Passed 3-2 along party lines. Remember this when you're going to vote. Elections matter.
replies(5):
As coldpie said:
> Remember this when you're going to vote. Elections matter.
(high empathy justice sensitive human)
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.
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.
No, also not a legal method to terminate a contract.
Government shouldn't enforce contract law, got it. Sounds like utopia.
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.