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.
I’d be very careful about using the argument “Go the way of the Dodo.” Contemporary thought is that it was a bad thing that humans hunted the Dodo to death.
I’d use the analogy “Go the way of the dinosaurs,” it speaks to the fact that those who adapted, the avians, survived, without the baggage of debating the morality of hunting a species to death.