Anyone who shops online — in other words, most of us — is familiar with the scourge of fake reviews. This digital slop, often generated by artificial intelligence, clogs up the listings and makes it hard to figure out whether that toaster you’re thinking of buying deserves its five-star rating or is a piece of junk.
Here’s some good news: This week, a Federal Trade Commission rule banning those fake reviews went into effect. That’s what we ought to expect from government regulation of the economy: The government saw a problem affecting millions of consumers and moved to fix it. It may not transform your life, but it will make one corner of it a little less unpleasant.
Whoever becomes president in January will bring in thousands of appointees to make consequential policy decisions every day.
With former President Donald Trump making clear that his intentions for another term constitute nothing less than fascism, the fate of the FTC and other agencies like it may seem like an almost trivial consideration in the upcoming election. But we must not forget that whoever becomes president in January will bring in thousands of appointees to staff those agencies and make consequential policy decisions every day. In many cases, the choice is between an agency that will do nothing while Americans are victimized, exploited, defrauded and harmed in ways large and small, or an agency that does its job to protect us.
There are many such regulations in the works that many people haven’t heard about. A new proposal from the Federal Communications Commission that would stop cellular providers from locking customers’ phones into that provider for more than 60 days. (Not surprisingly, major carriers T-Mobile and AT&T are arguing that, actually, it’s good for consumers to be tied to a cellphone provider for months or even years.)
Another new rule that’s now been finalized is the FTC’s “Click to Cancel” policy, which would require companies to make unsubscribing from any kind of subscription no more difficult and complicated than signing up in the first place. If you’ve tried to cancel a gym membership, you know how maddening this aspect of modern commerce can be. Business groups have already filed suit in the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, attempting to get the regulation quashed.
Unfortunately, the administration’s announcement of the finalized rule was a fairly low-key one. Vice President Kamala Harris includes Click to Cancel in her economic program, but it has hardly been a hot issue on the campaign trail and, as far as I can tell, Trump has not been asked about it. Given its obvious popularity, the administration should have had President Joe Biden and Harris skydive into Yankee Stadium under a 500-foot-wide banner to announce it. What better example could there be to show Americans what it means to have a government on their side? They could have presented a whole "Make the Internet Suck Less" agenda. And every Republican, including Trump, should have been forced to say whether they support the Biden administration’s action.
Voters who see Biden as weak and ineffectual because he’s old have little idea of how aggressive his administration has been in enacting regulations that could make demonstrable progress in improving Americans’ lives. The list of those regulations is long, complicated and sometimes highly technical. which makes it difficult to get both reporters and ordinary voters interested in them. But there have been plenty that aren’t hard to understand, such as expanding the number of people eligible to receive overtime pay, subjecting “ghost guns” to the same regulation as other guns, providing student debt relief to 5 million borrowers and increasing the minimum wage for federal contractors.
A new Trump presidency will do nothing to address the less dramatic but still important problems we face.
In all these cases and many more, the Biden administration identified a problem, asked “Should we do something about it?” and answered “Yes.” Under Trump, the answer will usually be “No” — even more so than his first term. Project 2025, which despite Trump’s denials is still the most detailed guide to what his administration will look like, contains a long list of agencies and departments that his allies are planning to either dismantle or neuter.
To take just one example, the plan proposes to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been extraordinarily successful at protecting Americans from financial scams, discrimination and exploitation. According to the agency, it has returned more than $20 billion unfairly taken from consumers. If Republicans have their way, the CFPB will simply disappear, leaving consumers at the mercy of predatory financial companies. Elsewhere, the oil industry has drawn up a detailed program to roll back current environmental rules — and you can bet they’re not the only special interest that expects Trump to give them whatever they want.
Even if you don’t believe Trump will follow through on his oft-stated intent to use federal power to crush dissent and prosecute his political opponents, this much is clear: A new Trump presidency will do nothing to address the less dramatic but still important problems we face.
Which is why it’s more important than ever that this administration, and the Harris campaign, call attention to the good things government continues to do. Trust in government is near all-time lows, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. That trust is affected by whether the government is demonstrating competence and efficiency (which is why Trump and his allies have spent so much time lying about the response to recent hurricanes).
But even more, trust in government is a function of whether people see government doing good things. In a great many ways that most people don’t notice, it is. Therefore it’s vital that when it does something great — like ensuring that you can cancel that subscription you signed up for without driving yourself crazy — It ought to be celebrated as loudly as possible. That way, not only will everyone know what the government did for them, they’ll know who should get the credit.
