>I haven't bought one for about 20 years.
Just the fact that you are commenting on HN shows that you aren't the average consumer when it comes to electronics. People tend to overestimate the others' knowledge on topics they themselves are familiar with. A considerable chunk of printer "consumers" don't even know the difference between an inkjet and a laser printer. We can blame them all we want because they aren't "doing their research before spending money", but we don't even know what we are wasting our money on, especially with thing we aren't that knowledgeable about. Everyone values their time differently, so they may or may not research something before purchase depending on what they are buying.
In short, no regulation means leaving sheep alone with wolves.
There is no such thing as an unregulated market. The only meaningful difference is between a free market--a market that is regulated solely by the voluntary choices of market participants--and a non-free market--which is at least to some degree also regulated by rules dictated and enforced by entities who are not market participants (the most common such entities, of course, being governments). Both types of markets are regulated; they're just regulated by different mechanisms.
> will always promote marketing over quality
No, a market in which consumers are either unable to perceive quality, or are unwilling to take the time to do so (possibly for rational reasons such as the lack of time or the product being so cheap that it's not worth the effort) will always promote marketing over quality.
But that doesn't mean this is a "problem" that either needs to be or can be fixed by outside regulation. It can't be fixed by outside regulation because outside regulation makes the problem worse, not better; it makes consumers think their interests are being protected, when in fact regulatory capture means all that is really happening is that the biggest players are getting further entrenched because the cost of regulatory compliance shuts out potential competitors.
It doesn't need to be fixed because consumers have the choice of what to buy or not to buy, and if they either can't or won't (again, possibly for rational reasons) take the time to choose based on quality, either they don't buy at all or they choose based on something else, and take the consequences. That's what not taking the time to perceive quality means: you choose to be at the mercy of whatever marketing or other information you do use to determine what to buy (or whether to buy), however unreliable it is.
> no regulation
More precisely, absence of outside regulation from entities like governments that are not market participants. See above.
> means leaving sheep alone with wolves
No, it means consumers make the choice of whether or not to be sheep, and take the consequences. Which is the only way to actually regulate a market and have the regulation actually improve anything. The wolves can't prey on consumers who refuse to be sheep, and that choice is up to the consumer.
Something something semantics... something something I'm not a native English speaker something something... I will use the correct definitions from now on though, so thanks for correcting.
>No, a market in which consumers are either unable to perceive quality, or are unwilling to take the time to do so (possibly for rational reasons such as the lack of time or the product being so cheap that it's not worth the effort) will always promote marketing over quality.
And as I said, ideally this wouldn't be the case. However, we are living in the real world where every statement in this sentence is unfortunately the case.
>all that is really happening is that the biggest players are getting further entrenched because the cost of regulatory compliance shuts out potential competitors.
While this may be true with some regulations, in this specific example it is the exact opposite. A fresh company with little capital won't be able to afford a razor and blades model the same way a giant company like HP can. An outside regulation that protects the consumers' interests will serve to make the playing field more even, giving the new company higher chances of actually succeeding. It reduces the risk of startups, because with correct rules higher quality/cost ratio guarantees higher success.
>it means consumers make the choice of whether or not to be sheep, and take the consequences
That only works if consumers actually know what the consequences are. As I said, there are probably countless purchasing decisions that you and I make that we don't even know are dumb. Everyone thinks they know the best for themselves until they find out their knowledge is negligible compared to what they don't know.
Voting with your wallet doesn't work when the default for "not voting" is "I agree" and people don't care about voting.
All of the achievements of humanity comes from collaborative effort, whether it be cumulative knowledge, joining of powers or protecting each-other's interests. Total individuality would only end up with the absolute domination of first-movers: people who managed to leave individuality behind and work as a group. The best way we currently have to avoid this is to have a democratic, all inclusive government that decides what rules we should set and follow.
I absolutely agree. So the next question is, which way of organizing collaborative efforts of humans has worked better (not perfectly, just better), if we look at human history? Free markets, or governments? When I look at human history, I see free markets doing better--not because free markets are great, but because governments suck even worse.
> The best way we currently have to avoid this is to have a democratic, all inclusive government that decides what rules we should set and follow.
Sorry, but this is a myth. There is no such thing as "a democratic, all inclusive government". Government is not magic. It's some human beings being given permission to exercise arbitrary power over other human beings. Human beings cannot be trusted with that kind of power. Various ways have been tried to limit the power of governments, such as the US Constitution, Bill of Rights, etc. The invariable result is that the people in power simply find ways around the limitations. The only way to stop human beings from abusing power is to stop giving them the permission to exercise it in the first place.
I understand that, realistically, no such thing will happen any time soon. But accepting at least some government regulation because we can't avoid it because the world is imperfect and we're not going to convince everyone to implement and learn to live with full-on libertarianism tomorrow, is way, way different from thinking of government regulation as the go-to tool of first resort for solving any problem. It's not. It's the worst tool for solving problems.
> Total individuality
This is also a myth. Nobody can totally support themselves with just their individual efforts. Well, perhaps there are a few edge cases living totally off the grid in a forest somewhere, but they're not going to be posting here and they're not going to be impinging on other people's lives anyway so we can ignore them.
The people who abuse power do not do it by "total individuality". They do it by co-opting, through corrupt institutions, huge numbers of other people to further their abuses. Those institutions did not get the power they have, which the people then abuse, through a free market. They got it through governments (in many cases the institutions are governments, or governmental institutions). In an actual free market, the kinds of abuses of power we routinely see in government-run societies could not exist, because the institutions and the implied permission of power that comes with them would not exist. People who want to do something collectively in a free market have to convince other people to help them by trading things of actual value. That's how a free market works: if you don't have something worth trading, people simply ignore you. You don't have the option of saying, hey, I'm in a position of power, you have to do what I say. And so people are forced to stop exercising their "total individuality" and actually cooperate with others.
