I do the best I can to explain why we don’t, and a few SlaterRaiders back me up!
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But the BEST explanation can be found in the book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand. This essay is on page 126-130, The Assault On Integrity:
Reputation, in an unregulated economy, is a major competitive tool. It requires years of consistently excellent performance to acquire a reputation and to establish it as a financial asset…Thus the incentive to scrupulous performance operates on all levels… It is a built-in safeguard of a free-enterprise system…Government regulation is not an alternative means of protecting the consumer. It does not build quality into goods, or accuracy into information. It’s sole “contribution” is to substitute force and fear for incentive as the “protector” of the consumer… What are the results?
To paraphrase Gresham’s Law: bad “protection” drives out good. The attempt to protect the consumer by force undercuts the protection he gets from incentive. First, it undercuts the value of reputation by placing the reputable company on the same basis as the unknown, the newcomer, or the fly-by-nighter. It declares, in effect, that all are equally suspect…Second it grants an automatic guarantee of safety to the products of any company that complies with its arbitrarily set minimum standards…The minimum standards, which are the basis of regulation, gradually tend to become the maximums as well…A fly by night securities operator can quickly meet all the S.E.C. requirements, gain the inference of respectability, and proceed to fleece the public. In an unregulated economy, the operator would have had to earn a position of trust…
Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory. Rather than isolating the consumer from the dishonest businessman, it is gradually destroying the only reliable protection the consumer has: competition for reputation…Government regulations do not eliminate potentially dishonest individuals, but merely make their activities harder to detect or easier to hush up.
Tags: alan greenspan, ayn rand, capitalism, the assault on integrity, the unknown ideal
Yeah, government regular is all bunk. I mean people should figure out on reputation that a product is poison or faulty enough to maim or kill. Good logic to follow there, Mike.
To me “consumer protection” is but a part of MY duty to myself and God of SELF-PRESERVATION.
It is incumbent upon me and me alone to complete my due dilligence in purchasing a good or a service. In terms of my argument, “due dilligence” in this sense would be like reading the credit card contract, or insurance policy BEFORE you sign and accept the agreement. Become EDUCATED and INFORMED before you buy…
It is not MY problem if in society today we have a large contingent of people who CHOOSE to be lazy and ignorant. And it is a CHOICE as we are ALL CREATED EQUAL with the capacity for reason and logic, and the free will to act upon it.
Those who choose to be taken care of by the government, who live in Vice rather than Virtue should be left to rot themselves out of existence.
Extending government “protections” to these people only increases Vice and sustains a people and a culture which by it’s very nature would die out on its own as it is inherently nhilistic.
It’s not “Capitalism” that “doesn’t work”, it’s people who vote Democrat that don’t work.
“Government Consumer Protection”, what a misnomer.
Consumer protection is not the responsibility of the government, whether by state or Fed.
Laws are meant to, and should provide security and civility.
Then there are laws designed to further protect civilization through incarceration and capital punishment, but the day to day lives of Americans are best served by getting out of the way.
We have developed accusatory lawsuits that should enable an injured citizen to obtain monetary and medical satisfaction through the court system, and these should have merit, before they are undertaken, and I believe frivolous lawsuits should have consequences against those presenting them, so we can relieve the courts, and free them to execute those lawsuits that have merit. Lawsuits like “I spilled hot coffee on my lap while I was driving my car” should cause the litigant and the attorney who presented such a case to pay court costs and all associated costs to the defendant.
Because we want to buy a cheaper product, doesn’t mean injury caused by that product should warrant governmental protection, or the fact that we used the product wrongly should not warrant governmental protection: instead, take it to court, OR, make certain you are going to be happy with the product you are buying.
Competition will allow manufacturers to advertise the advantanges of their product against the assertions of the competitors, but taxes should not be taken from Americans to make the determination that one product is better than another; when that is done, the government is the agency making the determination what you, as a consumer should by, and what you as a manufacturer should produce. Consequently, we end up with victims, and no one wants to take responsibility for their decisions.
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