Seems insane that the funeral rule exists, but then click to cancel doesn’t. It’s legally required a funeral home gives me pricing over the phone and support many specific requirements, but my ISP requires a long phone call to end a subscription.
Waste of resources from my perspective - is this really a good use of government resources? I’m not even on that side of the fence.
Transparent pricing on other things would also be good. But the funeral rule exists because you are not usually an emotional wreck when dealing with your ISP.
There is a saying that regulations are written in blood. Regulations get written when somebody has been harmed. It takes a long time, because they have to balance a lot of different perspectives. They tend to keep the focus narrow.
Funeral homes had a particular deceptive practice. It harmed enough people that the FTC got involved.
Deceptive subscription practices are also harming people, and the regulation is being developed. But it's no surprise that the FTC didn't just invent it on its own, because that's not how they work.
So we get one and not the other because regulations are developed piecemeal. It would be great if regulators had more freedom to rewrite regulations to remove "code smells", but that's not how it works.
It's why regulators get antsy when people complain about "regulation" as a general ill. The regulations aren't always well designed, and even when they are, things change. But people get the idea that every inconvenience is some kind of conspiracy against them, without even trying to consider why the regulation came about and who still might be harmed by removing it.
Waste of resources from my perspective - is this really a good use of government resources? I’m not even on that side of the fence.
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