craigslist, Comcast, and Capitalism
I’m moving—which means I’m doing a bit more buying and selling than usual. Some of this involves selling large objects on craigslist. Like most craigslist transactions, it’s pretty straightforward. Something is listed at a price. Maybe some negotiation occurs. Sale commences or doesn’t. Everybody is happy and nobody is cheated.1
I’m also doing things like talking to ISPs and moving companies. The larger the company, the more convoluted their pricing structure. Comcast will offer a cable subscription for a six month introductory rate. Except after that time, it jumps to some other rate that you need to read a lot of fine print to learn. And then you have to either lease a modem from them or buy it—which is free after a rebate that comes in the form of a prepaid debit card that needs to be used in a specific manner and contains other as-yet-unknown restrictions. And, of course, there are doubtlessly additional fees tacked onto the bill for things that I’m sure I could learn about if I read pages and pages of boilerplate that nobody has actually shown me.2
If all of capitalism functioned like craigslist, we wouldn’t need something like a consumer financial protection bureau. If corporations are intent on obfuscating the cost of their products, we should expect consumers to be confused. We expect the “willing transaction” element of capitalism to break down. We need regulators to keep the playing field level.
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Excluding the obvious scams. So long as nobody actually sends money via Western Union to the guy who claims he’s on vacation but has a pickup agent two hundred miles away who is totally going to come by and pick up that toaster, everybody is happy and nobody is cheated. ↩
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Somebody will respond to this post with something to the effect of, “Stop whining just because you’re a sucker. It’s you responsibility to read all of these contracts and manage your finances and when I was your age I pulled myself up by my bootstraps because kids these days are all a bunch of lazy whiners.” In my case, working out the math or reading and understanding the fine print isn’t a problem. (Consumer attorney. Math major.) I come out okay. That said, understanding the basic costs of ↩
