Oh Most Wise Government! Please Protect Us From FAANG!

In a recent opinion piece, Juan Williams is outraged that Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG) have become too powerful and they seemingly have no regard for the privacy of their customers.  He argues that they seek to profit off selling their customers' private information while maliciously manipulating the outcome of the - wait for it - the 2016 election.

Predictably, the answer is, of course, more government regulation. After all, what can one person do against the tyranny of FAANG?  The government must protect us from our own decisions these titans of industry as they seek to exploit our privacy and control our minds!  Unbeknownst to us all, FAANG lulls us into the thinking our data is our own and our privacy is completely within our control as we blithely skip the 144 page legal agreement and click on "I Agree."

Juan argues that the free market has failed to curb these actions and our very democracy is at stake should congress not act. What else can be done but to make laws to protect people from their own uninformed decisions?  Surely we can no longer afford to sit idly by and hope that our citizens become self-enlightened!

Perhaps we need these companies to subsidize legal counsel for every new subscriber?  An on-demand lawyer paid for by Mr. Zuckerberg can pop up on the screen and walk us through the legalese before we click "I agree."

Perhaps every ad on Facebook can be like a political ad which has the tag line "I am Vladimir Putin and I approved this message."

Or perhaps there is another way.

Perhaps we should take take responsibility for the contracts to which we agree.  If we are concerned with what could happen, perhaps we should actually read the terms and understand what we are agreeing to rather than blindly hoping for the best and keeping a personal injury attorney waiting in the wings.

Perhaps we should let the market decide when a business makes a bad decision.  As Juan correctly noted, Mark Zuckerberg lost $15 billion as a result of these recent mistakes.  Even for Zuckerberg, that had to hurt.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, we should exercise some free-will by opting out of a service when we are unsure of what we are getting.  Had we put our instant gratification aside and not signed onto thousands of adjustable rate mortgages in the run-up to the 2008 financial recession, we would not have had a financial collapse.

When we allow our government to coddle us with laws in an effort to protect us from our own decisions, we become weak and reliant.  We point the fingers at others rather than looking inward to ourselves.  We make decisions we otherwise wouldn't make because there is little risk of failure.  And with each law that is passed, we cede a bit more freedom to the government in the hopes that we are protected from our own stupidity. 

Or perhaps, that is what we want after all.