Kill the laws that keep car dealers in business

In fact it does not. Governments exist solely to provide for people. Everything else you've heard about -- companies, organizations, interest groups, etc. -- are fictions that exist to help or hurt the interests of individual people.

What you have in car dealerships is a classic example of regulatory capture [0], where most people don't buy a car that often, so they're not particularly focused on dealer laws. But dealers have all the incentive in the world to lobby for restrictive rules. And, since dealers are by their nature distributed, and often have the proceeds to be "good community citizens" (e.g., sponsor a little league team), their views have even more weight.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Removing protections for dealerships isn't about increasing efficiency: automakers simply want a larger share of the profit. These corporations wouldn't be clamoring to kill dealerships if they were going to take the profit out of selling cars.

This is just going to result in capital flight from local areas, directly making them poorer. Unless you're a major shareholder in one of these automakers, by advocating for the deprecation of locally owned dealerships, you're advocating for making yourself poorer.

I'm describing a dealership. Most dealerships make very little money from car sales. They make their money from servicing vehicles that were purchased there. When you have a brand new car with a warranty, you will take it to the dealer so that you don't have to pay for the repair and they bill it back to the manufacturer. And after the warranty ends, you are now in the habit of going to the same place and continue going there, paying out of pocket.

And most dealerships strive to make the service part of the equation very pleasant to keep you coming back. You will get a work area, internet, coffee, snacks, TV, etc. while you wait. Or if you want a loaner, they'll make it happen too. Some even have shuttles that will drive you to the local mall.

Mind you, all of this would still be in place with a factory store, minus the hellish experience of buying a new vehicle.

It isn't my opinion.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-b...

http://www.americanbar.org/publications/franchise_lawyer/201...

What bugs the hell out of me is that on HN - rather like on reddit - there are often comments that make lipservice to an abstract concept of quasi-erudite fairness, saying "well if we don't have all the facts, how can we judge!?" well, two responses:

1. You are literally already on the internet. Use google for like, 30 seconds. 2. Oftentimes, those facts are actually in the underlying link.

In this case, it is self evidently true that the laws that were passed to prop up car dealerships came about in an era without mass marketing, but, very importantly, and self-acknowledgledly, these laws existed to prevent the manufacturer from undercutting prices offered by dealers - under the theory that dealers were of critical importance to customers for servicing and selling cars. Which is a combination of circular and dumb. And even if it was once true, because people could not comparison shop without the internet, it is now no longer true, because people can comparison shop with the internet and can visit manufacturers directly for servicing.

These laws are literally anti-competitive monopolies that, if they never existed, would not need to be invented now to protect consumers. Instead they operate as enforceable licenses, dividing the country up into fiefdoms, in which each little fiefdom the local car dealer is the ensconced baron, operating with a monopoly on all original cars sales from that manufacturer in that territory - and if another dealer tries to sell new cars from that manufacturer in that territory, they can be stopped by the state and sued out of existence.

That, dotcomrade, is a load of bullshit. And easily discoverable with a 30-90 second google search.

As posted in another thread:

> These laws that were passed to prop up car dealerships and came about in an era without mass marketing, but, very importantly, and self-acknowledgledly, these laws existed to prevent the manufacturer from undercutting prices offered by dealers - under the theory that dealers were of critical importance to customers for servicing and selling cars. Which is a combination of circular and dumb. And even if it was once true, because people could not comparison shop without the internet, it is now no longer true, because people can comparison shop with the internet and can visit manufacturers directly for servicing. These laws are literally anti-competitive monopolies that, if they never existed, would not need to be invented now to protect consumers. Instead they operate as enforceable licenses, dividing the country up into fiefdoms, in which each little fiefdom the local car dealer is the ensconced baron, operating with a monopoly on all original cars sales from that manufacturer in that territory - and if another dealer tries to sell new cars from that manufacturer in that territory, they can be stopped by the state and sued out of existence.

In other words, it was once thought that car dealerships offered critically important services to consumers - and even if that were once the case - and I deny that it was ever the case, it was just an excuse to pass these laws - it is no longer the case, because of carfax, bluebook, rigorously licensed repair shops, and car manufacturers that have figured out how to create and operate manufacturer owned dealerships.

This is the vestige of a bygone - and I argue, wholly credulous - era. It is a straight-up tax on the consumer, and it benefits no one but the car dealerships to make it literally illegal for two people to be selling new cars from the same manufacturer within the same territory. That is what those laws do - let that sink in, because that is fucking ri-goddamn-diculous. Car dealerships, and their territories, literally become heritable assets like a barony. It's insane.

And no, my sarcasm aside, the point about being silent in areas of ignorance was made out of frustration that because the person I was replying to was personally ignorant it meant that there was a bona fide debate in this area. There isn't. And it is pretty easy to do the research. I find all to common, however, it being a very fashionable and vogue statement for someone to make to prove how intellectual and cultured they are that, if they aren't familiar with an area of discussion, then surely there must be a legitimate debate to be had. Well, no. That is sometimes true, and very often not. This is one of those cases.

You will find two sides in this debate: car dealers and the people paid by car dealers; literally everyone else.