Looking at Amazon, Aliexpress, even Walmart, there’s a lot of products that aren’t what they claim, such as lying about the capacity of batteries. Customers have to figure these things out for themselves and ‘metagame’ the system.
I don’t think this should be allowed, but what are your thoughts?
Should it fall upon me?
Would reporting fake products even have an effect? It doesn’t seem like an effective system right now, considering all the fake products that get to be sold.
Half the people in this country won’t pay taxes to feed starving children, how much money do you think goes towards protecting consumers from predatory counterfeiters?
Not enough! Clearly
Maybe.
One option is a proactively regulated market where only companies pre-approved by the government can sell anything, and every product must be checked and approved before it’s offered for sale. Such a market won’t have many fake products, but it also won’t have much competition or innovation. It’s also very likely to attract corruption, where the government conditions approvals on unrelated behavior that the current leadership prefers or requires bribes to do business. We’re seeing the former in the USA with the Trump administration for certain types of businesses, and it isn’t pretty.
The current situation for most product categories is a reactively regulated market. Deceptive practices are illegal, but enforcement depends on someone noticing and reporting them. More deceptive products make it to consumers, but more groundbreaking products do as well. It’s hard for government officials to blackmail most businesses.