Getting paid for the data we share

"Every breath you take

And every move you make

Every bond you break

Every step you take

I'll be watching you."

Lyrics: "Every breath you take," sung by The Police, 2003 

We give up our valuable data. We should get paid for it.

Eavesdropper

This week I visited with a student finishing up a degree in Computer Science at Southern Oregon University's Honors College. She suggested I turn off "Siri" on my I-Phone. She warned me about "cross tracking" from applications I have downloaded. Apparently, just because I am not using an app doesn't mean that that it isn't tracking me. You are giving up all that data, she warned.

Andrew Yang got famous for suggesting every adult in America be paid $1,000 a month as a benefit of citizenship. It was described as socialism. Free money for nothing! Most of the attention was on what a guaranteed income would mean to the work ethic and federal budget. 

He said, no, it wasn't a give-away. It was an earned benefit. He cited Alaska. Alaskans share in owning the mineral wealth of the state, so every citizen gets a check representing a share of oil royalties. Yang's observation was that American citizens were turning over to technology companies, retailers, financial services companies--in fact to every business that swipes our debit or credit cards--data that had enormous value, and we were giving it away for free. It was like owning a pool of oil or the electromagnetic spectrum and not getting income from it. 

Who owns that data? Businesses collect it, yes, but in a democracy "we the people" can decide that they are collecting something that is still ours. WE own the data. That means we can charge them for it, collected through taxes, and redistribute it how we wish. 

With the student's warning fresh in mind, I made a small purchase yesterday. I wanted some small heat lamp bulbs to keep exposed pipes from freezing. I went to PetSmart, where they sell a variety of light bulbs to heat animal cages. I picked out three small bulbs, prominently marked at $8 for one, and 50% off on a second bulb. They had three on the shelf, so I bought all three. I expected to pay $20: Eight, plus four for the second one, and probably another eight for that third one. 

The friendly cashier rang me up, asked if I had a customer number. I said no. She said it would be $40. I said, no, it was $20, the eight dollar price prominently marked, plus the second one 50% off.  She explained that they post the member prices. The non-member price would be $40 for the three bulbs. She said she would make me a member right there. She needed my name, address, phone number, and email address. She entered them. Now it is $20, she said brightly.

I am already earning “loyalty” points

When I got home I had a welcoming email from PetSmart in my in-box. They wanted to confirm my information, know the name of each of my pets, their dates of birth, breed, neutering status, health conditions and whether I preferred to get notices about special promotions by text or email.

Andrew Yang, in explaining his idea of a guaranteed annual income said the value of the data that we were giving up to businesses was as valuable as the markup they were making on items they sold us. That seemed crazy impossible to me, so I dismissed it as exaggerated or imagined justification for giving people free money. Maybe Yang was exactly right. For PetSmart yesterday, the difference between having someone they could target marketing to versus an anonymous cash buyer holding a $20 bill, was 100%. Without my contact information, the bulbs were $40. They wanted to know when to send me birthday greetings and pet maintenance products to the pets they expect me to own.

$81 billion for 5G licenses

Data on some consumers are worth more than data on others, but there is no reason that in a democracy this wealth of data could not be defined as a pooled resource owned by the public, inalienable, like our life and liberty. Recognizing that the public is creating wealth in the data we are offering up changes the moral and political justification for a guaranteed benefit. We would not be taxing businesses to give citizens something for nothing.  We would be taxing them to recover value from them something that is ours, the data on where we go, what we buy, what we read. 

The data Americans share are invisible, but it is as real as the invisible electromagnetic spectrum, and far more valuable. The public owns the spectrum and we auction that off and get paid for it. Why not our data? And since the public is constantly creating that resource, why not return its value to the public directly every month?

Thought of that way, it isn't a crazy idea.