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Comment by boonzeet

9 hours ago

There are many EU directives which benefit consumers directly in tech, including, but not limited to:

Consumer rights - 14 day cooling off period for online purchases

Sale of goods - 2 year seller liability for defective goods

Right to repair - likely doesn’t need explanation, require manufacturers to offer repairs and replacement parts

Unfair commercial practices - prevent misleading or deceptive advertising

Unfair contract terms directive - prevents disproportionately one-sided provisions in T&Cs (think Disney giving themselves legal immunity for a free Disney+ trial)

The EU’s problem seems to be in communicating its benefits to its citizens.

13 comments

boonzeet

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ricardobayes  8 hours ago

I wouldn't even call it a communication problem - I believe it's more a media problem, than anything. Good news are minimized and bad news are amplified to the maximum - nowadays even broadsheet newspapers operate with tabloid headlines, and that is really bad.

We somehow need to "want" a slower news cycle and simultaneously push back against the algorithmic outrage. The world is more predictable and safer than ever but the perception of the average person is not this, it's manufactured outrage at every possible opportunity and topic.

Despite the average european objectively being better off and safer than a decade ago, almost none feel that way and that is almost 100% due to the news algorithms being tuned to keep you in a constant dread cycle.

nickpp  8 hours ago

> cooling off [...] seller liability [...] Right to repair

Let's not forget I am paying directly for those when I buy a product. Those benefits are not free, they cost money. The money has to come from somewhere. It can't come from profits (since those are the sacred reason the company exists in the first place) thus they will come from higher prices.

Higher product prices mean less competitive companies. It also means fewer startups which must implement the required regulation no matter the market says. Then you need protectionism against Chinese competition.

But the worst is that I must pay for those benefits whether if I want them or not. Thus my choice is reduced. I cannot vote with my wallet and send price signals in the market to tell sellers that I want those benefits or not and at what price. The market gets corrupted. The economy falters. Outside competitors gain. The Government needs to intervene again and again, growing stronger and more intrusive "for my own benefit".

It's the decay spiral we are witnessing here in the EU right now.

  • lentil_soup  6 hours ago

    > But the worst is that I must pay for those benefits whether if I want them or not

    that regulation acts as a lower bound on what it takes to do business in the place. You also pay for companies not dumping toxic material on the streets, for appliances not catching fire, for not eating rotten food and million other things. All of those regulations of course "corrupt" the market for the good of a society so it's not just a race to the bottom. The idea of a free for all market is an utopia that doesn't exist ... thankfully.

    • prolly97  4 hours ago

      He's stating a fact that you don't dispute. You follow up with hyperbolic language; "eating rotten food" (as if anyone would purchase their goods from purveyors known to disregard food safety).

      In a market that has been designed to let people take part in voluntary transactions, we also design methods for making sure that the counterpart takes responsibility, and delivers the agreed amount quality of product.

      If you purchase a car that won't turn on, you're in your good right to make a claim against the producer. Same for all the other things you mention. And people do.

      You're making a point about negative externalities. Agreed that a factory shouldn't just be able to poison a river, because there's no tangible cost to piping your dirty water to one. Here it makes sense to make artificial interventions, in my opinion.

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  • intended  4 hours ago

    That... that is not exactly how things work.

    The choices you are presented with, are always a function of market structure, aka the interplay of incentives, regulation, and competition.

    You have a market because your taxes pay for many things, ranging from policing, to courts, to power and standards underlying how various systems work.

    The choices presented to you are always a trade off vs other options. Having regulation that dictates how plug points and voltage works for example, reduces the choices you have, but the baseline standard means many other things can be built because standardization enables modularity.

    The position that there exists some platonic ideal "choice" isn't even useful as an illustrative argument in this context.

    Markets that are effective at ensuring better outcomes for the median or average consumer are things that have to be crafted. Figuring out the correct extent of intervention, (whether you champion less regulation or more) is the issue.

  • prolly97  6 hours ago

    This!!!

    I went to California earlier this year. In our apartment we had a freezer that was clearly made before politicians thought to decide to put a cap on how good a freezer could be. It was fucking amazing at freezing stuff. No freezer I've ever used could freeze this good. It was probably from the 80's - old/sturdy AF.

    I wouldn't mind paying for some extra solar panels to feed it.

    • boonzeet  4 hours ago

      I’m not sure that’s a function of regulation but more a function of most modern freezers defaulting to -18°, where an American or industrial freezer is -22 to -28°C.

      Getting a better energy efficiency score is one reason (and consumers are motivated on running cost, not just environmental) but presumably these are cheaper to manufacture as well.

      I have an American style, EU-compliant freezer than I can set to -26° which I bought for preparing sashimi safely. It rocks! Highly recommend them.

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