> Just to be clear those things you buy on Temu must have by law a representative in the EU which would be the entity responsible if you are poisoned by whatever you buy.

Yup, the "EC Representative". Some LLC paper company that's probably going to just fold over when you hit them with a claim.

So you're saying that existing regulations don't work, so we should fix it by adding more regulations? What if they also won't work?

I don’t know much about the legal code. But when my computer code doesn’t work I don’t think of fixing it in terms of “add more code or don’t,” but rather “remove the bad code (if necessary) and add some good code (if necessary).”

Is that how you think about fixing software bugs too? "You're saying the existing code is broken so we should fix it by writing more code?"

No, I don't think so and I honestly don't see how this is relevant.

I am not saying that regulations are bad. It just that governments are accepting insane laws, and often they don't have mechanisms to undo what they've previously done. Or maybe they're not willing to use these mechanisms, it depends on the country.

This is just another example of that — law that sounds good on the paper and that doesn't make any sense in real life. I really doubt that mindlessly amending this regulation will make it better.

Those local merchants pay the taxes that fund your streets, your schools, your hospitals, and all the other things you take for granted every day.

The local merchants' profit pays for that. That profit comes from sales. For local merchants this likely means sales to customers like "you". So it's your money paying for those things via local merchants.

If your concern is foreign merchants not paying into the local tax system, it sounds like you're advocating for tariffs (i.e. taxes on imports).

It’s not like you don’t get anything in return from the merchants. Yes, you are part of the local economy. I’m not going to argue with you whether the capitalist society works, because it does, and has improved life to extreme measures. This entire system doesn’t work if money flows to half a globe away.

It’s not just about taxes alone, but the whole infrastructure of local corporations manufacturing and selling goods while creating employment and contributing to the local society. Tariffs alone don’t fix that, and neither do state-funded Chinese importers sweeping the markets.