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Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

It's curious that the market (almost?) always decides what is bad for the consumer and profitable for the companies. As a person who is a person not a company, I would rather we don't let the market decide so much about our lives.

Examples: Smart (spying ad-showing) TVs, non-compete agreements, water heater rentals, not-really-unlimited "unlimited data" cell plans, surveillance economy, only-rentable-not-buyable software and films and TV shows and audiobooks, etc.

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Because most of the free market theory that most normal people believe is based on the assumption of perfect competition[1]. However, that almost never actually occurs in the real world and even ends up being impossible in most cases.

For example, there is always going to be a huge barrier to entry for automakers. They need to invest an enormous amount of time and money in design, factories, raw materials, labor, etc before they can deliver an actual car. This barrier protects automakers from feeling the full repercussions of their anti-consumer practices because it is extremely difficult for a new pro-consumer competitor to enter the market.

When we remove that assumption of perfect competition, the whole free market theory starts to fall apart. A well functioning free market requires power to be balanced between all parties, otherwise whoever has the most power can end up corrupting it and using their power advantage to grab even more money and/or power.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition

What are our alternatives? I’ve said in posts before that legislating against each anti-consumer product or feature is a fool’s errand. The legislature cannot keep up the rate at which corporate entities produce consumer-unfriendly products. I also don’t trust it to represent citizens rather than corporate donors, at least here in the US.

Pitchforks? Seriously though, your comment is way too defeatist. Legislature has worked for centuries for this problem. Imperfectly, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

But if all else fails, giant corporations are eventually going to get the good ol' pitchforks up their butt.

To the contrary, I think settling for a mechanism that (maybe) cleans up the damage after it’s done is defeatist.

This isn’t a case where you have to wait until after the damage is done though. Making a blanket regulation of “you can’t sell a physical good that has its capabilities artificially limited to create price brackets”, or something similar, would work in advance of people trying to sell such products in the US market.

I'm not saying it's good, I'm just saying it is to be expected.

I already decided I will not buy cars with touch screens or cars that limit my usage (for ex. Tesla limiting how you can use its battery). I am guessing I will keep driving my 12 years old ICE car for another 5-6 years. It seems to work: car makers are starting to go back to buttons instead of touch screens [0]. Maybe the same will happen with these features (charging $/month for extra engine power / remote car startup / heated seats)?

[0] https://slate.com/business/2023/04/cars-buttons-touch-screen...

> It's curious that the market (almost?) always decides what is bad for the consumer and profitable for the companies.

In some cases people choose things that are bad for them, for all kinds of reasons. Someone will always sell you a subscription to your own car, if you tell them you want one. The market is the mechanism, the responsibility lies with the consumer. I know that it feels like there's a conspiracy, but it's almost always just people getting what they say they'll pay for.

The best solution is for people to exercise good judgment. The nuclear option is to regulate what people can and cannot buy and sell. It's not to have that nuclear option on the table, and it is necessary sometimes, but it does not feel like this particular case is one when people cannot reasonably be expected to decide for themselves what they want, or have the power to exercise that decision. Nobody HAS to buy a Mercedes.

I agree with this comment. I have a smart TV that does not show me ads. I could have bought maybe a better one that shoots Ads every now and then, but finally, luckily there is still choice. Same either cars. There are so many nice brands out there that it's now difficult to choose from - no offense to Mercedes, but there is so much good competition for that price...!

> The best solution is for people to exercise good judgment.

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

Guess which phase we're in now.

"Experience comes from bad judgement." Are you speaking from your own experience???

In the culture I grew up in its a well-known aphorism.

Yeah, the market doesn't decide when there are only a few major players.

The "market" didn't decide to exclude headphone jacks and SD cards on mobile phones. Apple went that direction and other companies followed suit. Customers had no real choice in those matters.

> Customers had no real choice in those matters.

Yes they did, they could vote with their wallet. And they voted for ear buds.

There's still plenty of phones with jacks out there by the way.

No, they didn't vote for headphone jacks to be removed, they were forced to decide whether it was a dealbreaker for them. This kind of incremental erosion of the user experience is a very different thing than consumers making a binary choice about what they would prefer. They 'get away' with it, then it becomes the new normal, and the previous experience becomes niche and expensive or comes with other compromises.

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