Really, the ‘discount’ price is the original price.
It’s a shell game.
In fact, when almost everyone pays the ‘stalking’ price, even when they obviously don’t want to be stalked and go out of their way to screw with the program and attempt to stop the stalking, your comment seems to completely ignores actual reality, which is heavily influenced by marketing, social pressures, price pressures, etc?
You know, actual market forces in a capitalist environment?
A shell game is one where misdirection is used to point someone towards an option which benefits the person running the game if the other player chooses it, by hiding the actual choice they want through confusion and obfuscation.
Seems like a perfectly appropriate description here?
by allowing the practice, the people that are fine with being tracked are imposing a tax on everyone else.
I see it as a dodge around unit pricing. Every price has the price per item and the price per 100ml/100g/whatever is appropriate. It's the law that applies to all shops that aren't small.
Easy to compare, until you come to the discounted prices which don't have unit prices printed. They can be multi buys, Clubcard offers, bundles, or whatever.
This seems intuitively free and fair, but the same sentiment is the centrepiece of John Stuart Mill's (problematic but fascinating) examination of Harm Principle and limits of personal liberty.
Namely; not being able to sell yourself into slavery.
Ordinary people (in the technological age) are not really capable of understanding or valuing their privacy and weighting the consequences of trading it. For the same reason we don't allow children to enter contracts I think it could fairly be said the average adult doesn't have capacity to "trade their privacy".
Why should the fact that they haven't thought things through take away natural rights?
Allowing people who don't care about their privacy to sell it seems like a fair transaction. Sabotaging capitalism & markets by not allowing consumers and producers to engage in barter seems inadvisable.
I personally care about my privacy, so I choose not to use overbearing services. I don't think that I should rob others of the ability to trade their privacy for better deals.