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The capitalists perpetuate capitalism through an ideology that stresses that the world will only get better with the right rich people in charge, and they only get louder about that promise when their regime is in crisis. It’s no wonder, then, that in a society where technology represents a substantial share of economic growth and political power, the capitalists that are adjacent to that particular gold rush breathlessly proselytize its utopian potential, promising it most fervently to the ones mining the gold for them.

every worker who could potentially exercise control over the means of production believes their bosses’ stewardship is leading the world to a better place. Another, of course, is a salary that prevents the need for much introspection.

For Yglesias, the very fact that something is the D.C. political consensus is enough to treat it as correct!

For Pressly, real privacy would mean not simply enabling people to participate in such decisions but mandating that far less data be made in the first place. Brought to its logical conclusion, his proposal evokes a kind of digital degrowth, a managed contraction of the Internet.

The highest compliment I can pay “The Right to Oblivion” is that it rescues privacy from the lawyers. Pressly’s version of privacy has a moral content, not just a legal one. And this gives it relevance to a broader set of intellectual and political pursuits.