Absolutely true. Although it’s true that users have become the product through advertising, making users pay won’t make them any less susceptible. The magical thinking this idea is based on is that market forces will solve the problem. The theory is that if I, a user, find out that a company is selling my data I will leave the service and go to another one, voting with my wallet and causing the whole system to value privacy. This depends on 3 assumptions:

1. There is symmetry of information in the economy (users will know when their data is being monetized)

2. There are many providers of a service with different offerings

3. The services are commoditized (there is nothing keeping me from interchanging one for the other)

None of those assumptions are true for all services and only a few services may meet all 3. #1 is the least true IMO and if you want it, it’s something you’ll have to pass legislation and regulate for. There’s not much you can do for #2 except make it easier for people to make services, sometimes economies of scale and network effects mean that it will only make economic sense for there to be 1 player in a market, in that case there should be heavy oversight on that player, such is the case with public utilities. #3 would require standardization, this can be done by industry, but they have every incentive at this point to silo their users. Public and Gov’t pressure could make this happen similar to the formation of the MPAA as a hedge the movie industry made against gov’t regulation.

i think there is a sneaky #4. just because some service you're using meets your privacy criteria today, there is really nothing stopping them or their aquirer from deciding to sell or exploit your information in the future. TOS seems to be kind of a one way street.

That's not true though; the fact that some service I'm using meets my privacy criteria today means they don't have any information to sell or exploit in the future.

How many services you use have your email address, telephone number, real name, or street address?

All of these have value, but are needed for various aspects of business (sending purchases, receipts, contacting you on case of issues with your account, etc).

For that matter the compiled list of actions you take on a site have value. The only way not to provide a service with valuable personal information is not to use it.

In the magic world where capitalism's "vote with your wallet" actually works (which as vegetablepotpie points out is fictional), email addresses given to corporations have the form "[random base64 UUID]@generic-mail-service.example.com", phone numbers are similar but base ten, businesses don't distinguish between 'real' names and "John Q Smith", and mailing addresses (given to corporations) are of the form "[random base64 UUID] care of [US postal service or a more cooperative competitor thereof]".

(I guess this technically assumes that voting with your actual vote also works, at least for the purposes of removing abusive know-your-customer laws, but lack of gratuitously harmful regulation seems in line with the libertarian-esque philosophy behind "vote with your wallet", so... eh.)

Who said anything about paying more? This could all be changed with legislation at effectively zero cost to consumers. That seems like the only real option as I can’t directly stop my electric company etc from selling my information.

Good point, the need for a legislative solution is a lot more clear cut in the case of government-sanctioned monopolies such as electricity.

To be honest, my guess is that the consumers who would pay extra money for privacy, although likely in high income brackets, are also likely to be the consumers who are the biggest pain in the ass to support (if we're not talking enterprise).