Clearing the air

I was over at a buddy's house the other day, shooting the breeze and having some drinks, when he mentioned that he was having some trouble with his 5 year old truck. He made the comment, "It's a good thing the government made it so car manufacturers have to warranty their exhaust systems for 10 years or 100,000 miles." [note: he's wrong about that, by the way. It's 2 years/24,000 miles or 8 years/80,000 miles for certain specified components.]

This blew me away.

"You really think that it's the government's job to force manufacturers to do that?" I asked him.

"Of course, " he told me (with a straight face!), "otherwise all the manufacturers would put out crappy exhausts made of regular steel instead of the stainless steel they use now, now that they have to cover them for 10 years."

That kind of thinking always confuses me. "Are you saying that you think no manufacturer would use better quality materials in order to differentiate themselves from the others?"

"No, they wouldn't."

"What about companies like Cadillac, Jaguar, Bentley? Don't you think they'd want to advertise that their cars' exhausts are made with better steel than GMC or Chevy?"

"Well..."

"Of course they would, man - don't be stupid [another note: we're good buddies, so I'm allowed to say that]. The market will always come around to meet any given consumer demand even without the government forcing their way into it - hell, especially if the government stays out of it. What you get with the government forcing manufacturers to warranty things they wouldn't normally cover is higher consumer prices. The government didn't say 'You must provide warranty service for this many years or miles, and you can't raise your prices either.' They also didn't say that manufacturers are required to make good quality product. If some car manufacturer decided it would be in his best interest to lower both production costs and materials costs enough to cover the difference in his warranty service costs, he's perfectly well allowed to do that. On the other hand, if it was left up to the market, and consumers were buying cars based on their warranties, manufacturers would compete on warranty coverage and maybe now we'd have cars warrantied for 12 or even 15 years."

He tried changing the subject. "Anyway, the point of it is that the government passed that law to protect the environment. They don't want all the nasty emissions in the air."

I chuckled. I like it when he lowers the fruit for me. "The government has no interest in anything but the appearance of caring for the environment. I just told you a minute ago that the warranty law doesn't force manufacturers to improve their products, only to raise prices or cut costs. If the government was really interested in saving the environment through arbitrary mandates, why didn't they just ban the internal combustion engine and force manufacturers to build only zero-emission electric cars?"

His jaw dropped. "They'd never get away with that! Everybody would have to buy new cars."

"It would sure cut down on those nasty emissions, though, wouldn't it?"

He just looked at me. He hates it when I play the absurd card to make a point.

"It's all about votes to them, is all I'm saying. They're not worried any environment but the one in their plush Congressional offices, and how they can hold onto it for as long as possible. Passing a law that seems to stick it to the 'big, greedy car manufacturers' gets them votes, even if the law really just comes back to bite consumers on the ass."

"I don't know about that..."

"Would you want to give it up? Think about it - nice, big office, with the great leather chair, the bar full of expensive booze in a drawer on the wall, the cute 19 year old intern..."

"...Yeah, I see your point."