Quote:
Originally Posted by softblueyz
America is flooded with counterfeits. But when it comes to our military and personal safety there needs to be some control/testing/inspecting. I don't give a crap about a handbag or a watch. I do care about products that are toxic and defective and dangerous to our health (as well as animals) and to our military.
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There is lot of unintended consequences for that, you remember the issue with the lead in the toys? That was Mattel toys made in China. So now we have regulations about testing toys for lead, so far so good right? The issue is you have a lot of very small manufacturers of hand made toys that these rules now apply too. These testing procedures might cost hundreds of dollars so if you're only going to test 5 toys the tests cost far more than what the toy is worth. Mattel doesn't have this trouble because they might be testing lots of thousands of toys and the cost is very minimal per toy. They are actually benefiting from this becsue smaller manufacturers have higher costs per toy.
I'll give you another example, in PA a heating boiler does not need a ASME stamp for a residential installation. Coal boiler manufacturers are a niche industry and this is expensive for them if they want to serve anyone where the stamp is required. You can literally have two identical boilers side by side where one cost $9K and the other cost $7K without the stamp.
Regulations are important but you have to be careful to balance that, the auto industry would like nothing more that to see air bag replacements have to be factory certified.
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