• Delta_V@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Currency is an adequate incentive.

    The data we create is valuable. Privacy is leverage to use against those who want your data - its an incentive to offer currency in exchange for the data you generate.

    For example, I wouldn’t ordinarily volunteer to let a corporation track me. However, my car insurance company pays me hundreds of dollars annually for the privilege of having a tacking app installed on my phone.

    Say you suspect that some type of fungus might cure cancer, so you spend $50 billion checking each of the 144,000 known fungal species. And say you actually find one that works. Too bad! The fungus already existed, so that’s a “discovery”, not an “invention”. You might be able to patent some extract or something, but if you’re charging $100,000 per cure, people will find ways around the patent. Better not to spend that $50 billion in the first place.

    This is a critique of for-profit medicine. Its an example of how capitalism stymies innovation.

    • dynomight@lemmy.worldOPM
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      2 days ago

      Currency is a great incentive. I think a good way of thinking about “rights” is a sort of structure to encourage transfers of currency. For example, should corporations be allowed to put up surveillance balloons and track every vehicle and sell that data to whoever? Or should that be a voluntary transaction, like in your case? (I don’t have an answer, just trying to point to the complexities.)