I can assure you I'm not wealthy and never have been, other than in the sense of me living in the west (though not the US). My point is that life can be pretty damn decent without digital markers for where you are, constant air travel and a new TV every other year.
Yes, certain things have gotten more affordable. But is affordable noise cancelling headphones and cheap air travel really the result of apps and websites crawling up our backsides with a microscope and shuffling that data to some unknown other?
Air travel in the 1990s was much cheaper than, say, in the 1950s, much like computers, TV:s and headphones. In fact, the price of air travel dropped by roughly 1/3 between 1980 and 1995[0].
Evidence suggests that happened completely without constant digital surveillance.
Just like with air travel, TV:s have gotten larger and cheaper for a long, long time before data harvesting even existed as a factor. Yes, the price of TV:s are continuing to drop. Mostly because of cheaper panels. Of course manufacturers claim that TV:s would be unsellably expensive without telemetry, but then again, they make lots of money off it and "cheap" is a neat way to justify that.
Current prices might've taken a bit longer to reach without telemetry - although the latest most significant price drops occurred a decade ago or more, well before spy TV:s were baseline models.
Today, you can buy a 32" monitor for $200, and they've not yet begun spying on us. For pure screen real estate, yes, it costs more than a 55" model. But is it "expensive"? Heck, would it be "expensive" if it was a 28" CRT, like the one my current LCD TV replaced a decade ago?
Sacrificing privacy for constant upgrades to something bigger and ostensibly better is, to reply in kind, if anything a kind of wealth blindness: What could possibly go wrong to anyone who owns a 55 inch TV?
Yes, certain things have gotten more affordable. But is affordable noise cancelling headphones and cheap air travel really the result of apps and websites crawling up our backsides with a microscope and shuffling that data to some unknown other?
Air travel in the 1990s was much cheaper than, say, in the 1950s, much like computers, TV:s and headphones. In fact, the price of air travel dropped by roughly 1/3 between 1980 and 1995[0].
Evidence suggests that happened completely without constant digital surveillance.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-air...