EDIT: I was just quoting the article for discussion purposes. There's no reason to down vote.
Copying and pasting a quote without providing any further context is implicitly endorsing it.
People are downvoting you because they don't agree with the quote.
99% of companies I interact with have no way to deceive me in any significant way, and the few that do (e.g. maybe a bank, insurance, or other financial companies) I double check on and I take action to mitigate the risks.
Moreover, companies who commit fraud eventually get caught and their people go to jail.
That is all part of a free market system, not a command-style, over-regulated Marxist one, which just hurts people in the long run.
People who advocate that kind of system are serious evil.
Which is why all the bank executives are currently in jail? (Contrast DOJ enforcement after the latest financial blowup to their conduct after the S&L crisis).
See Bernanke's take: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/10/04/ben-b...
Given the obvious information asymmetry between the seller and the buyer we shall not expect that amount to be high.
> Given the obvious information asymmetry between the seller and the buyer we shall not expect that amount to be high.
There really isn't that much. You can't concretize this (i.e. give real examples) because it's easy for customers to do some research.
There is a lot of "theorizing" going on here that is no good because it is not empirical enough.
Does it now? I could point you (in private) to at least two companies (big on my country's market in their particular segments) I know personally cheat and steal, including lying on the phone to people who have managed to figure out the deception and called in to complain. One of those companies has figured out a strategy to stay on top of user complains so that they're free to do whatever they want. The other one has their office in a low-population region and is the one of the few available employers for the locals - this allows the CEO to both abuse the employees and to avoid scrutiny by keeping the local work inspector bribed.
On top of that, it's an open secret that food stores do shit like cleaning stale meat with dish liquid and then selling it to people as fresh. There are many, many ways in which Joes and Janes Random Entrepreneurs abuse customers; it's pretty much common practice. As long they don't to it in a blatantly illegal way, they're fine.
> it's easy for customers to do some research.
No, it's not. Also, research is what you do when you buy a car; no one has the time to check out the place where they do groceries, and even if they did, everyone else cheats as much, so it's not that you have an alternative.
Customers voting with their wallets is bullshit in most industries and companies know it. People are quick to get outraged but slow to change their habits.
> I could point you (in private) to at least two companies (big on my country's market in their particular segments) I know personally cheat and steal, including lying on the phone to people who have managed to figure out the deception and called in to complain.
So those customers should just switch to a different provider. Now, if we are talking about companies that have regulatory capture, which we probably are, that's a different story. But you want to expand that regulation...
> The other one has their office in a low-population region and is the one of the few available employers for the locals - this allows the CEO to both abuse the employees and to avoid scrutiny by keeping the local work inspector bribed.
No one has to stay in a low-population region.
> There are many, many ways in which Joes and Janes Random Entrepreneurs abuse customers; it's pretty much common practice.
It's not common practice to sell tainted meat. It's not the case that everybody does it. And since meat is already regulated by the government everywhere, apparently your solution doesn't work, anyway (though actually it does work OK and you are blowing up the problem).
> Customers voting with their wallets is bullshit in most industries and companies know it. People are quick to get outraged but slow to change their habits.
That is absolutely false. Customers go for the best deal they can get. They switch if they get pissed off and have other options. And they always have other options unless there is regulatory capture.
I'm sorry, but people are just not utter morons that keep repeating the same tasks over and over again even if they have bad consequences. Your view of humanity is really unrealistic.