One of the best bits of news I saw this week was that people
in China
value privacy. Perhaps you're better informed, but I must admit to a lot of
ignorance about China. It's very populous, very ancient, and
quite secretive; its people produce goods with amazingly high
value and recently have become much better off than they were and
this year the Forbes
China Rich List identified 49 billionaires, a number second
only to the USA, who have made fortunes in real estate and health
care. Last week I noticed that my (German) Krups coffee maker was
"fabriqué en Chine" and recently on
eBay I bought a very nice quality fountain pen for about $7
including postage from Hong Kong. Detractors may call China
the "sweatshop" of the world, but in the long term hard
work does tend to produce wealth. But... privacy? Evidently so; the CSM article above references
"Chinese citizens’ rising sense of privacy and a
reluctance to tell the government their personal details."
Apparently a census is under way, and just as we resented
the US Census earlier this year, the same resentment is being
expressed there. Splendid! So even after centuries of oppression
(half a century of Communism was just its most recent
manifestation) Chinese retain a "sense of privacy."
Wonderful! That sense is integral to being human. We each own ourselves,
therefore we alone decide how much of ourselves to
reveal to others. Any information dragged out of us against our
will is a violation of that fundamental, human self-ownership
right; it's theft of our very persons. Since government cannot
function without such information, we have another proof that
government and human nature are permanently irreconcilable. The particular occasion of the Chinese census illustrates that
principle: for over thirty years, it's been a criminal offense
there to have more than one child. Think of that! A baby, a
crime. Can there be anything about government that's more
obscene? (Yes, alas there can; it's called waging war. But this
comes close.) So naturally, the law has been flouted and the
census would reveal the crime, hence the strong stimulus to
protect privacy. That one-child
policy has of course other major ill-effects, including a
serious population imbalance that will plague China shortly as
the deprived parents retire, without enough in the workforce to
support them. The recent
unrest in France
may be nothing compared to what will soon appear in China. Marketers, too, like to have information so they can plan
effectively. I've noticed that after a purchase at Amazon.com, I
get emails offering goodies similar to what I bought; that's
intelligent. Since one cannot buy a gizmo without the seller
being aware of it, and particularly since Amazon can do me no
harm, I have no objection at all to that. But government, with
its monopoly of unaccountable force, can do me a great deal
of harm, and that's why it's important that it learns as little
as possible. And that very same sense is being felt in China too.
It's enough to restore one's faith in humanity.
10A062
Privacy
by Jim Davies, 11/3/2010
