4 ms·

Why? Why are there no more?

• dkuntz2 13y ago
  Seriously? Because when every consumer protection agency in your free market utopia fails to perform adequately they no longer exist. If no consumer protection agency earns anyone's trust, how does it continue to exist in your perfect world? On a related note: what incentive is there for an individual to create a consumer protection agency? What incentive is there for a company to open their doors to a consumer protection agency that isn't going to give them a good rating?
  • snitko 13y ago
    > what incentive is there for an individual to create a consumer protection agency? Being paid by people who would like a reliable information about the products and services they purchase? > What incentive is there for a company to open their doors to a consumer protection agency that isn't going to give them a good rating? Being excluded from the rating altogether to the advantage of their competitors?
    • dkuntz2 13y ago
      What about my other question? What's to keep an entire industry from creating their own protection agency, and excluding all other agencies from inspecting their facilities? Who protects the consumers then? Without regulation what's to keep an agency from intermixing legitimate ratings with false ratings? What's to keep a company from paying every agency for false ratings, especially if everyone is profit-maximizing, and every other agency is going to say the same thing? Even if you found out, what can you do about it? Does being excluded from the ratings give an advantage to their competitors? All it says is that they weren't rated, not that they're better or worse, and what if their competitors are terribly rated? What's to keep an agency from being vindictive? This goes with the above mixing legitimate and false ratings.