>Letting companies redefine the rights of their customers seems bizarre to me.
I'm sure it's obvious by now but perhaps it's worth restating:
Those companies have large budgets for contributing to elected officials' campaigns. The individual consumers negatively affected by these practices can't band together as efficiently as the large business on the other side of the abusive behavior.
As long as enough elected officials entertain these businesses in visits, allow them to help write legislation, and accept contributions from them, it won't change.
Also, executive agencies have to put out proposals for new rule making and allow a period of public comment. The business in the sector have entire staffs and/or contract with firms whose job it is to watch these publications and craft intelligent responses backed up by fudged data to "prove" how "damaging" these policies would be to the industry.
The individuals who respond are mostly retired people/activist citizens who can only say "this is a bad idea and I don't like it at all."
But do you think in the rest of the world it's the same thing? In Germany we have good consumer protection laws, even though there of course are lobbyists (or, the old-fashioned name for it, PR people and employees of a company).
I'm sure it's obvious by now but perhaps it's worth restating:
Those companies have large budgets for contributing to elected officials' campaigns. The individual consumers negatively affected by these practices can't band together as efficiently as the large business on the other side of the abusive behavior.
As long as enough elected officials entertain these businesses in visits, allow them to help write legislation, and accept contributions from them, it won't change.
Also, executive agencies have to put out proposals for new rule making and allow a period of public comment. The business in the sector have entire staffs and/or contract with firms whose job it is to watch these publications and craft intelligent responses backed up by fudged data to "prove" how "damaging" these policies would be to the industry.
The individuals who respond are mostly retired people/activist citizens who can only say "this is a bad idea and I don't like it at all."