{"id":2065,"date":"2016-02-13T09:17:15","date_gmt":"2016-02-13T17:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=2065"},"modified":"2020-08-26T15:15:59","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T22:15:59","slug":"whats-the-opportunity-cost-of-lost-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/whats-the-opportunity-cost-of-lost-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opportunity Cost of Lost Privacy is Lost Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The opportunity cost of lost privacy is lost innovation, and by extension, a low-happiness society that lags not only in liberty, but in all amenities considered modern. Therefore, privacy is not just a luxury for the individual; it is a collective desirability as it leads to competitiveness and a strong economy. Today\u2019s legislators are blind to this causality.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When we\u2019re making choices, any choices, there\u2019s always some benefit we forego by not choosing the alternative that brings it \u2013 we try to maximize utility and happiness, but there\u2019s always something we\u2019re missing out on. This is generally called the opportunity cost<\/em> \u2013 the cost of not realizing a benefit, or the cost of losing a benefit. Wikipedia explains<\/a> \u201copportunity cost\u201d as such:<\/p>\n

In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost<\/strong> of a choice is the value of the best alternative forgone, where a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives given limited resources. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the \u201ccost\u201d incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would be had by taking the second best choice available.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We can note Wikipedia\u2019s important assumption in its definition \u2013 \u201cassuming the best choice is made\u201d. This is, of course, entirely subjective. There is also an opportunity cost for foregoing the benefits of the best choice available, if you\u2019re making something else<\/em> than the best available choice. Generalizing, there is always an opportunity cost for every single option you didn\u2019t<\/em> choose.<\/p>\n

In this case, the question is what the cost is to society<\/em> of individuals losing their privacy with ever-increasing surveillance. There are many observations to be made from countries and societies that went down this path, which generally shared the feature of slowly turning into low-happiness societies.<\/p>\n

To answer this question \u2013 what are the traits we associate<\/em> with privacy? In other words, assuming people can\u2019t be seen, what kind of people behave differently than generally expected?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s ignore for a moment that all people, really everybody, have a real, genuine, and legitimate need for actual privacy \u2013 like when going to the bathroom \u2013 and focus on the activities that are typically dampened by surveillance. It\u2019s sticking out. It\u2019s deviation. It\u2019s being redflagged. It\u2019s upsetting the status quo. Such things are seen as\u2026 undesirable.<\/p>\n

The people you suppress, and suppress effectively, by reducing privacy are the rulebenders and the rulebreakers. The square pegs in the round holes. The mavericks. The misfits and troublemakers. The ones who refuse to follow someone else\u2019s lead but insists their own way is better. Given the chance, legislators would happily make life hell for people who don\u2019t fall in line.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But these are the people we collectively call entrepreneurs.<\/em> They are suppressed and crushed when society decides they can\u2019t do things their own way anymore. When you stomp out privacy, you stomp out innovation with it.<\/p>\n

While the causality has not been conclusively studied, it\u2019s easy to see how this would lead to the observed long-term economic disaster in the high-surveillance societies we\u2019ve had in history, places that seemed to freeze in time when they stomped out privacy and other liberties. Innovation just ceased, stopped, and died. You\u2019d see 40-year-old cars on the streets (or design-by-committee disasters like the Trabant car<\/a>) and a lack of anything considered modern amenities as higher-happiness societies around them continued to innovate, improve, and \u2013 importantly \u2013 break the rules.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been theorized that this was the actual reason of the downfall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Cold War Communism: the lack of economic innovation, the complete and utter inability of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to compete. This inability to compete, in turn, came from its brutal and effective suppression of anybody who bent the rules \u2013 the people we call entrepreneurs. As a predictable result, Eastern Europe didn\u2019t have any more innovators.<\/p>\n

This is the opportunity cost we\u2019re all facing as our legislators are on a crusade against privacy and other liberties today.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, and therefore, privacy remains your own responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The opportunity cost of lost privacy is lost innovation, and by extension, a low-happiness society that lags not only in liberty, but in all amenities considered modern. Therefore, privacy is not just a luxury for the individual; it is a collective desirability as it leads to competitiveness and a strong economy. Today\u2019s legislators are blind … Continue reading “The Opportunity Cost of Lost Privacy is Lost Innovation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Opportunity Cost of Lost Privacy is Lost Innovation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The opportunity cost of lost privacy is lost innovation, and by extension, a low-happiness society that lags not only in liberty, but in all amenities\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/whats-the-opportunity-cost-of-lost-privacy\/\" 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