Which country has more freedom?

[Ban my account ffs!]

I say A, because I believe it is important that government protects the individual's right to privacy.

It is important that government has more say in your privacy and actively protects it as government is for, by, and of the people, while businesses and corporations are not.

[Ban my account ffs!]

To me, individual freedom is the most important.

In country B, as the original poster has pointed out, privacy is not taken seriously, and though there are laws in place, companies ignore them and trade your information.

In such a situation, there is good reason to suspect that a company could result to blackmail or extortion in order to get a desired result from you.  This is the basis of personal privacy in the first place:  to protect you from others taking advantage of you.

Sure, you don't HAVE to do business with these companies, but with little regulation, how do you know which companies collect your information and which ones don't (remember, they can simply trade or buy the info from another company that you already gave the info to.. or they could simply get it from the government).

But, you don't really HAVE to do anything (except eat, drink water, and stay warm).  I COULD go live in the forest and live off the land completely and not pay taxes and drop out of society.  But that is not feasible.

In country A, you still have the option of going into business if you wish.  That choice is still there.. it just comes with the consequences of higher regulation by the government... just like it is my choice in country B to do business with a company that, as a consequence, might take personal information from me that I might not be too happy to give out.

At least in country A I am secure in my person and I, as an individual, get to decide who knows what about me as my RIGHT rather than having a universal system of personal data collection that I must actively "opt out" of without any help.

The business as an entity has to follow rules and regulations that protect the rights of the individual and don't unduly harm the resources of the individual.

This is a shallow argument, but in country A, every company is held to the same standard.  And as competition is the basis of a free market, it would not necessarily be hindered by regulations that protect the individual.

If we were talking price supports or regulations against specific companies, it would be another story.  But we're not, and the individual should be the focus of freedom, not the choices of business as an entity.

But then again, I also believe that the freest market is one that individuals can easily enter into without the de facto "regulations" of other companies (monopolies that prevent new businesses from competing, etc.)