If anyone had the sense to make a law forcing the modem processor and peripherals to be fully documented with all registers, protocols, API, architecture, and a reproducible toolchain for compiling the software, we might just have a sustainable future. Governments and large corporations already require this level of accountability for what they purchase and use. Anything less than this level of support and transparency is exploitive theft of ownership. Retaining any digital rights for any products sold is criminal theft.
Dear Citizen, we will require all manufacturers to comply with non-essential guidelines, but all important stuff are subject to the fact that you are our bitch and need to vow to your benefactor, the "government" which is Groupon for corpos.
Pretty sure some of the stuff he's talking about are consumer issues too...fully documenting all the hardware lets people other than the original manufacturer provide support to the hardware without the use of reverse engineering.
Plus there's a lot of non-essential stuff the government makes companies do already, because if they didn't the companies would just exploit people. Food and Drugs being two big ones.
Politicians will always be generalists that must look to experts to advise them. The problem is there are few experts doing the advising and most are corporate funded with corporate agendas. Unless you are super into politics where these choices change your voting in a significant way, the situation will continue to suck.
The US used to have a panel of experts advising them, until it turned out they weren't science deniers and the republicans claimed they were all "paid off by the libs!"