6 ms·
The US is hardly some low regulation capitalist utopia. The US regulatory code is enormous. Plenty of self-proclaimed "Europeans" think it is, but in my experie
by thu2111 6y ago
The US is hardly some low regulation capitalist utopia. The US regulatory code is enormous. Plenty of self-proclaimed "Europeans" think it is, but in my experience they often know relatively little about the issues in question and are just parroting cultural talking points they picked up elsewhere.
Indeed, you seem to admit that here, when you state that you got your views of what British people believe from your "news bubble". For example you think everyone else thinks the NHS is awesome, because left-wing journalists told you that's what everyone thinks. One day you'll talk to a Brit outside of that bubble and get a real shock to discover they aren't enamoured with the NHS at all. Remember, nobody has copied the NHS model. Nobody! The rest of the EU looked at it and thought the UK was crazy to do that, they all went with far greater private sector involvement. The NHS is a socialist anachronism and plenty of people would love to move to a more standard social insurance model, but even expressing such an opinion results in nasty, vicious attacks by the left, so people quickly learn to just stay quiet about it.
Quite possibly one day there will be a referendum on this and the same sorts of people whose minds were blown by Brexit will have their minds blown a second time by the degree to which people vote against the NHS.
Likewise for rail. The UK just had a vote on that: Corbyn had very few identifiable policies but re-nationalisation of rail was one of them. Voters rejected that agenda on an a-historic scale. Again, if it ever became a topic of serious political debate like the EU did before the Brexit referendum, you'd be shocked at how little support nationalisation would end up having. Ridership was in decline for decades before privatisation. The moment they were privatised that trend went into reverse and ridership started climbing again, until it reached new records pre-COVID. Ticket prices were rising because the newly privatised railways became so popular (limited supply+growing demand=rising prices).
Regulation: Whilst the US is not a low regulation zone by international standards, the EU is even worse. I love this headline, UK leaving GDPR. Hell yes. Another brilliant move by the UK post-Brexit, the latest in a string of them. GDPR is a disastrous "law", in quotes because it barely qualifies as a law at all in the traditional sense when you read it. Laws are meant to explicitly state what they disallow but the GDPR is so vaguely worded it could be interpreted to mean almost anything. Just on basic constitutional grounds, junking it is a smart move.
But there are practical benefits too. GDPR imposes staggering costs on businesses to deliver dubious 'benefits' which approximately nobody outside of the reflexive "it's EU so it must be good" bubble actually cares about. There has been no mass migration away from US tech firms at any point, GDPR implementation changed basically nothing about the online experience and the EU's various attempts to legislate tech firms away from domestic markets just made it impossible to create local competitors. Beyond being banned from some local US newspapers and forcing yet more privacy popups everywhere, GDPR has been largely impact-free.
- james-bcn 6y agoI feel like I've lost a few brain cells reading that.
- thu2111 6y agoThanks for making my point for me about how the left react to discovering what other people believe.
- arethuza 6y agoI'm sure some people in the UK believe those things - just not very many.
- macinjosh 6y agoWhat a thoughtful response /s.
- james-bcn 6y agoWell, I could have spent time creating a post linking to refuting data, but do you really think it would make any difference to the thu2111's opinions?
- pydry 6y ago>For example you think everyone else thinks the NHS is awesome, because left-wing journalists Or because 87% of Britons polled said that they are very proud of it. >you'd be shocked at how little support rail nationalisation would end up having. 56% in favor. 15% actively against. Majority support even by members of the party that was most against it. >The NHS is a socialist anachronism This is a popular view among investors & high net worth individuals. The US system is extraordinarily profitable as a mechanism for parasitic wealth extraction and UK based investors are not blind to this. They want some sugar too. Nonetheless even UK right wing papers owned by those very people shy away from this view. 87% is above the threshold where they feel comfortable contradicting the popular view. Rail nationalisation was below that threshold and the barclay brothers owned telegraph, for instance, would attack the idea with savage abandon of a rabid dog.