Personal Information Economics

Full Title or Meme

The idea that our Personal Information (PI) is an economic good has gained attention. Is that a good thing?

Context

• From the economic meaning of the term good as something of value comes the question whether all of life's pleasures should be valued in economic terms.

Opposing arguements

PI is an economic good

• A New York Times Economic View opined that there is "value as an eonoic resource. It is not clear why data about private people should ever become the economic property of a company, but that appears to be a common phenomonon.

  Data increasingly prowers innovation and it needs to be used for the public good. ... Data provides a record of what has already happened, but its main value come from improving preditions. ... The buzzy refrain of th digital age is that "data is the new oil". ... When Celera mapped a gene first, it protected its(sic) intellectual property by requiring other firms to negotiate licensing agreements or pay high fees before using the dta. Yeras later the genes mapped by Celera led to many fewer innovations and commercial products than those that were immediately put in the public domain.

PI must not be labled as an econmic good

In a Q&A session with Harvards's Elizabeth Renieris the question of