In article ,
Gary Woods wrote:

Starting with supermarkets, but now in almost all areas of
retail and 'service' (such as banks), we are no longer the customers
but their commodities.

I heard an interview with Phil Zimmerman, author of Pretty Good Privacy and
net privacy guru. When asked about "free" services like Facebook, Gmail,
etc., he said "If the commodity is free, YOU are the commodity."
There's a lot of that going around on my side of the pond
too....supermarket loyalty cards so they can tell what you're buying, sell
the info to their suppliers, etc.

It doesn't have to be free :-( All that is needed is an effective
monopoly/cartel and a requirement to use their services, then your
only function is as the resource to be exploited. To use what I
think is an Americanism, they have us over a barrel and are seeing
how far they can push the broom handle.

The trouble is that the English are so damn docile, and they
dominate the UK!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.