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Comment by nomercy400 | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn't you have a free market economy? Where a customer is able to choose between a dealer or a direct sale company?

The customer is the one that should be able to choose between a cheaper price with a lower service, or a higher price with more service. The problem here is that companies want to provide the cheap alternative but aren't allowed to do so.

If a dealer cannot compete with a direct sale company on price and service, doesn't that make their business model flawed/outdated.

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I agree in theory, but the reality is that these companies made large investments under one set of legislation.

If a society flips and completely changes the economic/legislative landscape under which companies operate, it creates a very unstable business environment and discourages capex especially.

This would not be good for the long term economic health.

They made large investments under laws they lobbied for and made by politicians that were paid for. I have no qualms reversing a horrific abuse of lobbying and actions of unethical state congress members. They got to benefit from this farce for decades, it's time to shut it down.

"Let It Burn" is not the most airtight of analyses of a complex economic system.

It's not like they would repeal the law and all private dealerships would be shut down the next day. They would continue as usual, probably for several years, and most would eventually get phased out. It's not letting it burn, it's just letting it die the death it should have died decades ago.

That's like saying that Comcast and Verizon accepted public money to roll out infrastructure and invested their money in it. Therefore, we probably shouldn't address their artificial monopoly, because they invested money in their monopoly.

Laws change. Invested money by big corporations is not a valid reason to keep them. In fact it's pretty sad that this would even be a point of consideration.

Laws can and are written with long-term timelines in mind. If you're dismantling X, Y and Z, you could specify that X kicks in two years from now, Y starts five years from now, and Z won't kick in until seven years has passed.

Removing protectionist laws that allow certain businesses to flourish by restricting competition should only create uncertainty in other areas where there are similar laws. I don't believe there are many such areas. The only other industry I can think of where there are mandated middlemen is alcohol, and it would be great to fix that too.

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