The fun began with the implication that healthcare for everyone is a must. Good healthcare means not dying in good health. Assuming mental health (too tricky to deal with for this argument) that leaves people that wish to die in a precarious position. And what do with so many people? That might seem a strange argument, but it is not at all. Healthcare is yet imperfect because it's damn hard and expensive. Less surveillance is easier, not harder. The problem is that the general public WANTS surveillance. They want to give away their liberties for the safety it may bring them. Marx had a huge audience. I do not believe the hackers do. "Solving" surveilance for me means aligning it with justice, dignity, freedom and most significantly, tirrany prevention. With the cost of surveilance only going down we must consider the endgame. The endgame is full and continuous surveillance. It is inevitable as long as more surveillance has any advantage. I am not yet sure how to deal with this properly, and think it a political question. As for claiming your own privacy: we're far behind in the game for reasons beyond me. Most likely some modern variant of imperialism, where money is stolen from the weak and thrown at surveillance (see also the American budget for the department of unconsitutionality). To compare these issues with healthcare is meaningless. Although the conclusion is correct. If there is not far more effort (=money) expanded on feature-and-convenience parity for privacy-protecting solutions; we're all royally fucked. And no violent revolution will beat back the drone armies that already in flight. The time that a revolution was feasible was already ending when the founding fathers decreed Americans must bear arms in militias. Without similar class weaponry there is no chance, regardless of combatant quantity. The assault rifle cannot match the helicopter, the APC, the drone, and is not readily available either. The people's organization (intelligence and command and control infrastructure) will never again match that of the army. There will be no more violent revolutions. That is over now. So, if everyone would be so kind as to think of what to do about a world steepled in dysfunctional markets ... Well that would probably solve the privacy thing as well. We'd know to buy safe. And we'd spend a lot more on healthcare, too, I'm sure. But perhaps before everyone lived indefinitelt, we should fix democracy, or adopt whatever *cracy does work. Although, who's first to shoot me when I suggest no person knows what's best even for himself, or should be left the freedom to make the wrong choice? Besides, isn't government merely a product on a less free market? P.S.: i take back everything i stated in this rant. It's the only way anyone could make a statement nowadays ;)