3 ms·
You're right that the purchase was a choice, but we already have laws pertaining to fitness, minimum warranties, safety, etc. Without a method of looking into t
by burnte 6y ago
You're right that the purchase was a choice, but we already have laws pertaining to fitness, minimum warranties, safety, etc. Without a method of looking into the future to know that a product will be bricked by the maker in a year or two, the next best safeguard is minimums for viability set by law.
- avalys 6y agoThose laws and regulations are justifiable because the hazard of an unsafe product is worth the cost of the regulation to prevent, and their scope generally doesn’t exceed the bare minimum needed to ensure safety. There is no law that says, for instance, that the Slingbox has to be reliable, has to produce acceptable image quality, or has to be priced competitively. As a society we leave it up to the individual to make those judgements. I am simply suggesting that the question of “How long will the manufacturer maintain the service this device depends on?” should fall in the category of those sorts of questions, and not the “Will this device kill me if I plug it into the wall?” category that regulation should be reserved for.
- smnrchrds 6y ago> Those laws and regulations are justifiable because the hazard of an unsafe product Most consumer protection laws are not about hazard and safety. For example, credit card companies having to refund fraudulent transactions has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with protecting people in the vastly power-imbalanced bank-client relationship.
- burnte 6y agoActually there are regulations about reliability, etc. You can't make grossly misleading claims, Magnuson-Moss, lemon laws, companies are routinely punished via class action suits for poor products, and can even be charged criminally for bad products. It's not all just about safety.