I could see insurance companies purchasing your rewards accounts from data brokers to see what your habits are.
Our digital footprints are becoming more telling of our real lives, as more of our lives are mirrored digitally.
And in many ways that’s great - not only is booking a flight easier but my eating habits when combined with millions of others can reveal what epidemiology of yesteryear could only dream of
But I think this is where the privacy debate falls down - privacy is not real (secrecy is real, privacy is the politeness of our neighbours). What is concerning is what do others do with our information - and I think the best answer is the medical ethics answer - nothing unless it is in the individual’s best interests.
Yes there is a lot of wriggle room in those words but still
It can be achieved today with current tech under the right legal framework, and it will never be achieved regardless of what tech exists without that legal framework.
How is saving money not in an individual’s best interest?
You have person A who chooses to consume known carcinogens and excess carbohydrate, and person B who abstains from them and exercises control for their diet.
Why is it ethical for person B to have to subsidize person A?
Similarly, person A chooses to spend more money on less nutritious fast food meals, and person B makes quinoa salad at home and takes it to work. A lender may conclude person B exhibits behavior that indicates they have a lower probability of default, so why should person B have to subsidize person A’s lifestyle?
If the counter argument is that person A is poorer, had poorer parents, had a worse upbringing in a worse neighborhood with worse influences, then the correct way to subsidize person A is via government spending (cash, education, raising the floor on pay to quality of life at work ratios).
I think it's perfectly OK. Peeping on someones digital data is not OK.
But we have this perfect expectation of how we should and could be in our heads - thinner, fitter, more sensible with money, happier with friends. But we all fail. We just tend to fail in different ways.
Some of us are luckier, their satiety levels are lower, their kidney disease markers are low, no bowel cancer, no mental illness.
Those people won’t need high insurance premiums. But the point of insurance is not to reward the lucky ones, the whole point of insurance is that the lucky ones do subsidise the unlucky.
And please do not think “that person pays into a well researched health plan because they are more intelligent,more handsome, more like me”
If paying into a good health plan is important then simply make everyone do it.
The term is social insurance.
After staring at it for a while it’s the only thing that makes sense.
And then you can use that social pressure for useful things
