Word: posner
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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None of this, of course, is original; startling and fresh is Posner's belief that the exchange of gifts also provided a way for one clan or person to ascertain the reliability as a trading partner of another. This concept is central to the author's argument that information and the need for knowledge of the dependability of a transaction partner explain both privacy laws and racial prejudice...
...AUTHOR'S VIEW OF PRIVACY is easily the most innovative and controversial element of the book. Using economic efficiency as the ultimate justification of any measure, Posner decides that many of the recent legislative and judicial actions on privacy have been wrong-headed, since they allow individuals to conceal personal information that might be relevant to reliability as a transaction partner, while forbidding business enterprises from keeping secrets, even though the business might use its privacy to create products or processes that contribute greatly to the wealth of society...
...author would instead distinguish between seclusion and secrecy as different components of what we generally think of as privacy. Seclusion, as Posner sees it, is the traditional meaning of privacy, the right any thinking being has to solitude and the freedom of his own thoughts and ideas. This prerogative, essential for preserving a free society, becomes indefensible, however, when invoked to justify the sort of secrecy that society's efficient operation cannot warrant. Privacy statutes prohibiting, say, an employer's efforts to glean information about a job applicant, or a manufacturer's right to get his product to the preferable...
...appeals to this businessman-like instinct, Posner's economic argument falters upon this question of personal privacy. Suppose, for example, to make the sort of hypothetical case the author frequently finds fitting, that Mr. X is a master widget-maker who conceals the fact that he is a homosexual. He works for Mr. Y, the owner of a widget factory, who has a distinct aversion to homosexuals. X ends up out of a job, as the process of ferreting out facts about his employees leaves him with the knowledge of X's sexual preferences; and out of luck, because...
...Posner's privacy rule thus dooms Mr. X to suffer because his sexual behavior, information the author considers legitimate for his employer to obtain, even though it could have no bearing on his reliability as an employee. Posner offers no remedy for such a flagrant injustice other than a grudging concession that "some presumably modest efforts to achieve a more equal distribution of income and wealth may be economically justifiable." It's not that callousness limits his ambition; only his faith in the decision-making capabilities of the owners of widget factories does it. Everyone is a rational maximizer...