As coldpie said:
> Remember this when you're going to vote. Elections matter.
(high empathy justice sensitive human)
What? Why is that defensible? Make life worse/keep life bad for Americans so we have a better chance in an election? Do you hear yourself?
https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/holyoak-dissent...
My argument is different. There should not be any regulation except where existentially necessary (e.g. you need government to manage an army, because otherwise someone else will conquer the country, this sort of thing).
Sure, most rules sound good in isolation. But in aggregate you end up with huge administration and 50% marginal tax rate and massive regulatory burden to businesses. Not able to cancel a subscription easily after you willingly enter into a relationship with some business is too tiny an issue to merit expanding the government monster.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41626381
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41626251
Short answer is that you're just not paying attention.
Only thing that comes to mind is like de facto parts of Mexico, maybe Somalia?
Mindsets like this are actually why democracies fail.
It's a dark-pattern underhanded dirty trick when you don't.
In that case, why have a state government? Why not have everything determined county-by-county?
In fact, why have it be county rule? Why not just neighborhood by neighborhood?
You place the locus of control according to the problems you need to solve. Neighborhoods combine to cities combine to counties combine to states combine to countries in order to be competitive and thrive against the broader environment. Yes, it does typically entail a loss of autonomy, but the benefit is that your little independent enclave doesn't get taken over by the next-strongest neighbor.
So in your world, I have to protect my credit card details from all evil people in the world forever (and also somehow prevent them from acquiring companies that I've previously given my details to), because it's okay for a company to keep charging my credit card forever, even if I don't want or use the service.
This is pretty much an argument for legalizing theft.
It seems like you don't understand how checks and balances work in our system.
In the context of this concrete discussion, allowing customers to cancel contracts they don't want - that's something which you object to because you want companies to be allowed to keep taking your money against your will, because consent matters to you? That is obviously self-inconsistent.
Really, of all the places to get worked up about the 10th amendment, a clear-cut, low-risk, low-intrusion expansion of consumer protection is a weird one.
Her basic points are:
1. The FTC doesn't have the authority to make this rule, and in government there must be a hard line between "I want this" and "this is legal" unless you want a dictatorship.
2. The reason the FTC has so many Congressionally-enacted laws to follow is because of a history of overstepping its legal authority. The more they push the boundary, the less authority the FTC will have in the long-run.
3. The rule is too broad. Broad regulation is bad because it leaves too much legal wiggle-room for violators with deep pockets and smart lawyers. At the same time, small businesses who may be acting legitimately can't know they'll be accused of violating overly broad rules, or afford to defend themselves if they draw government scrutiny.
4. The FTC has a specific procedure it needs to follow for making a rule but they didn't follow that procedure.
5. Because of the above, the rule will be challenged by BigCo and struck down in court, wasting time and harming the FTC's reputation.
I'm hopeful about a "Click to Cancel" future (who wouldn't be?) but it's pretty hard to dismiss those points as "typical pro-business grift".
You know this isn't a legal way to terminate a contractual agreement with a company, right?
Because we aren't a unitary democracy, we are a federal republic that was built upon the idea of a limited federal government designed to address pressing national issues, with "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The will of the people state should almost always be superior to the will of the federal government. There needs to be an exceedingly pressing and relevant reason that any law, let alone one made by unelected bureaucrats, should overrule any of a state's laws. There is no exceedingly pressing reason the federal government should be involving itself in the process of canceling an auto renewing contract.
>"why is it okay that people should have to vote on whether others can prey on them, exploit and abuse them"
A company making it slightly annoying to leave an agreement with them is not being preyed on, exploited, or abused. That kind of language to describe "sitting on the phone longer than I want to cancel my paper subscription" or similar is bordering on histrionic.
I would recommend reading the newsletter "Big" by Matt Stoller for context.
Lina Khan seems widely hated across the aisle, so that's a good first step.
The SEC has also taken unprecedented actions under Rohit Chopra.
> It is also hardly one of the most pressing election issues.
Let's just send Lina Khan to Ukraine and get this problem squared away I guess
One of the people who voted against it explained why and it has nothing to do with wanting to make cancellations harder. But we can't acknowledge that truth because that goes against the "one side is good, one side is bad" narrative so many here try to push so often and so hard.
No, also not a legal method to terminate a contract.
Government shouldn't enforce contract law, got it. Sounds like utopia.
It would be similar to going into an israel-palestine war thread and saying that "remember, if you vote Biden you're voting for a president that is enabling a genocide" or saying that "those bombs were given by Biden's administration " whenever a hospital gets hit in that war. Is it true? Sure. Is it stirring the pot? Absolutely. Do people who vote for Biden already know that and don't really care? Almost certainly.
The exact same applies to comments like this. Like yes, republicans vote for Republican candidates knowing this. It's not like they weren't aware that the party they support leans heavily towards favoring business interests.
Are you saying this because you believe it, or because the Constitution says so?
I think rote but beneficial consumer protections in the digital age is something that fits well at a national level. We don't need a 50-state laboratory on how to handle SiriusXM.
Oh, and making it artificially difficult for laypeople to get out of subscription contracts is absolutely predatory.
That can't be true... people exist there. Turns out your heuristic is no more defensible than anyone else's: I want the government to provide precisely the services I want.