The Tragedy of the Internet of Things
IoT is the concept of having everyday objects be connected in an online network. It has been conceptualized and realized in areas such as smart cities, to manage things like transportation system and water supply, or wearable technology, to store a person’s heart rate and sleep pattern. Iot would give us the ability to collected multitudes of data, find patterns, and thus make changes to increase efficiency. Yet with this influx of data stored somewhere on the Internet, there comes the question of who it all belongs to. Weak cybersecurity on consumer devices across the nation leads everyday people vulnerable to the greedy hackers. And since this information is never hidden or made private in the first place, the information free for all turns into identity thefts and burglary.
As we learned from the theory of the Tragedy of the Commons, a lack of ownership of common property leads to overuse and lack of revenue. To maximize revenue, it doesn’t matter whether information is publicly or privately owned, as long as it is owned, according to Coase’s theorem. Ownership and price-setting imposes a set of controls on information free for all, and while business would of course prioritize maximizing revenue, it is important to keep the customer’s needs and privacy in mind. IoT can only succeed and benefit both business and customers if they consider both maximizing revenue (through ownership and price setting) and maintaining security.
https://niskanencenter.org/blog/2017-policy-priorities-making-way-internet-everything/