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And thanks to this technology, people can understand themselves better, if they choose to. It's truly bizzare that some people instead take away that the right way to "correct" this discrepancy is for companies to know less.

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Why do you find that bizarre? Given the asymmetry of resources and conflicting interests between people and the companies who know so much about them, it seems perfectly reasonable to want companies to know less. The vast majority of that knowledge is used to take from the consumer, not to give.

It's not a zero sum game.

Good companies use information they collect to provide better services. Bad companies use it to rip people off. The problem of bad companies doing bad things is independent of companies having information about people.

The arguments for information control are similar to those for anything else -- less [x] floating around, less potential for abuse.

And that argument by itself is not enough to restrict anything. Less hats floating around, less potential for abuse. Less televisions floating around, less potential for abuse.

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