WAY OFF: Insidious business practices

[Matthew Braun]

K Henderson <henderson.120 at OSU.EDU> writes:

>And ok, yeah, I'm free to pay more for my groceries to not have the card,
>but why the *$@#!)$ should I?!
Uh, 'cause you value your privacy more than the savings?

>I'm not inclined to spend the time and effort to do 'opportunistic
>shopping,' which is the way to truly save money (relative to the average
>person who doesn't pay much attention) I suppose.
Likewise.  I want to simply go to my local grocery store, get what I need,
and get done.

>The problem is...they force you to play their game, or waste money.
 I agree that we shouldn't have to pay what is, in effect, a privacy tax.
You can sell them the information and are rewarded through rebates, or you
can buy it through lost savings.  To me, my anonymity is worth the fee,
because I don't want to be profiled (economically, racially, whatever).

And since information warfare is a multi-sided affair :-), I've also
considered trying to use this system to build a really strange user profile.
("Hmmm...this guy only buys Coca-Cola and...deodorant?  What the...?  Marty,
do we have any other correlation between soft drinks and BO in white males
between 40 and 45 who drive Pontiacs and listen to NPR in the morning, and
classical music in the afternoon?")

>Commodities like groceries should be a simple thing....you need something,
>you buy something.  End of story.
Yep.  We should be free to conduct the business of living without being
pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.
Unfortunately, it's becoming less and less easy as technology marches on...

                                        m@

+-mbraun at urbana.css.mot.com-+--Experiments that failed too many times -----BOC+
|   Matt Braun -- Motorola, |    Transformations that were too hard to find   |
|  Urbana, IL Design Centre | Poison's in my bloodstream, poison's in my pride|
+Simulation Technology Team-+--- I'm after rebellion--I'll settle for lies. --+