I’m okay with regulation for food, drugs and money. But, in all other areas, best for consumers to accept that free market / capitalism is eventually about “my way or highway” and “take it or leave it” and learn to practice the good old Caveat Emptor! principle. While a sucker will get suckered once, most of them will develop the skills required to never ever get suckered again in the future. And that’s a great skill to learn. I don’t like regulation to create a false sense of comfort, especially when they’re made by incompetent jokers who have little or no expertise or experience in the matter. A guy who never used digital payments mandated 2FA for online payments. The nation paid the price for years until re/demonetization, UPI, PayTM, et al created the tipping point for adoption of digital payments. For areas other than food, drugs and money, I’m for reactive regulation i.e. regulation around customer service SLAs, breach of contract etc. but not for product.
I see a lot of businesses opening and shutting within a year or less. I keep thinking they just need to sucker somebody once. High population of the country ensures they’re viable even if they have zero repeat sales. I think their business model uses the “hermit” principle! I’m going to call this “Hermit Marketing”. I believe the paradigm I’ve proposed – product and service level regulation for food, drugs and money, and only service level regulation for other industries – will provide a good middleground. I also realized that there are an increasing number of “quasi regulators” in the digital marketplace world we’re now inhabiting. I have a problem with a Cab Driver, I can complain to Uber, I don’t need to go to local govt. I have a problem with an Amazon Seller, I can complain to Amazon, I don’t need to go to consumer court. So on and so forth.