What does a picture of your eye allow that fingerprints, face scans and other passport biometrics that have already been collected and linked do not? Honest question.

True, but does that mean the solution is to force the starvation because their choice to alleviate it was insufficiently willing for our tastes? At least they’ll starve with two kidneys, and we hope the would-be kidney recipient can get by on dialysis a while longer?

By all means let’s engineer a world where people are never faced with crappy choices. But people are living in the present, not the glorious future: Taking away the choice in this case doesn’t seem to fix the situation, and deprives people of a benefit they’d accept if you let them choose.

I agree! I think what rubbed me was the idea that the people taking Altman’s deal “do not know the consequences of what they are doing.”

Down that road lies a paternalistic flavor of charity, a spirit of “protecting them from themselves.” And that seems to evoke the idea that poor is the same as ignorant. That there’s only one correct value to assign to your biometric data, and anyone who values theirs differently must do so because they’re ignorant, rather than just having different values from you.

We can advocate for political freedom, material security, and just societies—and probably get better results—if we don’t model people as helpless or uninformed or without agency just because they’re in a socially vulnerable position.