Well, duh, they make money:
“With the near-zero cost of sending out huge volumes of spam, the fact that more than one in ten users are purchasing products is clearly continuing to drive the economics of spam,” said Radicati.
Another way of looking at this is that a lot of folks consider the unsolicited email proffering painkillers, stiffeners, low interest mortgages, etc., to be as useful as other forms of advertising.
The Washington legislature is considering legislation that will give consumers the authority:
….to put a security freeze on their credit-reporting file. A security freeze lets the consumer prevent anyone from looking at his or her own credit reporting file for purposes of granting credit unless the consumer chooses to let that particular business look at the information.
This is a partial step in the right direction. It is not enough and will not as article suggests give consumers the ability to prevent identity thieves from getting credit in their names.
As I commented last month individuals must own their personal information and:
No institution, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, any information about an individual without that individuals specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.
Anything less is a recipe for theft underwritten by the very governmental institutions alleged to be our protectors.
For your ongoing edification the Carnival of the Capitalists is up at The RFID Weblog and the Grand Rounds schedule is up at Respectful Insolence.
The latter includes an appearance of PZ Myers’ exploration of the finer aspects of ear wax and smegma.
Walmart is regularly bashed because of their compensation plan. They may be deserving but there are some who are worse. For example, the state of Maryland:
BALTIMORE – Audra White loves her job caring for a 55-year-old man and a 51-year-old woman who need help with everyday tasks, but her paychecks from the state of Maryland leave her living below the poverty line.
Audra White”I bathe them, wash their clothes, run errands, talk to them. It’s like a second family. You bond with them,” said White, 39, a contract worker for the state in a program that provides Medicaid patients with in-home care. As a personal care assistant, she cleans and cooks and will even arrange cans in the cupboard so all labels are facing front if that’s what a client wants.
The state of Maryland pays her a maximum of $40 a day for eight hours’ work. One of 3,000 personal care assistants who work as contractors for the state, she averages less than the $5.15-an-hour federal minimum wage. The workers haven’t had a raise in 19 years. White also has no health insurance, workers’ compensation, sick leave, paid vacations or unemployment insurance.
The article suggests that there may be an $80/month raise in the works for these personal care assistants. Yep, 50 cents/hour. Not much.
It is, though, puzzling why the 3000 people who have these jobs don’t move on to better paying positions elsewhere. Isn’t that what people do when they believe they are undercompensated and they aren’t getting relief from their current employer?
I often agree with Larry Lessig but he is off base here:
But the government also should not act as the cat’s paw for one of the most powerful industries in the nation by making competition against that industry illegal, whether from government or not. This is true, at least, when it is unclear just what kind of “good” such competition might produce.
Broadband is the perfect example. The private market has failed the US so far.
First, he is absolutely correct when we rails against government enforced monopolies which reflects the state of the telecom industry for, well, seemingly forever.
Second, though, what private market has failed us? The heavily regulated, monopolistic telecom industry? No, this is better described as a government failure.
Lessig goes on to suggest:
The solution is not to fire private enterprise; it is instead to encourage more competition.
But it is not market competition he is suggesting. It is governments entering the market.
Lynn Kiesling has a great suggestion:
A better approach would be for governments to strive to be technology neutral, focus on defining the objectives, and work (interjurisdictionally, if necessary) to reduce the transaction costs and other features of the institutional landscape that prevent robust, private competition from occurring.
This is, I think, a very polite way of saying quit mucking with the market and start clearing out the sludge that has been put in the way of effective market functioning.