Thursday, December 16, 2010

A Modest Proposal

Over at LRC, David Kramer is reporting that:
The Commerce Department is urging the creation of a consumer “privacy bill of rights” to prevent online etailers from sharing their customers buying preferences with other etailers, etc. in order for the other etailers to advertise their products to potential customers. First of all, did it ever occur to the morons in government (but I repeat myself) that one of the reasons why most of the big internet sites are “free” is because advertisers are paying those sites to keep them in business? Do the government morons think that Google, Youtube, and Yahoo are charitable organizations??? Secondly, if you aren’t interested in a product being advertised to you, then DON’T BUY IT. (Duh.) [This is the classic “economist” John Kenneth Galbraith ignorance about advertisers "controlling" us.]
David may be jumping ahead of things here a bit. Maybe advertisers, newspaper columnists and our friends are influencing our thinking. But how and in what way? Since we are getting all these inputs and many more thrown at us on a daily basis, we may never be able to figure all this out. I propose that the key officials at the Commerce Department each be placed in solitary confinement for one year, so they can start to contemplate things without any outside influences. After a year of solitary confinement, we place them in a natural environment with no electricity, clothes or utensils. After this one year in a natural environment, in the third year, we lock them up in a monastery where they are to write a report detailing their experiences, so that they can explain to us what influences they crave and which they can ignore. We will give them a year to write the report.

In year four, the rest of us get to read the report. In year five, we set up a panel to debate the Commerce Department officials, and in year six we all just go back to what we have all been doing in the first place. If the Commerce Department officials still want to block influences, then we just give them what they want and send them back to solitary,

1 comment:

  1. That sounds like an elegant solution for any government dept. needing some time to figure it out. The TSA employees however, deserve to be in general population to practice their "enhanced pat-down" techniques.

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