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by shadowgovt 2308 days ago
Ideally, this sort of market abuse would be translated into mistrust by the consumer.

But I think a case can be made that it already is. Most consumers understand buyer-beware on online merchant websites (especially since eBay was rampant with this issue at its inception and has gotten better over the years). Perhaps it is the responsibility of the consumer to self-educate, not the responsibility of the market broker to exhaustively police the vendors that use it? To spin the story around a bit: Amazon, eBay, et. al. don't background-check buyers to make sure they're not buying a product to build a bomb or something with it. Why are they obligated to background-check the other half of the transaction?
1 comments
jonathanstrange 2308 days ago
Without easy access to the relevant information? I mean how would the average customer know from the Amazon page or from even using the product that there is 751 times more lead than allowed in it?

If the distributor was required to test the product and put a large red banner "might induce lead poisoning" on the product page, then of course the consumer could choose. Alas, that's not the case.

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shadowgovt 2308 days ago
Why should that responsibility rest on the distributor's shoulders and not the original manufacturers?

If people were deeply concerned about lead, shouldn't we expect that products that can offer such a guarantee have a market advantage? Amazon et. al. make product attribute comparison pretty straightforward.

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