Here’s an example where regulation might actually provide better services to the market:
Brussels wants uniform mobile phone chargers:
Bruxelles - European Commisioner Günter Verheugen (industry) wants that mobile phone manufacturers come up with standard connectors for recharging and microphones.
He hopes that the industry will voluntarily come to standardization. Should that not happen, he will attempt to introduce regulations. Verheugen’s spokesperson has confirmed this in saturday’s Telegraaf (dutch newspaper, red.).
The commissioner wants to end current practices, where mobile phone manufacturers such as Nokia and Sony continue to introduce new models of adapters to the marketplace. This means the consumer will have to replace their current chargers.
Environment
VVD (dutch political party, red.) member of the european parliament Toine Manders has pushed towards standardization of the plugs as well.
According to him it’s also of environmental benefit if old chargers do not end up in wastebins.
In a reply Manders states he is happy with Verheugen’s announcement. “This proves that you can achieve real results as a European Commisioner”
Seems like a valid point. For some reason mobile phone makers each have different chargers and USB adapters, so if you want to use another phone, you need to buy the whole suite of accessories for it - new car charger, new headset, new USB cable, new normal charger, etc. There seems to be no rational reason behind this - nothing that helps the client anyway. So what do you guys think?
One counter-argument I could think of is that this stiffles competition in the battery industry. Having the same adapters means they must use roughly the same parameters in battery design.
artificially making decisions for consumers. if people wanted universal chargers they would buy from companies that used USB and shun companies that used proprietary chargers. I guarantee that the money spent lobbying for, passing, and enforcing this is greater than any percieved benefit. and all paid for with stolen tax dollars.
the market lets you vote with your wallet. this forces the market to cater to what you want. the regulator seeks to take that power away from you and have the market cater to what the regulator thinks is good.
fundamentally if you need a cerain power adapter design, to be able to enter the market for your phone, then isnt this effectively outlawing the introduction of improvement of technology?. i.e. the mark2 product might not conform to the fixed mainstream standard1?
This is nonsense. This kind of law demonstrates the average low IQ of the fools in charge of the EU. For starters, haven’t they heard about something called ‘innovation’? Suppose someone comes up with something better than the ‘standard’ charger? I imagine that innovation happens in various laboratories or inventors basements all the time. Just imagine if 5 years down the road, that new cell phones would be able to take advantage of various new technologies, but only with a new kind of charger?
What would happen is that cell phone manufacturers would have to go through additional layers of bureaucracy to get anything done.
Second, such a dumb law would likely drive up the price of cell phone chargers, as they all have to have some spook approve of it, having to use standard parts, waiting for approval processes, etc. Just imagine if there was a shortage of them, whether via market or governmental means. The price would REALLY go through the roof afterwards.
p.s.: this is a poor example of how regulations would make things better
According to him it’s also of environmental benefit if old chargers do not end up in wastebins.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. And while we’re at it, I find it outrageous that PC technology develops so fast that it may be beneficial to buy a new computer system every two years. I mean, seriously? What about the environment?
My proposal: standardize processor and chip technology to one model. Because we want innovation, establish an EU Commission for Electronic Development and Distribution (EUCEDD) which reviews recent R&D results of computer companies. If an innovation is in compliance with statutory environmental standards and consumer protection regulation and has no potential of increasing GHG emissions, it’s up for a vote within the commission. That’s fair and democratic I think.
The same principle applies to cell phone chargers. Personally, I’d like to see Günther Verheugen mind his own darn business so I can decide which charger I want to buy. Thanks in advance, Mr. Verheugen.
That’s just an ipse dixit and you know it. Do you really think that Gunther guy does it just to make libertarians angry? Maybe the guy actually thinks he’s doing something good.
Not really. Just like in the case of evolution, sometimes bad effects are accepted because the good effects outweigh the bad ones.
Yes, there is a valid point about inovation, i mentioned it in the first post.
I’m sure he thinks he is doing good, but I’m also sure he is not doing good.
There are costs and benefits to creating an industry standard. The industry has decided that its not the best decision to pursue a standard. This regulation is about forcing individuals to act in a way that will make them worse off, just like every other regulation.
Beneficial for whom? ,not for the companies,obviously, because, otherwise they would’ve already done it.Standardization implies costs for companies, and companies will transfer this costs to the consumers.
Crippling innovation is not good for the environment either because it means that its gonna be harder to come up with more efficient, less energy consuming, chargers.
The consumers who posted comments in the reddit link I gave in the first link seemed excited about this.
The costs will be covered by the fact that they won’t need to buy new adapters with each new phone. They already said they’re happy about this because all their other equipments use standardised ports for charging and connectivity.
Why don’t we standardize video game consoles then? I think it’s a shame that I can’t play Super Mario 64 on my PlayStation. These greedy video game companies want to ripp me off by making me buy new consoles every other year!
Maybe there are reasons why you have company-designed adapters? Maybe some other regulation is hindering development of common adapters in the cell phone business? Really, all that’s being done here is presuming knowledge. Bureaucrats presuming to know better than producers and customers which adapters to build. If customers are so happy with this, why don’t they tell cell phone producers?
Of course, on first glance, such a proposal may look good. But which consequences does it entail? Since we don’t have any cell phone experts around here as far as I know, we can’t really tell. So we should have no presumptions of knowledge.
There are little technical reasons why we couldn’t use a another cable headset or charger adaptor. The fact that the rest of the electronic industry uses standardised headsets is proof of this. No need for cellphone experts.
What if each cellphone maker used their own BlueTooth standard? So then you’d have to buy only their bluetooth headsets.
Because it doesn’t “work” that way.
People can only ‘tell’ the phone producers using the market, but any cellphone producer that would make a standardised adapter would find that it loses profit on the proprietary adapters.
when you first posted it, i picked up an ambigioius vibe, you were curious what we would say of the proposals. in terms of your response you seem to come out in favour of the proposed legislation. do i take it that the purpose of your thread was to announce that you are in some respects a socialist?
Then the question remains, if cell phone companies are just greedy, why do they limit themselves to building different recharging adapters? If most other electronic gadgets have common adapters because it is cost-effective, why would cell phone companies possibly not do this?
As a customer, of course, that sounds great to me. Not having to buy a new recharger every time I buy a new phone. Of course, I have no idea what other kinds of trouble I might invoke with this regulation, so I really don’t have any cares. But since Günter Verheugen has, to my information, never been involved with any kind of cell phone business on a professional level, I doubt that he knows much better.
Well … how come, then, that standardization is common practice in other industries?