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Sometimes the success of a consumer intervention will create "blowback," and allow the industry to not only win but also demand other concessions. |
An excellent recent example of regulatory blowback came with the creation of the federal Do-Not-Call Registry. In creating the registry, the Federal Communications Commission also tried to tighten regulations on "junk faxes," unsolicited commercial fax messages. The FCC ruled that "junk fax" senders had to document that they had consent from recipients of their messages. The junk faxers organized into a huge coalition (the deceptively-named "Fax Ban Coalition"), lobbied Congress, reversed the FCC's rule and actually make it easier to send junk faxes by having deceptively-named "Junk Fax Protection Act" passed.
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Deceptively named "Junk Fax Protection Act"; why, that sounds almost dishonest.
Isn't it time for the blogosphere to take these political liars that do the bidding and identify them? This won't stop until they are associated with the deceptions that they perpetrate on the public.
Several months ago I read one of John Stossel's book. What surprised me (yes, I live under a rock) is that he was very anti-regulation. Time and time again he stated that capitalism would prevail, companies could police themselves (or consumers would), and that bureaucracies were evil.
There were a few points I agreed with him on (frivolous lawsuits), but for the most part I strongly disagreed. I'm reminded of that book every time I see one of your deck of cards post.
And there is a reason for that.
John Stossel is a libertarian nut (and not the nice kind of libertarian nut -- the socialist libertarian). Hope you got that book in the library and didn't actually pay for it.
It was a gift. I sold it this weekend at Half Price Books after making some notes in it about the content.
Junk Fax Protection Act sounds like truth in advertising, since it protects Junk Fax