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Comment by cal5k | Hacker News Reader

Is the cost of living in your country, on average, higher or lower than in the United States?

As far as I can tell there are a vanishingly small number of problems where "new laws" are the optimal answer. Increased regulatory oversight generally leads to ossified markets with higher costs. Many of the most reviled monopolies throughout American history got there in no small measure because of government protection in the form of "regulation".

In this case, there are multiple car manufacturers available to Americans from around the world - if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour. That seems like a more responsive mechanism than piling on new regulation to dictate which types of fees are okay and which aren't.

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> Many of the most reviled monopolies throughout American history got there in no small measure because of government protection in the form of "regulation".

This is simply not true. The common reviled monopoly strategies include price fixing, collusion, natural monopolies, markets with high barriers to entry, network effects, and others in addition to regulatory capture. Regulations that contribute to monopolistic tendencies are "vanishingly small" in number, you just hear about them a lot because people don't like them.

> if this makes GM vehicles more expensive or causes a consumer backlash that damages sales, GM will change their behaviour.

It may be time to walk through history and see all the dark patterns that were solved by regulation. Before the EPA, it was common for manufacturing companies to dump industrial waste directly into rivers, for example.

Consumers only have so much energy for backlash, and your theoretical system requires everyone to have an encyclopedic memory of all the shitty things that every company does and weigh all of that in their minds when making consumer choices. It's impractical and impossible. Regulatory agencies are a much better system and that's why every modern economy depends on them.

I’d add that recent deregulation (energy markets) & pre-regulation (like cryptocurrency) show that companies are remarkably fast & consistent in enacting proven, exploitive models.

The idea that regulation is a burden on society is fanciful. What is burdensome is regulations that cannot be readily adapted. Unfortunately, popular myths like “regulation bad” is part of the reason regulators stay with policies they would much rather propose updating. Veteran regulators are quite eager to improve their frameworks. It is “politics” that prevents their evolution.

> Consumers only have so much energy for backlash, and your theoretical system requires everyone to have an encyclopedic memory of all the shitty things that every company does and weigh all of that in their minds when making consumer choices.

Hey, uh, there's this thing called Google - most people start there when they're making a big-ticket purchase like a car. Or you could pay for Consumer Reports to get expert-level analysis. Or you can just ask people on the relevant subreddit.

Consumers have access to more information to inform buying decisions than at any point in history. So unless General Motors is the only car manufacturer in the world, people can weigh the pros and cons and make their own decisions. More intervention from government is totally unnecessary and likely even harmful in the form of generally higher prices.

> That seems like a more responsive mechanism

It clearly isn't. The power and knowledge asymmetry between producers and consumers is such that most producers can get away with abhorrent behaviour pretty much all the time with no significant repercussions. That's why boycotts don't work, among other things.

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