![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsNPR this morning had an article about how a fraudster with a phone bank has been filling up the yellow pages of cities where there is no licensing or regulation of locksmiths, creating dozens of "drop box" addresses with local phone numbers and overwhelming the services listings with his own contacts, and then dispatching unqualified "contractors" to fix locks on people who call those numbers. The contractors frequently do poor or no work, and bill as much as five times the fee charged by legitimate locksmiths.
The power of the market should be sufficient to notify people that hey, those numbers are fraudulent, and you should know that. Other locksmiths, after all, could raise their rates just a little to publicize which numbers are local, and which are outsourced to contractors. And the victims of the overpriced contractors? There's no law against charging what the market will bear. There's no law stating that a locksmith must deliver a minimum amount of service for the charge rendered. If they don't like the service, hey, they don't have to call that number again; there are plenty left in the phone book. If they don't know which numbers are "good," there's always Google, which we always returns the most legitimate retailers and service people first. There's no way to game the system. The fraudsters don't need to be regulated, and locksmiths don't need licensing; that would just be a drag on the whole system. The current one is much more preferable.
Libertarian paradise for the win!
The power of the market should be sufficient to notify people that hey, those numbers are fraudulent, and you should know that. Other locksmiths, after all, could raise their rates just a little to publicize which numbers are local, and which are outsourced to contractors. And the victims of the overpriced contractors? There's no law against charging what the market will bear. There's no law stating that a locksmith must deliver a minimum amount of service for the charge rendered. If they don't like the service, hey, they don't have to call that number again; there are plenty left in the phone book. If they don't know which numbers are "good," there's always Google, which we always returns the most legitimate retailers and service people first. There's no way to game the system. The fraudsters don't need to be regulated, and locksmiths don't need licensing; that would just be a drag on the whole system. The current one is much more preferable.
Libertarian paradise for the win!
