If you don't have laws, or don't enforce them, people will do whatever they want.
I can remember when this simple point was obvious to almost everyone.
I can remember when this simple point was obvious to almost everyone.
I'm implying that parliaments in multiple developed countries are rapidly devolving and ceding their powers and/or work to the unelected or unrelated officials.
That said, I’m not arguing that we don’t need laws today - we do, or at least I have no other idea how to do a course correction from where we are. Preferably wide-range ones that alter the whole consumer-producer relationships.
But the key thing is not the laws, it’s the attitude (individual and corporate) towards others. Can’t legislate that, I’m afraid.
It also wasn't universally true. E.g. the story of Mad Munz creating TVs that worked only for 90% of the customers (who had good enough reception and needed less signal cleanup). His idea was to capture 90% of the market with a cheaper product, while shafting 10% of the consumers and shamelessly send them to other vendors when they reported their troubles and he already had their money.
https://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/madman-mun...
you sell a product -> you are responsible about the product
with a ".. -> you must be honest about the product (/what the products does, provides, etc.)"
to see how absurdly not followed this common sense(^1) is in the us look at supplements
1. provider are not hold responsible, non small parts of sold supplements are harmful in one way or another. Even cases like supplements advertised for pregnant woman with highly dangerous components for pregnant woman existed, no major change followed.
2. high amounts (AFIK 80% or so) of supplements sold in the US are severely dishonest and don't quite contain what is advertised. And this isn't just about it technically containing the supplements, but in a form the body can't absurd. But it goes so bad that "it's just sugar pills" is more on the harmless side... (and even that is dangerous given that many people take supplements for fixing health issues caused by to little of what the supplement).
not only has the US not fixed it when it started going out of hand, they went explicitly out of their way to not fix it.
(^1): (Common sense for anyone looking a bit into market dynamics/consumer protection etc.)
Just to make clear that while (2) is at least an exaggeration unless you really stretch the issues with GRAS components not being adequately safety tested, it's certainly true that evidence of benefit is thin.
Personally I'd love to see the FDA actually regulate supplements, including actually testing additives for safety rather than falling back on GRAS sketchiness.
But we can't even test food for parasites and bacteria so I guess it falls to the consumer to somehow get enough information to make an informed decision.