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EndGame Macro
When Your Data Becomes a Product, Your Privacy Becomes a Luxury
The entire piece is built on the central claim that data isn’t free, and we’re already selling it whether we realize it or not. Veldkamp argues that every time we buy something, download an app, or even just walk around with our phone, we generate a stream of information firms value and they pay us for it by lowering prices or offering convenience. That, she says, is the hidden bargain of the digital economy.
She describes how companies push discounts not out of kindness, but because more transactions mean more data. Monthly subscriptions, free apps, and artificially cheap goods are designed to keep the data flowing.
But the key insight is bundling…we think we’re buying a product, but we’re unknowingly selling our data at the same time and because the data price is hidden, we have no idea whether we’re being fairly compensated.
Her solution is to unbundle the two: firms should post two prices…one if you allow your transaction data to be used, one if you don’t. In theory, that transparency would turn us from passive data sources into active data suppliers who can judge what their information is worth.
And to reinforce it, she outlines five different ways economists can measure what data is worth: market prices, revenue impact, complementary inputs, behavioral correlation, and cost accounting.
On paper, it’s a call to give consumers visibility and policymakers tools to quantify a hidden asset class.
Where the Control Risks Hide
This all sounds empowering, you get to see the price of your data! but scratch the surface and it starts looking like a blueprint for legitimizing and expanding the data extraction system under the banner of transparency.
If privacy becomes a line item ($9.99 with data, $15.99 without), firms will simply price the private option so high that most people especially lower income consumers choose to give up their data. That isn’t empowerment; it’s economic coercion dressed up as market choice.
Her framework also assumes people have time, bandwidth, and expertise to evaluate the value of their data. They don’t. Even with unbundling, the default will be convenience, click accept and move on. That’s not a free market; that’s behavioral capture.
And she never addresses the fact that data isn’t just an individual asset. It’s relational. One person’s decision to sell their data exposes patterns about their friends, family, and community. Markets are terrible at pricing externalities like that.
Finally, the call to move data from intuition to quantification sounds neutral, but quantification tends to lead to formalization and formalization leads to regulation, enforcement, and eventually surveillance justified as measurement.
My Read
She’s right about the diagnosis that we are constantly selling our data without knowing the price, and companies do design environments where the real transaction is invisible. The hidden bargain framing is one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen.
But the proposed fix, unbundling doesn’t meaningfully shift power. It just reframes the same extraction in a way that satisfies economists’ need for a price without changing the underlying asymmetry.
If anything, formal pricing of data risks making exploitation look legitimate.
The real solution isn’t cleaner menus or dual price tags. Its limits with less collection, narrower rights, strict purpose constraints, deletion guarantees, and penalties for misuse. Transparency is helpful, but it won’t protect people who are structurally forced to trade privacy for affordability.
So yes, quantify it but don’t confuse a price with control. A price is just the number that tells you what you’ve already lost.
Are we ready for a data-driven future? From satellites to smartwatches, how we measure economies is being transformed. December's F&D explores the data revolution, the AI resource race, and what it means for growth and transparency. [...]
When Your Data Becomes a Product, Your Privacy Becomes a Luxury
The entire piece is built on the central claim that data isn’t free, and we’re already selling it whether we realize it or not. Veldkamp argues that every time we buy something, download an app, or even just walk around with our phone, we generate a stream of information firms value and they pay us for it by lowering prices or offering convenience. That, she says, is the hidden bargain of the digital economy.
She describes how companies push discounts not out of kindness, but because more transactions mean more data. Monthly subscriptions, free apps, and artificially cheap goods are designed to keep the data flowing.
But the key insight is bundling…we think we’re buying a product, but we’re unknowingly selling our data at the same time and because the data price is hidden, we have no idea whether we’re being fairly compensated.
Her solution is to unbundle the two: firms should post two prices…one if you allow your transaction data to be used, one if you don’t. In theory, that transparency would turn us from passive data sources into active data suppliers who can judge what their information is worth.
And to reinforce it, she outlines five different ways economists can measure what data is worth: market prices, revenue impact, complementary inputs, behavioral correlation, and cost accounting.
On paper, it’s a call to give consumers visibility and policymakers tools to quantify a hidden asset class.
Where the Control Risks Hide
This all sounds empowering, you get to see the price of your data! but scratch the surface and it starts looking like a blueprint for legitimizing and expanding the data extraction system under the banner of transparency.
If privacy becomes a line item ($9.99 with data, $15.99 without), firms will simply price the private option so high that most people especially lower income consumers choose to give up their data. That isn’t empowerment; it’s economic coercion dressed up as market choice.
Her framework also assumes people have time, bandwidth, and expertise to evaluate the value of their data. They don’t. Even with unbundling, the default will be convenience, click accept and move on. That’s not a free market; that’s behavioral capture.
And she never addresses the fact that data isn’t just an individual asset. It’s relational. One person’s decision to sell their data exposes patterns about their friends, family, and community. Markets are terrible at pricing externalities like that.
Finally, the call to move data from intuition to quantification sounds neutral, but quantification tends to lead to formalization and formalization leads to regulation, enforcement, and eventually surveillance justified as measurement.
My Read
She’s right about the diagnosis that we are constantly selling our data without knowing the price, and companies do design environments where the real transaction is invisible. The hidden bargain framing is one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen.
But the proposed fix, unbundling doesn’t meaningfully shift power. It just reframes the same extraction in a way that satisfies economists’ need for a price without changing the underlying asymmetry.
If anything, formal pricing of data risks making exploitation look legitimate.
The real solution isn’t cleaner menus or dual price tags. Its limits with less collection, narrower rights, strict purpose constraints, deletion guarantees, and penalties for misuse. Transparency is helpful, but it won’t protect people who are structurally forced to trade privacy for affordability.
So yes, quantify it but don’t confuse a price with control. A price is just the number that tells you what you’ve already lost.
Are we ready for a data-driven future? From satellites to smartwatches, how we measure economies is being transformed. December's F&D explores the data revolution, the AI resource race, and what it means for growth and transparency. [...]
Offshore
EndGame Macro When Your Data Becomes a Product, Your Privacy Becomes a Luxury The entire piece is built on the central claim that data isn’t free, and we’re already selling it whether we realize it or not. Veldkamp argues that every time we buy something…
Out now: https://t.co/q5XfijrwHJ https://t.co/HzyExpYlRG - IMF tweet
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Quiver Quantitative
BREAKING: Representative Tim Moore just filed new stock trades.
Something caught our eye.
Moore is buying up massive amounts of stock in a company called Hyster-Yale, $HY.
He is the only politician we have ever seen trade this stock. https://t.co/xXvU5KId6O
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BREAKING: Representative Tim Moore just filed new stock trades.
Something caught our eye.
Moore is buying up massive amounts of stock in a company called Hyster-Yale, $HY.
He is the only politician we have ever seen trade this stock. https://t.co/xXvU5KId6O
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memenodes
apple music users watching everyone talk about their spotify wrapped https://t.co/17btxEGuFW
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apple music users watching everyone talk about their spotify wrapped https://t.co/17btxEGuFW
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memenodes
The book will help you chill out and get rid of the chaos in your head https://t.co/gKNqsBvKrO
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The book will help you chill out and get rid of the chaos in your head https://t.co/gKNqsBvKrO
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Fiscal.ai
Dollar Tree has now delivered 17 consecutive quarters of positive comp store sales growth.
Shares of the discount retailer are now up 62.5% since announcing the sale of the Family Dollar banner in March 2025.
$DLTR https://t.co/Oh0JW50NvF
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Dollar Tree has now delivered 17 consecutive quarters of positive comp store sales growth.
Shares of the discount retailer are now up 62.5% since announcing the sale of the Family Dollar banner in March 2025.
$DLTR https://t.co/Oh0JW50NvF
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EndGame Macro
The First Crack You Can’t Ignore: ADP Just Showed Us Where the Slowdown Really Lives
The headline number from ADP is rough…private payrolls fell by 32,000 in November. That’s not the kind of thing you can wave away as noise when you look at how the losses are distributed. The real story sits underneath and it’s a lot more recession!flavored than people want to admit.
The most troubling piece is what happened to small businesses. They didn’t just slow hiring, they shed 120,000 jobs. And the smallest firms (1–19 employees) alone cut 46,000. When tiny companies retreat like this, it usually means two things: demand is softening, and credit is tight. They don’t have the buffers big firms have. They react first. They show stress first. And they’re usually right.
Then you look at the industries carrying the losses…
• Professional and business services: -26k
• Information: -20k
• Manufacturing: -18k
• Construction: -9k
That’s a mix you tend to see when the economy is shifting from slowing to actually rolling over. White collar cuts mean companies are pausing projects, freezing budgets, or scaling back plans. Manufacturing and construction weakness means orders are thinning out. And when those two sides of the economy weaken at the same time, it usually isn’t a false signal.
But here’s where the picture bends a little. This wasn’t an across the board collapse. Education and health added 33k, and leisure and hospitality added 13k. Those are late cycle sectors, they tend to hold up longer because people still need care, and people still look for services even when they pull back elsewhere. So you end up with a split labor market with essential services still hiring, cyclical and white collar areas pulling back.
Wages tell the same story. Pay is still up, but the momentum is fading. Job stayers are at 4.4%, job changers at 6.3%, both slowing. And small firms, the ones that cut the most jobs are now only giving 2.5% raises. That’s not a thriving environment; that’s survival mode.
If you’re looking for contradictions, they’re there. Job losses are mounting, but layoffs in other datasets still look muted. Some regions (like the West) added 67k jobs, while the Northeast alone lost 100k. And despite all this weakness, ADP revised October up from 42k to 47k.
None of that screams panic. But taken together, it does suggest an economy that’s starting to lose its footing.
My Read
This is what the early stage of a downturn looks like in real time. Not dramatic. Not clean. Just a slow tightening in all the places that matter: small firms, cyclicals, white collar work, wage growth. It’s the phase where the labor market stops adding oxygen before anyone sees the smoke.
If this pattern repeats even one more month, the conversation won’t be about whether the job market is cooling, it’ll be about how far along the slowdown already is.
tweet
The First Crack You Can’t Ignore: ADP Just Showed Us Where the Slowdown Really Lives
The headline number from ADP is rough…private payrolls fell by 32,000 in November. That’s not the kind of thing you can wave away as noise when you look at how the losses are distributed. The real story sits underneath and it’s a lot more recession!flavored than people want to admit.
The most troubling piece is what happened to small businesses. They didn’t just slow hiring, they shed 120,000 jobs. And the smallest firms (1–19 employees) alone cut 46,000. When tiny companies retreat like this, it usually means two things: demand is softening, and credit is tight. They don’t have the buffers big firms have. They react first. They show stress first. And they’re usually right.
Then you look at the industries carrying the losses…
• Professional and business services: -26k
• Information: -20k
• Manufacturing: -18k
• Construction: -9k
That’s a mix you tend to see when the economy is shifting from slowing to actually rolling over. White collar cuts mean companies are pausing projects, freezing budgets, or scaling back plans. Manufacturing and construction weakness means orders are thinning out. And when those two sides of the economy weaken at the same time, it usually isn’t a false signal.
But here’s where the picture bends a little. This wasn’t an across the board collapse. Education and health added 33k, and leisure and hospitality added 13k. Those are late cycle sectors, they tend to hold up longer because people still need care, and people still look for services even when they pull back elsewhere. So you end up with a split labor market with essential services still hiring, cyclical and white collar areas pulling back.
Wages tell the same story. Pay is still up, but the momentum is fading. Job stayers are at 4.4%, job changers at 6.3%, both slowing. And small firms, the ones that cut the most jobs are now only giving 2.5% raises. That’s not a thriving environment; that’s survival mode.
If you’re looking for contradictions, they’re there. Job losses are mounting, but layoffs in other datasets still look muted. Some regions (like the West) added 67k jobs, while the Northeast alone lost 100k. And despite all this weakness, ADP revised October up from 42k to 47k.
None of that screams panic. But taken together, it does suggest an economy that’s starting to lose its footing.
My Read
This is what the early stage of a downturn looks like in real time. Not dramatic. Not clean. Just a slow tightening in all the places that matter: small firms, cyclicals, white collar work, wage growth. It’s the phase where the labor market stops adding oxygen before anyone sees the smoke.
If this pattern repeats even one more month, the conversation won’t be about whether the job market is cooling, it’ll be about how far along the slowdown already is.
ADP highlights https://t.co/iRvdbnTNhI tweet