(Replying to PARENT post)
This is kind of a bullshit response, honestly. This is a very, very well plumbed, documented and reported on issue. The corollary to your statement about fences is:
"About which you do not know, be silent."
Car dealership laws may have served a purpose, but their primary purpose these days is to enrich car dealership owners:
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-b...
http://www.americanbar.org/publications/franchise_lawyer/201...
Their passing will be a net gain for the consumer.
(Replying to PARENT post)
Essentially, California pioneered the idea of protecting existing franchises from being cannibalized by the manufacturer that they were dependent on. But other states have taken the idea to an extreme.
[1] http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/02/why-you-cant-buy-new...
(Replying to PARENT post)
Conservatism is fine as mental shortcuts go, but we shouldn't take every mental shortcut available. We don't actually have to worry about shit that supposedly happened a hundred years ago, if we take the time to look at what's going on now. Right now, there are customers who want to buy, and producers who want to sell. Relaxing dealer requirements would allow those beneficial transactions to occur.
If we're so concerned that unspecified bad shit will happen because who knows it might happen, then simply put a time limit on the relaxed requirements. That is, the law could say that dealer requirements will come back in force in five years, unless subsequent legislation extends the period. In five years, legislators and lobbyists and maybe even the public can conclude "yes the world is exactly the same now as it was in 1920 so we need exactly the same laws", or not.
(Replying to PARENT post)
> The quotation you’re looking for is from Chesterton’s 1929 book, The Thing, in the chapter entitled, “The Drift from Domesticity”:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.
(Replying to PARENT post)
So, now Tesla wants to try selling new cars a new way. By allowing actual information (over the internet) to be freely available about every facet of their car. You like it, you try it in a nearby demo center, you buy it! Like so many other things we buy (like houses)
I'm pretty sure new cars don't need any protected status as a sales issue. In fact, most of us are pretty sure we're not getting responsibly informed by the car salesman in person. Just the opposite.
Lets say it out loud - car dealers think (know) they can make more sales by manipulating us in person. They fear a world where folks make independent decisions. So they make up any excuse to put off that future.
(Replying to PARENT post)
This is the most frustrating thing about uncommented sleep() calls sprinkled through a codebase.
(Replying to PARENT post)
I'm a big believer in Chesterton's Fence too, but what do you do about fences put up by someone who had no right to put it there? If someone erected a wall through the middle of your kitchen, would you have the same reticence to tear it down? The way I see it, the state has no right to enforce a ban like this, and we would be justified in ignoring and circumventing it.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
The argument for this stuff is mostly "OMG Tesla is awesome!". But folks forget/ignore that having to deal with A fortune 50 company as a consumer isn't fun either (recall: AT&T in the old days). Your local car dealer may have annoying commercials, but the folks who allowed a defective $0.50 ignition switch to kill people didn't work for a Chevy dealer... They were GM engineers.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
Under this analogy, I think it's quite reasonable to question why we have so many of these very dangerous laws just lying around waiting to ruin someone's life. Absent very compelling and readily apparent reasons for keeping them in place, the default course of action should be to disable and remove them as quickly as is safe to do.
"A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson on the dubiousness of pre-supposing that perfect and timeless wisdom guided anyone who's ever deigned to enact a law.
(Replying to PARENT post)
There are two fundamental issues here. 1) Why is commercial driving complex 2) Do we need a rent-seeking monopoly industry to solve the issues for us?
The answer for #2 is a resounding no.
(Replying to PARENT post)
(Replying to PARENT post)
Why would you assume that such a fence was erected for a good reason and not out of malice or for personal gains?
(Replying to PARENT post)
You can't write a balanced article on car dealerships without researching why these laws were enacted in the first place. So many people here just assume "oh, it's because of greed" - but perhaps you should spend a short time first of all investigating why these laws were created and the problems they were trying to solve.
Likewise, you can't write a convincing article about removing these laws if you don't speak of the reasons why the laws were created. You need to show why these reasons are no longer good.