[hchasestevens]

Alternatively: without this new source of revenue, auto manufacturers will be less able to compete on price and maintain the same margins. As a consumer, I don't get to decide whether I'd like a "repairable" car that doesn't harvest my data for $X, or am willing to settle for a data-harvesting, proprietary vehicle for $(X - Y) - the state has made that choice on my behalf and decided the latter should be illegal to sell to me (read: for me to purchase).

That $Y probably ends up being small enough that it doesn't matter to the average high-paid HN reader, but consumer prices do matter to people at the margins. There's a reason ad-supported Kindles exist, even if I personally would never buy one.

[allenrb]

Also, by prohibiting poor people from selling their own organs, it is more difficult for these folks to make ends meet in the short term.

That doesn’t sound like good reasoning to me.

[landemva]

A few years ago the feminist mantra was 'my body my choice'.

Are people free or not?

[maxwellb]

r.e. the state deciding for you - this was a statewide ballot measure, and passed with ~75% of the vote.

[danShumway]

That's a good point -- even if you approach this from a very strict Libertarian perspective, this regulation is pretty definitively an outcome that resulted from the free decisions of the majority of people who chose to live inside the state.

So I guess taking the traditional Ancap question about free markets, and reapplying it, it's reasonable to ask: how can regulation that is the result of people's free voting choices not itself be considered free?

And then you can get into whatever responses people have to that question in general about whether free choices can result in coercive structures that are worth opposing, which is not really my point here. My point is, I don't really see a huge fundamental difference between a free market deciding that a product isn't worth producing and a free democracy deciding that a product isn't worth producing. I don't see why one should inherently be viewed as more legitimate than the other.

If the voters don't want automobile manufacturers to violate their privacy, and they want to pass a law about it, that's their choice as a community. It seems just as valid of a choice as anything else the free market could produce.

[quantified]

Much closer to a “we the people” decision for voters than almost anything else.

[quantified]

Why not? They’ve been making cars for 100 years and margins go up and down, no data sales during they heydays. Anyway, it’s not anyone’s job to protect their margins.