[Tharkun]

Not lying about what you're selling seems like it ought to the norm without requiring legal intervention?

[pjc50]

On the contrary, without legal intervention the market collapses into everyone lying all of the time. The famous economics paper on this is Akerloff's "Market For Lemons".

[pas]

Free market advocates usually point out that reputation markets could arise in these situations. Of course the question is, would they, and would they provide a better force to raise quality of traded goods than regulation?

[justinclift]

Unfortunately, sleazebags with no ethics (eg "whatever parts suckers from $$$") outperform ethical people when viewed through the (say) MBA lens.

Thus the proliferation of places lying about everything they can get away with, until they're caught / stamped on.