I agree. There are other methods out there, like equalizers, for the consumers that wish to negate that practice.

Good news!

But better yet, just throw your TV out the window.  Give it the ol' heave-ho.  You'll be glad you did!

> Einstein wrote:

> After you toss your computer away

But then I would be forced to interact with people in real life...

I'm with SD on this one...

Personally, I like the subservient agencies like this.  Why?  Because they can experiment.  So... if the EPA sets up a regulation... and realize after a while that it's stupid... they can wave a magic wand and remove the regulation.  But if they don't... the President can wave a magic wand and remove the regulation by executive order, generally.  But if he doesn't... Congress can pass a bill to tell all of them to stuff it.  If there was a precedent that a legislature had to make regulations like this... essentially, your plan C became plan A.

It's like with the legal system.  Court cases generally come forward where the judge really has no idea of what the law means with regard to the specific case.  The judge can't just say "I dunno, let's figure this out later," and it's terrible legal precedent to create laws to apply to situation that occurred before the law came into play... so the alternative is to take what laws you have and construct an interpretation which makes sense and has some semblance of root in legal precedent.  Then, if Congress says "wait... that's a terrible precedent..." they can specify legislative intent on a bill.

Also.. remember... this issue just isn't by any definition the most important issue on the planet.  Having regulatory agencies make rules like this helps the legislature avoid   and, in some cases, defer to people with expertise in that particular area.  The best example... I'd definitely rather have the Federal Reserve managing the US money supply than Congress, largely because the amount of legislators with backgrounds in macroeconomics is miserable (not to mention that governments with monopoly control over the money supply have a good precedent of ruining it).  The same can be said of regulations created in a number of other agencies...