Owning databases that we help build: Can it end capitalism as we know it?

Sacrificing some more of our freedom to eternal state surveillance could become a deal with a devil we're growing to know only too well

From interest rates to fashion, pandemics in the past — like the Black Death in the 14th century — have left deep imprints on economic life. This time may be no different. In the aftermath of the coronavirus, governments can reimagine capitalism by giving all of us a stake in the most valuable byproduct of our day-to-day living: data. But make no mistake. It will still be a Faustian bargain. 

A global data profit will be a very different GDP from gross domestic product. The case for technology companies to share it with we, the people who supply them the