> Now say John travels to another town, and the proprietor of a similar establishment in that town, wanting to provide John with the best level of service, calls you to ask "Hey, what does John like?", and you tell them.
That was already way too invasive, yes. You could probably get away with it before, because the scale was so small that it wasn't quite as horrible. There is after all a difference between occasionally violating one person's privacy and violating the privacy of thousands of people a minute. Not an actual ethical difference, but there are finite legal resources to go around.
Also, I object to this idea that because the pieces of behavior are acceptable the combined effect is automatically okay. It's perfectly legal to own and use a camera. It's perfectly legal to own an use a telephoto lens. It's even legal to look at your neighbor's house. Nonetheless, taking a camera and pointing it through a telephoto lens at a neighbor's house and recording 24/7 is an excellent way to get arrested.
All of what we're discussing is within the realm of decency, not law. Yes it's impolite to gossip about people, always has been. It's however tyrannical and totally inappropriate to legislate decency.
"decency" is not definable, that's why it's tyrannical to legislate about it. Laws serve to establish a framework merely for peaceful coexistence. To use them to try to make everyone decent is surgery with a sledgehammer.
I'd actually challenge you to find a law in society that doesn't have some origin in vague decency - the legal framework built above decency is something we expect to be rather stable over the long term but, at a really basic level, we have a law to not murder people because we really don't appreciate it when people do it - not because there is some natural law inscribed in our DNA stating that murder must be a crime.
Laws conform with societal ethics and those ethics absolutely change over time and are never uniformly agreed to by all individuals.
Lastly - scale absolutely does matter when it comes to laws we want to enforce. We don't want to enforce a no-gossip law because the invasiveness of enforcement would be unbelievably deep, so decency is there to tell you that while you won't get arrested for doing a thing you should feel guilty about it - most members of society get equipped with this guilt during their upbringing and so criminally malicious gossip is a problem we mostly ignore at a societal level.
Laws are absolutely BS in their inherent nature and a construct of society that could easily shift radically with large political shifts - but that doesn't mean they're invalid.
We have laws not to murder people because the state assumes a monopoly on violence. In absence of retributive justice we did and do continue to murder each other in blood feuds that last generations. This is perfectly normal human behavior. The state is there merely to provide a framework in which people who hate each other can be expected to surrender their natural right to use violence.
To me that's where the right of one group (the government) to legitimately use force ends. The sledgehammer that is the legal system should only be used to administrate the peace.
Beyond that, the only concept that can really be impartially measured is liberty. How free are you? In the graph of all possible actions, which are legitimately available to you? Everything else is an attempt to define good or evil, or right and wrong, and is therefore some form of religion. In a world where we are all equal, have no oracle to discern good from evil, and disagree diametrically, the only reasonable thing to do is optimize for liberty, and let everyone figure it out for themselves.
Scale does matter, but not in regards to rights. If you have the right to do a thing, you have the right to do it a million times. If you have the right to write something down, you have the right to keep it in a database. If you can publish your letters, you can do so over HTTP as well. This isn't a new conversation. People have been publishing memoirs of their private correspondence since the printing press. What disturbs me is how we seem to be shifting our consensus that they have the right to do so.
So, you’re using Max Weber’s theory of the state in a contradictory way in my reading. Weber’s theory of the state as being the society which derives its authority from a legitimate monopoly on violence was contrasted _against_ the very “natural liberties” that you seem to espouse (e.g. the rights of peeping toms, the rights of private shopkeepers, and the limitation of the government). Either you argue that the legitimacy of the state stems from its legitimate monopoly on violence as a community (thus allowing it to dictate “decency” as you say) or you argue that the legitimacy of the state derives from the citizenry’s own natural rights to self governance and liberty.
I'm not strictly arguing for Weber. I'm basically proposing that beyond majority consensus, we have no way of determining that the peeping toms or the discriminatory shopkeepers are in the wrong. In combination with the problems of majority consensus (if a majority agree to murder a minority, is that okay?), the presupposition that we are all equal, and have a right to exist as and where we are, the only reasonable conclusion is to enforce the absolute minimum of law required to maintain the peaceful coexistence that differentiates civilization. This is doubly true in a multicultural society.
> We have laws not to murder people because the state assumes a monopoly on violence.
This theory utterly fails to explain laws against murder from the millennia when there was no such thing as a state that claimed monopoly on violence. In the feudal system there was no such thing as a unified state entity, it was just a bunch of people invested with certain rights organised into nested hierarchy of fealty, no monopolies there, but still they had no problem ruling people guilty of committing murder.
> If you have the right to do a thing, you have the right to do it a million times.
You've never seen those signs that say you get only one free cup of coffee have you?
The source of legitimacy of feudal monarchies was divine right. This is not the case today. Our governments derive legitimacy from the consent of, and in defence of the liberty of, the governed. This is why I object to these laws. They only constrain my liberty to interact peacefully with other people, and I certainly don't recall consenting.
> You've never seen those signs that say you get only one free cup of coffee have you?
Indeed I've seen the signs. I would very much object to similar laws.
You are free to leave if the governed collectively have decided on laws you don't agree with, and they'll probably ask you to if you go on about your demand to be granted veto rights on all legislation.
As an aside, I'm slightly curious how you explain the legality of said sign using your absolutist libertarian framework.
"free to leave" isn't really an excuse for tyranny is it?
The legality of the sign is derived from the fact that it's on private property, from which the owner has a right to expel anyone for any reason. Violating the rules of the sign is simply grounds for expulsion from said property, not criminal consequences. That's the difference between a rule and a law.
The state needs not have a monopoly on violence. Dueling was outlawed in France in 1626, and early modern France was certainly a state. The dueling laws only became necessary because our mores on violence changed.
By whether these laws enforce negative rights or positive ones. You should have a right to do whatever you want as long as you're not directly interfering with the rights of others to do the same. That's what it means to be free.
The demarcation represents a minimum set of restrictions on behavior which fundamentally differentiate civilization from its opposite - namely the presupposition of peaceful coexistence. From there, there is no means to derive the degree of compulsion to cooperate, so better not at all.
All of those things are basically religious terms to me. Some people subscribe to the religion that they have a "right to be forgotten" or a "right to their data". I don't subscribe to this religion, I want out.
You can lobby for the law to be changed. Don't be surprised you can't get a critical mass for "Yes, I'd like businesses to be able to track me".
You could just as equally declare copyright law or property law to be a religion and insist you don't want to subscribe to it, but society as a whole does, and so if you want to participate you just have to lump it.
What if the laws were the other way, and business were being mandated to track everything they can about the people they interact with? How would this tyranny be different from the one existing currently? Just because the majority decides something, that doesn't mean it's not tyrannical. People should be free to peacefully interact with each other as they individually see fit. Some people may track, some may choose not to, advertise that fact. Any picking of sides is totally arbitrary and therefore unjust.
The European union has evolved from the European Economic Union, and they are generally pretty pro-business and pro-freedom.
One thing you want to keep an eye on that is actually harmful to business (and economic freedom) is if some part of the economy gets caught up in a race-to-the-bottom. This is a situation where everyone's best move is to defect, and then defect again, all the way down until no one is free/making a profit/happy/etc anymore.
In this case there is a clear race to the bottom situation where everyone ends up having to track everything about everyone, just to keep up with the competition. As this would be pretty much truly be a panopticon-like tyranny by any other name, that's clearly not desirable.
In this case the EU is trying to make legislation that stops the race from going all the way down, by leveling the playing field so that everyone can conveniently say "see, we can't go further because it's actually illegal now".
So the net (long-term) freedom is actually increased by this measure.
Is it not tyrannical to prevent you from selling copies of Lord of the Rings without paying the author by that same logic?
If the majority of society was in favour of tracking everything then the opponents of that would have the same options of lobbying to change people's minds. As seen in the difference between end user reactions to GDPR vs ACTA, that seems like it would be much easier.
Yes? Copyright law was widely regarded as tyrannical when first introduced. Anything to which violence is an inappropriate response should not be legislated.
Because once you've told something to someone it's not yours anymore? Sure you can sign an agreement, but the consequences of violating it are civil, not criminal.
During WWII in Europe, numerous people in occupied territories learned that it is very important to be able to retain your privacy and ensure people don't learn too much about you. While people of Jewish ancestry are often taken as the canonical example, many other groups of people and individuals learned that "I have nothing to hide" is most definitely never true.
Would it surprise you that it is in fact Germany that now has very strong privacy protections these days?
Decency works for managing personal behavior on a small scale, with an ultimate check of free association. Commercial surveillance invalidates both the assumption of scale and the ability to opt out.
In general it seems like you're just asserting that value judgements should be scale free, while ignoring qualitative criticisms.
Erm. Are there any laws that you're okay with, then? "Murder is bad", "People should get paid for the use of copyrighted works", Freedom of Speech, private property existing, the modern concept of a fair trial... every one of those is a value judgement.
I'm sorry to break it to you, but you're really not. Commercial surveillance is exactly this imposition of value judgements onto people without their consent.
I myself am a libertarian. A government is merely a large corporation that is impractical to opt out of. Conversely, corporations that are impractical to opt out of constitute de facto government. Data protection laws like the GDPR attempt to constrain the power of corporations so they don't rise to that level, which ultimately constrains the amount of government.
A government is much more than a large corporation that is "impractical" to opt out of. They are the sole arbiter of legitimate force, and the sole entity that can govern your behavior in places you have a right to be. Corporations are perfectly practical to opt out of, as demonstrated by the many people who do. Find me one person who doesn't pay taxes and doesn't go to jail. I know plenty of people who don't interact with FAANG at all. Corporations will never rise to the legitimate use of force. If they do, they'll be governments.
> They are the sole arbiter of legitimate force, and the sole entity that can govern your behavior in places you have a right to be
This fully depends on what you include in your definitions.
Imagine this: A company owns a vast area of land. You agree to contract with this company in order to be on their land. This contract includes things like using physical force against you if you violate other terms spelled out in the contract (just as you can contract to have violence done to you at a BDSM club). The contract defines a technical term "right", the definition of which spells out some things you're positively allowed to do, and is somewhat harder to amend but not impossible. The terms allow you to sublease a bit of their land for your exclusive use. Your sole way to terminate this contract is to completely leave the company's land and pay off any balance you owe. Call this company USG and it is indistinguishable from the United States Government.
> Find me one person who doesn't pay taxes and doesn't go to jail
Most people who have under the table income and don't report it. Same as how it's often possible to get around breach of contract when your counterparty doesn't find out. Model vs reality. And note how similar the requirements for keeping your income unreported mirror the requirements for avoiding transitive association with a given corporation.
> I know plenty of people who don't interact with FAANG at all
1. There are likely still surveillance profiles being kept on them. 2. It's hard to believe said people use the web for anything, given the prevalence of Google Tag Manager and CAPTCHAs. 3. More entrenched than FAANG are Equifax and LexisNexis, which are even harder to distance yourself from. I'd say it's easier to renounce your citizenship of most countries than it is to avoid the worst of the surveillance companies.
> Corporations will never rise to the legitimate use of force
You keep using this word legitimate, which entirely depends on perspective. I would say that it is plainly illegitimate to throw someone in a cage for smoking a plant, and so calling government inherently legitimate is a bit dubious.
> Corporations will never rise to the legitimate use of force. If they do, they'll be governments.
Corporations, as creatures of law, are an apparatus of government. And they’ve participate in the legitimate use of force from the very dawn of corporations as a thing.
If the gossip was scaled up enough you might have laws created around it (actually some jurisdictions have anti-libel laws which is basically equivalent to gossip). We don't currently attempt to legislate decency because in most cases the system self-regulates, just like it used to do with the shopkeeper & fungus cream scenario mentioned in another comment. Then technology came along and increased the possibility of information sharing (and potential harm) by orders of magnitude, and once it's been determined that the system no longer self-regulated laws such as the GDPR were drafted.
well online-mob-cancellations fuelled by social media are exactly what scaled up gossip leads to. so we are already there and it's about time that something is being done about that.
Yes, and I'm suggesting these laws are unjust because they impose the values of some segment of people on to others. Leave people to associate as they see fit. Some groups will track you, some won't. You can choose which to patronize, on which browsers.
Literally all laws “impose the values of some segment of people on to others”, so according to your criterion all laws are unjust. I guess that’s a form of anarchism, and you’re welcome to it. For me, it’s simply not an interesting way to think about justice and how society should be ordered, because it seems to be the end of a conversation, rather than the beginning.
Laws against theft are just because violence is a legitimate form of recourse against thieves. In order to surrender this right to violence, people need an alternative recourse. This furthers my point - since what we're talking about is basically gossip at scale, would you argue that violence is a legitimate form of recourse?
Why is violence is a legitimate form of recourse against thieves? Perhaps violence is so inherently evil that it is better to part with one’s property than to protect it with force.
That was already way too invasive, yes. You could probably get away with it before, because the scale was so small that it wasn't quite as horrible. There is after all a difference between occasionally violating one person's privacy and violating the privacy of thousands of people a minute. Not an actual ethical difference, but there are finite legal resources to go around.
Also, I object to this idea that because the pieces of behavior are acceptable the combined effect is automatically okay. It's perfectly legal to own and use a camera. It's perfectly legal to own an use a telephoto lens. It's even legal to look at your neighbor's house. Nonetheless, taking a camera and pointing it through a telephoto lens at a neighbor's house and recording 24/7 is an excellent way to get arrested.