This is a great question raised by Capitalism, and the extreme lengths the United States has taken it to.
How do you define how much profit is enough?
If you're suggesting Google can still make "enough", shouldn't McDonald's pay their workers a few bucks more and still make billions? Shouldn't banks lower fees and still make trillions?
In our current world, the only amount of profit that is enough is "more", and that will be attained at all costs (i.e. employees living below the poverty line, banks destroying the global economy and in Google's case, we lose our privacy)
That's not what I meant. I was using the colloquial "little much" to suggest that Schneier's statement was too sweeping to be accurate. If the U.S. passed a law tomorrow that made user tracking and profiling on the web illegal, Google would still make plenty of money from AdWords.
>Google would still make plenty of money from AdWords.
Of course they would.
And McDonald's would still make plenty of money if they were forced to pay a decent wage, and banks would still make plenty of money if they were forced to be more responsible and lower fees.
But you don't see that happening, because the drive for more profit is all consuming, and it's the corporations that have the most influence in these laws.
This is a great question raised by Capitalism, and the extreme lengths the United States has taken it to.
How do you define how much profit is enough?
If you're suggesting Google can still make "enough", shouldn't McDonald's pay their workers a few bucks more and still make billions? Shouldn't banks lower fees and still make trillions?
In our current world, the only amount of profit that is enough is "more", and that will be attained at all costs (i.e. employees living below the poverty line, banks destroying the global economy and in Google's case, we lose our privacy)