gopher] Norway to track all supermarket purchases?
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Norway to track all supermarket purchases?
Author : croes
Score : 281 points
Date : 2022-06-04 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lifeinnorway.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lifeinnorway.net)
| leonardinius wrote:
| Wow. That seems to be a succession / resurrection of 2015-2016
| projekt I was involved with Norwegian Consumer Council
| forbrukerradet and some of major groceries chains(Coop, Rema,
| NG..)
|
| The moment I left we were receiving soft real-time Pos log data
| (anonymized) and we're building some consumer groceries basket
| stats.
| apienx wrote:
| Coincidentally, the WEF's individual carbon footprint tracker
| initiative was recently announced. https://youtu.be/_j1d_2yTRRA
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Future conversation with government bureaucrat:
|
| "I see that you are made of approximately 23% cheese.
|
| That is above the state limits for health reimbursement, so I am
| sorry we cannot support you at the moment until your diet fits
| within government guidelines."
| guerrilla wrote:
| Nonsense, healthcare already covers smokers, alcoholics, obese
| and all kinds of other things.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Depends on who _is_ the government.
|
| Once you have the data exactly on how unhealthy someone's
| choices are, you can lean their behavior towards better
| behavior(according to those that want government to help
| people behave better).
| guerrilla wrote:
| I'm saying it _does_ now in Norway and Sweden and they
| already have all of our medical records.
| Krasnol wrote:
| ...and than there are People who wonder why Germany is so
| reluctant with their personal data, leaving cash behind, having a
| general ID, and so on.
|
| Sometimes it is wise to look at the past and learn from it.
|
| Datensparsamkeit ftw!
| hexo wrote:
| Hope they won't ban cash payment.
| karencarits wrote:
| One should be aware that Norway already has _very_ comprehensive
| registers and databases about the population. Currently, it has
| only been a benefit, I think, as it enables detailed quality
| control of say health care services and high-quality register
| studies.
|
| For example, all health/hospital records of deceased Norwegians
| are digitalized ten years after death and added to a national
| register. No way to refuse. In my opinion, that is much more
| invasive, yet it hasn't been discussed at all by the public
|
| https://helsedata.no/en/about-helsedata.no/
|
| https://www.digitalarkivet.no/en/
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yep; societally, they've got a very different attitude towards
| privacy.
|
| Everyone's salary is publicly available online. (So's the fact
| that you looked!) https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40669239
| wiz21c wrote:
| As said in the article, we already share our data with the
| supermarket, google, etc _and_ whatever other systems that
| binds all of them together.
|
| In that situation, I'm happy that government has access to
| the same data because it gives it a way to balance the
| private sector power.
|
| Now what is needed is the ability to opt out.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _As said in the article, we already share_
|
| The article says that a number of people uses <<loyalty
| programs>>. It mentions tracking though <<debit card>>, and
| last time I checked Norwegians still have circulating cash.
| It does not mention Google, but surely there will be
| Norwegians that do not share data with it. Let us highlight
| that surely, some do not share at all.
|
| I do not understand, contextually, the idea of
| <<balanc[ing] the private sector power>>.
| gryte wrote:
| Circulation of cash is very low, only 3% of trensfered
| money is in cash according to this 2019 study
| https://www.norges-bank.no/en/news-events/news-
| publications/... Since then, with COVID where many stores
| refused cash payments, so it may have decreased further.
| einherjae wrote:
| Cash is available, but very very rare these days. Enough
| so that using it is an outlier for most people < 60.
|
| Debit, or mobile payments are the norm, to the point that
| even kids having a cookie stand will expect mobile
| payment.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _an outlier_
|
| Within a Paretian framework, anything good is an outlier.
| What you need is a system that allows the minoritarian
| good to be preserved.
|
| So, within your sentences: "using it is an outlier for
| most people below 60 _and for privacy conscious
| individuals_ ".
| c_--vote_win wrote:
| mdp2021 wrote:
| c_--vote_win wrote:
| mfer wrote:
| Most of the people I talk with about data collection aren't
| aware of what's collected about them. People I've shared
| details with sometimes think I'm nuts. They just don't
| believe it.
| c_--vote_win wrote:
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The engineering perspective will sometimes polarize the
| "overly-focused on the technical capabilities" and the
| "technically conscious out of competence".
|
| Anyway, thank you again for the suggestion to be aware
| of, and possibly read, Zamyatin's "We" - suggestion that
| for some massive glitch in the system disappeared.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Wow people really forgot that privacy is all about privacy
| with respect to the government because they are the ones
| with the monopoly on violence. It is tragic that people
| think private firms could ever be as evil as governments
| ako wrote:
| If you consider all the school shootings in the US the
| claim that government has a monopoly on violence is
| nonsense. There's plenty of non governmental violence.
| vetinari wrote:
| He meant the legal one.
|
| It is a core concept of law and statehood; if you
| consider it nonsense, you consider statehood of your
| country to be the same.
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| At this very moment there are corporations worth
| trillions of dollars. More money than the worth of many
| countries combined. The people in charge of these
| companies command so much capital, they can more or less
| run the world if they so wish. All they need to do is set
| policies on loans and the entire world will literally
| change itself to conform.
|
| Corporations are no stranger to violence. They're no
| stranger to organized crime dealings and tight
| relationships with governments. Coca-Cola for example has
| straight up assassinated union leaders.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Government certainly doesn't have a monopoly on violence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency
| )#H...
| missedthecue wrote:
| If you have to go back a two centuries to prove a point,
| you're probably not right.
| guerrilla wrote:
| They're called Securitas today and are very much active,
| they're often contracted out to by states. They're also
| notoriously corrupt and abusive.[1]
|
| 1. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securitas#Kritik
| missedthecue wrote:
| Securitas is contracted by the state to run background
| checks and do other paper-pushing activities. They do not
| kill people under their own prerogative.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Nope, that is absolutely false. They fulfill police
| duties in Sweden. Prior to that they were ubiquitous
| security guards and engaged in violence daily.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's tragic that people think companies like Equifax
| can't have government-level negative impacts on people.
| zerox7felf wrote:
| Hard-power violence is mostly exclusive to governments,
| but don't underestimate the power of soft-power
| "violence" and coercion.
|
| Another thing that sets the government and private sector
| apart is that the government is under (mostly, even if
| indirect) democratic control, or otherwise accountable to
| the public, whereas the private sector can get by with
| bad press, so long as they can continue to operate. As an
| individual of average wealth, it is far less difficult to
| influence government policy and politicians as opposed to
| doing the same to a private organization.
|
| Really, this is not about choosing between "good" and
| "evil", it is about choosing which evil you are most
| likely to be able to contain.
| mejutoco wrote:
| I do not understand the tragic aspect. Private firms have
| had similar powers in specific contexts, and may partner
| with the government, so they seem to have the same
| potential consequences.
| baq wrote:
| at sufficient scale the difference between governments
| and corporations is negligible. east india company would
| be the most obvious example, but there's plenty nowadays.
| hgomersall wrote:
| If your government is untrustworthy, then you're screwed
| in any case. Reasonable interpretation of data was never
| an authoritarian regime's strong point.
| chupy wrote:
| Check out the Dole corporation to see how evil can they
| actually be - https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-
| dark-and-bloody-hist.... Nestle with the classic baby
| formula marketing to 2nd/3rd world countries, chinese
| milk scandal etc and probably most other multinationals
| are in the same league.
| jltsiren wrote:
| That attitude makes sense if you come from a low-trust
| society where the state apparatus thinks it's running an
| empire. Especially if the country is large and actively
| trying to reshape the world.
|
| Things look different in a small high-trust country with
| multiple political parties. Because the country is too
| weak and insignificant to change the world, the
| government tends to focus on administering the country.
| Because there is a lot of trust in the society, the
| people who want to serve in the government are usually
| ideologically motivated to serve the best interests of
| the public. It's not a particularly lucrative or high-
| status career, so people with other motivations tend to
| go elsewhere. And while people may disagree on what
| exactly are the best interests of the public, there are
| many viable political parties to choose from.
|
| Private firms are allowed to be evil in the sense that
| they can put their private interests ahead of public
| interests. Most of them are. And because they are
| private, the public has only limited means to regulate
| them when they misbehave blatantly. They can't, for
| example, vote the directors and shareholders out and
| replace them with people who promise to serve public
| interests.
| pjlegato wrote:
| Even if one happens to approve of the conditions under
| which personal data is being managed _right now_, even if
| one happens to approve of the current administrators and
| thinks they're entirely benevolent, there is no way to
| know who will be in charge of that data in the future, or
| what ends it will be used for. Once it's out there, it's
| out there forever.
| salt-thrower wrote:
| I think the argument is that it's already out there.
| Companies, with no directive to even pretend to serve the
| public interest, already have all that data. The
| government does too, because security agencies mandate
| that they get backdoor access. "Once it's out there, it's
| out there forever" - that already happened.
|
| Given that it's already out there, there's not much more
| to fear in terms of a slippery slope. All that's left is
| to at least force the public sector to disclose more of
| what's going on and regulate how private interests are
| allowed to use it.
|
| Otherwise, we already have the dystopia you're imagining,
| we just don't see it as well.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Maybe people forgot because in recent times, corporate
| malfeasance has been a far bigger problem in people's
| lives than government overreach.
| cgriswald wrote:
| The government only has a monopoly on _legal_ violence,
| but violence is beside the point. (And never mind that a
| bad government could simply steal the data or compel a
| corporation to hand it over.)
|
| Imagine living in a state where abortion laws now allow
| individuals to sue other individuals who have had
| abortions. A corporation could use grocery data to find
| and sue individuals who are likely to have had an
| abortion. The analysis would be a bit more complex than
| this, but just looking at grocery data, scan for people
| who bought pregnancy tests, bought fewer tampons than
| usual, and aren't buying baby food a year later. No
| violence, totally legal, and absolutely devastating to
| the individuals involved.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| bjornsing wrote:
| This angle is increasingly popular, but I think totally
| naive and even dangerous: When the shit hits the fan there
| is no "balance" of power between government and the private
| sector. History is not full of examples of corporations
| putting people in camps and working them to death, despite
| the government's attempts to prevent it. The government has
| all the power (when it really matters).
| ceejayoz wrote:
| VW used slave labor, as did the American plantations.
| Even today, forced labor is rife in some industries, like
| shrimp fishery in Asia.
| bjornsing wrote:
| Of course. That's why I added "despite the government's
| attempts to prevent it" above. But that obviously wasn't
| enough. People genuinely think that the next
| concentration camps will have a Google logo.
| dgeiser13 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town
| the_only_law wrote:
| Tbh I'd rather have my salary public than some of the public
| information out there about me. I'm still dumbfounded I can
| basically dox people with voting registration records if I
| know just a few things about them.
|
| I've hunted down estranged family members before and I was
| kind of concerned because I was able to find a ton of
| information about them I wouldn't want out on the internet
| yunohn wrote:
| > In my opinion, that is much more invasive
|
| Sorry, what? You're saying a digitised deaths registry is _more
| invasive_ than tracking all supermarket purchases?
| rdsubhas wrote:
| No. That's not what the parent comment is saying.
|
| They're saying that digitising the _health records_ of the
| deceased is much more invasive.
| yunohn wrote:
| Fair enough, I missed that nuance.
|
| But to be honest, I don't care what happens 10yrs after I
| die. I don't want to be surveilled for the whole time I'm
| alive...
| karencarits wrote:
| In my opinion, yes (regarding _health records_ , as pointed
| out by others). Confidentiality is a core value in health
| care, it's even explicitly stated in the Geneva declaration:
|
| > AS A MEMBER OF THE MEDICAL PROFESSION: > ... > I WILL
| RESPECT the secrets that are confided in me, even after the
| patient has died
|
| To me, financial information seems less private. Furthermore,
| I can use cash or ask a friend to buy things for me, but I
| cannot have a friend seeing the psychologist or having an
| abortion in my place. If I was struggling with some taboo-ish
| condition (say, pedophilic thoughts), the idea that this
| information would be kept and possibly leaked in the future,
| would heighten the bar for seeking help. And although I will
| be dead, my health records may contain information about the
| living, say information about heritable conditions.
| kkfx wrote:
| Well, ten years after death is a thing, while you are alive is
| another... Also who register matter (private companies, no
| matter if on their own or _formally_ for the public vs the
| public State directly _totally_ on internal resources).
|
| Personally I agree we need statistics, data in general, but to
| be collected with EXTREME care and transparency because yes, we
| might spot health issues in advance and so save lives, we might
| anticipate needs and so satisfy them better with better
| forecasting/planning BUT we might also do nasty things.
|
| Try to imagine if a day resources start to be scarce, a
| dictatorial government rise _supported_ by most people
| self-(propaganda)-convinced that that 's the sole option to
| sort the situation out and such government start the old: it's
| not that bad but some work to make it bad against us, we need
| to took the down. So a social score born, became spread, with
| much general data on the population: how easy can be
| selectively _killing_ or just addressing careers of various
| people thanks to the mass of data on them, accordingly to
| dictatorship NOT social needs?
|
| More "lighter" and general example: how can we prevent a cohort
| of people taking advantage of such big mass of data for their
| own profits at the expense of another cohort?
|
| It's not just a mere matter of privacy: if we ALL know anything
| about anyone or nothing about anyone we are on fair and equal
| conditions, some will take advantage some others not because
| some will be smarter, just more active etc than others, but
| overall situation should remain in a normal fair balance. If
| just very few know very much on almost anyone and most others
| know next to nothing about those few...
|
| Just imaging simple things like knowing with enough precision
| what people eat anywhere in a country: those who know can
| organize "better" (commercially) shelves and gain competitive
| advantage on competitors to a point perhaps of pushing them to
| the margins and then abuse the gained position to establish de-
| fact price policies on pretty anything. Even if data are public
| and collected only by the public, no one is corrupt etc those
| who can process such public data at scale can grab competitive
| advantages against all the rest.
|
| In fairness terms: just imaging you came from a bad health
| family: you might be drop for many job offer because of such
| legacy, pay more for some health insurances etc. You might say
| "hey, that's true but still fair", well, it's not. It's not
| because potential employers know something about you, you do
| not equally know something about them up front.
|
| At social scale we need a certain degree of incertitude to let
| the society evolve by nature instead of by planning because we
| MUST plan and we might even be good planner BUT nothing beat
| natural evolution in the long term and as a society we MUST
| think at the long terms. Individuals have, rightly, to think
| about their own life, so short an mean terms, but at a society,
| so State level we must also weight the very long terms. Our
| individual life is, unfortunately (well, for some at least) a
| not-that-short/not-that-long timeframe, States, populations can
| potentially last millennia. Planning even for a single century
| for us is well... More fantasy than science, and that's why we
| have to allow nature do it's job with a certain level of
| "background noise"...
| aaomidi wrote:
| Can't wait for this all to eventually leak. Countries need to
| realize data is not "free" and has a cost to it.
| meowtimemania wrote:
| Is it not is already publicly known? Don't think there's
| anything to leak
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Is it not is already publicly known? Don't think there's
| anything to leak_
|
| The purchases made by an individual, already public? That
| on that day you were in that place? That you read "The
| Lance" instead of "The Spear", that you read Comte instead
| of Hegel?
| rvnx wrote:
| Yeah it's public so nothing to leak, it's meant to be like
| this, same in Estonia, your address is public, your name,
| your birthdate, +/- your face picture, all the land you
| possess, you can interrogate who is the owner of a specific
| car plate without any restrictions, see a map of all the
| traffic accidents with precise information (date, why,
| what, what was damaged). Then you have semi-public data
| like phone location (you just need to sign NDA), and guess
| what ? Everything is fine.
| nostromo95 wrote:
| Invasive to _whom_?
|
| I'm certainly not going to be feeling outraged by medical
| records disclosure when I'm dead. Do with me what you will when
| I'm gone--I care more about my experience when I'm alive.
| amenghra wrote:
| Hypothetical situation: how would you feel if your medical
| records and used to calculate health risks for your
| children/other family members and refuse specific insurances
| (or make them more expensive)?
| nostromo95 wrote:
| That's a good point.
|
| I was imagining some sort of anonymized records database--
| turns out you can look up specific names which I agree
| yields some undesirable outcomes.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Non hypothetically, if your parents have a genetic
| condition that can be passed onto their offspring, in my
| country you are checked against them to try prevent them or
| catch them in the early stages.
|
| For free (payed by the taxes)
| singularity2001 wrote:
| If of all countries Norway turns into a digital totalitarian
| state it would break my heart. With much power comes much ...
| risk.
| nomilk wrote:
| In the same week we see one government (Canadian) fining a
| company for unnecessarily storing data on users, and another
| government obtaining _masses_ of data just for the hell of it.
|
| EDIT
|
| > SSB claims they want a less time-consuming way of collecting
| and analysing household consumption statistics in order to inform
| tax policy, social assistance and child allowance.
|
| That does seem plausible. Inflation statistics, for example, are
| notoriously vulnerable to arbitrary changes in the "basket of
| goods" economists define. If economists could access _the entire_
| shopping list, including volumes, then there 'd be no need to try
| to guess what a representative basket looks like.
| [deleted]
| DeathArrow wrote:
| The ideological left push us more and more towards a dystopic
| future. Which doesn't seem very distant.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Ah yes, mass surveillance is well known to be only supported by
| left-wing ideologues, such as Viktor Orban:
|
| https://www.connectontech.com/2016-2-19-hungary-condemned-fo...
| Elinvynia wrote:
| The ideological left of neoliberalism, which has only been
| gaining ground everywhere since the 70's :)
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| It isn't the left that keeps pushing authoritarianism around
| the world, see Orban, Putin, Trump, DeSantis, Abbott and the
| likes.
|
| Touch some grass.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Collectivist authoritarians will always cause totalitarianism
| as a "step toward Utopia".
|
| The logical conclusion of their beliefs is to enslave people
| "for their own good".
| Iv wrote:
| Yeah, fuck the leftist ideology that gave us the PATRIOT act,
| the legalization of torture, that wages wars on lies with no
| long term plans, who made the Echelon network a mass
| surveillance network. Fuck these neocon hippies.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| The Stasi would be jealous.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Sure, they would have loved to have Norwegian levels of
| government trust, but that's antithetical to the way the Soviet
| Union was set up.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Stasi was the secret police in East Germany.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Yes I'm aware of that. Do you believe the GDR could have
| established meaningful trust with the populace independent
| of Soviet policy?
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Are the actual basket item details being sent, or just the total
| basket price?
|
| Advertisers would pay insane money to get ahold of data to link
| exactly what a consumer bought (basket item details).
| androa wrote:
| Stores already has that data, and shares it with their
| suppliers.
| tloriato wrote:
| "Hello #3576. You have reached your 1kg monthly limit of natural
| meat. Please consult the official list for alternatives."
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Or "you've reached your monthly quota of alcohol purchases".
| Which isn't far fetched at all! In parts of Canada, up into the
| 50s, you had to bring your permit booklet to buy alcohol from
| state operated stores where they recorded your purchases:
| https://www.tvo.org/article/buzzkillers-a-brief-history-of-t...
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I mean,
|
| > Vinmonopolet (English: The Wine Monopoly), symbolized by v
| and colloquially shortened to Polet, is a government-owned
| alcoholic beverage retailer and the only company allowed to
| sell beverages containing an alcohol content higher than
| 4.75% in Norway.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinmonopolet
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| Vinmonopolet is nicer than any liquor store I was at in the
| US, though (Am american, lived in norway the last 9 years).
| And there are options to get it delivered to your house.
| Plus, it is _really_ easy to order something if they can
| get it (and ways to import it yourself if you don 't see it
| on their website). My liquor store experience improved
| greatly upon moving here.
|
| Do they close early? Sure, but that's easy to work around.
| Are they expensive? Sure, but I don't drink heavily so it
| isn't a big deal.
|
| Plenty of places have such a solution, including some US
| states.
| InefficientRed wrote:
| There are still US states where wine can only be sold in
| state-owned stores.
| doublepg23 wrote:
| Currently working at a PA one, I even get a .gov address.
| hericium wrote:
| Sweden is similar - you can't buy a beer with > 3.5%
| alcohol. Subjectively, they improved the quality of these
| 2.1% / 3.5% beers. It was piss some 10 years ago.
|
| Higher percentage, "normal" alcoholic products are sold in
| government-run Systembolaget[1]. And there's almost no cash
| in Sweden.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systembolaget
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's so sad that Sweden doesn't allow real beer in the
| shops like Norway does.
| rsolva wrote:
| I don't know, I have started to think we shouldn't sell
| any type of hard drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, in
| grocery stores. Why not sell these products in separate
| specialized stores, like we already do with Vinmonopolet?
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > any type of hard drugs, like alcohol and tobacco, in
| grocery stores.
|
| I volunteered at an addiction and methadone clinic for
| awhile. I recommend you try it then come talk about what
| "hard drugs" are.
| drekk wrote:
| Alcohol kills more people than "harder" drugs and is much
| more acceptable within polite society. Same situation
| with tobacco, which also happens to be one of the most
| difficult substances to quit that we know of. Your
| average patient suffering from substance abuse will have
| an easier time quitting most drugs in comparison to
| nicotine. Given intravenously, nicotine is 5-10x more
| potent in producing a euphoric effect than cocaine.
|
| Heroin, meth, etc. might kill you quicker and be more
| unpleasant to administer with more noticeable
| withdrawals, but if we're talking about ultimate cost to
| society they're not the worst offenders.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Please remake your argument using RATE of users who
| remain high functioning.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| This was the case in Sweden as well (probably the rest of
| Scandinavia too, but I don't know for certain off the top of
| my head).
| agilob wrote:
| Dear monkeybutton, you're about to commit a consumptioncrime,
| a social service worker will visit your household in the next
| few to days to check if everything is fine with you and your
| loved ones.
| paulcole wrote:
| Doing stuff like this today is going to be 100x better than
| what people 3 generations from now will have to live through
| thanks to climate change.
|
| The question is whether we're willing to inconvenience
| ourselves today to protect future generations - and the answer
| is looking like no.
| jen20 wrote:
| Given that since 2020 we observed that (at least in the US)
| many were not even prepared to accept minor inconvenience to
| protect the _current_ generations, I'd say the answer is
| emphatically "hell no" rather than just looking like it.
| fullshark wrote:
| I have the opposite take. The lesson from COVID is like the
| lesson from the war on terror imo, the majority of people
| largely DID accept massive curtailing of individual freedom
| due to fear, and will do it again the next crisis that
| comes along. The climate change crisis is slow moving and
| 100% of the people don't accept it as happening but if it
| produces an actual short term crisis like a famine then the
| statists will be ready to use it to propose (or possibly
| just enforce without passing laws) massive intrusions on
| individual rights again and continue to search for similar
| crises to keep doing it.
| basisword wrote:
| The answer is no for stupid solutions like tracking
| everybody's meat consumption and a government limiting it.
| You will be swiftly told to fuck off (and rightly so). You
| need to get people on your side and contributing without
| massively changing their lifestyles, instead of alienating
| them. We need massive reductions in business contributions to
| climate change and we need investment in current clean energy
| solutions and investment in further research. The current
| younger generations already are less well off economically
| than the last. They shouldn't have to make further sacrifices
| for future generations.
| jacooper wrote:
| Exactly, I don't know why we are focusing on meat while we
| all know that energy and business emissions are more
| important, it looks like its an intentional distraction
| from big oil, and to give Norway's government more spying
| powers.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I don't necessarily disagree in principle, but I think what
| you're saying will be very hard or impossible.
|
| Those "business contributions to climate change" exist
| _because_ they 're producing goods that consumers want; you
| can't significantly reduce that without also affecting
| consumer lifestyles, by reducing the options for the number
| of goods, or making them more expensive.
|
| Further research in clean energy is all very nice, but
| that's what I've been hearing for 25 years, and if we look
| at what has _actually_ been accomplished then I think it 's
| a pretty big gamble to bet that "further research" will all
| make things work out.
|
| The last 100 years or so have been quite exceptional in
| many ways; I think the expectation that younger generations
| will have it at least as good as the previous one is just
| not realistic.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Are consumers social planners?
|
| Did consumers plan the massive road infrastructure in
| America? Did consumers make public transportation a
| fifth-rate form of transportation? Did consumers plan
| American Suburbia post-WWII? Did consumers decide that
| housing in central locations should be so expensive that
| they have to live a driving-distance from work (see: bad
| public transportation)? Did consumers decide that the
| goods that they consume have to take multiple trips
| around the world?
|
| Why blame the output sink for so much?
| jacooper wrote:
| Once we exsuahst all options to reduce climate change
| with limited impact on the customer, things like
| renewable energy(people don't care where their energy
| comes from), replacing unnecessary plastics with paper,
| etc, we can then talk about things like limiting meat
| consumption.
|
| But affecting peoples lifes without actually tackling
| industries and corporation that do way more harm is just
| stupid and basically serves Oil companies targets, they
| created the "carbon footprint" just to distract people
| from focusing on them.
| gruez wrote:
| >>Those "business contributions to climate change" exist
| because they're producing goods that consumers want; you
| can't significantly reduce that without also affecting
| consumer lifestyles, by reducing the options for the
| number of goods, or making them more expensive.
|
| >without actually tackling industries and corporation
| that do way more harm is just stupid
|
| I think you're missing the parent poster's point, which
| is that consumers ultimately pay for everything.
| "tackling industries and corporation" ultimately means
| affecting consumer's lifestyles.
| jacooper wrote:
| There is a difference between affecting the consumers
| life to change to renewable energy and affecting the
| consumers life to virtue signal by banning meat while
| ignoring corporations.
| basisword wrote:
| >> The last 100 years or so have been quite exceptional
| in many ways; I think the expectation that younger
| generations will have it at least as good as the previous
| one is just not realistic.
|
| Whether or not this is true (it very well could be
| although we won't know for a while) I think the idea that
| younger generations will just accept that is unrealistic.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| You're probably right there! But the alternative ("keep
| doing our thing like 10 years from now doesn't exist")
| will be worse, so ... yeah. It's a bad situation :-(
| vkou wrote:
| > The answer is no for stupid solutions like tracking
| everybody's meat consumption and a government limiting it.
|
| When the era of plenty that we currently live in ends, I
| feel that a lot of people are going to be in for a rude
| awakening.
| peyton wrote:
| It's not a question of us inconveniencing ourselves today.
| It's a question of us and all of our descendants
| inconveniencing themselves in perpetuity.
|
| Which seems unlikely. The future is long.
| concordDance wrote:
| This kind of comment is one I only see from people who
| haven't actually read the IPCC's reports and don't actually
| have a feel for how bad it's going to be by 2100. Am I wrong?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| You would be correct if the governments consisted of smart,
| very technical people, who weren't brainwashed by colleges
| into implicitly believing the current "feel good" narrative.
|
| But in reality, the people in charge are a complete opposite
| of that.
| GeorgeBanica wrote:
| Compared with taxes, at least this way everyone gets the same
| amount of meat independent of how wealthy they are.
| ihattendorf wrote:
| Because the wealthy surely wouldn't be able to find a way
| around a supermarket meat restriction...
| Iv wrote:
| *illegally
|
| Sure, there are illegal ways around all laws. That does not
| make laws useless.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Norway is already the country where it's quite normal to
| drive to Sweden to buy tobacco, alcohol and yes meat, and
| other stuff that's cheaper across the borders.
| Restaurants source cheaper meat illegally this way etc.
|
| Unfortunately, Sweden is in the EU and Norway is not so
| there's quite a lot of customs rules on that border.
| ftyers wrote:
| I lived in Tromso and drove to Sweden and Finland a fair
| few times... there is zero customs enforcement. At least
| for cars, for lorries they're probably tracked in some
| other way.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| And I should point out that this is a day trip: It takes
| me less than 90 minutes to get to Sweden. There are
| busses and trains that go as well. There might be a lot
| of customs rules on the border, but I've never seen them
| actually stop folks either.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Right, the border is chill (except for the crazy covid
| times, hope that's behind us). Mostly easy and fair rules
| for regular people. But the point is, if your car is full
| of meat and it's for a restaurant, not personal
| consumption, it's definitely illegal.
| concordDance wrote:
| This is bad because different people want meat different
| amounts. Best case you get a meat black market (with
| corrosive effects on law and order ala alcohol prohibition)
| which will still lead to very inefficient meat allocation.
| [deleted]
| baisq wrote:
| Literally.
|
| And it will reach the point where you will be pushed to a
| higher tax bracket if you consume too much meat, and you will
| have to lower your tax bracket by eating bugs instead.
| klipt wrote:
| Why do people jump from "meat" to bugs (which are still meat
| btw) instead of vegetable proteins like tofu? I'd much rather
| eat tofu, tempeh, Quorn, etc than bugs.
| leksak wrote:
| Bio-availability of protein being less in vegetable
| protein-sources, maybe?
| whatever1 wrote:
| In the US we do it already. The insurance companies can
| themselves define what healthy lifestyle is and they charge you
| higher premium. Or deny you coverage.
|
| If you have any objection you can take them to the court and
| face their multi million legal teams.
| Iv wrote:
| If Norway reaches the point where they have to ration meat, I
| don't see the problem with such a system.
| jacooper wrote:
| You don't have to track everyone to ration resources.
|
| You can just say, 1KG per person, and voilla its done.
| Iv wrote:
| Uh, you literally _have_ to track people 's consumption to
| ration resources.
|
| During WWII it was done with state-issued ration tickets
| and a crackdown on the inevitable black market that
| emerged. That's a good alternative to this.
| jacooper wrote:
| Why would Norway need to ration meat anyway ?
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Please consult the official list for alternatives."
|
| More likely a new way to tax stuff that the government does not
| like. Eating too much red-meat from methane-producing cows?
| Extra climate change tax for you!
| fullshark wrote:
| Can't they just add a meat sales tax to accomplish that?
| klipt wrote:
| Or just measure the methane output and charge the farmers a
| tax on that directly. That would give them incentive to
| feed their cows that methane reducing seaweed.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Can't they just add a meat sales tax_
|
| No, because the (sinisterly clever) idea of ekianjo allows
| the implementation of something which is sought by some:
| progressive taxation of limited resources or externalities
| etc, as opposed to fixed one. It's akin to rationing. You
| drive 10000 miles/y, pay 1/u or 1000; if 20000 miles/y, pay
| 2/u or 4000...
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Not if the tax is progressive (higher earning people, or
| people eating more meat get taxed at a higher rate).
| gonzo41 wrote:
| They should probably think about the Natural Gas that makes
| up 60 % of the total value of Norway's exports before they go
| virtue signalling to people eating meat from farms that use
| tractors.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > They should probably think about...
|
| Problem is hypocrisy is hardly a reason that you can use
| against those in power.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| WanderPanda wrote:
| But they are also exporting green electricity certificates
| to balance it off. #greenwashing
| 867-5309 wrote:
| this would arguably be a great thing
| ekianjo wrote:
| Let's not stop there and let's profile people on everything
| they purchase and increase their taxes on everything that's
| not remotely considered healthy enough, because you know,
| they increase the burden on the whole society!
|
| That's the recipe for the abolition of individual freedom.
| fullshark wrote:
| You can choose to pay more taxes/fees at least, people
| already do that for certain things that are designed to
| nudge people to behave properly (e.g. pay 10 cents for a
| bag to encourage you to bring reusable bags and some
| people just don't care). Sin taxes are not new things.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| There's a lot of talk in N about the "people health" and
| how people need to eat less sugar etc. And how things
| like sugar should be taxed more. But you can still buy as
| much candy and whatever at the grocery store. And it
| doesn't seem terribly expensive, either. (Alcohol is,
| though.)
|
| There _should_ be some opt-in assistance for making
| better lifestyle choices, I think. More walk, less talk.
| There are already self-help ideas that center around
| promising other people that you won't do X, or that you
| will do Y, and then having to pay them money or something
| if you do /don't. Why couldn't the government help you do
| the same thing? As a not-for-profit alternative.
|
| EDIT: I don't mean that the disincentive should be that
| you give the government money if you fail. That would be
| a bad incentive for the government.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| Ah yes, the great "individual freedom" to screw over the
| many people already affected by climate change. Thanks
| buddy.
|
| You're also shifting the discussion from climate change
| that you mentioned in your previous comment to
| "everything that's not remotely considered healthy
| enough" in this comment. Two entirely different things.
| jacooper wrote:
| Climate change is stopped by doing meaningful things like
| stopping oil exports, moving the grid to renewable
| energy,
|
| Not shifting the burden to individuals who contribute
| almost nothing compared to giant corporations, And doing
| werid things like banning meat, imagine if they did the
| opposite, they hike vegetable prices because you don't
| eat enough meat.
|
| If this happens(the article doesn't say this has anything
| to do with climate change specifically) it would be just
| a giant distraction from Norway's role in climate change
| by producing Oil.
| srean wrote:
| > compared to giant corporations and doing werid things
| banning meat
|
| Presumably these giant corporations are after the profits
| that can be booked by serving the demand. The question is
| how much of that demand is ultimately attributable to
| demands generated by the behaviors and wants of the lay
| people, even if they are not the proximate cause.
|
| Avoiding externalities is a thing. I would rather have
| that loop hole plugged instead of a persistent
| socialization of risks and losses and privatization of
| the gains, now that would be a free market.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > Ah yes, the great "individual freedom" to screw over
| the many people already affected by climate change.
| Thanks buddy.
|
| So you'd be OK with full-on tyranny? Because there's
| never going to be a short list of massive problems in the
| world to deal with.
|
| > You're also shifting the discussion from climate change
|
| Not shifting anything, I was giving an example of how
| certain items could be taxed by linking them to current
| problems. You can easily extend that example to other
| things beyond climate change.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > there's never going to be a short list of massive
| problems in the world to deal with.
|
| Yes, you live on a finite world with a lot of people and
| many things you choose to do affects other people too.
| Now, you may choose to stick your fingers in your ears
| and shout "LALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" and straw-man
| everything you don't like as "full-on tyranny" if you
| wish, but that's not how it works and at that point
| you're no longer really part of any constructive
| dialogue. There is always a balance, and it's rarely
| easy.
| [deleted]
| kzrdude wrote:
| Meat is part of a healthy diet. Sure, some survive on other
| stuff, but in general, meat is healthy.
| swader999 wrote:
| It's essential.
| lambdaba wrote:
| Seconded. I'm on an all-meat diet and I turned my health
| around thanks to it. Most often people who advocate
| eliminating meat look sickly, because they are.
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Where do you get your dietary fiber from?
| lambdaba wrote:
| I don't, turns out transit works fine (actually much
| better) without it.
|
| I won't speculate on whether this would apply to
| everybody but my hypothesis is my health issues stemmed
| from gut biome disregulation caused by - way too many
| causes to list - and somehow only total elimination of
| carbohydrates and plant matter fixes it.
| [deleted]
| hhjinks wrote:
| I'm happy that worked for you, but nutrition is too
| complex to make sweeping statements like that. Some
| scientists say that animal fats are unhealthy, while
| others correlate the increase in lifestyle diseases with
| the increased consumption of vegetable fats. We just
| don't know enough about how the body works.
| [deleted]
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm all for meat, fish and vegetables. That's the
| healthiest slice of the available foods. Any reason
| you've cut out vegetables entirely? I'd consider eating
| lots of green veg, while avoiding the starchy ones. My
| entrance point was AIP which basically forces one to do
| this.
| lambdaba wrote:
| I think it has to do with gut biome somehow. I've seen
| excellent biome diversity scores from other people on the
| diet, but in my case it's from repeated experience with
| gradually eating more and more fruit (and nothing else),
| not necessarily large quantities even (though I did
| ocassionaly eat quite a lot apples).
|
| I haven't really tried with vegetables (not interested
| taste-wise), so it might be the carbs / fruit sugars that
| weren't great for my gut biome, which I suspect is messed
| up as it is for many people nowadays.
| sofixa wrote:
| Part of. Extreme consumption of meat, especially red
| meat, is unhealthy. Not to mention bad for the planet.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tomp wrote:
| Meat is literally recycled grass. Zero net carbon
| footprint. Sure cows release methane, but it's part of a
| cycle and doesn't contribute to long-term climate change.
|
| All other "C footprint" is a consequence of poor farming
| practices, not meat. Blame the process (and the energy
| source) not the product.
| californical wrote:
| I'm a vegetarian because of environmental (and more
| recently, ethical) reasons. I'm an enormous advocate of
| reducing the quantity of animal products that the world
| uses.
|
| This is definitely not a "great thing". There are much less
| invasive ways to influence behavior and nudge consumers to
| consume fewer harmful products. Like simply using product-
| specific taxes or labeling requirements. Or targeting the
| producers directly.
|
| We don't need to increase government surveillance, ever.
| Elinvynia wrote:
| You should look up "Dairy is scary" on YouTube then
| (promise, it's worth it!). Being a vegetarian has much
| less impact than one might think.
| fmakunbound wrote:
| Heh I've been vegan for ages, just watched it. Great
| reminder.
| jacooper wrote:
| Ah yes, the meat people eat definitely has more impact than
| the oil Norway produces.
|
| You don't get to dectiate what people eat, imagine the
| other side, you are not eating enough meat, we will tax
| vegetables more in your purchases.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| No. The limit will be less generous. :)
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Given that this is Norway, the cynic in me thinks this is not
| about getting better demographic data as claimed, but rather to
| lay the groundwork for progressive sales taxes: your sales tax
| rate (potentially only for certain items) increases relative to
| your income and/or consumption habits. If this were just about
| demographics, it would be relatively straightforward to anonymize
| purchase records.
|
| (Massive privacy implications aside, I don't necessarily disagree
| with progressive sales taxation.)
| jonahbenton wrote:
| The comments objecting to this are bizarre.
|
| In the predatory capitalist US, the number of private companies-
| not subject to any real regulation, or supervision, or action on
| the part of citizens- that have exactly this data and more
| numbers literally in the thousands.
|
| And while a lot of attention is paid to government data
| collection, it is very hard for various parts of the government
| in the US to get this information for administrative purposes- as
| distinct from criminal investigations- and even if government
| could, it would serve no purpose because except for policing,
| education, highway maintenance, delivery of mail and healthcare
| for military veterans, US government entities perform virtually
| no services.
|
| In Norway, which has extremely high quality of life and a very
| competent government that runs things like a sovereign wealth
| fund to the express and explicit benefit of citizens, where the
| goals of data collection are further improvement of quality of
| life, the intent and capacity of delivery for which by the
| government is proven over and over again-
|
| IOW, to be concerned about data collection by an entity that over
| and over again has demonstrated its competence, especially in the
| context of alternatives like the US-
|
| WTF are people thinking.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Knowledge is power, and power corrupts, so what you're saying
| is "I don't mind giving the Norwegian government absolute
| power, because they aren't absolutely corrupt (yet)".
| Iv wrote:
| I would say that the government having the same amount of
| knowledge that private companies have is not necessarily a
| bad thing.
| [deleted]
| dane-pgp wrote:
| That might be true in the case where that amount of
| knowledge is precisely zero.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| I just can't with the aphorisms. Ashes to ashes and dust to
| dust. So there.
|
| Make an actual argument.
| verisimi wrote:
| Tell me again how we're not moving into technocracy, with
| everything micromanaged, every purchase accounted for (by the
| government).
|
| 'Its perfectly fine for governments to know this info'.
|
| The end of banks, and central bank digital currency and social
| credit systems are just around the corner.
| rvz wrote:
| All of what you have just said is totally correct. Will be made
| worse if not is already worse with closed-source software, zero
| privacy, internet-of-things, artificial intelligence and
| blockchains as I said before. [0]
|
| Anyone standing in the way of this have failed to stop it
| entirely and we will end up co-existing with these things in a
| few years or so.
|
| So it is not a surprise at all to see Norway do this. A new
| world order of CBDCs, IoT and more invasive tracking, etc led
| by members of the World Government Summit.
|
| Oh dear.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31617042
| jacooper wrote:
| Blockchains ?
|
| If anything, blockchains mighg be the things that end
| government control over finance. And not all cryptocurrencies
| are public, monero and zcash exist.
| elephantum wrote:
| Russia does that already country-wise.
|
| Every receipt is sent to federal taxes office instantly, every
| cash register is connected to the internet.
| el-salvador wrote:
| El Salvador does this too for business to business receipts. It
| doesn't include item descriptions though, only totals.
| kzrdude wrote:
| One of the big grocery stores in sweden (coop) closed all their
| shops for a week last year due to a ransomware attack. So yeah,
| all those cash registers were and are connected to the
| internet.
| jacooper wrote:
| Some Arab gulf countries do this too
| axg11 wrote:
| There's a general reaction that big government is bad, more
| tracking is bad. Norway ranks highly in most metrics of
| development and quality of life. Perhaps in a high trust society
| this type of data collection is a positive.
| mdmglr wrote:
| What do you mean by "high trust society"? The people trust the
| government agencies?
|
| I agree data collection can be positive. I think next they
| should start collecting any tweet, comment, or text file
| citizens write so they can see how good the public education
| system is doing. Actually the state should run an SSO service.
| Every computer, phone, tv and device must use the states SSO so
| that the person behind the device is tracked. State should also
| run an MDM solution. Every Smart watch should send all vitals
| to see how good nutrition is. Add microphones and camera
| everywhere to see if any crime is happening. (If you can't tell
| by now I'm not being serious.)
| axg11 wrote:
| High trust society, as in: there is a high degree of trust
| between any two random people that they are likely to act in
| each other's benefit when it comes to societal issues. That
| is fundamentally how I view taxes. We're contributing to a
| common fund for common good.
| cerol wrote:
| Although I understand and agree with what people are pointing to
| here, it's too easy to get carried away with the "welcome to
| 1984" fatalism. Life does not have a "last page", like in a book.
| In a story, the last page lasts forever, but in the real world it
| does not. In the real world we get to see things get really bad,
| and then we see them get better, then bad again, ad infinitum.
|
| When people have nothing left to loose, that's where real change
| happens.
| Havoc wrote:
| Open to abuse & certainly not privacy friendly, but in a
| hypothetical world where governments can be trusted on that it
| seems very plausible that it could be a social plus.
|
| i.e. You can probably spot trends like person X spends a huge
| amount of their pay on nappies and babyfood...probably could do
| with some additional social help.
|
| Nordic countries probably come closest to said hypothetical but
| still seems kinda dicey
| Iv wrote:
| Good luck arguing that a government can do good on a mostly
| American board.
| init-as wrote:
| Governments can only be trusted when any given individual can
| be trusted. I understand that Norway's current government is
| one of the most accountable and transparent in the world so the
| damage a given individual can do is limited, but that entails
| trusting all future governments.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| Or people can just ask for help if they need it
| axg11 wrote:
| The people in society who need help the most often have the
| least trust in government and don't have the means to
| understand and navigate programmes that could help them.
| californical wrote:
| How does surveilling them and then coming to them with
| assistance increase their trust? Seems like it would
| decrease trust. I mean I distrust a lot of government
| functions, and would trust them less in that case.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| Programs like the proposed one would require trust you day
| is missing though
| hutzlibu wrote:
| This might be, because the programs are often not helpful.
| Here in germany I know stories of how asking for help
| mainly resulted in the children taken away (and cared for
| badly).
|
| It depends on the area and the people working on it, I also
| know of good institutions, but I can see, why the so called
| underclass is sceptical of the common state institutions.
|
| Most help that comes, comes with hard obligations, that
| mainly keep them down. Give a struggeling person a bunch of
| paperwork to fill out and he or she will just struggle
| more. And only once they are down enough, they get a
| certain label and then they get a more or less competent
| government helper, putting them totally into dependent
| state. Most have accepted their state as retarded by then
| and rarely make it up again.
| leksak wrote:
| I remember this one time when I had a hard time making
| ends meet so I got a housing subsidy which made me be
| able to afford rent at the time. This was more or less
| the first 6 months of that year. After that I got a job,
| and cancelled my subsidy the moment I started my
| employment. I got "back debt" and had to pay back a
| substantial amount of the subsidy I've gotten (remember:
| without it, I wouldn't have made rent routinely).
| Effectively, while paying back that debt, as a gainfully
| employed person - I had less money at the end of each
| month (after paying rent that is) than while on the
| subsidy (after paying rent).
|
| I did feel kept down at that time.
| jacooper wrote:
| That's on the government to fix, the solution is definitely
| not to track everyone in the country to spot who needs
| help.
| jacknews wrote:
| Right, in a really, really ideal society, you wouldn't need to
| keep this kind of thing secret.
|
| I understand salaries are already public in Norway. Why
| shouldn't they be? Unless you can't justify your earnings, for
| some reason.
|
| I understand the 'big brother!' response to this kind of thing,
| I'm also squeamish about it. It does rely on a government that
| is trustworthy and accountable. But I don't think secrecy,
| paranoia, etc, is beneficial, compared to more openness.
| davoneus wrote:
| Well, it depends on what you call "Privacy". See, the Europeans
| (as a whole) take a completely different attitude towards
| Government and Private Organizations than Americans do. To many
| Americans, the Government is the big, bad wolf, trying to take
| everything from us. In Europe (to a much larger degree) they
| take the opposite stance. To many EU citizens, they can control
| the Government and it's policies at the ballot box, but not so
| the Corporations. That's why the best Privacy regulations
| regarding Corporations are coming from Europe, and not the US.
|
| I won't say one way is better than the other, but it's telling
| that almost every major IT Security standard that deals with
| Privacy (absent NIST of course) takes its guidance from the EU.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "SSB claims they want a less time-consuming way of collecting and
| analysing household consumption statistics in order to inform tax
| policy, social assistance and child allowance."
|
| Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can
| create policies to control your behavior to our liking.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Well, since we sat on our collective asses and blamed the
| consumer while corporates were building mass survaliance, we
| should not be surprised that the state is joining the party.
| jvm___ wrote:
| You're already being tracked by the grocery stores, wouldn't it
| be better to be tracked by someone who at least tries to have
| your best interests at heart vs. the grocery industry who just
| wants to sell you more?
| paganel wrote:
| The grocery store can't send me to prison nor can it order a
| judge to block my bank accounts based on my political
| believes and actions.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Now you are tracked by both private entities and the state.
|
| I don't want to be tracked by anyone, without my explicit
| consent, which I should be able to withdraw anytime.
| verisimi wrote:
| But you agreed to be managed by the government right?
| Remember when they came round and you signed the contract?
| To pay 40%+ in taxes? For the ability to vote once every
| 4-5 years for someone to represent you?
|
| You don't? Nor me.
|
| Governments presume to have authority over everything in
| their domain. The belief in the false idea of 'government'
| by the majority is what sustains their power.
|
| It is actually immoral and fraudulent. They are meant to
| serve us - and a servant is less than a free man/woman.
| That is not how they see it though - they are only serving
| themselves.
| runnerup wrote:
| No one's stopping you from amassing the mercenary arms
| necessary for taking over Sealand again and making your
| own sovereign nation.
|
| But you don't get to live near society and not "opt in"
| to our laws. You can protest the laws, you can choose to
| break the laws (and face any consequences). But you can't
| just pretend that anarchy should be the default status
| until you sign some imagined physical contract.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > But you don't get to live near society and not "opt in"
| to our laws. You can protest the laws, you can choose to
| break the laws (and face any consequences). But you can't
| just pretend that anarchy should be the default status
| until you sign some imagined physical contract.
|
| Prohibition was defeated because people broke the laws
| curtailing their individual freedom to drink alcohol.
| Individuals have been smoking marijuana despite a federal
| and state bans on it with the latter being being lifted
| recently but speedily. The abortion issue, at this
| moment, concerns the right of one to opt out of laws that
| curtail bodily independence.
|
| The social contract is fiction. Every freedom that has
| ever been sought or protected starts with the individual
| spiting the mandates of society while circumventing or
| blunting its punishments. That's not anarchy but a
| foundational cornerstone of liberty.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Individuals have been smoking marijuana despite a
| federal and state bans on it with the latter being being
| lifted recently but speedily
|
| _sigh_ I was hoping we'd see recreational In Florida, as
| even the older more conservative people seem to have
| embraced it.
|
| I believe it was supposed to be a ballot option, but it
| was struck down apparently because pendantic lawyers took
| issue with a single phrase. I'm not sure why that means
| it has to be removed for this ballot, why can't the
| proposers just fix the wording and resubmit.
| verisimi wrote:
| I'd move to 'Individuland'! Where is it? Don't tell me
| that states have claimed everything and everyone?!
|
| Must I accept the authority of government and rule by the
| worst of us?
|
| Why do you accept it? Cos you were born somewhere?
|
| Do I have the right to create a new country, and make you
| a citizen? If not, where does the government's right to
| do that come from?!? In fact, it has no right - all the
| pieces of paper they write, don't count! It is really an
| invention by tyrants, who want to you to think your
| voting is doing something. And you do!
| runnerup wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
|
| Just come with a very small, relatively affordable
| temporary mercenary force.
| [deleted]
| philistine wrote:
| At its core, you're fervently asking for a world without
| irregularities, without flaws. A just world. Our world
| isn't this way. It is unjust. Where you're born is
| restrictive on your opportunities, plain and simple.
|
| The only way to free yourself from the yoke of the US (I
| presume you are American) is to renounce your
| citizenship. Which means you cannot enjoy all that comes
| with this privilege, like living there. Are you ready to
| do that?
|
| And if you're wondering whether you can make a nation:
| yes you can. Maintaining a nation, having a sole claim on
| territory, and having recognitions by your peers (other
| nations), that's the tough part. Again, if you wish to
| free yourself from american tyranny this way, you need to
| find another nation, already recognized by the US,
| willing to agree to your existence as a nation. Are you
| able to do that?
|
| Like I said, an unjust world.
| verisimi wrote:
| Does government make justice better or worse? I think
| most people are fair minded. The state is a tyrant
| though.
|
| What does it say about us, if are so accepting and
| defensive of it?
|
| How much money is it ok to forcibly take (tax)? If any is
| forcibly taken, are you enslaved?
|
| The are individual options are poor. But I'm not going to
| say the tyranny is 'good', 'right', 'acceptable'.
| epgui wrote:
| Honest question: how old are you?
| verisimi wrote:
| ASL?
|
| It is a loaded question. You want to say something about
| age. Why?
|
| Government is a form of slavery. Everyone goes along with
| this. Why?
|
| You can see this is the case because we are steeped in
| euphemisms:
|
| 'Democracy' is really 'representative democracy' - you
| vote for someone to represent you for 4-5 years.
|
| 'Department of defence' is the department of attack.
|
| 'Military aid' gives guns.
|
| 'Freedom of speech' means its fine to ban people without
| legal recourse for 'hate speech'.
|
| 'My body my choice' means it's fine to kill a baby, but
| that you can be fired if you refuse medical treatment.
|
| 'Domestic terrorists' is anyone the government doesn't
| like, watch you bank account get frozen.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Government is a form of slavery.
|
| > 'Democracy' is really 'representative democracy' - you
| vote for someone to represent you for 4-5 years.
|
| You're comfortable with this overly broad definition of
| slavery, but have issues with calling a form of democracy
| "democracy"?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > ASL?
|
| Huh?
|
| > It is a loaded question. You want to say something
| about age. Why?
|
| Because, in our experience, most people who argue this
| kind of position are in their teens or early 20s. (I also
| note that you didn't answer the question, and seem
| somewhat defensive about it.)
|
| Your position _is_ fairly naive. Read the news right now.
| Russia is invading Ukraine. If you set up your perfect
| non-government-run country... how long are you going to
| be able to keep it? And even if you can keep it against
| external invaders, how about internal takeover.
|
| Those who know history remember seeing this idea tried.
| The French Revolution wound up with the Terror, and then
| Napoleon. The Russian Revolution wound up, not with
| communes, but with the Communist Party.
|
| And we've seen chaos. We've seen towns in the Wild West
| voluntarily start paying money to hire law officers
| because they were tired of people getting shot down in
| the streets. We've seen warlords arise in Somalia when
| there wasn't a central government.
|
| > Government is a form of slavery. Everyone goes along
| with this. Why?
|
| Because your absolute, ideal freedom breaks down when you
| have a neighbor, who _also_ wants that absolute, ideal
| freedom. Your freedom constrains other peoples ' freedom;
| their freedom constrains yours. You can never be
| perfectly free.
|
| And then, they may not like you constraining their
| freedom. So they may attempt to enforce their desires on
| you, with force. So you either need to fight them, or you
| need something like a police department to keep them from
| doing so.
|
| In the end, it turns out that a reasonably-well-governed
| country is the optimum of freedom, even though nobody is
| perfectly free.
|
| And, we kind of _do_ (collectively) consent to this.
| "Deriving their just powers from the consent of the
| governed". Especially in the US, the people have enough
| guns that they can, if they choose, withdraw their
| consent from the government - but it's going to get _very
| bloody_ if that happens. It won 't be an improvement over
| the current state.
| verisimi wrote:
| I was expecting you to make a strawman attack - and you
| did anyway (teen). I prefer to engage with the topic.
|
| There are many ways to interpret what is going on in
| Russia. I've no idea what's really going on - I'm not
| there. I suspect its just theatrics, to make us all
| fearful, decrease the population, to gain even more power
| from the people. Russians believe their government is
| defending ethnic Russians who have been under attack by
| literal nazis since 2013. Who has the truth? CNN?
|
| I don't say I'm going to create my own country and defend
| it. All I say is government is slavery. You can justify
| paying taxes, that you love your country, whatever you
| like. You can say that sending weapons to Ukraine is
| fine. But this is because you believe what your
| government tells you - it is not 'free thinking'.
| Stockholm syndrome perhaps - you have come to love your
| captor.
|
| They do run the news you know. We actually live in a
| fascist (government + corporation) state. They don't give
| you truth, they tell you what is expedient for their
| aims. And they aim to control what you think. They may
| have you cheering for infringement of individual people's
| natural rights - so complete is the way they frame the
| world to most.
|
| My position is that I am forced to accept their immoral
| force. Unlike you, I'm not going to call government
| actions 'right' or 'moral'. I don't individually consent
| to any of it! (There is no such thing as collective
| consent - you and your friends cannot justly tell me what
| to do). The appearance of consent is due to the threat
| and actual use of force.
|
| > In the end, it turns out that a reasonably-well-
| governed country is the optimum of freedom, even though
| nobody is perfectly free.
|
| I know I'm a slave, but you are labouring under the
| illusion you are free. I'm not sugar-coated the turd - I
| leave that to others.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I'd move to 'Individuland'! Where is it?
|
| Somalia is the standard answer. Or get on a boat and live
| at sea.
| hhjinks wrote:
| You're free to live in the woods if you don't like the
| deal. You don't get to use any of society's
| infrastructure if you don't opt in, though. You won't be
| taxed, of course, since you can't engage with any
| economic activity within society. I'm sure you could make
| a nice commune in the wilderness somewhere. Just don't
| bring anything from society with you, like tools,
| clothes, food, livestock, seeds. Good luck out there.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Where can this be done legally in the US?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| You should probably check for "public land", which is
| found in almost all States but is very, very frequent
| west of Texas. See e.g. the map at:
|
| https://vividmaps.com/non-private-land-in-united-states/
|
| But you should check what you can do in it. It will be
| probably legal to park a vehicle there and very probably
| illegal to dig a moat around it (public means "of
| everyone", not just "free").
| hhjinks wrote:
| Why would someone who rejects society care about
| society's laws?
| annyeonghada wrote:
| Because (s)he may not care about society, but society -
| in particular, the government - care about him/her.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| To avoid issues, to avoid conflict.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is an interesting argument, but I think the reality is
| you don't get to opt-in. You are automatically opted in
| based on the local jurisdiction and, more importantly,
| you have no way to opt out beyond Michael Scott's cry 'I
| declare bankruptcy!'.
|
| You can go to live in a forest. Your obligations to the
| jurisdiction remain.
| burnished wrote:
| You, uh, sorta can't. There is no unowned land left. You
| can squat but that is living as an outlaw.
|
| Also >You don't get to use any of society's
| infrastructure if you don't opt in, though. You don't
| represent the rest of us, so why are you pretending to
| the authority to make stipulations like this? I'd imagine
| if there were any outlands left to retreat to, you would
| at least have some bartering going on there at the
| fringes.
| hhjinks wrote:
| I'm not pretending to be an authority on anything, or
| representing anyone but myself. You can't just pick and
| choose which parts of society you want to comply with. If
| you do, you get incarcerated. As a direct consequence,
| interfacing with society's infrastructure is a soft opt-
| in, which will result in your incarceration if you don't
| live within the bounds of that society. So it's not a
| stipulation, nor do I require any authority, nor do I
| need to speek for anyone, when saying it, since it's a
| necessary component of the theoretical.
| verisimi wrote:
| > You can't just pick and choose which parts of society
| you want to comply with.
|
| You can't pick any parts. Choice has nothing to do with
| it. You serve the government, it does not serve you. You
| are a slave.
|
| But you can pretend that you picked what society is
| asking you to do, if you like - that you picked how much
| tax you paid, that your government borrowed so many
| trillions, the way they spend that money, which wars they
| fight, etc, etc. If you don't believe me, try and change
| something.
|
| I personally think that's an example of Stockholm
| syndrome, but each to their own.
| dvdkon wrote:
| That's the thing: you can't really do that. And the
| argument shouldn't be "society vs wilderness", but
| "existing vs new society".
|
| In the past, it was really hard to sever ties with one
| society and government and go form a new one, but you
| could actually find places where nobody would immediately
| chase you away (even then most expansion was at the
| expense of natives, though). Nowadays that's impossible.
| A small number of people could maybe live in Siberia
| undetected, but that's more like partisan warfare than
| establishing a new country: The moment Russian government
| finds out anyone's there, they're getting deported. Your
| best bet for not living in an existing state is amassing
| an army (likely illegal in your home country) and
| invading a weak state. Good luck.
| davoneus wrote:
| What a load of BS. The predominant form of social
| organization is from a majority status. The people who
| voted in that government are the ones who direct the
| government resources, and are determining what it's
| polices are towards the governed.
|
| The people in Norway have a clear and simple choice; they
| can sit and do nothing, or they can do something. Action
| might entail moving the hell out of the country and
| complain from a distance. They could also vote in a new
| government, but it's up to them.
|
| As far as that BS idea that "They are meant to serve us",
| no you are quite wrong. The Government serves the people
| who voted it in, and gave it control of those resources.
| That Government, in the end, has no obligation to
| _anyone_ else . Its only obligation is to those who voted
| it in, and it uses that granted power as a proxy for
| those people (and corporations) to enact their will.
| Don't' like it? Fine, do something about it, rather than
| complain here about big, bad Government.
| burnished wrote:
| Wouldn't it be wild if there were some sort of middle
| ground between "say and do nothing" and "die in a failed
| militant uprising"?
| FreqSep wrote:
| Look, I am far from pro-government interference. That
| being said, I personally disagree with much of your
| argument here.
|
| You implicitly agree to _some_ measure when you
| participate in the society set up by government.
|
| There is today a very common attitude that governments
| are intentionally only serving a small elite. This
| populist - perhaps even intuitive - rhetoric is
| exaggerated for most of the Western world.
|
| If you're living on your own out in the wilderness, I can
| see your argument. But this actually does exist to some
| degree in how uncontacted peoples[0] are generally not
| subject to the laws of the government whos jurisdiction
| they fall under. This isn't a lifestyle most of us would
| choose but perhaps there is some merit to making this
| path easier to take for those who desire it.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A small elite utilizing a governmental structure to
| control a much larger human population is basically the
| story of history since the dawn of agriculture and the
| formation of city-states.
|
| A radical relatively recent notion is that democratic
| systems of government which allowed the public to elect
| representatives to the decision-making positions within
| the government would alter this historical dynamic and
| would eliminate the concentration of real power in the
| hands of a small group of elites. This notion hasn't
| really worked out in the USA as it's rather clear that
| American politicians today almost universally serve as
| the equivalents of corporate middle managers within a
| larger power structure controlled by entities like large
| banks and hedge funds, industrial conglomerates in
| energy/tech/pharma/ag/etc, military industrial
| contractors and affiliated government bureaucracies, and
| corporate and state propaganda organizations, who funnel
| wealth up to a tiny minority (quite similar in
| proportional structure to say, the House of Saud's
| ~15,000 affiliates relative to the Saudi population of
| what, ~35 million?)
|
| The alternative approach of communism has merely replaced
| one set of elites (inherited aristocratic wealth) with
| another (members of government bureaucracies selected by
| internal bureaucratic politics, see China for example),
| where the general population doesn't even have the
| illusion of being represented in a democratic process. In
| some cases (Cuba) this has indeed raised the average
| standard of living for the majority of the population,
| which is an uncomfortable fact for many, although
| repression of all dissent tends to be the price for that.
|
| Now, maybe equalizing technology can get us out of this
| mess to some extent, but it truly dates back to the
| origins of what we call civilization. Kings and priests
| weren't really possible until farmers figured out how to
| grow far more food than they themselves needed; some
| narcissitic types figured out they could control this
| excess and use it to set themselves up at the top of the
| social pyramid (rather literally as in Egypt,
| Mesoamerica, etc.), and that's continued relatively
| unchanged right on up to the present day (with some
| improvements of course, for example the elimination of
| chattel slavery in most places).
| jdasdf wrote:
| I dispute your assertion that society is setup by the
| government.
| FreqSep wrote:
| Yes, I agree and see now that I made a bad choice of
| words there.
|
| Correcting it I would rephrase it to say that massive
| components of society are directly facilitated by the
| government as one example: (roads -> shipped goods,
| travel experiences, etc)
| verisimi wrote:
| How do you like that the roads previous generations paid
| for are now being turned into bike lanes, that you pay to
| park, etc.
|
| Did the government make the right decisions then? Are
| they making the right decisions now?
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _You don 't? Nor me_
|
| Technically (in at least some systems), you do when you
| ask for residency - when you leave the parent's house to
| live somewhere defined in the territory, and make that
| formal. That is the "signature of the contract".
|
| The simile of the "service" holds credit. Of course, do
| not forget that many other models were drawn in History
| (e.g.: Hobbes, "better compromise than the insecurity
| which comes with anarchy", etc).
| hammock wrote:
| Grocery stores who track me are subject to the pressures of
| competitive enterprise. The government is not.
|
| And that's to say nothing of the fact that, at least in the
| US, about 50% of the entire population at any given time tend
| NOT to believe that the government has their best interest in
| mind
| panarky wrote:
| >> the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can
| create policies to control your behavior
|
| If I was an evil mastermind dominating you for my own
| nefarious purposes, I probably wouldn't start by monitoring
| the pasta in your pantry.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| My god.
|
| "competitive enterprise"?
|
| You mean, like, between Walmart and Amazon? They're really
| competing for YOUR dollar? They have YOUR best interests at
| heart?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >between Walmart and Amazon
|
| I doubt Walmart is a major player in Norway.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Yes, in the mundane literal sense, they are subject to
| competition in a way government is not. This is
| blindingly obvious to anyone whose brain hasn't been
| rotted by extremist populist discourse. We (rightfully)
| worry about excessive market power when companies are
| still nowhere close to the degree of monopoly that govt
| has by design.
|
| I constantly make decisions at a moment's notice to
| patronize stores other than Amazon and Walmart. I don't
| recall the last time I was able to choose to live a la
| carte under a specific German or Chilean law.
|
| I say all of this neutrally. Government is coercive and
| monopolistic, because it's the institution that we chose
| to channel as much of society's coercion as possible.
| It's why we have nominal democratic control over it:
| because there's no alternative to it. It's absurd how
| people too dim to understand this need to shove
| everything into the framing of "govt has no downsides,
| the market has no upsides" and warp reality into claims
| that even famously powerful companies like Amazon are
| more optional than govt is.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| With respect-
|
| I know what you mean when you say "government is
| monopolistic" but with a moment's reflection perhaps you
| will agree that- certainly in the US- it is an incorrect
| statement.
|
| There is the abstraction called "government" which in its
| definition implies a singleton-ness- even this in
| practice fails the test because every US jurisdiction is
| overseen by multiple overlapping "governmental"
| authorities, and people interact with different ones
| often in conflict with each other all the time.
|
| However the more significant objections to "government is
| monopolistic" are these:
|
| In the "monopoly" sense there is literally no actual
| service in which any layer of US government is the sole
| provider. Mail delivery? Nope- UPS, Fedex, etc. Rule
| making? Ha. Contract law exists and in simple obvious
| ways even supercedes constitutional protections.
| Policing? Lots of private security around. Education?
| Tons of private schools around, including frauds that
| siphon public dollars while excluding public kids. Health
| care? Don't make me laugh/cry at the private predatory
| brutally expensive evilness that is so much of the US
| healthcare "system". Money supply? Nope, nearly all
| dollars are created and manager by private entities.
| Military? Also plenty of options here, none in any sense
| "well-regulated".
|
| Which brings me to the "-olistic" suffix of monopolistic,
| which implies an intent to monopolize, a set of behaviors
| that prevents competition and the existence of
| alternatives to the singleton. In this way, as the above
| shows and which is plainly evident- there is virtually no
| domain in which the US government acts as a predatory
| singleton. The "-ilistic" is the most deceptive and
| incorrect sense of the statement "government (in the US)
| is monopolistic" because it simply isn't.
|
| Amazon and Walmart, however- are defining the practice.
|
| And when it comes to "nominal democratic control"- don't
| get me started. A responsive customer service agent is
| the devil's version of democracy. No thank you.
|
| Cheers.
| inawarminister wrote:
| Yes. Walmart, Amazon, or another disruptor coming in to
| eat the incumbents' lunch money.
|
| Nations don't do that... Actually, they do - the wheel of
| history has moved, now we have the incumbent hegemon and
| her close allies pulling everything to stay on top,
| though it might be too late.
|
| Still, the free-ish market is a much more benign
| mechanism than international competition, as long as the
| relevant supervision is there. Maybe.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| You can shop at small mom and pop shops.
| jonahbenton wrote:
| With respect, one can and should try, but in lots of
| places and for lots of products it can be pretty
| hard/much more expensive to do.
| hericium wrote:
| > You're already being tracked by the grocery stores
|
| With cash and no store "loyalty" app - no.
|
| > wouldn't it be better to be tracked by someone who at least
| tries to have your best interests at heart
|
| But this is not the case here.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| > With cash and no store "loyalty" app - no.
|
| Several stores track your phone inside the store. Some also
| use facial recognition.
|
| I haven't seen any store use automatic license plate
| readers on customer cars but It wouldn't surprise me if
| some do.
| gruez wrote:
| >Several stores track your phone inside the store
|
| phones made in the last few years have mac address
| randomization to thwart this type of stuff. It's not
| perfect, but it suffices to prevent them from building a
| profile of your purchases between visits.
|
| >Some also use facial recognition.
|
| good thing covid made face masks socially acceptable ;)
| ftyers wrote:
| In England they definitely do for parking purposes. Like,
| you get two hours free parking and after you have to pay.
| And they track it via licence plate readers.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _" With cash and no store "loyalty" app - no."_
|
| Oh, but you are. You are lumped in with other folks using
| cash and no loyalty card. There is a demographic like you,
| in other words. You might very well be tracked through the
| store so that they can study where you go and what you stop
| at as well.
|
| _> wouldn 't it be better to be tracked by someone who at
| least tries to have your best interests at heart_
|
| Ok. Except that they might just use it to do good overall
| too. I very highly doubt you can be any more sure than the
| rest of us.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| > You are lumped in with other folks using cash and no
| loyalty card.
|
| More than that you're lumped in with other folks who have
| the same habits and brand preferences as you, which may
| very well be a lump of exactly one person.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| >> You're already being tracked by the grocery stores > >
| With cash and no store "loyalty" app - no.
|
| Assuming no facial recognition, phone tracking or license
| plate reading, all that means is they aren't tracking you
| between visits. Certainly the items purchased together are
| tracked. And they get lumped together into the "cash, no
| card" group. And if you buy any age restricted products
| where they can see your ID, your birthdate is entered into
| the system, which is probably unique enough among cardless
| cash users in any grocery store.
| ratsmack wrote:
| >tracked by someone who at least tries to have your best
| interests at heart
|
| I don't know if that was sarcasm or you being really naive.
| Frost1x wrote:
| The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I'm fairly certain this
| is how many view this issue and supporting government over
| privatization in the current environment. They may not be
| your friend but they may help compete against and regulate
| those currently suppressing you.
|
| For that to change, privization needs to stop focusing on
| minimizing its alignment for personal gain and has to look
| at shedding a bit back towards society, realigning more at
| a slight loss of gains, not capturing gains purely for
| itself.
|
| If that doesn't happen, you're going to continue to see
| surges of support for government, ideas of socialism, etc.
| codewench wrote:
| Maxim 29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No
| more. No less.
| epgui wrote:
| I don't think the view that "government is bad" is any less
| naive than the alternative, and it's a rather less
| sophisticated viewpoint. Assuming you live in a functional
| country, I'd even go so far as to say it's a juvenile
| viewpoint.
| asiachick wrote:
| The Norwegian government may have a reputation for actually
| putting my best interests at heart but on the balance I think
| most governments do not have a good track record of putting
| my best interests at heart either unintentionally or that the
| people in charge are outright corrupt.
| macinjosh wrote:
| > wouldn't it be better to be tracked by someone who at least
| tries to have your best interests at heart
|
| This sounds like a fantasy. I much prefer the supermarket
| getting my data and trying to sell me more because their
| motivations are _clear_ to me.
|
| The government is supposed to have my interests at heart yet,
| it is impossible to even come close to knowing everyone's
| interests. It is even more difficult to simultaneously
| satisfy them unless this "everyone" happens to be incredibly
| homogeneous in culture, values, and lifestyle. Kinda like a
| small northern country. Additionally, this assumes an
| altruistic leadership in the first place.
|
| In reality what happens is the interests of the factions in
| power are what are held up by government at any given time.
| In democracy those factions change routinely and so do the
| things they care about. This creates uncertainty and risk. So
| yeah I prefer the predictability of a corporation to the ever
| changing and ever more powerful politics of government. At
| least I know what I am dealing with.
| Siddarth1977 wrote:
| The people in government (and/or lobbyists and special
| interest groups controlling them) absolutely do not "have
| your best interests a heart".
|
| I'm way less concerned about someone who just wants to sell
| me more than about the government. It's trivial for me to not
| buy a new package of sugar-snacks no matter how much they
| advertise it, whereas governmental actions can ruin my life.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| The assumption that anyone beside yourself has your best
| interest at heart is the one thing that I simply cannot
| comprehend. Time and time again, humans have shown that they
| do not care about others beyond what is expected within the
| rules of the society ( and even then it really depends on how
| well those rules are enforced - see recent pandemic's 'we are
| all in this together' messages but from yachts ).
|
| Realistically, only you can have your own interests at heart.
| Obviously, exceptions in the form children and mental
| handicaps comes in, but, well.. does government and
| corporations see the population at large as children?
|
| In other words, being tracked is not good for the individual
| regardless of who is tracking you. It doesn't matter if
| government tracking is better or worse. They are both bad and
| they erode your ability to do things as you see fit.
| Tryk wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy, we don't need to be tracked by
| either.
| more_corn wrote:
| So, "it's ok because someone already tries to do it and
| they're worse?" This is the second worst argument against
| privacy I've ever heard after "I have nothing to hide".
| Privacy is essential for human dignity. Tracking everything a
| person does and buys is dehumanizing and ripe for abuse.
|
| But there's no precedent for personal data being misused
| mishandled or abused right?
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Realistically, what is the worst possible consequence of a
| supermarket being able to track you? At worst, I suppose you
| be could be charged more for purchasing a certain item at
| that particular chain. I highly doubt this has ever happened,
| since it's bad for business. The usual consequence for
| getting tracked at the supermarket is getting a discount on
| certain groceries via a loyalty program, with zero downsides
| for you.
|
| What is the worst realistic consequence for a government
| (which has orders of magnitude more power than a lowly
| supermarket chain) tracking all grocery purchases? As many
| other posters have noted, it's reasonable to imagine a
| progressive sin tax: for example, your sales tax rate
| increases as your purchase more meat or liquor. This has a
| much more profound impact than anything the supermarket is
| powered to do as a result of tracking your purchases.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| You completely forgot that those data can and will be sold
| to anybody interested, anywhere.
|
| Much more worrisome image rather than taxing ie chronic
| junkfood eaters who will inevitably cost health system
| easily 100x compared to healthy persons.
| macinjosh wrote:
| I also can refuse to give my data to any corporation I
| please. Yet any data the government requires I am forced
| to provide and am unable to opt out.
| macinjosh wrote:
| If we are concerned about the health care costs of people
| eating too much junk food I would also think we _must_
| curtail any other unnecessary risky or dangerous behavior
| that can lead to increased health care needs like
| drinking, biking on a busy road, rock climbing, skiing,
| skateboarding, endurance sports that slowly destroy your
| joints, skydiving, motorized racing of any kind,
| horseback riding, suntanning... I could go on.
| specialist wrote:
| The worst outcome is those private entities treat my data
| as their property, to do with as they wish, without any
| accountability, transparency, or recourse.
|
| In other words, the staus quo.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I do not think it likely that e.g. grocery stores are
| expending capital to develop and implement systems to give
| there customers leverage to pay them less money, with no
| benefit (never mind net benefit) to the grocery store.
|
| It's more likely that there is a side to the art of
| tracking that you do not account for, than the idea that
| the grocery stores are so benevolent.
| kalmi10 wrote:
| I think the idea is that if one in a loyalty program, and
| it provides them with some discount/benefits, then they
| are more likely to shop there instead of at some other
| chain. This way they spend their money at that chain, and
| that is good for the store. It's just one more way stores
| are competing with each other. It also provides the chain
| with some data, but I am uncertain of its utility. I
| don't really believe it to be useful for them in general
| for anything other than targeting.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| The benefit to the store is that they can more closely
| monitor consumption patterns across time (e.g. people
| buying X will also frequently buy Y, but not necessarily
| on the same grocery trip). I don't see how this is
| harmful to the consumer.
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| Corporations cannot put me in jail. Corporations cannot
| (for the most part) just take my money. Other than denying
| me service, corporations have little power over me, except
| that which is granted to them by the government itself.
|
| Government tracking has the potential to be much worse than
| corporate tracking.
|
| (I think I'm agreeing with your post, but I'm not sure)
| beowulfey wrote:
| In theory, a democratic government is supposed to be
| beholden to its people, but the problem you are
| describing occurs when the government is no longer under
| the power of the population.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Or if you're part of a disfavored minority.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Yes, we are in 100% agreement.
| baq wrote:
| corporations cannot put you in jail if law enforcement
| works.
|
| if the government fails, corporations can and will put
| you in jail.
| epgui wrote:
| I may be getting hung up in semantics, but calling this a
| sin tax is stupid. Who cares if alcohol is a "sin" or not?
| That's irrelevant, what matters is that it's a highly
| addicting poison that harms everyone.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > calling this a sin tax is stupid
|
| "Sin tax" is the name for a targeted excise tax to
| discourage consumption. The name goes back to the 1500s
| when the Catholic Church used such a tactic (or at least
| justification) to tax certain activities.
|
| Whether we current use a moral framework to distinguish
| what goods to tax, it's become an accepted term.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| > Realistically, what is the worst possible consequence of
| a supermarket being able to track you? At worst, I suppose
| you be could be charged more for purchasing a certain item
| at that particular chain.
|
| The way it works in Norway at the moment is that you can
| get a membership at any of the grocery chains, download an
| app and what not. Then you register your debit card in that
| app, and it monitors what you buy, and you get discounted
| prices on stuff you buy the most of and/or benefits in
| general.
|
| Personally I have no problem with this, because it's an
| opt-in thing.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > I suppose you be could be charged more for purchasing a
| certain item at that particular chain. I highly doubt this
| has ever happened, since it's bad for business.
|
| I'm sure it has, it's just done in a subtle manner you
| don't notice.
|
| > What is the worst realistic consequence for a
| government...tracking all grocery purchases? As many other
| posters have noted, it's reasonable to imagine a
| progressive sin tax:
|
| That was determined by a democracy. And if a government
| wanted to do that today, it would be trivial to do via
| fiat. No need to build a database or even track what
| exactly is purchased. Just swipe your "tax setting" card
| before you swipe anything else.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| >I'm sure it has, it's just done in a subtle manner you
| don't notice.
|
| How do you figure? In all grocery stores I've visited,
| loyalty card discounts are clearly noted on the item's
| price tag. I've never seen any hidden discounts (or
| surcharges) that pop up only at checkout.
|
| >Just swipe your "tax setting" card before you swipe
| anything else.
|
| Very true, but decentralizing progressive sales tax
| collection is rife for fraud. Without centrally tracking
| everyone's cumulative tax burden, there would be no way
| to prevent people from using hacked Tax Setting cards
| that grossly underreport their income or cumulative meat
| consumption. Hacking notwithstanding, this would also be
| a lot more expensive that centrally tracking everything,
| since each Tax Setting card would have to maintain its
| own memory of cumulative purchases (otherwise, just ring
| up your massive meat order one steak at a time).
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > In all grocery stores I've visited, loyalty card
| discounts are clearly noted on the item's price tag. I've
| never seen any hidden discounts (or surcharges) that pop
| up only at checkout.
|
| Yes. A surcharge won't show up there. The most common way
| to do things is to have a very high base price and give
| people variable discounts.
|
| > decentralizing progressive sales tax collection is rife
| for fraud.
|
| So is distributing sheets of paper that I can exchange
| for goods and services. It's pretty cheap and easy to do
| this and I bet it can be completely done offline with
| security good enough that the biggest issue will be
| retailers letting people skip the excise tax.
|
| As a sidenote - why are people concerned with the
| government putting a sin tax on meat?
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > otherwise, just ring up your massive meat order one
| steak at a time
|
| David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel "The Pale King"
| (which is set within the context of an Internal Revenue
| Service Regional Examination Centre and the people
| working there) contains something like that - at some
| point a supposed 1977 progressive sales tax experiment in
| Illinois is mentioned, which of course went horribly
| wrong and caused lots of chaos because people began
| splitting up their purchases in order to stay within the
| lowest tax band, and so it had to be repealed again after
| four months.
| Amezarak wrote:
| > That was determined by a democracy.
|
| Concentration camps, extrajudicial killings, racial
| violence, anti-labor violence, mass surveillance, and
| torture have all been done by democracies too.
|
| "We're a democracy" in Europe and the US, generally
| speaking, means a tiny subset of the government is
| democratically elected and responsible for setting high-
| level policy goals. It doesn't mean the government _as a
| whole_ carries out the will of the people on an even
| regular basis or always has their best interests at
| heart. We should be very careful about giving any
| powerful organization, government or corporate, more
| power (and information is power) regardless of its
| nominal method of governance.
| ben_w wrote:
| The _worst case_ scenario is that the country changes its
| mind about morality (happens a lot and not just as a result
| of invasions and coups), and suddenly a particular group
| which can be identified by shopping preferences is now at
| risk.
|
| Imagine if this was happening in America before and then
| during the Prohibition era and how grape juice and yeast
| sales would look.
|
| Or abortifacients and birth control pills today, given the
| relevant news story in the US (consider what _could_
| plausibility happen not just what actually has happened)
| and certain politicians describing the latter as the
| former.
| bobthechef wrote:
| taylorius wrote:
| At least you (hopefully) know what the Supermarket is up to -
| as you say, they just want to sell you more stuff. The
| government on the other hand - who knows what plans they
| might cook up.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| This was my take on it. The supermarket can't reach into my
| paycheck and take more money at their whim, nor can they
| put me in jail.
| philistine wrote:
| That's incredibly facile. The supermarket can, and will,
| sell all your data because there's profit in it. Now try to
| make sense of how you know what they're up to.
|
| At least with the government, you have a ton of elected
| representative who can help you if the government does
| something dumb with the data.
| dvdkon wrote:
| I know Norway isn't in the EU, but the GDPR prevents (or
| rather lets users decide on) sales of data like this. Not
| sure how it would interact with mass collection of data
| by a government agency, but any such transfers might be
| exempted by an additional law.
| jelling wrote:
| You should consider reading "Seeing Like a State" for a
| history of how even well intentioned social engineering
| policies can go seriously off the rails.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > wouldn't it be better to be tracked by someone who at least
| tries to have your best interests at heart vs. the grocery
| industry who just wants to sell you more?
|
| Oh man, if somebody with the power of a state tracked
| everything I did in order to improve my life, and for no
| other reason than that, I would _love_ it. Sounds like a
| guardian angel. Sign me up.
|
| But... what if they didn't care about me very much, never
| really thought of me at all, and really just saw me as one
| person among tens of millions? What if instead of helping me,
| their main motivation was to get re-elected?
|
| And what if the government in power was somebody I actively
| didn't like, and had even protested against? Maybe I felt
| they were evil and irresponsible. Would I still want them
| tracking me and trying to change my behavior?
|
| I can think of people I would want to give that kind of power
| to, but it's the people I don't know about yet that worry me.
| DrJokepu wrote:
| It doesn't look like this will stop supermarkets from
| tracking people, this will just require them to share that
| information with the government, so this tracking will be in
| addition to the existing tracking, not replacing it. I would
| say that's objectively worse.
| AlbertoGP wrote:
| It also creates the incentive for the government to allow
| more and more invasive tracking by the shops.
| Iv wrote:
| The goal of a democratic state is not to control the behavior
| of its population.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| punnerud wrote:
| And SSB in anonymizing and grouping the data before anyone
| internal can use it for analyzing
| einherjae wrote:
| They say. For now...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| that's the point of any policy by definition. All policies do
| is create either negative or positive incentives that deter or
| encourage behavior respectively, I don't see why you ought to
| do it on the basis of bad data rather than good data.
|
| When you get child tax credits or pay a carbon tax very
| explicitly the point is to control what you do, that's not new,
| secret or particularly sinister.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Or to tax you more efficiently.
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Isn't that just what sales tax is for? Another comment
| mentioned increasing your tax bracket if you bought too much
| meat, but trivially they could just add a sales tax on meat
| instead to the same effect.
| rglullis wrote:
| With this they can make a progressive sales tax. "Oh, if
| you buy meat according to the national average, you pay the
| standard tax. But if you are eating more than that, you pay
| double."
| data-ottawa wrote:
| Thanks, that's an informative reply I hadn't thought of
| spoonjim wrote:
| There are already ways to do this, you give everyone a
| "ration card" for 50% off up to N pounds of meat.
| rglullis wrote:
| That would push up the price of meat for everyone.
|
| (Really, HN? Voting down something that is 101
| microeconomics to negative scores without one single
| argument?)
| archsurface wrote:
| You haven't eaten your five-a-day fruit and veg - more
| tax on your chocolate. Oh, you haven't reached your 10000
| steps today either - more tax.
| rglullis wrote:
| Distinction without a difference
| [deleted]
| Zigurd wrote:
| Video analysis, grocery delivery data sold to data brokers,
| etc. are unregulated in some places like the US. So you are
| much more likely to have, for example, your health insurance
| revoked for whatever untransparent reasons in places where this
| kind of data collection is all in the private sector.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| > Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can
| create policies to control your behavior to our liking.
|
| How about this phrasing instead?
|
| _"The more we know about you, the more efficiently we can
| create policies to control your behavior to *YOUR* liking."_
|
| Not all governments are unfriendly to their people. Or, should
| I say, not all people imagine their government is evil. I'm
| looking at you USA.
| molszanski wrote:
| This communicates a different thing to me.
|
| This reminds me that thanks to credit/debit cards and IT,
| supermarket chains, banks and corporation have a detailed
| information on what I buy.
|
| And we have no idea how they use this information. We may only
| assume and I don't think we would be happy if we would found
| out.
|
| Not that I want the government to know too.
| andreshb wrote:
| More the reason to not feed your guests
| Jenz wrote:
| I am confounded as to why I have not heard of this. I'd
| appreciate it if someone could link me the official statement.
| c_--vote_win wrote:
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| Can you pay cash?
| ekianjo wrote:
| Now you know why governments want you to move away from cash
| transactions. Cash is evil anyway because it can be used to
| evade taxes, finance terrorism and purchase drugs! Think about
| the children!
| binz120 wrote:
| Yeah you could haha I think the majority of the public wouldn't
| care about their food purchases being tracked.
| digitallyfree wrote:
| I feel it's similar to people "not caring" about corporate
| tracking (e.g. browser tracking, or cell phone companies
| selling location data) - i.e. by turning a blind eye to it as
| long as their services work and so on. They accept it as the
| norm and do not push back against these measures.
|
| They know that it's happening and don't like it, like how
| they won't like the Norweigan government's decision. But
| they'll likely put up little resistance and move on to other
| things.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > wouldn't care about their food purchases being tracked
|
| You dont buy only food in supermarkets these days.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Really? What if it includes alcohol sales? Do you want the
| state to know how much alcohol you consume?
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| You can't buy alcohol at the supermarket in Norway.
| samstave wrote:
| "How many villages does a Man need to Pillage to get a
| drink in this place?!"
| [deleted]
| m-s wrote:
| Yes, you can. But only drinks with up to 4.7% abv
| Tor3 wrote:
| You can buy alcohol at the supermarket in Norway, it's
| just that it's limited to alcohol of 4.5%vol. or lower
| (i.e. the supermarkets sell beer and alcohol cider and
| the like).
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| 4.5%, no thanks. Easier to get water intoxication than
| feel anything about alcohol.
| gyaru wrote:
| The state owns the only alcohol store.
| neither_color wrote:
| Sounds like Virginia. A lot of states have a similar
| system in place:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage_control_
| sta...
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The state owns the only alcohol store.
|
| How do they feel about being responsible of delivering
| poison to people then? Somehow I can rationalize it if
| it's a transaction between private parties, but if the
| government acts as the drug dealer it's no better than a
| cartel.
| jen20 wrote:
| Given that the alternatives to legal alcohol are well
| known, I'd imagine they feel fine about it.
| Tor3 wrote:
| See my comment above - you can buy beer elsewhere, unless
| it's stronger than the typical lager.
| admash wrote:
| In case you were unaware, all liquor stores in Norway are
| run by the government -- "vinmonopolet" as they are called.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinmonopolet
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| That misses the point.
| marcc wrote:
| Sarcasm? I think most people should care about this.
| binz120 wrote:
| Yes. They start with food and then god knows what else they
| will track. Give them an inch and they will take a mile.
| Zigurd wrote:
| What do you think happens to online food delivery orders?
| That all gets sold to data brokers.
| convolvatron wrote:
| because I used the same credit card at Whole Foods as
| linked to my amazon account my last shopping trip there
| showed up in 'recently purchased' and 'suggestions'. are we
| upset because the Norwegian government is getting the same
| information that Amazon is clearly mining?
| rglullis wrote:
| You don't pay taxes (yet?) to Amazon.
| guerrilla wrote:
| They pay profit instead. What's it matter though?
| rglullis wrote:
| The ability to collect taxes was shorthand for "the right
| to use force to compel you to do things as they see fit".
|
| Amazon can not compel you to buy from them, and Amazon
| can not throw you in jail if they don't like you as a
| customer.
|
| Mining personal data and using it against the interests
| of the individual is bad in both cases, but it is _far_
| more dangerous when done by the State.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Amazon can not compel you to buy from them, and Amazon
| can not throw you in jail if they don't like you as a
| customer.
|
| Of course they can, by becoming a monopoly and driving
| all other options for things you need out of business.
| Also by manipulating you with advertisements and
| propaganda. Coercion has many forms.
| rglullis wrote:
| Last I checked, it is still illegal to have a monopoly
| and the government _can_ break a company apart if it
| starts abusing its power.
|
| Now, who can break the Government apart if it starts
| abusing its power?
| guerrilla wrote:
| If you had checked, you'd know monopolies are not
| illegal. It's discretionary regulation and impotent in
| many cases. Power comes in many forms.
|
| States fall for many reasons, but primarily causes are
| war and revolution (which are sometimes the same thing.)
| rglullis wrote:
| Monopolies _are_ illegal if established through improper
| conduct and anti-competitive practices. The exceptions
| would be for _State-owned_ or _State-granted_
| monopolies... Amazon is neither of those.
|
| > States fall for many reasons, but primarily causes are
| war and revolution
|
| So, the way to get rid of Amazon would be to get the
| Government to simply start a judicial process against a
| company. The way to get rid of the Government would
| require bloodshed. Can we agree that that n corrupt and
| power-abusive Government is far more dangerous than
| Amazon (or any other corporation) could ever be?
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Monopolies are illegal if
|
| You're moving the goalpost and still wrong [1]. I don't
| know why you want to talk about this so badly if you
| don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, as I said,
| it's discretionary regulation and power comes in many
| forms.
|
| > The way to get rid of the Government would require
| bloodshed.
|
| You don't need to get rid of "the government" if you
| control the state and everyone's minds via lobbying,
| corruption, propaganda and other means.
|
| > Can we agree that that n corrupt and power-abusive
| Government is far more dangerous than Amazon (or any
| other corporation) could ever be?
|
| Absolutely not. "The government" is the puppet, the
| owners of companies like Amazon are the puppeteers. Power
| comes in many forms. Coercion comes in many forms.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
| rglullis wrote:
| You are the one that brought the thing about monopolies,
| and you still haven't brought up any strong argument that
| Amazon has a _de facto_ monopoly. And you also are going
| to have an even harder time to make a case that Amazon
| should be convicted for anti-competitive practices.
|
| (Also, let's not get into the fact that the news are
| about changes in Denmark and you are using an wikipedia
| link to argue about US Antitrust Law. The world does not
| spin around D.C)
|
| So, yeah, we can drop the talk about monopolies.
|
| > power comes in many forms.
|
| I'm not arguing about power by itself. I'm arguing about
| how dangerous an institution can be if they abuse the
| power they do have. You and I might dislike all the data
| collecting from Amazon (and Google et caterva), but none
| of them can put me in jail. The Government can. And since
| you want to think of terms of American politics: think of
| all the abuses that were made in the name of "The War on
| Terror" and "The War of Drugs". Don't forget the Obama
| administration getting the IRS to go after Tea Party
| organizations.
|
| Mind you, this is no way a defense of the corporations,
| and I already have an idea of how I would like to see
| people fighting the concentration of power [0]. But I
| find _weird_ seeing people who understand how bad it can
| be when power gets too concentrated in the hands of a
| few, and yet they just want to put it _all_ in the hands
| of the government, the one entity they have _no_ recourse
| against. To me, those wishing to give the government more
| power than it already has shows a case of naivety at best
| and a serious authoritarian inclination at worst.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641
| reaperducer wrote:
| _the majority of the public wouldn 't care about their food
| purchases being tracked._
|
| Citizen #83238201: You have exceeded your yearly purchasing
| quota for condoms and thrush medication. Please report to
| your nearest moral re-education camp.
| nine_k wrote:
| This assumes that the scope of tracking is somehow naturally
| limited to grocery, and can't extend. Also, the technically
| easiest way to track grocery purchases can be by tracking all
| purchases, and then filtering out the non-grocery.
|
| Let's generalize the question: what makes you uncomfortable
| about the government tracking _all_ your (non-cash)
| purchases? They already know your income for tax purposes,
| and much of your large purchases, also for tax purposes. And
| if you need a pinch of stuff that 's illegal, you're not
| going to swipe your debit card anyway. I suppose a court
| order will show all your bank operations history, should the
| government need it for lawful purposes.
|
| So, if there's still anything left to preserve, we need to
| clearly articulated first, what that is.
| Svip wrote:
| There is still a receipt even if you pay cash. It's just that
| in that case, _only_ the supermarket and the buyer know of the
| transaction.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Ostensibly... But if you ever pay with a card, it's quite
| likely those with the data will be able to correlate your
| cash purchases with the card purchase and thus identify you.
| finnh wrote:
| How? Unless you input a form of ID (like a telephone number
| in a loyalty program) I don't see how a cash transaction
| can be linked to you at all.
|
| It's not like your cash purchase of 58.32kr has a match
| 578.32 kr withdrawal; that cash was taken from an ATM in a
| large, round-number bundle.
| lkschubert8 wrote:
| I think they are more likely referring to being able to
| create a fingerprint of what you purchase. If you
| purchase via card enough times its not unreasonable that
| a model could be created to link your cash transactions
| back to you.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| I believe the reference is to utilizing pattern matching
| in the items and quantities purchased. We are creatures
| of habit and tend to repeat the same activities and
| purchases.
| Karellen wrote:
| If there's a cash transaction every Wednesday between 7pm
| and 9pm, which always contains a specific type of bread,
| and a specific type of breakfast cereal, and a specific
| type of milk, and a specific type of sandwich filling,
| that's anonymous customer #5678.
|
| If you ever misremember the amount cash in your wallet,
| and, rather than just abandoning your basket at the
| checkout when you discover this, you pay with a card just
| _one_ time, for that exact basket, when there is no cash
| customer for that basket on that night, they can now be
| pretty certain about who customer #5678 is, and can then
| link you to 95% of your historic purchases too.
|
| OpSec is hard, yo.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| You still can pay someone to buy your groceries. :)
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| That's why you rotate your brands and buy stuff you don't
| need only to discard it later. Just kidding not kidding.
| mrob wrote:
| ATMs/self-service checkout machines can contain cameras
| to record the serial number of every note they
| dispense/accept.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Dont forget about face recognition.
| fudgefactorfive wrote:
| The point isn't explicitly connecting the cash purchase
| directly to you. The point is there are plenty of ways to
| attach payment methods directly to you and once that's
| happened anything else related to you can allow inference
| of further purchase data.
|
| For example, store POS system tracks nearby MAC addresses
| (simplest to do, very archaic). You always have your
| phone on you. Game Over. Even if you pay cash, if you've
| _ever_ paid with a bank card connected to your identity
| next to that phone a logical inference can be made that
| the cash transaction XYZ is related to pseudonymous ID
| ABC if phone P 's identifier was present at time of
| purchase.
|
| That's what the entire point of things like Google
| Wallet/Pay is. Another means of directly attaching
| payment methods to your ID. Once that bank card is
| connected to you all transactions for that card from
| _any_ source is also connected to you. From that every ID
| present at time of purchase is one step removed from you.
|
| And so it goes...
| Karellen wrote:
| There's no reason that the receipt/transaction wouldn't also
| be reported to the agency. Just because it can't be linked to
| any specific individual, doesn't mean the data is entirely
| useless for the kind of analyses they are looking to make.
|
| ...or, for the kind of analyses they _say_ they are looking
| to make.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Can't you just pay in cash, without leaving digital trail?
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Of course you can pay in cash. Most of us in Norway simply
| choose not to most of the time.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Gestapo's dream. I think they did in fact track purchases--not
| very efficiently--to find who was hiding Jews in their basement.
|
| Though maybe at least if it's government-tracked that's better
| than only being corporate-tracked.
|
| And there have to be escape-hatches.
| FpUser wrote:
| This is insanity and will definitely lead to abuse.
| samstave wrote:
| One of the things I have long wanted in the USA:
|
| An app/website/whatever-service which allows the scanning of a
| receipt/UPC code - which takes the scan data and the price for
| ITEM.'
|
| Then allows me to track ITEM $ over time, and between vendors /
| stores.
|
| Ideally I also want to be able to track ORIGIN, thus if I am
| tracking the cost of an ITEM which has an ORIGIN of non-US-
| country, I can track over time the cost of a product that was
| made over-seas.
|
| The reason this is of interest to me - is I like to see where the
| inlfation of costs is occurring.
|
| As an example, there is a juice that I like to buy which was
| $1.34 per half-gallon.
|
| It quickly became $1.50 during the pandemic, pre-gas price hikes
| etc. It was a product that was standard stock forever, its made
| in the US, and I am convinced that this item was just price
| lifted, but not because of economies of delivery...
|
| As compared to a product which , say, comes from Thailand - which
| is shipped over-the-sea, and there are no price hikes.
|
| This can give you insight into where profits are being harvested.
|
| Additionally, one would do well to know ImportYeti ; a service to
| examine the source ORIGIN of products that you find which are
| made in China, in order to get the actual mfr for a product -
| such that if you want to cut out all middle men, you can contact
| the factories directly.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's ok that the government wants this data, but the data
| protection agency needs to tell them no, that's not possible, and
| maybe work with them to make something similar possible - but
| that respects privacy. Due to the database leak effect, I hope
| they do a good job.
| mateo1 wrote:
| People seem to suddenly forget that these transactions are
| _already_ tracked and individually linked to you. Should we allow
| anyone to collect that data _except_ democratically elected
| governments? What 's the logic behind this?
| leeroyjenkins11 wrote:
| The idea behind the separation is that the government has the
| ability to make you do something with the threat of force. Not
| to say we shouldn't put protections from private corporations
| in place, but they can't legally imprison you.
| bbddg wrote:
| You're just describing laws. Is the worry here that they
| could more effectively enforce laws because of this tracking?
| Is that a bad thing?
| car_analogy wrote:
| Yes! This is not a novel idea - it's how the US got its 4th
| amendment, prohibiting unreasonable search. Government
| power should not be unlimited, because it risks slipping
| into tyranny.
|
| Don't turn your country into a prison on the hope that the
| warden will remain benevolent. There's no shortage of past
| and present examples of that suddenly changing.
| concordDance wrote:
| It is when you don't trust the lawmaking process is acting
| in your best interests. And distrust of that process is
| extremely high atm (I believe trust in politicians is below
| 50% in the US).
| bbddg wrote:
| Well we don't really have a functional democracy in the
| US. That's really the core problem to fix before you can
| start trusting the government more.
| marklubi wrote:
| > Well we don't really have a functional democracy in the
| US.
|
| The United States isn't a democracy, it's a democratic
| republic. Unfortunately, most of that was thrown out with
| the 17th amendment, and we're paying for it now with
| increased federal control.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| There isn't necessarily a strong separation, though. Here in
| the US, governments (at every level) can easily purchase this
| kind of data from private entities when they need to.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I should have the possibility to opt out of the data
| collection, no matter who does it.
|
| As long as I don't break the law, it's no one's business what I
| do.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _People seem to suddenly forget that these transactions are
| already tracked and individually linked to you. Should we allow
| anyone to collect that data except democratically elected
| governments?_
|
| Both are bad.
|
| People don't like governments tracking their every move
| because, governments have sometimes done bad things with that
| information, both historically and even today.
|
| People allow tech companies to track their every move because
| they're offered something in return: Free access to an app,
| automatic coupons at the supermarket, etc.
|
| I don't envision the government lowering people's taxes in
| exchange for more information. Even though this program could
| help the government craft health policy and save millions on
| medical care for its people.
| [deleted]
| mdmglr wrote:
| > People seem to suddenly forget that these transactions are
| already tracked and individually linked to you.
|
| Is this true? I thought only if you joined a rewards program.
| car_analogy wrote:
| You're absolutely right. Therefore, we should prohibit this
| tracking by _anyone_. We definitely shouldn 't _expand_ it!
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Because giving this power to the only entity that has monopoly
| of coercion/violence is a _terrible_ idea. See history.
| bbddg wrote:
| I guarantee the NSA is slurping up this data in the US.
| temac wrote:
| We should allow neither.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| In most countries, paying in cash is a thing. And I try to
| avoid paying with cards or e-payment as much as I can
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Norway is also really not a fan of cash, so they're doing all
| they can to phase it out, especially during the pandemic.
| mellavora wrote:
| I guess you haven't spent a lot of time in the Nordics.
|
| some random articles:
| https://sweden.se/life/society/a-cashless-society
| https://interestingengineering.com/sweden-how-to-live-in-
| the...
| hp48fan wrote:
| Nope. Their cashless culture is one of the reasons I hope I
| never do go to Scandinavia.
| vkou wrote:
| What are the other reasons?
| hp48fan wrote:
| I knew a (great) artist who spent almost her whole life
| in Norway and Sweeden. Shes in her nineties, speaks a
| half dozen languages, worked for Norwegian public TV.
| That is to say she's walked in the highest echelons on
| Nordic society.
|
| Talking to her, she'd often bemoan that the prejudice
| that Nordic societies are very conformist is true.
|
| Which is in line with what Ive experienced with Nordics
| vkou wrote:
| If I were to look for it, I don't think there's a single
| country on Earth where I couldn't find a smorgasbord of
| social conformism that I strongly dislike.
|
| It's a social glue that holds every culture together, and
| it never has to make much sense.
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Having lived in the UK, US, Sweden, and worked
| extensively in the Netherlands and India, I can
| comfortably say that conformism exists everywhere. It
| doesn't take the same shape everywhere, but it certainly
| colours the place and the culture. Scandinavia is not a
| bad place to live by any measure. I can list a host of
| reasons why either place would be uncomfortable to live
| in. But one of my key takeaways from my experience is
| that different places are culturally different, but
| different isn't necessarily bad, just different. Don't
| dismiss a place until you have been there.
| alcover wrote:
| SWIM also carefully avoids electronically paying for tobacco
| because that info, despite the theoretical separation, may be
| golden to insurance corps..
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| You must have hella change laying around.
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| If you always carry your change with you and spend it
| whenever possible, your coin quantity will remain
| pocketable.
|
| You gotta be committed enough to hand over a twenty dollar
| bill alongside a quarter, when paying a $19.17 bill for
| example. Rather than take in 83 cents you take in 8 (and
| score a dollar.)
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Not much, because I also pay in coins in exact amounts.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I don't know about him, but my Safeway has a change machine
| up front. You can either get the total in cash, minus
| commission, or store credit for the whole amount.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| My bank in germany has a machine, where I can put them in
| to be transfered to my account. (but I think I only ever
| did that once)
| 01acheru wrote:
| In euroland bills start at 5 euro, below it is all coins.
| So when paying cash you get a lot of 1 or 2 euro coins as
| change.
|
| I change those coins into 5 euro bills whenever possible,
| stores always want change. Small coins go into a big jar
| that we use to tip people like the pizza delivery guy.
|
| If the jar gets too full I simply donate the jar as is to a
| charity I know.
| [deleted]
| croes wrote:
| What's the worst a store can do to you, what's the worst a
| government can do to you?
|
| Don't make me confirm Godwin's law about democratically elected
| government.
| mh7 wrote:
| Grocery stores can ban me for life - which means I starve.
| trasz wrote:
| "Government" isn't a single entity. What's the worst thing
| the state's statistics department can do to you? Is it really
| that more dangerous than, say, Amazon?
| croes wrote:
| Like you said, it's not a single entity. One collects the
| data, best, the ones that are harmless because they can't
| do much but others take that data to justify their actions.
| Iv wrote:
| A store can sell its data to authoritarian governments that
| can jail people, to insurance companies that in some
| countries can prevent you from getting a credit card, a loan
| or even a job.
|
| Now another question: what the best a government is likely to
| do with this data? What is the best a private company is
| likely to do with it?
| gruez wrote:
| >A store can sell its data to authoritarian governments
| that can jail people
|
| I find it unlikely that my local supermarket is going to
| sell my purchasing habits to China or Iran. I'm far more
| worried about my local government getting their hands on
| it, but at that point I don't see the distinction.
|
| >to insurance companies that in some countries can prevent
| you from getting a credit card, a loan or even a job.
|
| In what country are insurance companies determining whether
| you can get a credit card/loan/job? Are you sure you don't
| mean credit bureaus?
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| If you're talking about the tracking done by reward systems
| then that's a voluntary agreement that people enter into. You
| can choose not to use a rewards program. As far as I know, if
| you use a credit card they only know the total of how much you
| spent and once again you can choose not to use a credit card or
| bank card and pay with cash if you wish. This proposed data
| collection has no opt out option.
|
| It's kind of exasperating how little people think about the
| difference between voluntary participation and forced
| participation when it makes a world of difference. Maybe we
| have just lived in good times too long and we have become soft,
| weak and amnesiac about what happens when the other aspects of
| human nature gain dominance in society.
| moistly wrote:
| > As far as I know, if you use a credit card they only know
| the total of how much you spent
|
| Oh, no, no. They report so much more:
| Merchant name Purchase amount Date Billing
| zip code Sales tax amount Tax indicator
| Merchant postal code Merchant tax ID Invoice
| number Order number Customer code (if purchasing
| cards) Item commodity code(s) Item description(s)
| (SKU) Unit price(s) Quantity Unit of
| measure Extended price Discount per line item and
| line item total Debit or credit indicator
| Discount amount Shipping amount Duty amount
|
| https://www.heartland.us/resources/blog/what-to-know-
| about-l...
| throwaway4aday wrote:
| The information you linked doesn't seem to indicate that a
| grocery store would do this.
|
| > Level 3 credit card data involves large transactions that
| take place primarily with B2B or business-to-government
| (B2G). These transactions take place using corporate
| purchasing cards, which allow the companies or government
| agencies to monitor purchases and have access to detailed
| spending reports.
|
| Instead, it seems that level 1 would be what most
| businesses that sell to consumers would use
|
| > Level 1 data primarily refers to small business-to-
| consumer (B2C) transactions. This level only requires the
| following information for credit card transactions:
|
| Merchant name Purchase amount Date Billing zip code
| moistly wrote:
| Right you are. I skimmed and misinterpreted.
| cma wrote:
| Why would the grocery store, who tracks inventory changes
| with each sale, only be able to know the credit card total?
| davchana wrote:
| OP means the "card issuing bank" knows only the total
| amount spent, not the individual items cost.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| What if the government said it was optional, but those who
| sign up get a 2% discount on their taxes? Would you find that
| more acceptable?
| el-salvador wrote:
| This must exist in some places now. I once got a discount
| in Sales Tax in Honduras (about 1%) for paying with my
| credit card instead of cash in a restaurant.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| But this is not what is happening in Norway, isn't it?
| There's no alternative offer on the table, there's not even
| an invitation to propose an alternative, there's no opt
| out, only govt wanting to get deeper into private people's
| business.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _If you 're talking about the tracking done by reward
| systems then that's a voluntary agreement that people enter
| into. You can choose not to use a rewards program. As far as
| I know, if you use a credit card they only know the total of
| how much you spent and once again you can choose not to use a
| credit card or bank card and pay with cash if you wish._
|
| I'm not in Norway, but my local cafe has a rewards program
| that is automatic. It's linked to my credit card number; so
| long as I pay with that card, it happens. I get a decent
| discount on a sandwich every now and then.
|
| Even if they _didn 't_ offer the reward thing, though, I
| would still assume that my purchases were being linked to my
| CC#. I'd assume it's being done so across merchants, too,
| where merchants use the same payments processor.
|
| (And I'm not fond of this. To me, it's a good example of why
| privacy regulation matters: I shouldn't need to give up
| _privacy_ for the sake of being able to have the convenience
| of a CC; the processor 's fees are there to pay for the
| convenience. One shouldn't be forced to go through cash, and
| even then, there are places -- and _government_ places, too
| -- that don 't accept cash.)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > It's kind of exasperating how little people think about the
| difference between voluntary participation and forced
| participation
|
| It is totally exasperating when folks excuse corporation
| tracking you as 'voluntary agreement' when the only
| alternstive to tracking is forgoonf essential services like
| mobile phones and living like a hermit
| xipho wrote:
| It's also exasperating to those who think that unless you
| pay cash you're not being fingerprinted regardless of any
| choice you did/not make. And with RFIDs picked up in your
| basket, cash likely not going to help either. What does it
| take, a combination of 5-6 purchases in one area, perhaps
| repeated in part a handful of times to make a profile that
| almost certainly you? It's the buisiness of groceries to
| fingerprint you, even before anything digital came along,
| how else do they optimize what they sell?
| stickyricky wrote:
| Its not difficult to pay with cash and to not enter your
| phone-number at the register. Paying with cash is a helpful
| way to budget.
| majjam wrote:
| Until they go cashless :(
| yossarian1408 wrote:
| Mobile phones an essential service?
| [deleted]
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Thankfully, you're wrong - cash still exists.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| For now, but not much longer in Norway, if the various
| governmental players get their way.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I'm not totally insensitive to libertarian arguments about a free
| society and limitations on government, but I also wonder given
| all the constraints on a government and societal pressures, what
| tools does a government really have if they want to offset
| climate change or reduce public health costs, or ration limited
| resources.
|
| I guess I think most of us, if we were actually in that position
| and wanted to stay in that position would have to choose
| interventions that are less than ideal.
| c_--vote_win wrote:
| lordnacho wrote:
| Worth remembering the whole reason this can even be suggested is
| that Scandies tend to have high trust. Not saying there won't be
| similar voices to what is in this comment section, but plenty of
| Norwegians will take this at face value, an honest attempt to
| gather socially useful information, part of a tradition that has
| historically functioned reasonably well.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Saying that it is just about trust can be misleading. The trust
| has to be rationally based. It's not some kind of society-wide
| ex nihilo personality trait.
|
| I think you can trust the government more in Scandinavia than
| in the US. Both dispositions are relatively rational.
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Then why explicitly link the data to people's national ID
| numbers? If analyzing societal trends were the only purpose of
| this initiative, anonymized (or for some applications,
| aggregated) data would work equally well.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| The article already answers this:
|
| "When the purchases are linked to a household, it will be
| possible in the consumption statistics to analyze socio-
| economic and regional differences in consumption, and link it
| to variables such as income, education and place of
| residence."
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| That can still be done with anonymized data. It is not
| necessary to associate purchasing habits with national ID
| numbers to perform the analyses you listed.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| I fail to see how you can get this kind of data from
| anonymized supermarket receipts? Entirely different data
| collection methods: sure. But the entire point of this is
| that was too difficult ("time-consuming and error-prone",
| according to the SSB).
| MontyCarloHall wrote:
| Issue national ID cards that contain a private key. For
| each citizen, the government would encrypt a mapping of
| their national ID number -> anonymized ID ("anonID")
| using their corresponding public key. The anonID could
| only be used to look up anonymized demographic data,
| updated when new IDs (and thus new encryption keys) get
| issued, once every few years. When checking out at the
| supermarket, your national ID number and private key
| would be used to generate your anonID on the spot, under
| which your purchases would be recorded. Demographers
| could thus freely query mappings from anonID ->
| demographic info/supermarket purchase history, without
| revealing anyone's actual identity. Without knowing one's
| private key (which is embedded only in their national ID
| card), it would impossible to freely map national ID ->
| anonID.
| awildfivreld wrote:
| I get a feeling that this is a roundabout way of simply
| anonymizing the ID in the data when it is collected, as
| have been done a lot in studies. The problems with this
| is that our behavior is unique enough that is it often
| possible to find out who you are (or what demographic you
| are in for advertising purposes) from your actions, no
| unique identifier needed.
|
| One example of this is when our national newspaper (NRK)
| did an investigation[1] on "anonymized" GPS data, and
| could easily find the identities of the persons they
| belonged to.
|
| [1]: https://www.nrk.no/norge/xl/avslort-av-
| mobilen-1.14911685
| Tor3 wrote:
| I went and checked various online papers with comment sections,
| and the comments have been massively negative to this. This is
| apparently not something people will easily accept, so it remains
| to be seen what happens.
| baal80spam wrote:
| > I went and checked various online papers with comment
| sections, and the comments have been massively negative to this
|
| Thank God.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Since when do governments care about what people think? Even
| with mass demonstrations they typically hardly move an inch.
| jacooper wrote:
| I mean, Norway should be one of the most Democratic
| countries, so it should have an effect, but it will probably
| not since its protests against giving them more power.
| guruz wrote:
| Please check rank of
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/679796/democracy-
| index-m... :-)
| guerrilla wrote:
| That is a joke. Sweden is 4th on that list. Despite the
| fact that the vast majority voted for anti-NATO parties,
| they just refused to have a referendum or wait until the
| election (in 90 days) to make a decision and explicitly
| stated they will not consult us. (No, polls aren't
| elections. Don't even start.) This isn't exactly unique
| either. They regularly do things people don't want and
| can't stop. On top of that, we have powerful lobbyists and
| shittons of propaganda too, just like everyone else.
| forgot_user1234 wrote:
| NAV is an Extremely well run org.
|
| I believe in the system and I believe Norwegian state will do the
| right thing
|
| Case in point - look at the tech platform docs for NAVs tech
| teams - https://nais.io/
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| That's a reasonable stance as long as you believe that no
| change will ever happen. Neither peaceful change from within,
| nor violent from outside.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| The dynamics of such a system are rarely considered, which is
| why it's such an easy trap for societies to fall into,
| especially societies with high regard for their institutions.
|
| It starts with the voices of reason ("Isn't there a danger
| this data could be abused?") being slowly pushed out, through
| lack of promotions or being transferred to other departments
| where they are a "better fit".
|
| Then this government body starts to attract the naive zealots
| ("Just think of all the good we can do! How could anyone see
| a problem with us collecting more data?") which becomes self-
| reinforcing.
|
| The final step is when the ambitious and malicious take
| notice ("This data must be worth a lot of money to the right
| people, and I could make sure my political party never loses
| another election") at which point the entire process is
| captured and corrupted from the top down.
|
| Avoiding building these systems in the first place is good
| civic hygiene, and societies need to develop an instinct that
| if you allow data and power to accumulate in one place for
| too long, it will start to attract pests.
| t_mann wrote:
| It's happening in China, it's happening in arguably the most
| 'well-mannered' 'Western' country - at this point it's naive to
| assume mass data collection won't be coming to your country (and
| they might not always be as well-mannered as Norway currently
| is).
|
| Some might say 'I don't care' or 'only those who have something
| to hide have anything to worry about', but I respectfully
| disagree. For the same reason I have curtains in my bedroom I
| want to have agency over my data.
|
| What baffles me is that I'm fairly sure that similar views are
| shared by many in the HN community, yet the 'crypto/web3'
| communities receive almost undivided scorn. Yes, it's ridden with
| scams, but those are still the communities that do the most
| overall to push zero knowledge and similar privacy-preserving
| technologies (and contrary to the popular claim that web3 doesn't
| do anything innovative, some of the zk stuff like
| STARK/SNARK/PLONK... they already put in production are actually
| quite recent, academically speaking).
| greatgib wrote:
| What is very scary, is the normalization of the surveillance
| society with crazy things like that being accepted/ignored by
| most citizens.
|
| It is getting worse and worse all the time. Curiously, 20 or 30
| years ago people would have being angry and governments would
| have had to resign as even suggesting such privacy killer things
| would be offensive. Now most people would not even care...
|
| Just to let you imagine the future, in France, with the current
| 'ecological bullshit', some idiots suggested that households
| could have a quota of consumption of everything to save the
| planet: that much water, electricity, food...
|
| That will be more easy with shops transmitting all your shopping
| info directly to the gov...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Welcome to the Brave New World.
| paganel wrote:
| Fuck it, not even Ceausescu was doing this (or something similar
| to this) in communist Romania, and I grew up under Ceausescu as a
| kid, I should know. The worst that was happening from this point
| of view was maybe an older neighbor lady stopping you on your way
| back from the grocery store and literally going through your
| purchases (yes, kids were sent to the grocery store to do small
| purchases), but nothing more than that (and, even then, we, as
| kids, knew that what those old ladies were doing was wrong)
|
| Which begs the question: how come today's Norwegians are ok with
| this? How is this normal in a liberal democracy? Is this what
| modern liberal democracy was all along? I.e. a dystopian State
| infringing more and more on one's basic liberties, all in the
| name of the "greater good"? That's nuts.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I'm still surprised that the major credit card companies and
| banks in the US have not started transitioning to digital
| receipts. Several retailers and smart POS systems link your
| credit card number to your email and send you receipts
| automatically.
|
| It could be a dual edged sword for the banks, as a more informed
| consumer might budget more carefully and spend less, but the data
| collected would be quite valuable. It would not be a hard sell to
| consumers - "Shop with _blank_ and you never need to worry about
| paper receipts again! ".
|
| On a separate note, thermal receipt paper is a terrible source of
| BPA/BPS plastics. There are alternatives that use vitamin C, but
| they are rare.
|
| https://www.pca.state.mn.us/green-chemistry/bpa-thermal-pape...
| NiceWayToDoIT wrote:
| Two years ago when they moved to cashless payments, question was
| what can go wrong. Well now we know...
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