You’ve witnessed the recent brouhaha about Facebook selling your life to advertisers and, especially, if indirectly, to Cambridge Analytica. (Can the University or the City of Cambridge sue for damages for the misuse of their name?  I wish they would.) 

Is it a problem?  No, not especially.  What should we do about it?  Nothing.

It is indeed a problem when a company, or the state, fools people by telling them they are being taken care of when they are not.  Free exchange among informed adults benefits both sides, and practically everyone else.  But if the exchange is fraudulent, it does not.  “Not to worry,” says Facebook, “We have your privacy for social chitchat in mind, and would never abuse it.”  “Not to worry,” says the state, “We have your entire privacy, income, safety, right to vote, education, health, legal justice, protection from knife attacks, and freedom in mind, and would never abuse them.”  In Facebook’s case, if the fooling becomes egregious, and is publicized through a free press, or private suits before a court, and if Facebook is not protected by the state in a cozy monopoly, the buyer of chitchat goes to a competitor, or ceases chitchatting.  In the state’s case, by contrast, she gets to vote, occasionally, on a collection of important issues, one of which may be the abuse.  Mostly not.  Perhaps she can move to France.