4 ms·

Here's a bunch of consumer laws that work: - living in the UK, I barely ever receive spam calls or messages. I can be reasonably sure that companies don't sell

Here's a bunch of consumer laws that work: - living in the UK, I barely ever receive spam calls or messages. I can be reasonably sure that companies don't sell my contacts to third parties, I can withdraw my consent to marketing communications and spam will stop, I did it multiple times. My American friends seem to have way more problems with that, to the extent of buying burner phones to buy insurance. Considering that the tech is exactly the same across the pond, the difference is entirely in the legislation and consumer protection. - cars became much cleaner and more efficient over the last three decades thanks to the ever ratcheting Euro standards. I only need an old car passing by to be reminded of that, you can just smell the difference. - my broadband connection has a minimum average speed guaranteed by law, which protects me from the line being oversubscribed. This actually works, and a friend of mine got a sizeable compensation for a period when they didn't get the full speed. So consumer laws work, and saying that enforcement can't be done is a bit of a post-hoc rationalisation. It is true that GDPR can and should be enforced harsher, but it's just one example in a long and successful history of consumer protections.

than3 4y ago
I'll keep in mind points 1 and 3. As for cars, how do we know that's true. There was Dieselgate, but from what I've heard they only got them because of whistleblowers. Many VOCs which these laws are designed to reduce are odorless. The ones are visible are larger particle size and generally less of an issue from an environmental perspective from most accounts.
- dgroshev 4y ago
  You can literally smell it in the air, older cars don't have cats to burn everything uncombusted down to CO2+H2O. You can smell it with a modern car for the first few minutes while cat is heating up. You can see it in car shapes, there's a reason why every modern car looks the same — aerodynamics and pedestrian safety make car shapes converge. You can see it in ubiquitous cans of AdBlue on petrol stations, which was not a thing just two decades ago (and still aren't in many developing countries). Finally, you can see it numbers: https://www.asm-autos.co.uk/workspace/images/yearly-co2-emissions.png https://www.asm-autos.co.uk/workspace/images/yearly-co2-emis... There is no fundamental reason why all those changes had to happen, it wasn't the market driving them. It was the regulation.

than3 4y ago

I'll keep in mind points 1 and 3. As for cars, how do we know that's true. There was Dieselgate, but from what I've heard they only got them because of whistleblowers. Many VOCs which these laws are designed to reduce are odorless. The ones are visible are larger particle size and generally less of an issue from an environmental perspective from most accounts.

dgroshev 4y ago
You can literally smell it in the air, older cars don't have cats to burn everything uncombusted down to CO2+H2O. You can smell it with a modern car for the first few minutes while cat is heating up. You can see it in car shapes, there's a reason why every modern car looks the same — aerodynamics and pedestrian safety make car shapes converge. You can see it in ubiquitous cans of AdBlue on petrol stations, which was not a thing just two decades ago (and still aren't in many developing countries). Finally, you can see it numbers: https://www.asm-autos.co.uk/workspace/images/yearly-co2-emissions.png https://www.asm-autos.co.uk/workspace/images/yearly-co2-emis... There is no fundamental reason why all those changes had to happen, it wasn't the market driving them. It was the regulation.