8 ms·

It's wild to me that America's most functional consumer regulator might be a private company.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
I mean, it's on-brand; if the USA has bad things from too much privatization, it's poetic for the solution to be more privatization.
- eru 3y ago
  What bad things?
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    Medical bankruptcies.
    - eru 3y ago
      The healthcare sector is one of the most regulated and least private in the US. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need
      - bugglebeetle 3y ago
        I like the NHS.
        eru 3y ago
        Very approximately, Americans spends about 20% of their GDP on healthcare. Britain spends about 10%. Singapore spends about 5%. (Those numbers include both government spending, like on the NHS or US Medicare and private spending.) The NHS looks good compared to the broken American system. But it's a spendthrift compared to Singapore. Healthcare outcomes in Singapore are no worse than in the US or UK. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore for more information.
        DanBC 3y ago
        I don't think you included out of pocket payments for Singapore, but you have for England.
        eru 3y ago
        I rounded heavily, instead of looking it up. Blame laziness. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?end=2019&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?end=2... has the numbers. Picking 2019 to avoid covid's effects you get: US: 16.68% UK: 9.87% Singapore: 4.42% The world bank also has data to show private vs public health expenditure.
      - Gibbon1 3y ago
        Meaning subject to the most regulatory capture and infected layers of parasites
  - mrcode007 3y ago
    https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/pittsburgh-flint-veolia-privatization-public-water-systems-lead/ https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/pittsburgh-flint-veolia-...
    - eru 3y ago
      Thanks. That looks perhaps like an instance of what the grand-father comment described: > I mean, it's on-brand; if the USA has bad things from too much privatization, it's poetic for the solution to be more privatization. The municipality of Flint that's mentioned in the article still was in charge of providing water. They just outsourced parts of that duty. More privatisation might have helped. Who knows?
      - orwin 3y ago
        How though? By making concurrent pipes companies? How many for an unregulated free market? 8? 10?
        eru 3y ago
        Why do you need concurrent pipes?
        wpietri 3y ago
        I think his point is that markets work through competition. If we have 10 different companies running pipes to every home in Flint, all run by separate companies, then we might be set. But with one, market mechanisms don't work, so a market fundamentalist ideology leads to bad outcomes.
  - epgui 3y ago
    The US is basically like a third world country that accidentally became very rich.[0] What bad things? [0] Yes, I know that was a crazy hand-wave over History...
    - deaddodo 3y ago
      > The US is basically like a third world country that accidentally became very rich. Yeah, yeah. We've all heard the popular Dutch idiom. Repeating it ad infinitum doesn't make it true. Atleast the Dutch are aware enough of 1860s-1990s history to leave out the "accidentally became" part.
ipaddr 3y ago
It's a co-op not a private business
- wpietri 3y ago
  Its stock is traded on the NASDAQ, so it's definitely a business: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/cost https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/cost As far as I can tell it was always structured as a normal business, albeit one requiring an annual membership fee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco Co-ops are different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
- skyyler 3y ago
  Costco members aren’t owners, are they? It’s just a membership, like a gym.
  - eru 3y ago
    I'm not sure that would actually make much of a difference in this case. Eg the investment manager Vanguard has a very curious ownership structure: > Vanguard is owned by the funds managed by the company and is therefore owned by its customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanguard_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanguard_Group So Vanguard is in some real sense a co-op, even if that's not the legal official form of the company. See https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/news/who-owns-vanguard https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/n... for more on the matter. (But keep in mind that it's advertisement by Vanguard about itself. So take it with a grain of salt.)
    - mook 3y ago
      Even if you somehow banded together all Costco members (i.e. people who paid membership fees to be able to ship there), you wouldn't be able to force the board of directors to resign (other than via boycotts etc.). For a clearer example, Sam's Club has a similar membership, but that's well-known to be owned by Walmart…
eru 3y ago
Isn't that how market economies are supposed to work? By default, consumers are their own best regulator. You buy only the bread that tastes good, and that shoes that fit, so the market will provide, etc. It's a small step from there, to outsourcing part of that to a middle men like Costco. Costco benefits from their reputation with customers they got from those efforts. Similar for product reviews on independent websites or magazines or even on Amazon. It's only in exceptional circumstances that 'consumer regulators' can not be private entities. And much of the time, we get lots of government regulation that could be done by private entities just fine or better. But to be honest, lots of that regulation is still 'good enough', so it doesn't do that much harm. Two examples to illustrate: Germans like to eat raw minced pork. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett So there are rules in Germany that all pork sold has to be save to eat raw. In most other countries, people don't share that peculiar preference, so the government regulations on pork are less strict. I hold that even in the absence of specific regulation, the German market would provide Germans with pork that's safe to eat raw. Companies would just put a little sticker on their meat that tells you, that it's safe to eat (and normal existing rules about truth in advertising would make sure the sticker is trustworthy). The second example: thanks to harmonised EU rules you can put palm oil in your chocolate without loudly declaring it and still call it chocolate on the packaging. (You just have to mention the palm oil in the fine-print list of ingredients.) By and large, German customers don't like palm oil in their chocolate. So German supermarkets mostly only carry 'proper' chocolate. So we private companies regulating the German chocolate market, to give consumers what they want.
- fireflash38 3y ago
  The bread that tastes good to most is the one that has shitloads of sugar added. Good for the company bad for people. Salmonella only hurts a few people and not the company, and skimping on cleaning gives execs bigger bonuses. There's tons of regulations that are good and well intentioned. Shit, even with your example of chocolate in the US capitalism got us shitty ass Hershey "chocolate". Why would that happen ya think?
  - erulabs 3y ago
jhart99 3y ago
Costco has incredible leverage over their suppliers. I worked for a supplier previously and they forced changes to our packaging including labels, cases, and pallets to make things easier for them. I have no doubt that Costco could give HP or Sony an ultimatum like this to dictate functionality or just not carry their brand.

I mean, it's on-brand; if the USA has bad things from too much privatization, it's poetic for the solution to be more privatization.

eru 3y ago
What bad things?
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Medical bankruptcies.
  - eru 3y ago
    The healthcare sector is one of the most regulated and least private in the US. See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need
    - bugglebeetle 3y ago
      I like the NHS.
      - eru 3y ago
        Very approximately, Americans spends about 20% of their GDP on healthcare. Britain spends about 10%. Singapore spends about 5%. (Those numbers include both government spending, like on the NHS or US Medicare and private spending.) The NHS looks good compared to the broken American system. But it's a spendthrift compared to Singapore. Healthcare outcomes in Singapore are no worse than in the US or UK. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Singapore for more information.
        DanBC 3y ago
        I don't think you included out of pocket payments for Singapore, but you have for England.
        eru 3y ago
        I rounded heavily, instead of looking it up. Blame laziness. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?end=2019&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=2000 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?end=2... has the numbers. Picking 2019 to avoid covid's effects you get: US: 16.68% UK: 9.87% Singapore: 4.42% The world bank also has data to show private vs public health expenditure.
    - Gibbon1 3y ago
      Meaning subject to the most regulatory capture and infected layers of parasites
- mrcode007 3y ago
  https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/pittsburgh-flint-veolia-privatization-public-water-systems-lead/ https://theintercept.com/2018/05/20/pittsburgh-flint-veolia-...
  - eru 3y ago
    Thanks. That looks perhaps like an instance of what the grand-father comment described: > I mean, it's on-brand; if the USA has bad things from too much privatization, it's poetic for the solution to be more privatization. The municipality of Flint that's mentioned in the article still was in charge of providing water. They just outsourced parts of that duty. More privatisation might have helped. Who knows?
    - orwin 3y ago
      How though? By making concurrent pipes companies? How many for an unregulated free market? 8? 10?
      - eru 3y ago
        Why do you need concurrent pipes?
        wpietri 3y ago
        I think his point is that markets work through competition. If we have 10 different companies running pipes to every home in Flint, all run by separate companies, then we might be set. But with one, market mechanisms don't work, so a market fundamentalist ideology leads to bad outcomes.
- epgui 3y ago
  The US is basically like a third world country that accidentally became very rich.[0] What bad things? [0] Yes, I know that was a crazy hand-wave over History...
  - deaddodo 3y ago
    > The US is basically like a third world country that accidentally became very rich. Yeah, yeah. We've all heard the popular Dutch idiom. Repeating it ad infinitum doesn't make it true. Atleast the Dutch are aware enough of 1860s-1990s history to leave out the "accidentally became" part.

ipaddr 3y ago

It's a co-op not a private business

wpietri 3y ago
Its stock is traded on the NASDAQ, so it's definitely a business: https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/cost https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/cost As far as I can tell it was always structured as a normal business, albeit one requiring an annual membership fee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costco Co-ops are different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
skyyler 3y ago
Costco members aren’t owners, are they? It’s just a membership, like a gym.
- eru 3y ago
  I'm not sure that would actually make much of a difference in this case. Eg the investment manager Vanguard has a very curious ownership structure: > Vanguard is owned by the funds managed by the company and is therefore owned by its customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanguard_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vanguard_Group So Vanguard is in some real sense a co-op, even if that's not the legal official form of the company. See https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/news/who-owns-vanguard https://investor.vanguard.com/investor-resources-education/n... for more on the matter. (But keep in mind that it's advertisement by Vanguard about itself. So take it with a grain of salt.)
  - mook 3y ago
    Even if you somehow banded together all Costco members (i.e. people who paid membership fees to be able to ship there), you wouldn't be able to force the board of directors to resign (other than via boycotts etc.). For a clearer example, Sam's Club has a similar membership, but that's well-known to be owned by Walmart…

eru 3y ago

Isn't that how market economies are supposed to work? By default, consumers are their own best regulator. You buy only the bread that tastes good, and that shoes that fit, so the market will provide, etc. It's a small step from there, to outsourcing part of that to a middle men like Costco. Costco benefits from their reputation with customers they got from those efforts. Similar for product reviews on independent websites or magazines or even on Amazon. It's only in exceptional circumstances that 'consumer regulators' can not be private entities. And much of the time, we get lots of government regulation that could be done by private entities just fine or better. But to be honest, lots of that regulation is still 'good enough', so it doesn't do that much harm. Two examples to illustrate: Germans like to eat raw minced pork. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett So there are rules in Germany that all pork sold has to be save to eat raw. In most other countries, people don't share that peculiar preference, so the government regulations on pork are less strict. I hold that even in the absence of specific regulation, the German market would provide Germans with pork that's safe to eat raw. Companies would just put a little sticker on their meat that tells you, that it's safe to eat (and normal existing rules about truth in advertising would make sure the sticker is trustworthy). The second example: thanks to harmonised EU rules you can put palm oil in your chocolate without loudly declaring it and still call it chocolate on the packaging. (You just have to mention the palm oil in the fine-print list of ingredients.) By and large, German customers don't like palm oil in their chocolate. So German supermarkets mostly only carry 'proper' chocolate. So we private companies regulating the German chocolate market, to give consumers what they want.

fireflash38 3y ago
The bread that tastes good to most is the one that has shitloads of sugar added. Good for the company bad for people. Salmonella only hurts a few people and not the company, and skimping on cleaning gives execs bigger bonuses. There's tons of regulations that are good and well intentioned. Shit, even with your example of chocolate in the US capitalism got us shitty ass Hershey "chocolate". Why would that happen ya think?
- erulabs 3y ago

jhart99 3y ago

Costco has incredible leverage over their suppliers. I worked for a supplier previously and they forced changes to our packaging including labels, cases, and pallets to make things easier for them. I have no doubt that Costco could give HP or Sony an ultimatum like this to dictate functionality or just not carry their brand.