Your argument is in alignment with

    * "There's a sucker born every minute" and
    * "caveat emptor" and
    * "If I can trick you into giving me your money, that's your fault" 

Regulation helps discourage that.

In this case, "REG-U-LATION" actually "caused" the issue. Up-to-date LIDAR of every home in America was deemed to be invasive breach of privacy so was regulated out. This product didn't successfully account for future non-technical issues.

I "foolishly" tried to reward a previously known-good vendor by buying a product from the company that had sold me a vacuum that worked for ten years... which brings up the next truism:

    * "Past performance is not an indicator of future success"

Customers would buy contaminated food if it was cheaper, too. There's value in having a floor on quality and design for products to avoid races to the bottom?

How's changing the behavior of every person on Earth to create the market pressures you wanna see working out for you?

Over here in the EEA, governments using regulations to create the market pressures I want to see has a fair amount of success, FWIW

Sorry, it's not. Latest example, Canon's phone app for its cameras, for GPS tagging, remote shutter, transfer to phone, didn't require any Internet access, but now they changed it to require an online login for no reason. Oh and that login only works with chrome installed.

So miss me with this caveat emptor libertarian fantasy land ("openly lies about its specs" is the buyer's fault?!)

> They buy stuff that openly lies about its specs

That one is very specifically failure or regulators and absolutely should subject to regulation. We can bicker about whether repairability should be regulated ... but false claims by the manufacturers absolutely should.

It is absurd to blame the user for this one.