It is interesting that the federal apparat does not require any similar disclosure regarding the cost-increasing effect of the regulations it imposes on the cars it allows us to buy.

Well, assuming we can afford to.

Millions of us – literally – no longer can, if the waning number of new cars being sold currently vs. recently is a barometer of that. The high of more than 17 million annually was set back in 2017. It is down by a couple million now.

Certainly, there is inflation. The cost of everything has increased by about 20 percent, roughly – and that includes cars. Which of course leaves less money in people's hands to buy cars. And cars have become alienating things to many people, who dislike the disconnected, smartphone-emulating interfaces and pushy parenting of the "driver assistance technology" that has become unavoidable in new cars – because the car companies now anticipate these "technologies" being mandated by the regulatory apparat and make them standard before they're required.

Which is exactly has happened.

It is why all new cars already have a suite of "advanced driver assistance technology" – including (most of them) the automated emergency braking system that has been mandated to be standard a few years hence. Elements of the so-called "kill switch" all new vehicles must have by 2026 are also already embedded in anticipation of the formal requirement.

This regulating and complying with it has been happening for a long time – since the mid-1960s, to be precise. That was when the apparat issued its first regulation that every car buyer could see the moment they went to look at a new car.

It was the seatbelt mandate.

Others followed – because one thing always follows another. In time, there was so much regulating – so much mandating – that cars were fundamentally transformed. Some say this transformation was for the best, though the unspoken part is – according to whom? Well, according to those who approve. Those who don't can suck it. More finely, those who don't have no choice. They can "approve" – by buying what's available. Or they can choose not to – as millions now do.