Yes, you can argue that warranties are overpriced, but if everyone factored the price of the extended warranty into every purchase they made, then manufacturers would naturally be forced to reduce the cost of the warranty, by making their product either more reparable or increasing initial quality.

> Finally, people are hyperbolic discounters, they are myopic in a way that hurts their happiness, so a regulation that encourages longer-term thinking may help them in the long run.

Here it may just be my Yankee self-reliance talking, but this smacks of the worst sort of paternalism. Arguing slippery slope arguments is in itself a slippery slope, but why stop here? If buying a bigger TV is not going to make me happy (or make me unhappier) then surely a regulation should exist to prevent me from buying it.

When there are significant externalities (like leaded gasoline) then government regulation is easy to justify. When the externalities are second-hand (the reduction in demand for product longevity causes reparability to become a secondary concern for manufacturers) then I'm more inclined to err on the side of "let the customer set the price of their own risk", rather than "let's just increase costs for everyone because it may or may not have a net societal benefit".

I don't trust that regulatory authorities are above the myopia and are truly able to see long-term more than anyone else.