How corporate America built a better Roach Motel: Today’s economy is founded on the belief that monopolies are efficient. If monopolies failed to make their customers happy, competitors would come along to dethrone the monopoloy. But that’s not how it works in the real world, where monopolies lock out competitors and trap customers by making it expensive and painful to switch, writes Cory Doctorow. “…. dominant businesses don’t maintain their lead by making their customers happy, but by making it harder for those customers to leave.”
For example, big business lobbied to kill the “Click to Cancel” rule, “which required companies to make it as easy to resign from a subscription service as it was to sign up for it.” Sirius XM executives celebrated the rule’s demise on a call with shareholders. “Sirius believes that its profits come in part from the fact that dissatisfied customers can’t figure out how to cancel their service.”