Selling bomb-detecting magic sticks to military knowing in full that they are not working and people will be put in life-threatening situations trying to use them is malicious and sociopathic, not just fraudulent. If anyone got hurt because of his bullshit detectors let a bomb pass, he should be fully responsible.
Being able to sell magic/fraud legally only means that client will be more cautious when buying.
Regulation is not to protect the dumb, it is to promote competition when the majority of consumers are clever enough to not try a service that has not been proven not to be a fraud.
For example, Amazon would never have worked if it was legal to sell book online and not sending them. People would only shop in local shop where they pay for the book they have in their hands and we would be all laughing at the (few) morons that thought they could trust a website. And that works for simpler things too - would you try a different brand of food if it is legal to poison stupid people, would you even try another shop than the one you trust the owner ?
Yep. And you can see this firsthand in Third-world countries, where people are very reluctant to do business with anyone who isn't a close friend or family member for this very reason. The result is an enormous amount of inefficiency.
Spot on. I am very reluctant to try supplements from unknown brands, because I've heard previous scandals (in my country) where the amount of supplement has been way off (both too much and too little), without any serious action taken against them.
The tone of the comments at the time when I replied was more like "fool and his money are easily parted" and I framed my reply focusing on why not allowing the fool being parted with his money is really good for everyone.
Part of the problem is that the FTC is only so big, with only so many people, and the entire market is huge. I agree that even the allowable claims are suspect, but there are limits, even if they're not always enforced.
I don't know the examples you are talking about, but yea, in an ideal world I'd fine the crap out of "super food" companies. The problem is that they tend to have copywriters talented enough to phrase things in such a way that it is just barely not a totally obvious lie.
Also: "low fat" or "low sugar" products that normally don't contain much fat or sugar to begin with. Like "low fat" ice cream that compensates the reduced fat with more sugar (d'oh).
Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for failure... You can eat low fat ice-cream and low-sugar cake and end up eating more fat and sugar than you would get from regular ice cream and cake.
The problem is that there's no way of holding the buyers accountable if their own countries and the taxpayers whose funds they are misappropriating refuse to do so.
It turns out the American World Police isn't so effective in things that could actually use some policing. And even sections of their proper police bought into the scam.
Buying them with public funds for public safety applications, however...