What’s the harm to any person if private information of theirs is shared?
Person B should be (and is) free to tell person A their salary iff they want. If they don’t want to share that private information with A, no else should either.
You're thinking about an individual supply of information between two actors, not a sea-change by making it common knowledge among all market participants.
I wonder if you’re carefully thinking through the privacy concerns. Share anonymized (and non-de-anonymizable) information all you want. Don’t share private, individual information without that individual’s affirmative consent.
Same reason that it’s OK and informative to share how many people in your state have +COVID or +STD tests, but not how many in your household do.
I'm honestly not sure how I feel about the privacy concerns.
On the one hand I do very much support privacy in many areas. Facebook is a cancer that seeks to spy on me every second of the day and needs to be regulated for that reason. People need privacy for a lot of very important reasons.
On the other, I'm not sure how I feel about privacy in financial matters. Do people's salaries need to be secret? Yes, having other people's financial information is an advantage in negotiations, but wouldn't that even out if you both knew more about each other's finances? And make lots of other negotiations easier too.
Edit: I'm actually not sure it's a valid privacy state to conceal how many people have COVID in your household. It think that information being public has a lot of value and I don't know if I support privacy in that case. Where they were when the caught it is a dangerous thing to leak. But I don't see any reason to conceal it. Certainly, I wouldn't want COVID+ people around me, and I wouldn't want them hiding their status to sneak back to work and continue the pandemic either. "I am currently under quarantine" seems like an important message that needs to be broadcasted.
I couldn't care less what anyone else at my company makes for any practical reason. In the best case, I know I'm the highest paid person in circumstances X. In the worst case, I get jealous or enraged that someone else is either making more for the same contribution or making the same and contributing less (in my estimation).
I think it's pretty clear we just have different views on privacy. I view health and financial information as being nobody else's business, except as required disclosures to the government and those disclosures should be minimal so as to serve a valid government purpose and not be disclosed to random members of the public. Sure, the IRS needs to know how much I made last year. My neighbor or my non-supervisory, non-payroll, non-HR co-worker has no business knowing it.
Likewise, if there are quarantine restrictions for people with +CV19 test results, I support the government having enough information to enforce their quarantine restrictions, but not for the local Nosy Upinmybusiness to have that information.
> I think it's pretty clear we just have different views on privacy.
I'm not sure we do. I'm normally on the pro-privacy reflexive side. But the best way to test your beliefs is to have a discussion. I was hoping to take the opposite side on a few issues I'm more ambivalent about and clarify my own position.
In the case of "person X needs to be quarantined", I find myself leaning away from privacy by default because it interferes with people's ability to protect themselves. That's not suggesting I would be okay with knowing other people's cancer diagnoses or blood pressure.
Similarly, I'm not sure of the downside of your coworkers knowing what you make. It seems that openness will lead to everyone making more money. Possibly except the company, but honestly they may make more than enough extra revenue to make up for slightly higher salaries with more motivated workers.
> if there are quarantine restrictions for people with +CV19 test results, I support the government having enough information to enforce their quarantine restrictions,
Pragmatically, there just isn't sufficient government surveillance (thank goodness) for the government to enforce quarantine restrictions without the population's cooperation. That's why it's so scary to be in pockets of anti-maskers. It's also why I feel safe knowing that it's hard for the government to enforce similar measures outside of a pandemic.
Person B should be (and is) free to tell person A their salary iff they want. If they don’t want to share that private information with A, no else should either.