Clicking on those "Accept Cookies" notices was already annoying, but now it's become a daily reminder of how that smug Bryan Caplan knows Hubski better than Hubski knows itself. Aside from the macho schoolyard language and attacks on the author's character (which, I admit, he did not say would not happen), Caplan perfectly predicted Hubski's response. In this short essay, he made just a few simple claims. Technology companies provide us with great benefits. No one earnestly disputed this claim. The fact that the conversation occurred on an online platform is suggestive. Travel agents still exist, but people overwhelmingly choose to book online. The postal service exists, but people prefer e-mail. Telephone service exists, but people send electronic messages. Bank tellers exist, but people check their balance at home. Taxis exist, booksellers exist, etc. etc. "Undercutting" is simply a pejorative way of saying "offering a better deal." Yet the people who benefit from tech companies mostly complain about them. What better example of "searching for dark linings in the silver clouds of business progress" could you ask for than a comment, quite as long as the article itself, finding fault with each tech company mentioned, one by one? Big Data was the main point of contention. Caplan is quite clear on the costs and benefits tech companies have brought to data aggregation and privacy: Benefits: Costs: If your values put the costs greater than the benefits, quit Facebook and don't shop at Amazon. If your favorite local shop closed under pressure from internet sales, sorry, but the vast majority of people prefer to shop at the online store that has a neurotic obsession with pleasing customers with incomparable convenience, vast selection, and low prices. Why are these companies keeping track of our data, anyway? It was creepy when Target figured out that a teen girl was pregnant before her father knew. We all know what motivates corporations: profit. But that's just the beginning of the explanation. Profit comes from revenue, and revenue comes from customers. Customer demand is the best explanation for corporate behavior. People pay tech firms to collect and aggregate personal data so their ads will be better targeted.For practical purposes, we have more privacy than ever before in human history. You can now buy embarrassing products in secret. You can read or view virtually anything you like in secret. You can interact with over a billion people in secret.
Then what privacy have we lost? The privacy to not be part of a Big Data Set. The privacy to not have firms try to sell us stuff based on our previous purchases.
Facebook made more than $40 billion in revenue in 2017, approximately 89 percent of which came from digital advertisements.
Caplan argues that privacy has improved, not that it is not perfect. Pointing out some ways in which privacy protections are imperfect does not invalidate his argument. You can still skip town and buy something at a random shop. You can still buy a dirty magazine at the gas station. You can still research a skin condition at the library. You can still support a dissident political position by walking around outside with a sign. You can still put a paper letter in the mail. In addition to these options, you have the option of doing these things online. Tech has given us more options, and even if they are not perfect it is an improvement. Thus GDPR is exactly what he is talking about when we have to constantly click "I agree" while online in order to satisfy European bureaucrats. It is common knowledge that websites collect data, so "Implicit consent was working admirably." For those who do not realize they are being tracked, constantly clicking to make notices go away is not particularly educational.When business offers new energy, new housing, new food, the wise are grateful to see the world improve, not outraged to see a world that falls short of perfection.
Not if the shop's not there. The population of the Los Angeles Greater Metropolitan Area is 18.79 million according to Google. Yet I was unable to buy spare parts for a Shimano 105 Groupset anywhere within the city. The most popular line for the most popular bicycle part manufacturer in the world and the only place it was available was Amazon because everyone else doesn't want to compete on price. So they've got some Dura-Ace in stock at four times the price because it's a luxury item people want to fondle. Sure- any number of shops could get it for me. They're on a 4-week turnaround because they've refined their supply chains to the point where they only get what they can sell. And they're not going to compete on price because if you needed it you'd buy it off of eBay - it'll show up gray market from Shenzen a week faster than they can get it anyway and if none of it fits, it's your problem for "not buying local." And yeah - some of those parts I had to order two or three times because Amazon doesn't pay their drivers enough for them to not have a "not feelin' it" day. So in the end you can't "buy something at a random shop" you have to find it online, make sure it isn't fake, wait a week, and then go five miles to the nearest Amazon Locker because at least there? You know it'll likely arrive.You can still skip town and buy something at a random shop.
Your perspective in this discussion is invaluable. Most of us never buy targeted Facebook ads. Do you think that when you paid Facebook to identify users within ten miles, by sex, age, and education, that gave Facebook incentive to collect personal data on their users? You've worked in a few sectors. Do you think it would be smart business for Facebook to collect as much data about their users as possible, so they can offer you the widest possible menu of targeting choices when you want to advertise your next venture? Do you think that when you pay an annual fee to Amazon for the privilege of being a Prime Customer, you directly support and promote the business practices you complain about?
So your argument, then, is corporations are allowed to do whatever nefarious shit they feel like because it is the duty of every consumer to have perfect 100% clarity into the morality of their purchases? That the calculus of the transaction lies on the virtue of the consumer, not the provider? You're arguing that if the world didn't want the Amazon to burn they shouldn't have allowed Bolsonaro to win. As for Facebook, targeting by sex, age, education and distance is absolute fucking child's play. That level of granularity was available in the junk-mail era. Facebook's innovation was to allow you to target 16-year-old girls on their period who listen to Taylor Swift. Or 55-year-old white men with an interest in Ruby Ridge, Dale Earnhardt and Vince Foster. Facebook didn't start with the basic offering and work their way finer and finer - they hit the ground running with microtargeting. They had the data, they didn't do the due diligence, they monetized COINTELPRO. Our prior use of Facebook (we discontinued our Facebook advertising long before Zuckerberg testified to Congress, if I recall correctly) was an extremely blunt use of a surgically precise tool so no, I would say we were doing the exact opposite of incentivizing them in their methods. But then, we're some shitty brick'n'mortar establishment in the hinterlands of Seattle, not Cambridge Analytica so really, what was your economic argument again? As to Amazon, no aspect of my Prime membership contained any votes for Prime Marketplace or Prime Video or Prime Pantry. By your argument, if I wanted local bike parts I should opt out of Amazon Prime and be incapable of purchasing anything within two weeks. This is like your "if you don't like cars you can always ride a horse to work" argument which is Ben-Shapiro-grade speciousness.
You can ride a horse to the grocery store. You might blame the Ford Motor Company if this is inconvenient, but Ford couldn't have made cars the default form of transportation if customers didn't buy them. And if Ford didn't make them, customer demand for motor vehicles would have been satisfied by someone else. Customer demand is the best explanation for corporate behavior. It has lasted several years for me, and I have no plans to return. I miss getting some updates and invitations, but on balance it's not worth my time. I left my smartphone on the charger one Sunday as an experiment. I missed some messages, and nothing terrible happened. Have you tried asking classmates to contact you via other channels? Or creating a fake account just for classwork and leaving your personal details out of it? When you say you "have to" use social media to communicate, aren't you really saying that it's simply more convenient than voice calls, personal visits, or written notes? You don't "have to," you choose to because it is the best of the available options (including the option of not communicating). The rational-actor model isn't perfect; obviously people are not always rational. Can you suggest a better model for explaining or predicting human behavior?Yes - you can do all these things but when you create a social environment that practically requires you use technology, you're going to hand over the keys because there's no other option.
I remember trying to delete Facebook because of "privacy concerns," guess how long that lasted?
He's applying a rational-actor model to individual choices.
Pollution is a classic negative externality, but safety (for car occupants) is a benefit mostly realized by car buyers. But let's think through the incentives. Ford is in the business of selling large, complex transportation machines. When you shop for a car, the dealer encourages you to add options like all-wheel drive, premium sound, the sports package, and a bigger engine. Ford makes more profit when it sells more equipment with the car. If enough customers demand a refrigerator in their car, manufacturers will provide them. Why would Ford be opposed to adding emissions control equipment to a vehicle? Ford is interested in making profit, not pollution. The primary reason Ford would be opposed to putting emissions equipment in cars is that customers don't want to pay for it. --from an International Council on Clean Transportation report published in 2012. Euro 6 standards took effect in 2014. If customers demanded emissions controls (and were willing to pay the cost), manufacturers would already have incentive to provide them. Rational customers might calculate that the air they breathe won't be noticably cleaner if they pay for emissions controls but most other people don't, so it's not a worthwhile expense for them. If they knew everyone else would also buy the controls if they do they might (or might not) decide the benefit is worth the cost. Legislation is a way to solve this coordination problem (making people internalize the cost of their externalities), by forcing everyone to buy cleaner cars. Like anything else, this approach has pros and cons. That sounds like something a model would predict... and it's not entirely irrational. The short term is more predictable than the long term. Spending money now, or buying on credit, means you will definitely get to enjoy the product. I save in a retirement fund, but there is some risk that I won't be around to enjoy the savings, or some misfortune will make the funds unavailable when I want them. Spending resources today to reduce the risk of a catastrophe in 100 years could be a mistake if (1) the catastrophe happens anyway or (2) some other catastrophe happens or (3) some unforseen innovation would have averted the catastrophe at much lower cost. Agreed, no model is perfect. If you want to understand and predict human behavior, you can make random guesses or use an imperfect model. An assumption like "when stuff costs more, people buy less of it" is reliable enough to have some predictive power. The rational-actor model isn't a libertarian concept. Any model is a simplification, the idea is to reduce the complexity of the universe to make it more comprehensible. The question is how accurately the model represents reality; behavioral economics has been challenging rational choice theory recently. Back on topic: Caplan holds libertarian views. Does that mean that when he asserts that (1) tech companies produce great benefits and (2) people mostly complain about tech companies, he must be wrong because libertarianism is also wrong? That's the feeling I got from the responses here.Car manufacturers have no real incentive to maintain emissions standards or follow safety regulations, but we created those things because they were negative externalities.
For example, the cost of taking a 4-cylinder 1.5L gasoline engine from no emission controls to the most stringent proposed EU standard (Euro 6) is around US$360, whereas the cost of taking a 4-cylinder 1.5L diesel engine from no emission controls to Euro 6 standard is around $1400.
The problem is humans will usually always choose short term convenience over long term consequences
Regarding the model - I don't think any model is ever going to really work.
My main beef with libertarian economic theory is it feels like a simplification of reality much like Marxism is.
That's because you're trying SO HARD to get that feeling. You absolutely refuse to acknowledge that the article "solves by inspection" a dozen different things that absolutely no one else considers solved. Car manufacturers sell cars on the selling points that matter to consumers. In the '90s it was cup holders. In the '80s it was a commanding view over the road. In the '70s it was "please god can we return to the '60s despite these horrible emissions standards." You act as if consumers buy cars based on their emissions levels when even the EPA just insists they pass. All the ZULEV PZEV bullshit the manufacturers slap on the back are poorly-defined terms created by the California Air Resources Board, not the EPA, and they're not something you test for. Most consumers want the best performance they can get that abides by the laws they believe in and don't concern themselves with minute decisions influenced by driving habits beyond pass/fail. That whooshing sound is you blasting by #dieselgate as if it isn't there.That's the feeling I got from the responses here.
You can ride horses in and around Griffith Park. They are illegal everywhere else. Customer demand is the best explanation for corporate behavior... once you account for the externalities that the corporation is allowed to pick. Customers didn't demand pollution they were helpless to stop it until the EPA. Customers didn't demand seat belts they didn't have an option until they were mandated and yes I know Ford had them as options nobody bought and that doesn't matter because safety equipment never has a lobby it wasn't until a dozen kids got killed that three-wheelers became four-wheelers it's not like the manufacturers did it of their own accord.
Oh, come now. He argued that technology was an unalloyed good by deliberately devaluing everything lost. You can't say "no one earnestly disputed this claim" when I have a 500-word essay on food deserts and the annihilation of commerce. You can't restate the argument as if no one answered your complaints last time. "Profit comes from revenue, and revenue comes from customers" and profits and revenue are not a piece of the civil experience in any way shape or form. THAT is the beef. Like when he just whooshed the fuck over the Muckraker movement and why they existed.In this short essay, he made just a few simple claims.