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Not even close to the truth. What you are describing is a perfect functioning market, with producers just interested in serving the needs of the customers. In r

Not even close to the truth. What you are describing is a perfect functioning market, with producers just interested in serving the needs of the customers. In reality, things are way more complex: - producers try to reduce costs - producers ignore customer demands as long as they are able to do it. In particular when the customer has no option because competitors are following the same cost-saving approach. - customers give up and start watching second-best options, and get used to them (tragedy of the commons) - there are synergy effects which allow producers to get away with sub optimal options: I will use my Amazon Prime account to watch videos, even if I am not entirely happy with the offer, because I am already paying for Prime for delivery. - the world is complicated, and consumers have little time and power, while producers can spend time writing 30 pages contracts. The only way to balance power here is to associate, but citizens are quite bad at it. The EU is an association, and I am happy that they are taking into account the consumer's interests. I wonder when will this fallacy of "the market works to fulfill the interests of the customers" die out ...

beaconstudios 8y ago
All of these things are true, but that still doesn't make what the EU is doing, good. They're just forcing the providers to spend money in Europe. What makes you think European productions won't fall prey to exactly the same problems? This is purely an exercise in the EU seeing that it can control foreign companies using GDPR and thinking "hey, why don't we use this to force companies to give us money". Also: > I wonder when will this fallacy of "the market works to fulfill the interests of the customers" die out ... Just because it's flawed, doesn't mean it isn't mostly true. The market is far from perfect but that doesn't mean it doesn't still fulfil customer needs. It just doesn't fulfil all of them, fulfils them in an inoptimal way, and so on.

beaconstudios 8y ago

All of these things are true, but that still doesn't make what the EU is doing, good. They're just forcing the providers to spend money in Europe. What makes you think European productions won't fall prey to exactly the same problems? This is purely an exercise in the EU seeing that it can control foreign companies using GDPR and thinking "hey, why don't we use this to force companies to give us money". Also: > I wonder when will this fallacy of "the market works to fulfill the interests of the customers" die out ... Just because it's flawed, doesn't mean it isn't mostly true. The market is far from perfect but that doesn't mean it doesn't still fulfil customer needs. It just doesn't fulfil all of them, fulfils them in an inoptimal way, and so on.