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Comment by gmd63 | Hacker News Reader

I don't buy that argument. The issue is companies deliberately built complexity on top of their existing systems to make it harder to cancel. The added complexity that costs a lot of money to fix is a result of their unfair and deceptive practices.

An enormous amount of deadweight loss would be returned to the economy if they simply implemented a much simpler design of click to cancel and avoided the unfair and deceptive practices in the first place.

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Isn't the argument that making it easier to cancel subscriptions means that more customers will cancel and the cumulative effect across the industry will be much more than $100M?

No, I think that the $100M number comes from the cost of implementing the change, not the impact to the impacted companies' bottom line.

I think the other person is right… the term is “economic impact” not “cost to implement”

That's what I thought too, but from the ruling in the article, it seemed like the justification came from calculating the cost to implement (emphasis on 'compliance costs'.

> But an administrative law judge later found that the rule's impact surpassed the threshold, observing that compliance costs would exceed $100 million "unless each business used fewer than twenty-three hours of professional services at the lowest end of the spectrum of estimated hourly rates," the 8th Circuit ruling said.

Well, the two are related. By definition, the economic impact must be at least as much as the cost to implement. So estimating the cost to implement sets a lower bound on the total economic impact.

No, it is only cost to implement the new rules. If this cost is estimated to be above one hundred million dollars, then extra review steps are required. These steps allow the public, and the regulated industry, to suggest alternatives. These alternatives must be evaluated to see if they would be both effective and cheaper for legitimate businesses to implement. If they are, then the FTC is supposed to drop their own proposed rules and adopt the alternative rules instead. This keeps the rules themselves from hurting legitimate businesses; the illegitimate businesses aren’t going to follow the rules anyway.

Why would anyone be concerned with the industry vs the economy? Especially when it’s an industry engaged in foul play?

Any dollar “lost” as a result of customers being able to cancel results in customers gaining more money to empower industries that are actually productive.

Obviously I agree with you morally speaking but apparently the law doesn't.

Sure, and I can make an argument that John's Window Breaking and Repair Services, LLC is performing a public good by stimulating economic activity.

That is a decent argument against the law requiring the analysis, but it is not a good argument that judges should let the FTC violate the law.

YEAH!

NO PART OF THE GOVT SHOULD EVER VIOLATE THE LAW!

YOU TELL 'EM, BUDDY!

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