Re: Children's Privacy Act

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

From:	IN%"llurch@networking.stanford.edu"  "Rich Graves" 24-MAY-1996 21:35:29.54

>I think forgiveness, within reason, tends to have a positive economic
>effect. I'm not the same person I was seven years ago, or even seven
>months. (Is it 7 years, btw? Or was it 12? It's arbitrary, in any case.) 

>I have no objection to allowing someone to become, and remain, a
>productive member of society years after fucking up badly. Note there are
>no statutes of limitations and no forgive-and-forget mandates for the more
>heinous violent crimes.

	I have no objections to giving people a second chance. I just like to
know _when_ I'm giving someone a second chance. What the laws in question say
is that companies - and individuals, so far as I know - shouldn't be allowed
to have that knowledge.

>Someone once said something about giving up a little freedom in return for
>security.

	Do try to keep in mind the freedom of the data-gatherer. This was also
said in regards to government. I'd agree with keeping governments and similar
coercive forces (e.g., monopolistic and ogliopolistic companies) from having
this information, or from misusing it if they have to have it for some
reason.

>OK, that's a straw man. The last couple examples show why some laws aren't
>necessary. The market simply wouldn't accept a too-totalitarian insurance
>company; people would rather pay as they go, and accept the risk
>themselves. But why is it fair to discriminate against detectable risks,
>when undetectable risks may be more expensive? 

	Discriminate? A rather loaded term. I generally define discrimination,
and have confirmed this definition by a dictionary check, as bias against
someone on a basis other than rational information. If someone refuses to hire
me for a job necessitating calligraphy, they aren't discrimiating against me
or other people with bad handwriting (including those, like me, who have that
due to neurological problems). They're being rational. A health insurance
company that judges who should be insured by that company on the basis of
whether the person is likely to get sick is surely being rational. A credit
company that judges who should get credit from that company on the basis of
whether that person is likely to declare bankrupcy is surely being rational.
	Moreover, even when it isn't rational, it's still that company's
business what it does with its dollars. It's analogous to the problem of
not allowing people to freely contract not to sue, as in remailers. While it
might be considered stupid for someone to do so - particularly in hindsight,
when they're claiming that they should be able to do so - the person should
still be allowed to do so.
	In regards to accepting the risk themselves, look at what happens when
you have insurance companies that are required to accept everyone at an equal
price. The ones who have information - denied to the insurance company - that
they're going to get sick will sign up more than the ones who won't. Take
Huntington's as an example. If genetic screening is prohibited to insurance
companies, someone who has a test and finds out that they've got the allele
for Huntington's, and thus will get sick and die from it, is going to go down
and get themselves insurance. Then the insurance - e.g., everyone else who
buys from that insurance company - will have to pay for them when they need
several years of nursing care before dying. How is this fair to everyone else,
including the insurance company?
	You spoke of fairness. Capitalism isn't fair; neither is life. Someone
who is bigger physically will have to spend more on food to keep alive than
someone who is small. Does that argue for socialization of food, so that
those who are big (partially a genetic trait) won't have to pay any more? Some
people are smarter than others. Does that mean that the ones who are smart
should be handicapped artificially to make everything fair?
	Most arguments on fairness ultimately come down to either appeals to
gut instincts - not a valid argument - or philosophical ones, generally
Rawls' Theory of Justice. That one has a problem. Rawls thought that the
most just social system was that which a group of people would come up with
when they didn't know what position they'd be in. This would lead to equality,
since nobody'd want to be in the low position, right? Wrong. People can
rationally take a chance. If you give someone a choice between gambling for
(on the flip of a 50/50 coin) 150 or 0 dollars, and getting 50 dollars
guaranteed, the rational choice is the gamble. In other words, if it is more
efficient - as I have argued - for things to be unequal, then this idea of
what justice is would argue for inequality being just.
	-Allen