Posted on 02/12/2013 1:44:22 PM PST by frithguild
Sometimes I look at what I have written and worry a little bit. I look at all of this stuff I posted about the Google Purge of David Petraeus and Kip Ward, and how the use of information stifled voices of dissent. Sometimes I think I might come off as pretty paranoid. Then I see a little something like this:
The real threat is that Google, or perhaps just a few people within the leadership of Google, may be quietly operating as a private intelligence agency for the left.
The information analysts and behavioral scientists are busy looking for better ways to predict how all sorts of subsets of individuals will behave. I do not doubt for one millisecond that some legislators, maybe for example Chuck Schumer, are listening carefully about collecting and managing information that wins elections. They seem hard at work putting little noticed appropriations and authorizations in all sorts of legislation, so that their analysts and behavioral scientists have more to work with.
At the end of the day, however, they are taking something that is mine - unique information. I think that whenever somebody uses my information, they should pay a tax. Each time my information is passed from one machine to the next, a little more tax will be paid. The amount of information tax that must be paid should be subtracted from my income tax liability. I bet Google can figure out just how to do that.
>>The information analysts and behavioral scientists are busy looking for better ways to predict how all sorts of subsets of individuals will behave.<<
Hari Seldon lives, baby!
> At the end of the day, however, they are taking something that is mine - unique information.
> I think that whenever somebody uses my information, they should pay a tax.
Not tax but royalties to the owner of the information, if the owner wants them.
Axiom 1 - the population whose behaviour was modeled should be sufficiently large.
Axion 2 - the population should remain in ignorance of the results of the application of psychohistorical analyses.
(Frankly, this looks more like the work of Nash than Seldon...)
I say we vote for the Mule in 2016 then.
Once a week, or once a month, delete all Google cookies.
The way to do this is to search your cookies (easy in Firefox), for “utma”. That is not just Google’s cookies, but any other website that uses Google’s tools, with of course, the information going back to Google.
Then, for the ‘advanced’ paranoia control, Adobe provides what are called “flash cookies”, that use flash to backup cookie information, so if a cookie is deleted, all its data is automatically restored.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html
This is an Adobe page that shows you the flash cookies you currently have on your computer. The image on your screen is *not* a picture, but a control panel. If there is a flash cookie for some website you want to purge, delete it here *first*, then delete their cookie in your browser.
I don’t really care if they have my information.
What I am arguing for is each time my information transfers from my machine to another, that is a taxable event. Then from another machine to the next, that is a taxable event. Whoever owns the machine that receives my information must pay my income tax. If enough machines receive my information, I may end up paying no income tax at all. The feds might even get a surplus in tax payments.
I get to know who has my information, because they have to report the taxable event. If you don’t want to pay tax - don’t collect my information.
From the Wikipedia entry on Seldon:
Paul Krugman
At the 67th science-fiction world convention in Montreal, Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate in Economics, mentioned Hari Seldon. According to Krugman, his interest in economics began with Asimov’s Foundation novels, in which the social scientists of the future use ‘Psychohistory’ to attempt to save civilization. Since ‘Psychohistory’ in Asimov’s sense of the word does not exist, Krugman turned to economics, which he considered the next best thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hari_Seldon
As I have said for a few years now, Paul Krugman should just stick to being wrong about economics.
That is a very good idea, if it could be limited to that. But I see great danger in that resulting in an “electronic data transfer tax”, on far more things.
Imagine if the government got a penny for every Google search, or course Google being by subscription only, and a nickel a search. Or it cost a penny to look at FR, and a penny to look at every link from FR.
A penny of tax every time we used a credit card or made an electronic bank transfer. Already the UN has proposed an international financial transfer tax, to fund the UN.
As ridiculous sounding as I could make these, I’m sure that some greedy government employee could make them much worse.
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