Paul Krugman in favor of the surveillance state: First, most people probably don’t have that much to be private about; most of us don’t actually have double lives and deep secrets — at most we have minor vices, and the truth is that nobody cares. Second, lack of privacy is actually part of the experience of being rich — the chauffeur, the maids, and the doorman know all, but are paid not to tell, and the same will be be true of their upper-middle-class digital versions. The rich already live in a kind of privatized surveillance state; now the opportunity to live in a gilded fishbowl is being (somewhat) democratized.
Gosh, where do I sign up! I posted this largely because of it's obsurd, "let them eat cake" quality, which was also echoed in another recent Krugman column in which he wrote: There are almost no genuine libertarians in America — and the people who like to use that name for themselves do not, in reality, love liberty.
What an incredibly arrogant thing to say! There are many people involved with libertarianism who've worked hard to preserve individual liberties, and there are many people involved with the left who have authoritarian views associated with their own, personal economic and social interests and don't give a damn about level playing fields other than as a selling point. |