New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions

The Supreme Court just heard arguments in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross [1], which is challenging California's law that pork sold in California must follow certain animal welfare / health & safety standards. A big debate is over whether it was genuinely a health & safety standard versus a purely 'moralistic' law that is seeking to de-facto regulate other states.

The issue is called the "Dormant Commerce Clause" [2], which is the idea that one state can't place "undue burdens" on interstate commerce. California can't just ban all imports from Texas, or vice versa. But courts have generally upheld health and safety laws, like California's car emissions laws or Hawaii's very strict agricultural products import restrictions --- but only if it is narrowly-tailored and there is a compelling state interest. Hawaii has a very compelling state interest in keeping its unique biodiversity, while California has a compelling state interest in keeping the valley of asphalt known as Los Angeles free of smog. There isn't really a good bright line test or definition in existing precedent of what "compelling state interest" means when it must be balanced against "balkanization" [3] by these kinds of laws, so many are hoping SCOTUS uses this case to make a clear definition.

But it is likely that this kind of law would be seen more as a morality regulation than health and safety. California argued that it was not an attempt to legislate moral issues in other states, but more of a health and safety regulation:

> Mongan [California state solicitor] pushed back on some of the hypotheticals about state laws that would condition the sale of products on a company’s general health care or labor practices. He told Barrett that Proposition 12 is “focused on the production of goods that are coming into” California, rather than on company-wide policies. “I think we would all recognize,” Mongan said, that it would be problematic if states can condition the sales of those products on restrictions of wholly unrelated out-of-state purchasers.” [3]

[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/national-pork-pr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause

[3] https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/10/california-law-on-sale-of...

But FDR, with its New Deal, is still the prefered US President, and by a large margin :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_preside...

> On the other hand, I think it's fair to offer autopilot/"full self driving" on a subscription, or at least the upgrades as a subscription.

Agree with your overall point. However, this probably isn’t feasible considering most companies will follow Tesla’s FSD upgrade model.

Autopilot / FSD upgrades are often more safety than feature related. Allowing people to opt out of upgrades but keep their older FSD just means a bunch of vehicles on the road with depreciated safety features.

This is polling data. You have to read the question. In this CNBC poll[1], the question was "which party do you want to control Congress?" and the Republicans came out ahead.

In this[2] Harvard poll, the question was "would you be more likely to vote for a Republican or a Democrat in the midterm" and it was a 50/50 tie.

Generally, I think OP's conclusion is correct. There is a tendency in this bubble to assume that the GOP is dead and unsupported, but that is not the case.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/20/gop-holds-big-leads-on-key-e...

[2] https://harvardharrispoll.com/key-results-october-3/

This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want.

It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact safety, and if Tesla's pricing is any indication of overall market, FSD will cost a pretty penny.

If full self-driving was offered at 10k up front for the life of the car, or $80/mo, I would imagine many buyers of lower-end vehicles would prefer a subscription.