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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

The free market absolutely has the capability to control for snake-oil salesman; that is why there is a large and profitable business in reviewing items.

In America the CDC was distributing snake oil in this crisis, their test kits didn't work. As the death toll rises that is going to enter free-marketing lore as a classic example of government regulation contributing to a crisis. There should have been 10 free market solutions and a CDC endorsement for the one they liked best. Depending on how this plays out we may well discover that lighter regulation would have saved literally millions of lives.

Notice that as soon as a crisis hits and the government needs someone to figure out a solution their first and only tool is removing regulation. This is a powerful hint - that regulation is also retarding useful action in non-global-pandemic crisises.

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There is a giant market for fake mattress reviews and a tiny market for real ones. You see the same basic paradigm across a range of industries where reviewers make more money from advertising deals than their customers. That or just early access only being handed to people with positive relationships resulting in a lot of bias.

Net result, consumer reports maintained a solid reputation over time and most independents end up selling out at some point. Well that and several billion dollar snake oil companies.

PS: Fill in the blank: The water cooled ultra X get’s an extra 2 FPS ___ . (meh save yor money.) or (which is so amazing!)

I do actually respect the point your making; normally I would just leave it alone. But were mattresses really the best example?

I'm trying to figure out what it would take for me to feel I'd been cheated in a mattress purchase. What does a fake mattress look like?

I meant the review was fake not the mattress.

A more direct example is the supplement market, but that’s such a dumpster fire I figured a less extreme example was relevant.

The medical & scientific professionals who order – & desperately need! – new tests aren't laypeople sifting through online mattress reviews.

They are experts, who can compare results in real cases, learn what's working, and then share their experiences – in their small, real-names, real-reputations communities – with others.

And the tests that have been blocked aren't being developed by fly-by-night hucksters who ride a horse-drawn cart into town, then disappear into the night before their trickery is revealed. They're by existing medical/biotech/scientific giants – who are already supplying the same doctors/hospitals other trusted diagnostics, or supplying the exact same tests around the world with strong track records.

If you think the fake-mattress-reviews issue is a major one, by all means, get a "Federal Mattress Agency" to save the poor consumers. But let doctors/hospitals/scientists develop, and try, new things without months/years of delay on low-risk products.

Theranos is a recent example of medical professionals being fooled by exactly that kind of hucksters. Without regulation I assume the situation would deteriorate significantly as the risks of being sued would still exist but be irrelevant for people who took the money and ran.

As far as I understand Theranos actually bled money to provide correct results through traditional testing methods while it pretended to use its own devices. Given that Theranos was basically a black box to any outside observer medical professionals only saw that they had something that obviously worked. Other than violating various lab regulations it mostly defrauded investors while still providing the service it was paid for. If it gets bad enough I think having a few investors defrauded is an acceptable risk.

> regulation is also retarding useful action in non-global-pandemic crisises

This is a given, and doesn't mean it's not worth the tradeoffs. We shouldn't have a system that is always adapted to be ready for global pandemics, because most of the time, we don't have one. If we didn't need to change anything, it probably meant we were making poor tradeoffs in peace time.

Like credit rating agencies and how well they work? /s

In this case, it's not even about falsely marking up poorly understood investment products for extra business, it's people's health.

Any reviewing businesses that are strict with their criteria simply won't get business from device companies, all we've succeeded in doing here is moving the problem up one level.

My take is that we need to strive for effective regulation (so I'm not coming at this from a 'government is always the problem' perspective, just thinking out loud).

There is some incentive for medical providers and insurers to use safe and effective treatments (good reputation is good business). For products that are not immediately physically dangerous, perhaps retrospectively evaluating their choices would be similarly effective for outcomes as the current approach of banning things until they are approved.

This is an interesting perspective, especially in the context of our current concerns over the balance between emergency commerce restrictions and potential.

Do you think that we would have been better off with letting the market itself make more decisions regarding what should stay open during the crisis?

And that’s why they don’t sell homeopathic children’s “medicine” at major American drug stores.

Except they do.

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