I wouldn't say that. If it meets our needs/wants and we are willing to pay for it, that represents value, no matter how silly it sounds. People pay money for plenty of nonsense: cosmetics, junk food, DLC. The fact that it's artificially derived (laws begetting paid workarounds) doesn't change the value proposition. For data gluttons the investment in data acquisition pays off. There are plenty of people paying money to work around laws, especially tax laws. Tax decisions have a scale from wisdom (an individual making prudent financial decisions) to deviance (a company playing shell games with businesses and bank accounts) but the line can be blurry.
I do think the situation is dystopian though. Sharing data without explicit case-by-case consent should be disallowed.
I wouldn't say that. If it meets our needs/wants and we are willing to pay for it, that represents value, no matter how silly it sounds. People pay money for plenty of nonsense: cosmetics, junk food, DLC. The fact that it's artificially derived (laws begetting paid workarounds) doesn't change the value proposition. For data gluttons the investment in data acquisition pays off. There are plenty of people paying money to work around laws, especially tax laws. Tax decisions have a scale from wisdom (an individual making prudent financial decisions) to deviance (a company playing shell games with businesses and bank accounts) but the line can be blurry.
I do think the situation is dystopian though. Sharing data without explicit case-by-case consent should be disallowed.