I'm seriously considering importing my next car from Russia or India or some country where consumers aren't as easy to abuse and defraud as they are in the west. But getting it certified for the road might be difficult, and I'd basically be on my own regarding maintenance. I live in rural Germany with close to zero repair shops close by that are capable of servicing non-German cars. (Okay, maybe there's a Ford dealership here somewhere, but that's just about it).
Wasn't "consumer protection" something that governments were supposed to be doing? Where are they right now, as they're watching this shitshow?
The way it worked in the software industry was that the move from purchase-prices to subscription prices was a huge structural change that made it difficult for consumers to compare prices and lead to a drastic price increase.
Consider Toggl track, a time-tracking software that I like to use and that, at $9/month without any predatory subscription tactics, I consider very reasonably-priced. ...but at the same time, I can still recall a day when you'd pick up small software utilities like that from a Radio Shack. They came on floppy discs (later CDs) in cardboard boxes that would cost you maybe $20-$30. This was to own the software and you could use it for the rest of the hardware's lifetime if you didn't do any OS upgrades. (often they would even survive an OS upgrade or change of hardware). That was so much better value for money.