It's curious that the market (almost?) always decides what is bad for the consumer and profitable for the companies. As a person who is a person not a company, I would rather we don't let the market decide so much about our lives.
Examples: Smart (spying ad-showing) TVs, non-compete agreements, water heater rentals, not-really-unlimited "unlimited data" cell plans, surveillance economy, only-rentable-not-buyable software and films and TV shows and audiobooks, etc.
Because most of the free market theory that most normal people believe is based on the assumption of perfect competition[1]. However, that almost never actually occurs in the real world and even ends up being impossible in most cases.
For example, there is always going to be a huge barrier to entry for automakers. They need to invest an enormous amount of time and money in design, factories, raw materials, labor, etc before they can deliver an actual car. This barrier protects automakers from feeling the full repercussions of their anti-consumer practices because it is extremely difficult for a new pro-consumer competitor to enter the market.
When we remove that assumption of perfect competition, the whole free market theory starts to fall apart. A well functioning free market requires power to be balanced between all parties, otherwise whoever has the most power can end up corrupting it and using their power advantage to grab even more money and/or power.
What are our alternatives? I’ve said in posts before that legislating against each anti-consumer product or feature is a fool’s errand. The legislature cannot keep up the rate at which corporate entities produce consumer-unfriendly products. I also don’t trust it to represent citizens rather than corporate donors, at least here in the US.
Pitchforks? Seriously though, your comment is way too defeatist. Legislature has worked for centuries for this problem. Imperfectly, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
But if all else fails, giant corporations are eventually going to get the good ol' pitchforks up their butt.
This isn’t a case where you have to wait until after the damage is done though. Making a blanket regulation of “you can’t sell a physical good that has its capabilities artificially limited to create price brackets”, or something similar, would work in advance of people trying to sell such products in the US market.
I already decided I will not buy cars with touch screens or cars that limit my usage (for ex. Tesla limiting how you can use its battery). I am guessing I will keep driving my 12 years old ICE car for another 5-6 years. It seems to work: car makers are starting to go back to buttons instead of touch screens [0]. Maybe the same will happen with these features (charging $/month for extra engine power / remote car startup / heated seats)?
> It's curious that the market (almost?) always decides what is bad for the consumer and profitable for the companies.
In some cases people choose things that are bad for them, for all kinds of reasons. Someone will always sell you a subscription to your own car, if you tell them you want one. The market is the mechanism, the responsibility lies with the consumer. I know that it feels like there's a conspiracy, but it's almost always just people getting what they say they'll pay for.
The best solution is for people to exercise good judgment. The nuclear option is to regulate what people can and cannot buy and sell. It's not to have that nuclear option on the table, and it is necessary sometimes, but it does not feel like this particular case is one when people cannot reasonably be expected to decide for themselves what they want, or have the power to exercise that decision. Nobody HAS to buy a Mercedes.
I agree with this comment. I have a smart TV that does not show me ads. I could have bought maybe a better one that shoots Ads every now and then, but finally, luckily there is still choice. Same either cars. There are so many nice brands out there that it's now difficult to choose from - no offense to Mercedes, but there is so much good competition for that price...!
Yeah, the market doesn't decide when there are only a few major players.
The "market" didn't decide to exclude headphone jacks and SD cards on mobile phones. Apple went that direction and other companies followed suit. Customers had no real choice in those matters.
No, they didn't vote for headphone jacks to be removed, they were forced to decide whether it was a dealbreaker for them. This kind of incremental erosion of the user experience is a very different thing than consumers making a binary choice about what they would prefer. They 'get away' with it, then it becomes the new normal, and the previous experience becomes niche and expensive or comes with other compromises.
Are there any recent examples when a boycott worked? That did not work for dumb TV's and privacy-oriented business phones like Blackberry. Sometimes when market converges to the cheaper and more predatory choices, and that kills the market segment that was normal in the past.
>If you don't like it, just don't buy cars whose performance is artificially limited. Let the market decide the issue.
You are unfortunately one of the apologetic quote, "dickfucks", endquote the parent was referring too. When all players eventually do this, where will you got to buy?
There is no more free market left in the auto industry after a century of consolidations. We're at the mercy of a few giant automakers who own the entire market and make the rules in their flavor. The current greed-flation is another nail in the coffin of the "free market competition benefits the consumer" trope.
If we had left everything to the so called "free market" our food would have still contained lead, mercury and arsenic. That's why governments need to step in and regulate some things in flavor of the consumer because we can't expect the corporations to do it themselves through "free market" competition, as it's much easy and profitable for them to form rent-seeking cartels and work against us that compete for us.
It seems all lessons from the past have been forgotten.
I don't like a lot of the features in modern cars. That doesn't mean the world should be legislatively changed to suit my personal tastes. Because maybe I'm in the minority. But neither will I buy stuff I don't like; plenty of second-hand cars to go round.
Corporations do not make (significant) sums of money on a button vs screen choice, and there's important evidence about the safety and ergonomics that favors buttons.
Paying extortion to get more speed? That's just a cash cow.
I will spell it out for you, since you were so kind to spell it out for me: consumers' power is limited by the interests of corporations. When a corporation can fix what is viewed by the consumer as a mistake without significant financial downsides, they frequently will (if the consensus is strong enough that it really was a mistake). However, they will not fix anything that causes them financial hardship unless forced to by the legal system.
Arguing for the sake of arguing? If you read the article I linked you would have seen that touch screens were used by car manufacturers to lower their cost. Switching from touch screens to buttons causes them some financial hardship (their costs are going up). The article I linked directly refutes your argument.
1. evidence for the cost savings in a single vehicle build is hard to find. The article you linked to cites a cost of $50 for the screen, claiming this is significantly less than tactile controls, but this is contradicted by the actual cost of the typical tactile controls used in mass-market vehicles.
2. design costs with tactile controls maybe a little higher for the first stage of a new design, but its not as if car companies did not have (a) in-house talent for this (b) decades of experience. Contrast with the (amortized) cost of implementing "car OS's" on touchscreens before even getting to "what does the infotainment screen look like".
3. where the screens do potentially save money is in allowing rollouts of new features without requiring new hardware (which in fact would generally be impossible to rely on). Of course, as Tesla found out, this doesn't always go as planned, and the company can incur extra costs because users know the change can be rolled back.
4. as the article you linked to, and dozens of others, makes clear, there is a growing body of both scientific and anecdotal evidence that screens are terrible for safety while driving.
5. whether manufacturers are responding more to consumers' demands for buttons, or the evidence that they are exposing themselves to legal liability for their interface designs is hard to get a handle on at this point, since they notoriously do not speak openly and honestly about such things. Therefore, please do feel free to believe it is an example of corporations responding to consumer demands, while I'll continue to believe that it is corporations covering their collective asses for the design mistakes they've made (preferably before they get sued over a collision on par with the navy vessel one that led to their removal from US navy ships).
Then you can expect the carmaker to jerk you around indefinitely. This month, 300 HP costs $5. Next month it's $10. One month, your wipers won't go intermittent unless you pay an extra $3. Want ABS to function? Uh oh, your subscription lapsed. No brakes for you.
Sure, all those terms were written into the purchase contract, but with dozens of subscriptions, what sane owner wants to stay on top of all those options, activations, and deactivations?
Will the carmaker let you upgrade your software without buying new hardware? Don't bet on it. Not if there's a chance to suck more money out of your generous wallet.
Screw all that. While I much prefer to own cars with elan, I'll buy a Honda just to avoid being jerked around. And after a couple decades of owning BMWs, that's just what I did. No more hostage-taker carmakers for me.
In fact, that's why Jay Leno doesn't own a Ferrari: jackass sales tactics.
The problem is when the entire market becomes nothing but dog turds. Or, realistically, 98% dog turds and 4% premium-priced diamonds (note the overlap)
Seriously. It isn't like anyone needs a Mercedes. There whole brand is around flashing wealth around and crap like this is inline with that. Buy something else.
You are correct that nobody needs a luxury vehicle but those are the brands that the Fords and Chevys of the world will emulate in their mid to lower priced tiers.
