Redistributing information will have the same effect as redistributing property. It will discourage private enterprise, because it will reduce the incentive to generate valuable information, and will breed underground criminal organizations as a means of circumventing the state apparatus.
The Soviet Union was one of the most corrupt societies on Earth by its end, largely as a consequence of making the formal economy so restricted that they pay off of operating outside of it grew enormously. Today's Russian organized crime is just the continuation of the organizations and networks that ran its grey/black markets during the Soviet era.
Well I'm not certain if one can assume "killing privacy with am open surveillance system" would reduce the incentive to generate valuable information or breed underground criminal organizations from past history.
History isn't always a reflection of what will happen today. The "current moment" is different than the past. Today, societies are sill severely corrupt in functioning and when it comes to humanity, currency, desire.
The question, "can an open surveillance system without privacy defeat the value of a person taking criminal action(s)" is the real bet. I think it would since technology is able to build such a system. The only difficulty or making it not a possibility is getting the majority to desire the change and which might be an impossibility. People can be unwilling based on self interests, the current world not being great and being conditioned by the not so great system of today in thinking it's the opposite of what we need.
We don't know anything for certain about hypothetical future scenarios of course. I think it's a significant risk, given what has happened in the past, and the general dynamics of an economy.
Economically valuable work is done when individuals have an incentive to do it. The acquisition of proprietary knowledge is one such incentive to do valuable work. Without privacy, there are far fewer opportunities to generate proprietary knowledge.
>>The question, "can an open surveillance system without privacy defeat the value of a person taking criminal action(s)" is the real bet.
It's not the only real bet. Whether it can be imposed without destroying much of the incentive to generate value, and without incentivizing the creation of a black market with a parallel dispute resolution mechanism that works in secret and outside of the law (aka criminal organizations) is also a major bet, and one that I think will lose catastrophically.
The former - the potential harm to the incentive to be productive
- is the most dangerous risk of eliminating privacy.
Economic development is a major source of risk alleviation. It reduces risks from disease, natural disasters, accidents, starvation, etc. So in trying to eliminate risks from crime by way of eliminating privacy, you may inadvertently increase much more serious risks, and you may in fact increase the criminal element itself by pushing people to operate through outlawed networks bound by oaths of secrecy.
>>Economically valuable work is done when individuals have an incentive to do it. The acquisition of proprietary knowledge is one such incentive to do valuable work. Without privacy, there are far fewer opportunities to generate proprietary knowledge.
I don't really believe that is all true. Grunt work is done for the requirement of survival. The work where a person helps produce discoveries by an academic research life happens to not be rewarded financially from what I've observed. The people in history that have paved science to what it is today, have all had some passion and with not really receiving much besides fame.
Also when does it stop being a rush to push society a little forward for all the time lost? Do people deserve more leisure than work hours in our lifetime.
Lastly the surveillance system I envision technologically possible makes criminal action impossible for any benefit in the society of such an open system of observation towards others in the system.
Anyway thank you for the time put into your reply. Interesting to read.
>>I don't really believe that is all true. Grunt work is done for the requirement of survival.
I mean the work of creating and expanding businesses, aka generating capital.
If I put in work creating a new health food stand, and my competitors can easily see that I'm successful, and therefore worth copying, and then easily see who my suppliers are, how I do research on what items to add to my menu, then my competitive advantage diminishes significantly, and I will be less likely to do the work of creative entrepeneurship required to increase the diversity of goods/services offered on the market.
I recommend reading up on Paul Romer's work on the role of knowledge in productivity, and how mundane business development adds to it, which he won a Nobel Prize for:
The Soviet Union was one of the most corrupt societies on Earth by its end, largely as a consequence of making the formal economy so restricted that they pay off of operating outside of it grew enormously. Today's Russian organized crime is just the continuation of the organizations and networks that ran its grey/black markets during the Soviet era.