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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I think a subscription for heated seats is disgusting, as does pretty much anyone I would imagine.

But at the same time, is this a problem best solved by a legislature? Or the market?

Government regulations are useful when they protect our safety, health, prevent monopolies/collusion, and so on.

But do we really want the government dictating companies' business models? Dictating whether cars can be owned vs. leased, or features can be owned vs. leased? I'd much rather consumers just don't subscribe to these features, and then the car manufacturers abandon the strategy.

Legislation doesn't feel like the solution here.

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> I'd much rather consumers just don't subscribe to these features

Sure, if the consumers actually do have the choice. The heated seats are pre-installed and you pay for it, whether you activate the subscription or not. You can't choose a cheaper, non-heated seat, as far as I know.

As an individual consumer, you don't have that much leverage or power. As a group of consumers, aka voting citizens, it's easier to handle such rent seeking businesses practices through legislation.

> Sure, if the consumers actually do have the choice. The heated seats are pre-installed and you pay for it, whether you activate the subscription or not.

From what I've read, on models where a feature is standard, BMW doesn't charge a subscription. It's only available as a subscription when it is an option, making it obvious you aren't paying for it except in the subscription. I think their idea was to make it so different people can lease the same car and pick different options essentially.

The heated seats are pre-installed and you pay for it, whether you activate the subscription or not. You can't choose a cheaper, non-heated seat, as far as I know.

The cost of the heated seats has to be covered by the actual purchases of that option, otherwise they'd be selling a car without heated seats for the price of one with them, at which point the car is overpriced.

If car manufacturers could just arbitrarily charge more, then they would do so anyway, seat heating hardware or not.

The market was allowing it, the law prevented it. It's obviously a bad thing, so it's good that something stopped it. Why does it matter what force stopped the bad thing from happening?

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