PC Gaming

Say I go to a furniture store and buy a table. It has a 5 year warranty. 2 years later, it breaks, so I call Ubersoft and ask them to honor the warranty and fix it. If they don’t, then I can file a suit against them, i.e., for breach of contract. I may not even have to file a suit, as there may be government agencies who receive and act on these complaints, like my local consumer protection division.

I’m talking about real things here. Your example is a situation where the US government agrees that a company shouldn’t be permitted to take my money and then renege on their promises. And that’s generally true of most governments.

Supposing an absence of regulations protecting consumers like me, like you’re trying to suggest in your example, then it would be reasonable to assume an absence of laws and regulations protecting the corporation from consumers like me. Absent such laws, a consumer would be free to take matters into their own hands. They could go back to Ubersoft and take a replacement table without their agreement - it wouldn’t be “stealing” because it wouldn’t be illegal. If Ubersoft were closed, the consumer could break in. If Ubersoft security tried to stop them, the consumer could retaliate - damaging Ubersoft’s property, physically attacking the owner / management / employees, etc.. Ubersoft could retaliate as well, of course - nothing’s stopping them. And as a corporation, they certainly have more power than a random consumer - but at that point they would need to employ their own security forces rather than relying on the government for them.

Even if we kept laws prohibiting physical violence, the consumer is still regulated by things like copyright and IP protections, e.g., the anti-circumvention portion of the DMCA. Absent such regulations, a consumer whose software was rendered unusable or changed in a way they didn’t like could reverse engineer it, bypass DRM, host their own servers, etc.. Given that you didn’t speak against those regulations, I can only infer that you are not opposed to them.

Why do you think we don’t need regulations protecting consumers but that we do need regulations restricting them?

I have no problem with you believing on the market auto-balancing itself at the sole benefit of the users. But it is just you believing something, and you are lucky you can afford to live in a way that enforce that belief.

In my country there was an unregulated market for everything (in the 19th), and workers (among them children) were getting very low paiement with the excuse that they weren't working enough. So I don't believe in the auto regulated market in the benefits of users.

Let's take the tobacco industry (based on slavery and addiction) do you think it is an industry that thrives on the good health of people ? No, tobacco needs regulation to start lowering the number of people killing themself with cigs.

You can make up examples (and I can do myself a all bunch of things with 'ifs') but I prefer some facts and some studies as arguments.