>>> Take responsibility for your choices and entitlement.

>>> - You

>> AFAIK, telling people this isn't effective, so it can really only serve to make yourself feel superior, not really effect change

>> - Me

> I don't see how any of that follows. ... look at Unions

> - You

I think you misunderstood me, or are replying to more than what you quoted here, because I'm not sure what unions have to do with the statement you did quote from me.

I am saying that the literal act of telling people to "take responsibility for your choices and entitlement" isn't an effective way to have more people take responsibility for their choices and entitlement. Your saying it is not useful in furthering your implicit goal of getting more people take responsibility. 99% of the time the only thing that that statement will do is make you feel superior because you believe you're already doing that.

> The people that hold the view that papa Government will fix everything are thinking emotively like a child.

I mean, the way you phrased that makes it practically a tautology. I'd suggest you consider that there could possibly be other reasons look towards the government for solutions beyond mere naivete.

If you understood those reasons, then you could address them and potentially convince people that they should change their mind. However, I will again point out that it is your approach here that will get in your way. Calling a person childish, if they are not being childish, will result in them dismissing what you have to say because you are insulting them. But calling a person childish, when they are being childish, will result in a metaphorical fingers-in-ears-going-la-la-la-la response because they are being childish.

> Government will fix everything

I agree the government cannot fix everything, however I also believe there are classes of problem that a government, or government-like-entity, are better capable of addressing than the alternatives, but you're so busy calling people immature and smugly telling us how you've got it all figured out that I doubt you'd be willing to take the time to try to understand that (I'd love to be wrong about that, mind you)

>If you're a good citizen of the world you should turn off location to save on greenhouse gases.

If you're a good citizen of the world, you wouldn't use a phone containing compounds taken from strip-mines that poison the surrounding ecosystem and then had to be shipped on a pollution belching freighter halfway around the world.

> Android is terrible at efficiency with those on.

How much worse? Over the lifetime of a phone, how much more energy will be used? A ballpark, order-of-magnitude, fermi estimation would be good to have for this. Heck, I'll do it so we can see:

Assumptions:

* 5,000 mAh battery (this is higher than all flagship phones this year[0])

* To get watt-hours assume a li-po battery operating at 4.2 volts (higher of two standard voltages for li-po[1])

* 3 year lifespan (Higher than the US avg replacement cycle length[2])

* The phone battery is completely drained by the end of the day

* The phone battery is fully charged by the next morning

(3 years * 365 days) * (5,000 mAh * 4.2 volts) = 23 kWh[3] which is about 7.66 kWh/yr.

To put this in perspective a kWh costs 12 cents on average in the US, and boiling 1 cup of warm-ish (65-70 degree F) water takes around 150 Wh[4], which works out to mean that a person could offset their phone's energy usage by having one less cup of coffee per week.

But I estimated high on everything, so in practice a phone will use less than 23 kWh over its lifetime, probably significantly less.

This all puts aside the immediate question of why are you bringing energy efficiency into a discussion about privacy?

> controlling the evolution of the species?

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't really understand what privacy laws and evolution have in common. I'd appreciate an explanation.

>> people's awareness of the issues, skills, and values are hugely variable across a population

>> - Me

> So because there are dumb and or lazy people, the EU needs to attempt another centrally planned ...

> - You

First, I'm kind of impressed that you managed to interpret what I said to mean that some people or dumb and/or lazy. Why do you believe that different from you is bad?

Second, assuming your real question is more like "On what basis is the EU passing a law imposing these restrictions about personal data on companies?". I would say the reason is because a majority of the EU constituent country leaders believe that doing so upholds the values and goals of the EU. For example "The goals of the [EU] are... promote peace, its values and the well-being of its citizens" and "Individual freedoms such as respect for private life,... and information are protected by the EU" and "Human rights are protected by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. These cover ... the right to the protection of your personal data"

tl;dr That's the point of the EU [5]

> Think about how many diseases are from improper flushing and wiping. How about a bathroom monitor that's armed with a stun gun to make sure people wash their hands?

As long as we're being sarcastic, I'll say that that sounds like a great way to create jobs.

More seriously, I believe the EU does have laws about food workers washing their hands after using the restroom. If it could be shown that enough lives would be saved by extending those laws, and their enforcement, to be worth the expense, I don't doubt the laws would eventually change to account for that.

[0] https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/which-2018-flagship-pho...

[1] https://learn.adafruit.com/li-ion-and-lipoly-batteries/volta...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/619788/average-smartphon...

[3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=((365+*+3)+*+(5000+mil...

[4] https://www.plotwatt.com/2011/05/21/plotwatt-labs-boiling-fo...

[5] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/eu-in-brief_en