Data and Tax
A useful comparison?
One of the most fundamental questions in the data governance and the digital economy is the question of the value of data. As an economist, I could mock up some sort of value function to describe this. For instance, the value of data comes from predictive insights, and is thus a function of the similarity between data subjects (e.g., a correlation). As a rule-of-thumb, more recent data is likely to be more valuable than less recent data (again, owing to similarity), and therefore the value of a datum could be subject to some decay (i.e., half-life) component.
As a rough estimation, I’d suggest something like:
for the value of data at time t for two subjects x and y.
Of course, I might also be completely wrong in this conjecture. Data is tricky.
Given the trickiness of data (both in determining a value function, and in understanding a value function), I’ve often found myself — not intentionally flippantly — reverting to a more basic argument: tax. Let me explain.
Part of the challenge I find with the conversation around the value of data is that people assume, implicitly or not, that the…
