Take for example my state’s “use” tax paid in lieu of sales tax on online purchases. However, many come to believe that such exposure is the government’s right. One must reveal all income to the IRS under penalty of law. It is necessary to obtain services or favor but it is just that voluntary in exchange for some consideration, be it a loan application, attorney services, medical treatment, etc.Ĭompelled disclosures are a completely different animal. We every day voluntarily offer up private details. But it is a distinction that I would have expected from someone who calls himself a bleeding heart libertarian. It’s not one that I would expect, say, the New York Times, to point out. Census Bureau, by contrast, uses the threat of force to get its information. But I’ve never seen FB make that commitment. If FB had committed to guarding your privacy, then it would be breeching a contract by doing so. Every single person who signs up with Facebook does so voluntarily. Its handing over Census data to the Secret Service so the federal government could round up Japanese Americans and imprison them was pretty contemptuous of privacy, to put it mildly.īut let’s grant, for the sake of this discussion, that FB is quite contemptuous of privacy and that the Census Bureau is less so. What I get from this is that neither Cohen nor figleaf sees the crucial difference between the two kinds of power.įigleaf is right that FB is contemptuous of privacy. But I also think some people are better off with less liberty than I would otherwise think ideal–and I would not want to make them worse off by “forcing them to be free.” In any case, I completely agree that it does not matter “who’s infringing liberties.” We should be concerned, I think, about any accumulations of power–whether in the hands of government officials or private parties–because we should oppose any attempts to use such power to infringe on others. I imagine most people reading this blog are the same. He wrote:įigleaf: this comment makes me think you’re a BHL! My only limit about this is that I wouldn’t say its about maximizing liberty at root, but maximizing well-being. private interests is still infringementĪndrew Cohen, the BHL blogger whose post figleaf was commenting on, responded, in turn, to figleaf. Point being, I don’t really care who’s infringing liberties - infringement by government vs. I think he meant to put the word “more” before “openly.”
Consider further that Facebook is openly contemptuous of “citizen” privacy or the implicit right to the property of your personal information than the U.S. Therefore it’s not as simple as private-sector = more liberty, public sector = less. In a comment at the Bleeding Heart Libertarians (BHL) site, “figleaf” wrote:Ĭonsider further that the privately owned Facebook restricts user liberty more than any fully-owned public university website.
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