Norway to track all supermarket purchases? • Hacker News Board

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#141

Post by trasz » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

croes wrote: post #107

mateo1 wrote: post #29

People seem to suddenly forget that these transactions are already tracked and individually linked to you. Should we allow anyone to collect that data except democratically elected governments? What's the logic behind this?

What's the worst a store can do to you, what's the worst a government can do to you? Don't make me confirm Godwin's law about democratically elected government.

“Government” isn’t a single entity. What’s the worst thing the state’s statistics department can do to you? Is it really that more dangerous than, say, Amazon?

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#142

Post by jonahbenton » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:06 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #122

jvm___ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're already being tracked by the grocery stores, wouldn't it be better to be tracked by someone who at least tries to have your best interests at heart vs. the grocery industry who just wants to sell you more?

Grocery stores who track me are subject to the pressures of competitive enterprise. The government is not. And that's to say nothing of the fact that, at least in the US, about 50% of the entire population at any given time tend NOT to believe that the government has their best interest in mind

No post body was provided.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#143

Post by Beltalowda » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #87

Beltalowda wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article already answers this: "When the purchases are linked to a household, it will be possible in the consumption statistics to analyze socio-economic and regional differences in consumption, and link it to variables such as income, education and place of residence."

That can still be done with anonymized data. It is not necessary to associate purchasing habits with national ID numbers to perform the analyses you listed.

I fail to see how you can get this kind of data from anonymized supermarket receipts? Entirely different data collection methods: sure. But the entire point of this is that was too difficult ("time-consuming and error-prone", according to the SSB).

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#144

Post by ihattendorf » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

GeorgeBanica wrote: post #126

tloriato wrote: post #9

“Hello #3576. You have reached your 1kg monthly limit of natural meat. Please consult the official list for alternatives.”

Compared with taxes, at least this way everyone gets the same amount of meat independent of how wealthy they are.

Because the wealthy surely wouldn't be able to find a way around a supermarket meat restriction...

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#145

Post by mrob » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:07 PM UTC

finnh wrote: post #38

Enginerrrd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ostensibly... But if you ever pay with a card, it's quite likely those with the data will be able to correlate your cash purchases with the card purchase and thus identify you.

How? Unless you input a form of ID (like a telephone number in a loyalty program) I don't see how a cash transaction can be linked to you at all. It's not like your cash purchase of 58.32kr has a match 578.32 kr withdrawal; that cash was taken from an ATM in a large, round-number bundle.

ATMs/self-service checkout machines can contain cameras to record the serial number of every note they dispense/accept.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#146

Post by Iv » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:08 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #14

"SSB claims they want a less time-consuming way of collecting and analysing household consumption statistics in order to inform tax policy, social assistance and child allowance." Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can create policies to control your behavior to our liking.

The goal of a democratic state is not to control the behavior of its population.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#147

Post by fullshark » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #85

paulcole wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing stuff like this today is going to be 100x better than what people 3 generations from now will have to live through thanks to climate change. The question is whether we’re willing to inconvenience ourselves today to protect future generations - and the answer is looking like no.

Given that since 2020 we observed that (at least in the US) many were not even prepared to accept minor inconvenience to protect the _current_ generations, I’d say the answer is emphatically “hell no” rather than just looking like it.

I have the opposite take. The lesson from COVID is like the lesson from the war on terror imo, the majority of people largely DID accept massive curtailing of individual freedom due to fear, and will do it again the next crisis that comes along. The climate change crisis is slow moving and 100% of the people don't accept it as happening but if it produces an actual short term crisis like a famine then the statists will be ready to use it to propose (or possibly just enforce without passing laws) massive intrusions on individual rights again and continue to search for similar crises to keep doing it.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#148

Post by punnerud » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #14

"SSB claims they want a less time-consuming way of collecting and analysing household consumption statistics in order to inform tax policy, social assistance and child allowance." Aka the more we know about you, the more efficiently we can create policies to control your behavior to our liking.

And SSB in anonymizing and grouping the data before anyone internal can use it for analyzing

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#149

Post by hutzlibu » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

axg11 wrote: post #72

cuteboy19 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or people can just ask for help if they need it

The people in society who need help the most often have the least trust in government and don't have the means to understand and navigate programmes that could help them.

This might be, because the programs are often not helpful. Here in germany I know stories of how asking for help mainly resulted in the children taken away (and cared for badly).

It depends on the area and the people working on it, I also know of good institutions, but I can see, why the so called underclass is sceptical of the common state institutions.

Most help that comes, comes with hard obligations, that mainly keep them down. Give a struggeling person a bunch of paperwork to fill out and he or she will just struggle more. And only once they are down enough, they get a certain label and then they get a more or less competent government helper, putting them totally into dependent state. Most have accepted their state as retarded by then and rarely make it up again.

Re: Norway to track all supermarket purchases?

#150

Post by ekianjo » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 4:09 PM UTC

Beltalowda wrote: post #100

ekianjo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not stop there and let's profile people on everything they purchase and increase their taxes on everything that's not remotely considered healthy enough, because you know, they increase the burden on the whole society! That's the recipe for the abolition of individual freedom.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Ah yes, the great "individual freedom" to screw over the many people already affected by climate change. Thanks buddy.

So you'd be OK with full-on tyranny? Because there's never going to be a short list of massive problems in the world to deal with.

> You're also shifting the discussion from climate change

Not shifting anything, I was giving an example of how certain items could be taxed by linking them to current problems. You can easily extend that example to other things beyond climate change.