Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert recently put forth a thought experiment regarding a society where no one enjoys privacy. He puts forward a number of anti-individual ideas and it can be argued that we are trending towards them already. But it is an utopist notion doomed to failure because it fails to take into account human nature.
I heartily urge everyone to read “noprivacyville” http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/noprivacyville/ by Scott Adams. He puts forward the idea of a city with everything tracked and zero privacy. He starts with an idea an insurance company has to install GPS tracking devices on cars in exchange for lower insurance rates. He extrapolates the concept to envision an entire society run in this manner, which unfortunately, looks as if some unlucky city, country or society will experience sometime in the not too distant future.
Among the utopist notions that he can see are lower crime since no criminal would dare defy the omniscient masters, less police needed to catch speeders since the car reports its own violations, a more efficient health care system because guesswork has been removed, cheap public transportation since the inefficient routes could be eliminated fast, and an end to “confusopolies” (pricing plans which rely on confusing the customer would not be tolerated).
And in all fairness to Mr. Adams, he does admit that this is a thought experiment. He is not advocating it. He is using his thought experiment to contemplate the price we pay for our privacy and concluding that it is expensive.
But when I look at another utopist concept, “Anarcho Capitalist” concept put forward by many Libertarians, it seems that this “noprivacyville” might put that in the grasp of a collection of oligarchy minded societal engineers who wish to create a perfect city. A society with no government but which everything is owned by private entities, is possible only if we get rid of personal privacy.
Allow me to explain further with a modern example. Take a casino floor, everything is owned by a private entity. There is no expectation of personal privacy. The expectation is the opposite. People know they are being watched. And if you don’t like being watched, you are welcome to leave. And it functions in many ways as a government. It has its own currency (chips), it’s own police force (Security), it’s own economy, housing, shops and it’s own factories (Slots, Games, Hotel, Restaurants and kitchens). And it is privately owned and subject to the whims of the marketplace. Every one of these functions would still need to be performed in a society. But if these are done by corporations en masse, these functions are going to be run in a manner that is in the corporations best interests. That means your personal privacy goes bye-bye!
And it is exactly because it is privately owned; there is no expectation of privacy! In a casino, if you are causing trouble, you get taken to a Holding Room and asked to leave (if you are really being a problem, then you wait for the police). And is exactly here that the Anarcho Capitalist Utopian Dream of an entirely privatized society starts falling apart!
It gets down to what are know as externalities! An externality is a fee or penalty that exists outside of the economic equation. A good example is when Bechtel privatized the water rights for Bolivia, the thirst and misery of the Bolivian people who couldn’t even save rainwater for their own use was an externality as was the revolution that ensued because of this policy.
Taking the casino Holding Room example. As it stands now, whatever happens to the person who is detained by Casino Security and then arrested by the police is external to the equation. The fellow is off property and that’s all that matters. Scott Adams admits to a similar dynamic in his piece. He says “Bad workers would end up voluntarily moving out of the city to find work. Imagine a world where your coworkers are competent.”
And where is he to go if there is nothing but similar private entities that do not want him on their property because they believe he is an incompetent troublemaker? If he lives in Noprivacyville other entities know his past and can want nothing to do with him once the information is shared. What’s more, since it is their property and there are no courts to appeal the matter, he can be arbitrarily evicted, have his job terminated, have liens put against him all before he gets home! All of this is external to the precious equation of a perfect Anarcho Capitalist society.
But the fellow in question still needs food, water, housing, sex, and warmth during winter wherever he winds up. Getting rid of privacy did him no good whatsoever!
Time and time again, whether it is Bechtel’s causing a revolution in Bolivia, Enron’s causing rolling blackouts while joking about senior citizen’s eating cat food, or Banks selling CDOs to themselves and causing the Great Recession, we find that externalities upset the precious equations which free market advocates passionately swear by.
Engineers make mistakes. Things often work very different in reality compared to the drawing board and the lab. When confronted with the mistakes and catastrophes, the response is invariably some version of “Er, it’s not supposed to work like that!” And utopias are very difficult to engineer!
I work in casino surveillance, so I have a unique personal perspective on all of this. I can say from personal experience, on the casino floor people know that they are being watched and commit crimes anyway. “Who would try it?” Scott Adams asks, given that the “few criminals who make that mistake would be easy to round up”. The answer is anyone who thinks that they had a reasonable chance of getting away with it. That’s one of the reasons that the Death Penalty is a bad joke as a deterrent. Prisons are not filled with people who thought they would get caught. They are filled with people who thought they had the system aced and could get away with whatever they’re in there for.
And there is the other dynamic regarding security and surveillance departments, they never turn a profit! Any benefit they have to a corporation is measured negatively in what was prevented or deterred. And when budget time comes around, it’s those departments that never turn a direct profit like Engineering, Security, and Surveillance that are first on the chopping block.
Gathering all of this data does no one any good if the staff isn’t there which can interpret it and act on it. I’ve already witnessed expensive slot monitoring systems installed and people who should be acting on the data just pretending to look at it. Or maybe they where never trained to interpret it. The creator of Dilbert, Scott Adams is well aware of the lack of competence issues in the workplace. That’s why he stopped with the concept as a mere thought experiment. As of this date, March 20 2011 http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-03-20/ , he had the insight to say in today’s strip the “a deep understanding of reality is the same thing as laziness” and backed it up with “You ever see a statue of Buddah jogging?” And he had one of the characters falsify data on reliability statistics by randomly typing numbers on a spreadsheet!
There once was a little girl in Russia named Alissa Rosenbaum whose family owned a pharmacy. A bunch of utopist nasty people took her family pharmacy away and made it state property because they had a vision of a utopia. Well, to make a long story short she never forgot that, moved to Paris, started writing, then moved to Hollywood, then hit it big with her work. So big that she eventually started a philosophy circle in NYC whose protégés included the future Federal Reserve Chair whose dedication to deregulation helped bring on the current financial crisis! Just as the utopian collectivist dunderheads who stole the Rosenbaum family pharmacy wound up creating Ayn Rand, so too would their Libertarian counterparts wind up creating monsters we can not forsee if Noprivacyville ever becomes a reality!
Based on my personal experience invading people’s perceived yet nonexistent privacy, I don’t think that an Anarcho Capitalist Noprivacyville would keep its promises. I don’t think that Scott Adams does either. The sacrificing of privacy would neither deliver on nor be worth the supposed benefits of lower crime, health care efficiency, increased workplace competence, and an end to confusopolies.
Promises to make the “trains run on time” should be viewed with extreme skepticism no matter who stated them!
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