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Comment by grraaaaahhh | Hacker News Reader

I know it's more complicated than this, but whenever I see businesses complaining about how including all the fees upfront will harm their business I can't help but read it as "Our business wouldn't be viable without the ability to lie to our customers."

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There are some situations where the business owners are correct, especially if their competitors are permitted to tack on extra fees at checkout. Sometimes it is necessary to establish a global rule to prevent prisoner's-dilemma defections.

Why are they opposing the law then? Seems like it would solve the prisoner's dilemma issue.

For one, there will be an immediate price ratchet that would scare customers away, and they would rather avoid that.

Two, customers (yes, that's us I'm talking about) are dumb and superstitious when it comes to numbers.

$10 = oh no, that's bad

$9.99 = oh, that's perfectly fine!

By raising 'visible' prices for everyone some portion of the customers will shy away from the product, say by buying groceries rather than eating out.

>By raising 'visible' prices for everyone some portion of the customers will shy away from the product, say by buying groceries rather than eating out.

Respecting the agency of customers to make informed decisions for themselves. How terrible.

Heh, especially for the bigger companies they barely see the person buying the food as the customer, instead it's the investors in the stock as the customer. They've not respected the 'buyer' for a long time, and is one of the reasons why we have customer protection laws on the books.

They could always lower their prices to the ones they’d been advertising. Sure, they would lose their scam money and that might hurt their finances, but that’s the choice they made when they came to count on the free money.

Because they're not just engaged with their competitors. They also have relationships with the government and with suppliers (of food, of labor, etc).

Below the line fees are a political statement, and act as political back pressure against the purported source of some costs.

I mean subsidies work this way and is why companies hunt around for the best ones they can find.

I don’t see how it’s more complicated than that actually

> I know it's more complicated than this

it really really really isn't

Same with people who complain about paying a living wage or basic benefits. I once had an Uber driver who, apropos of nothing, started telling me that he was driving for Uber because he had to shut his old business down after Obamacare went into effect because he couldn’t afford to provide health insurance for his employees. I just sort of nodded along because I didn’t really have a choice, but I couldn’t help but think, “Sounds like the problem was just that you weren’t a very good businessman.”

Curious if he thinks uber should be providing health insurance for him or not.

Additional government regulations will always require additional resources by a business to be compliant. By over regulating, the government is killing small businesses. The only organizations that can afford the resources to manage government bureaucracy are large companies. So I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that Uber drivers statement.

Not mentioned in this comment are that those large companies are the ones who lobby for such regulation, so they can kill small businesses and gain their customers

Providing health insurance for full-time employees in the United States is just part of the cost of doing business. It's not cheap, but it's absolutely something you can budget for. IIRC this guy had over 50 employees working more than 30 hours a week (I think in a landscaping business) which is why he had to start providing healthcare. If he couldn't afford to pay for health insurance for his full-time employees, then frankly, that means his business was only ever viable as long as he was able to exploit his workers with substandard pay and benefits.

That one I'd be more sympathetic to. The fraction of GDP that America's health care sector rakes off is far out of line with other first-world economies. (And, by most metrics, their health systems deliver same-or-better results.) In effect: Any company which wants to employ actual Americans (one who'll have to get heath coverage) is forced to send huge-and-growing protection payments to America's health care system mafia.

Be that as it may, it's not like the ACA invented employer-sponsored health insurance. Health insurance is just part of the cost of doing business in the United States and has been standard for full-time employees (and many part-time ones) for decades. In this particular case, I believe he wasn't providing health insurance for anyone but was now required to because his company was over a certain size. (Something along those lines, it's been a long time.)

Businesses hate capitalism. They don't want to compete on pricing and quality.

>They don't want to compete on pricing and quality.

I support this bill for other reasons, but price competition is a poor reason. Is not having all-in menu pricing really detrimental to price competition? My impression is that most restaurants have the same cost structure of menu price + tax + tip. I very rarely see restaurants trying to add any sort of charge on top. Therefore, at least when it comes to restaurants competing with each other, this law is a non-factor in most cases.

The thing is we're seeing more and more restaurants doing this. It's like a cancer cell, there's only one at first, then if its successful it's conquered the entire organ market rather quickly. This is about cutting off a bad practice we're seeing spread in that industry.

And I want the bill to spread to other markets that love tacking on hidden fees (looking at you Airbnb).

If you're doing capitalism correctly, there is no competition. You control pricing, and quality is irrelevant. It's all about the power of money.

Businesses hate markets, because it's sink or swim and almost everybody sinks.

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