The Latin iteration of “buyer beware” is – caveat emptor
“The axiom or principle in commerce that the buyer alone is responsible for assessing the quality of a purchase before buying.”
The Joe Biden Administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) – is under the hyper-busybody leadership of pro-crony, anti-capitalist Lina Khan.
Who apparently doesn’t speak Latin. Or understand the Constitution. Or the limited, republican form of government it institutes.
A limited, republican form of the FTC? Would work to protect buyers from forces beyond their control.
To wit: Preventing economy-dominating massive companies – from acquiring and/or merging to form even more massive economy-dominating massive companies.
Thereby shredding the nation’s marketplaces. And with them the nation’s small businesses – and the jobs and consumer choices they provide.
List of Mergers and Acquisitions by Apple
List of Mergers and Acquisitions by (Google) Alphabet
List of Mergers and Acquisitions by Amazon
List of Mergers and Acquisitions by (Facebook) Meta Platforms
Apple Buys a Company Every Three to Four Weeks
List of Google’s 259 Acquisitions (in 295 Months of Existence)
The Acquisitions That Made Amazon the Giant It Is Today
Everything Facebook Owns: Mergers and Acquisitions from the Past 15 Years:
“A majority of these Facebook acquisitions were undisclosed to the public, so the true number is likely to be even higher.
I bet that applies to way more than just Facebook-Meta.
I would like to see the FTC being more than a mite more proactive in this regard.
What the FTC shouldn’t be doing? Is micro-managing every tiny transaction in which Americans engage as they go about their lives. Caveat emptor, Ladies and Gentlemen.
FTC Action Leads to Lifetime Industry Ban for Operators of ‘Extended Vehicle Warranty’ Scam
FTC Wants to Make Cancelling Subscriptions Easier
FTC Launches Inquiry into Small Business Credit Reports
This FTC is getting WAY too micro-specific.
The FTC is also looking to ever-further insert itself in the private negotiations between every employer and every employee.
FTC Proposes Rule to Ban Noncompete Clauses
Get a load of the FTC’s press release list. It is an endless avalanche of governmental assault on nigh every sector of the economy.
Which freezes in amber every sector of the economy. Nigh everyone afraid to move – for fear of FTC assault for having the audacity to engage in business.
If you want to do business with someone? The impetus is on you to inform yourself about that someone – including their business practices.
If they scam you? There are laws in nigh every state, county and municipality to address it. The federal government shouldn’t get anywhere near it.
But if that someone is straightforward in their terms and practices? And you engage their services? No government – most especially the federal – should get anywhere near it.
To wit:
Payday Lenders Banned by Federal Trade Commission
FTC Acts to Ban Payday Lender From Industry
FTC Targets Online ‘Quick Cash’ Lenders
FTC Targets Payday Lender Over Wage Garnishing
This is the FTC targeting an industry – for being an industry. For doing nothing actually wrong.
This is the FTC inserting itself into the single, individual transactions of many tens of millions of Americans. Micro-management – in its tiniest sense.
Oh: The Big Banks do everything for which the tiny payday lenders are being targeted. Are the Big Banks being targeted? Heavens no. Because Big Banks buy cronyism. Tiny payday lenders can’t afford it.
Credit Cards v Payday Loans: Big Banks Dominate DC – Little Guys Get Dominated
Payday Lenders: More and More, DC’s Leftists Are Siding with Big Business
DC Is Ensuring Only Billionaires Can Get a Loan – In the Name of ‘Helping the Little Guy’
The FTC’s hyper-expansion – is emblematic of what happens when government engages in hyper-expansionism.
It grinds Small Businesses into inertia – and eventual bankruptcy. Because nigh every time they do business – they are targeted by government.
Big Businesses bribe government – and thereby purchase permission to do business. Which their ever-dwindling number of Small Business competitors can not afford.
Big Businesses then use the money garnered from their government-assisted economy domination – to buy up more and more of their Small Business competitors. Thereby further expanding their economy domination.
Big Businesses then use the money garnered from their government-assisted economy domination – to further bribe government to purchase permission to do business. Which their ever-dwindling number of Small Business competitors can not afford.
Lather, rinse, repeat….