What Crovitz doesn’t discuss is that there is a tremendous difference between private businesses knowing selected bits of your personal habits, versus a government agent having access to all of your personal information. In a related context, Friedrich Hayek pointed out in The Road to Serfdom that it makes the difference between tyranny and liberty when central planners "merely" accumulate in one group of bureaucrats all of the power that had previously been dispersed among thousands of CEOs and other decision-makers in the private sector...
The free market has mechanisms to ensure the optimal amount of privacy is provided, consistent with the tradeoffs between other objectives. The real privacy danger comes not from business, but from government.
We Need Privacy From the Government by Bob Murphy
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