For most people, shopping is still a matter of wandering down the street or loading a cart in a shopping mall. Soon, that will change. 1.Electronic commerce is growing fast and will soon bring people more choices. There will, however, be a cost: protecting the consumer from fraud will be harder. Many governments therefore want to extend high street regulations to the electronic world. But politicians would be wiser to see cyberspace as a basis for a new era of corporate self-regulation.
2.Consumers in rich countries have grown used to the idea that the government takes responsibility for everything from the stability of the banks to the safety of the drugs, or their rights to refund when goods are faulty. But governments cannot enforce national laws on businesses whose only presence in their country is on the screen. Other countries have regulators, but the rules of consumer protection differ, as does enforcement. Even where a clear right to compensation exists, the online catalogue customer in Tokyo, say, can hardly go to New York to extract a refund for a dud purchase.
3.One answer is for governments to cooperate more: to recognize each other’s rules. But that requires years of work and volumes of detailed rules. 4.And plenty of countries have rules too fanciful for sober states to accept. There is, however, an alternative. Let the electronic businesses do the “regulation”themselves. They do, after all, have a self-interest in doing so.
5.In electronic commerce, a reputation for honest dealing will be a valuable competitive asset. Governments, too, may compete to be trusted. For instance, customers ordering medicines online may prefer to buy from the United States because they trust the rigorous screening of the Food and Drug Administration; or they may decide that the FDA’s rules are too strict, and buy from Switzerland instead.
