United States | News & Politics

For decades now, airlines, hotels, cable companies, banks and a long list of other companies have bilked U.S. consumers out of billions of dollars annually via bullshit fees that unfairly jack up the advertised price of service. More interesting perhaps is the fact that it it took until 2023 for a U.S. federal regulator to even ponder the idea that this was perhaps bad and could or should be stopped.

Last year, the FTC announced it would be cracking down on such fees. That included a 126 page proposal aimed at the auto industry’s use of “administrative fees,” document fees, and other markups used to fatten up the price consumers pay for new or used cars.

Not surprisingly the auto industry didn’t much like that, and has been fighting the effort in court. While the rules were supposed to go into effect on July 30, the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) and Texas Automobile Dealers Association filed a challenge with the notoriously wacky (and corporate friendly) Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has suspended the FTC’s plan upon review. As with most such challenges, the automakers are trying to claim the FTC doesn’t have the authority to implement such rules, despite the agency’s authority to police “unfair and deceptive” behavior being very clear under the FTC Act.

Here’s the thing: the FTC and FCC aren’t doing anything crazy here. They’re doing the absolute bare minimum when it comes to policing obnoxious, misleading fees, often used to help companies falsely advertise a lower price that doesn’t actually exist. And even here you can see how such efforts face an unrelenting legal and lobbying assault by companies with near-unlimited legal and lobbying budgets.

Now remember that the corrupt Supreme Court is on the precipice of dismantling Chevron, a cornerstone of regulatory law as we know it, effectively undermining most existing independent regulatory authority. Once Chevron is dead, every last regulatory decision corporations don’t like will be challenged in court, and it will be left to a (potentially corrupt) judge to determine what regulators can or can’t do.

Picture this fight over fees. Now apply it to pretty much any regulatory effort to do anything. Then apply the assumption that corporations will win most of the time thanks to corrupt, unelected judges (often with lifetime appointments), and you’ll begin to see the full picture.