It is genuinely fascinating to me how different people can feel about things. I get enraged when my "government" tells me what I can and can't do with my body/money/time. If I want to snort coke all day, what business of theirs is it as long as I'm not infringing on others' rights? Likewise, if I want to give my data to a super sketchy website, why shouldn't I be able to?
Obviously it's "safer" to let others make rules and force us inside the fence to keep us sheep away from the dangerous wolves out there. I do understand that perspective to some extent. However I would never trade my freedom for security. The former is not easy to regain.
Except they're not taking freedom away from users, they're taking freedom away from corporations. Freedom that many corporations have been abusing. This is a key difference in perspective.
Your example where you "want to give your data away to a sketchy website" is not in any way representative of reality when a) the website is as ubiquitous as for instance FB, and thus in no way perceived as sketchy, and b) the user makes no conscious decision to consent (let alone "wants it").
I think you have a decent point there, but the comment I replied to literally said:
> Hoping you've blocked access to the EU so I don't happen across it :)
Being glad that he doesn't have the freedom to use the site, thanks to a government law (whether a side-effect of the law or a direct effect is irrelevant, because the law brought it out just the same).
I suspect it's more in teh sense of a "Don't let the door hit you on the way out..." retort.
That is, if you're offering such a service that exploits users for their data, then I would never want to use it, so it might as well be blocked, for all I care.
Maybe even desirable if it was, so you don't come across it by mistake and sign up without doing proper diligence.
Freedom of choice is nice, but there's an argument that putting rat-poison in food products isn't ok, even if you label it on the package.
The government also prohibits you from accepting a job offer for less than minimum wage, and the general consensus is that this gives workers more power.
The government isn't the only source of power and coercion; private companies are too. A lot of these regulations are the one countering the other.
Your premise is flawed: if it was true that without government, companies would just carelessly or intentionally poison us all (not a good way to gain repeat customers btw) then I would agree with you. But obviously I disagree with your premise.
The Jungle is a widely misunderstood book. For one, it's fiction [1] [2] [3].
The milk scandal is interesting tho. I don't disagree that there are people/companies out there that are horrible human beings (or run by horrible human beings), but these are exceptions. There is also a market-based recourse for consumers. Lawsuits and liability is a big deterrent for example. It's also illegal to harm someone (as it should be) so jail time for the offenders is quite possible without having enormous and onerous regulations. And haven't you noticed that it's the giant companies that often push regulation? Because it raises barriers to entry for competitors. Big companies have the resources they need. Using the government to hurt your competitors is one of the oldest traditions in countries with governments big enough and powerful enough to do so.
And they got the crap sued out of them. The lying is the problem IMHO. People know what they're getting now, but millions still choose to smoke. And why shouldn't they be able to?
Companies are careless and malicious despite government and customers actions.
* XIX century wants it's snake oil back
* Didn't hear about China and melamine milk scandal?
* Would you buy food from Amazon if it was co-mingled in current way?
* VW emission scandal
It is easy to be freetard when you do not get diarrhea every so often due to food that was "optimized" (like in XIX century ;)
