Vacuo: Caveat Emptor? (Buyer Beware)
Without a federal government to set quality regulations and ensure that company products meet those standards, how can anyone trust anything they buy in Vacuo? But while it is true that customers in Vacuo are more alert and critical consumers than in other kingdoms as a matter of cultural habit, the situation isn’t nearly as hazardous as it may seem.
The less popular option is for a city to tax its citizens to fund its own, local certification agency. In practice, this isn’t much different from a federal agency; not only are the people unhappy to pay an additional tax, such a government agency is inefficient by nature. If its employees pass a product that turns out to be dangerous, they will likely lose their jobs, and so might their elected superior. Therefore, such agencies tend towards excessive caution, taking much more time than necessary to run too many expensive tests, and sometimes refusing to take a chance on a product that is actually safe. The agency has no incentive to work faster, as its bureaucrats earn the same amount of tax-payer money from the government regardless. Further, since the agency is not spending tax-payer money rather than its own, it has no incentive to seek cost-saving measures or practices.
The more popular option is for the people to leave quality assurance to private certification firms; third party companies independent of any manufacturing firms, hired by those manufacturers to test their products and assign them approval ratings. Private certification firms are forced to compete with each other for a manufacturer’s business; they must constantly look for better and faster ways to test the quality of a product, because their client companies will always be looking for someone else who can provide a guarantee of quality with greater speed or a lower price, and a firm can earn more money by winning more clients. Certification firms also must earn and maintain public trust; if they give a good rating to a bad product, their assurances become worthless to manufacturers.
The larger companies in Vacuo – those who own one or more of their own cities, and effectively operate as their own private countries – can and do often go to the expensive of retaining multiple private certification firms, to continuously and thoroughly assure the frugal people of Vacuo that their high-priced goods are of commensurately high quality. Their customers, in turn, shrewdly watch for any sign of under-the-board dealings between these second and third parties.
Therefore, private economic investigation and journalism is another lucrative business in Vacuo… but also a dangerous one. Companies engaged in such practices are more committed to burying the truth (and the ones who find it) than most people are to exposing it.
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