toomsie wrote:Ebay is a fine example of trade that doesn't need government interference. The trader has an incentive to provide a good service or get bad feedback. Almost all disputes get handled Ebay. If a trader is selling counterfeit or broken goods and does not pay restitution then there Ebay account is closed. No police, no courts, lawyers. Ebay has an incentive to protect customers interest. If it does not then customers will take their custom elsewhere. Amazon is generally more trusted then Ebay but Ebay is cheaper. Your free to choose what you want.
LMAO!
So you've replaced government regulation with big corp regulation (and make no mistake eBay and Amazon are big corporations), how exactly is that better? You don't really have any rights (other than those provided by the government anyway).
There's a *lot* of counterfeit stuff on both eBay and Amazon. Some of it is very good - at least to look at. And most folk buy it and assume they've got the real deal. A few spot the issue and in all fairness the seller often refunds the money promptly - but the reality is they make a killing selling crap whilst refunding very little.
There are a number of other scams too, selling lots of low value items and occasionally losing high value ones so that the feedback is mostly positive. Counterfeit 'proof of postage' labels (amazing how hard it is to get Paypal to give you your money back if the seller conjures one up) and of course the old classic 'brick-in-a-box'. Faced with refunding a high value item or believing the seller that you're trying to pull a fast one claiming they've sent you a brick, who do they believe?
It's worth pointing out that the reason eBay, Amazon and other such companies offer such 'great' service is a lot less to do with their altruism and more to do with keeping within the law regarding remote sales. eBay has for the longest time tried to escape distance selling regs and their partner company Paypal has been trying to escape being classed as a 'payment' system claiming instead they're simply transferring money around. Turns out the consumer side of 'the man' has never been that impressed by either claim and as a result they've changed their working practices whilst suckering in the punters making them think they're the good guys.
It's a bit like buying a car.
People buy cars these days and are impressed by the long warranties on offer. They think the car companies offer these warranties out of the goodness of their hearts.
What they fail to realise is that consumer laws say that any item that you buy must last a "reasonable length of time" and must be "fit for purpose". Turns out that regardless of what car manufactures would have you believe, no sane person thinks a car should only last a year and in fact even if it only came with a 1 year warranty you'd have no problem getting them to fix problems several years down the line.
Faced with such legislation the manufacturers simply extended the warranties to give folk what they already were entitled to anyway and then sold themselves as the good guys.
In the meantime in the 'good old U.S of A, good old capitalism means most items come with a 90 day warranty and if it breaks then it's tough titty.
As for the internet providing feedback on the quality of goods. I've never found that to be true - at least not in any useful way.
You can pick pretty much anything and find a whole raft of conflicting reports. In some cases fanboys will big up one product whilst denouncing a competitors product often having never owned either. And then you've the issue of how to evaluate feedback. What value 1000 complaints? If the company has only sold 1000 items then obviously that's pretty grim, but if they've sole 100 million???
Finally in order for there to be feedback someone somewhere has to take the plunge and buy the product first and without consumer law and no reliable reviews that's a bit of a risk, particularly with high value items.
Anyway, consumer laws are just a tiny bit of what governments do for you. You're molly coddled and protected pretty well from cradle to grave...
When families go to work the husband pays for family upkeep and utilities including childcare and the wife pays government taxes, including sales tax, property tax, inflation tax 
and the other hidden taxes that get passed on directly indirectly.