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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

That’s mostly in industries without meaningful competition.

In competitive industries, customer-hostile choices are much less common.

In competitive industries, customer-hostile choices are much less common.

How many brands of TV are there? How many of those brands still make even one consumer model that isn't "smart" in user-hostile ways?

Having lots of suppliers doesn't necessarily create effective competition in the customer interest. If there's a customer-hostile practice that makes lots of money and is sufficiently obvious that all suppliers can adopt it without any need for legally questionable forms of cooperation then what is going to happen?

Effectively forcing subscriptions or other after-purchase limitations and costs on customers when there is nothing in it for those customer to balance what they lose is exactly the kind of predatory behaviour that government regulation should protect against.

That’s the party line. In reality cars are one of the most heavily competitive consumer markets, and guess what? They still behave like assholes.

The brands compete. The dealers are local monopolies. Usually by law.

The brands compete on the kinds of cars they want to sell. When it comes to less profitable kinds of vehicles, that's where lobbying and regulatory capture comes in to kill competition. Thus we have the chicken tax, much stricter fuel economy standards for small trucks than big trucks, and the extreme protectionism in the inflation reduction act when it comes to EV tax credits.

But the locality is typically only a town. Emailing all the dealers in the area for a quote and driving a bit out of your way to pick up the car isn't that hard.

It's the brands trying so sell you subscription seat warming, not the local dealers.

Interesting point!

There’s a dozen GM brand dealers within 15 miles of where I’m sitting right now. They absolutely compete.

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