It's inevitable unless regulators and consumer activists maintain the upper hand (in which case businesses will complain about a business unfriendly environment).
Badly behaved businesses reap concentrated benefit while imposing diffuse losses on others. It's kind of like how a factory worker in a declining city notices the harm of a layoff much more than the benefit of TVs costing 25% less.
I haven't ever seen any real repercussions for businesses acting against the interest of their customers, aside from high profile scandals. And even then the penalty is usually a tiny fraction of what would be appropriate.
At least the gov't has some plausible accountability to the citizens every time an election rolls around. Especially local gov't.
1- and this is precisely my point. If they start enforcing it, it would kill the smaller businesses in the current situation - and probably put thousands (millions?) of people in the street.
Thus forcing the businesses to pay or be punished. The business likely has the option of not passing the cost along to the consumer, but in the end they are the one being forced to pay the state.
This is going to have unintended consequences. Chances are it brings in a trickle of revenue and triggers silly behaviour rather than making anyone better off.
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