Hacker News Reader

Comment by _qulr | Hacker News Reader

> I don't believe we are as impotent as your response would imply

I don't believe we're impotent, which is why I'm suggesting new laws such as a consumer bill of rights and right to repair. I think that antitrust is actually too little too late in addressing problems. After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)

> It's a losing proposition to focus our energy on short term fixes.

I think we disagree about which is the long term fix and which is the short term fix. I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.

View on HN

> After all, you can't take anti-trust action against a company until it's already a trust. ;-)

That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.

> I personally consider antitrust action against individual companies to be a short term fix, whereas permanent universal consumer protection laws are a long term fix.

Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result.

Further, how would you make it "permanent"? Constitutional amendments are a non-starter right now, and Congress can't pass laws that have 80%+ popular support. You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.

> That's not what the laws on the books say. It's a colloquial term, and nobody like a pedant.

It was merely a play on words, but the point was that antitrust only kicks in when significant market power is involved, some kind of restraint on competition, whereas other laws protect consumers from abuses by companies of all sizes, even the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies.

> Ralph Nader said the same thing in the 60s and 70s. Consumer protection laws have been used to encourage economic concentration and the abuses of labor and society that always come with it. The American government has never succeeded at compliance regulation — it gets weakened and corrupted, and we always wind up getting the worst version of laissez-faire economics as a result.

Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.

> Further, how would you make it "permanent"?

What do you mean? Laws are permanent by default, unless the legislators write an expiration date into the law.

> You know what is permanent? Court-ordered break-ups under the Clayton Act.

Tell that to AT&T. ;-)

> Again, I find it strange how you think one set of laws can't possibly be intelligently and usefully applied by the government, while at the same time thinking another set of laws can, i.e., antitrust.

It's not strange if you look at historical priors. The US Government has frequently succeeded at regulation that involves rulemaking, investigation, and prosecuting abuses. The same government has failed to achieve its' goals any time it tried compliance based regulation. Sure, both are subject to regulatory capture, but I've only seen the one model succeed.

I'm generally against these types of "consumer protection" movements explicitly because they target the smallest "mom and pop shop" companies. Consumer protection costs wind up driving those smaller businesses out and promote corporate concentration. Once you have that, the corporations are writing the rules, and the laws stop protecting customers (see: Boeing 737MAX).

> Tell that to AT&T.

ATT, Verizon or T-Sprint? If they don't answer I can leave a messaging on their answering machine using free long distance, or send an email using a modem. Just a few things that resulted from that breakup...

And we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution. Look at how much effort it took to undo that breakup, and they still haven't gotten back to the Ma Bell days.

> we're only back down to three because of a (going on) five decade streak of executives that favor laissez-faire economics, which kind of proves my point that it's a good solution

I think that kind of disproves your point, but maybe we should just stop there. :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com