11 ms·

The trend is created by a lack of government regulation of corporations in the United States. Europe controls the negative externalities of capitalism with powe

The trend is created by a lack of government regulation of corporations in the United States. Europe controls the negative externalities of capitalism with powerful regulatory agencies; I've noticed an antipathy towards their activity on HN as well. That said, it appears clear to me we need one system or the other.

loeg 5y ago
No, the trend GP is describing was started by Texas just last year and allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court's inaction. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/01/supreme-court-texas-abortion-ban-508275 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/01/supreme-court-texas...
- _delirium 5y ago
  Texas did intensify it, in particular by trying to use private enforcement as a mechanism for doing an end-run around federal constitutional oversight of state law (it remains to be seen whether this will work once it's fully litigated). But private enforcement mechanisms have been an almost unique feature of U.S. law for considerably longer than that. This is a pretty good law review article from 10 years ago: J. Maria Glover (2012). The Structural Role of Private Enforcement Mechanisms in Public Law. William & Mary Law Review 53:1137–1217. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol53/iss4/3 https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol53/iss4/3. A quote: > The American regulatory system is unique in that it expressly relies on a diffuse set of regulators, including private parties, rather than on a centralized bureaucracy for the effectuation of its substantive aims. In contrast with more traditional conceptions of private enforcement as an ad hoc supplement to public law, this Article argues that private regulation through litigation is integral to the structure of the modern administrative state. Private litigation and the mechanisms that enable it are not merely add-ons to our regulatory regime, much less are they fundamentally at odds with it.
- SkittyDog 5y ago
  If you believe this phenomenon started in Texas last year, you might want to do some research, and correct your post. It's been going on a lot longer than that.
  - labster 5y ago
    The Texas abortion law is actually quite similar to the one enacted by Augustus Caesar on the topic of adultery.
- xdennis 5y ago
  I'm not certain, but I think this was started by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Instead of having government officials verifying compliance, it created "professional plaintiffs". [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990#%22Professional_plaintiffs%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
scarface74 5y ago
I don’t know, it might be a silly idea. But have you ever thought that parents should be responsible for their children? The only thing that the EU has done is make web browsing worse by forcing a damn cookie popup on every damn website.
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  Parents can’t control the social landscape their children are born into. Sure, you can try to block the apps and socially isolate them if you care more about making a statement than their emotional wellbeing. Alternatively we can admit that there is an issue with the amount of power and influence given to a few companies who have privatized all normal communication, especially for the younger generation. There is a reality of psychological and sociological harm that can’t be mitigated by taking your children fishing and giving them a few stern lectures. Full grown adults can’t even fight being manipulated by these apps.
  - alar44 5y ago
    Ridiculous. The world is full of choices and kids need to learn how to make them. They don't learn that by being sheltered. And regarding power to a few companies: that's how it's always been.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - beachy 5y ago
      Try telling that to your 13 year old daughter when every one of her friend group is congregating on social app du jure.
      - coryrc 5y ago
        You are presumably an adult. Are your friends only within one year of age? Unlikely. That this happens for children is a consequence of our morally-bankrupt "education" system which isolates children away from the community and only with people the same age for socialization (of which teenagers are known to be poor at). The same way you can't blame an individual for not walking places in, say, Atlanta, because the path between two locations is interrupted by a highway; or you stop all fires from burning in a forest which has had fires for thousands of years then wonder why the fires are so intense; it's silly to point to social media being the primary issue why teens are bad at socializing when it's a direct consequence of your society to concentrate together people with wild hormones without a moderating influence.
jokethrowaway 5y ago
Absolutely not, we don't need any more of that. I've lived in Europe my entire life and things just got worse regulation wise. Every year it feels more and more like living in a totalitarian regime. Social media is a tool like any other, the problem is that parents aren't there to educate kids. Oftentimes because both parents are working or because they're single parents.
- ben_w 5y ago
  In my childhood, half of Europe was literally a totalitarian regime, including the bit I moved to recently. I’ve been to the Stasi museum; I think they’d have lusted over the surveillance capacity of even just the data analytics in the tracking cookies whose cargo-culted consent [0] popups are merely the most visible consequence. Being able to read direct messages from or to any person, just by court order? Convincing everyone to take photos of everyone around them continuously, with location and time metadata added automatically by the camera, and having an AI that can recognise specific faces in the entire dataset? They’d think every charismas came at once. But the rules and regulations? Not so much. And I’m saying that even though there’s a few specific ones I’m quite unhappy about. [0] they’re not needed for things strictly necessary for functionality (like this website and GitHub), but if you do need them then you need non-coerced consent so the “no” needs to be as easy to click as the “yes”
  - ben_w 5y ago
    > every charismas came at once And now I can’t edit it, I spot the typo; should be “every Christmas came at once.”
mellavora 5y ago
As a related note, the reason playgrounds are so sanitized now (along with so many other activities) is because US health care is generally paid by private insurance, rather than universal coverage as in Europe. This means that if a child is injured on the playground, the insurance company will sue the owner of the playground (the owner could be the city) unless it can be proved that the playground took all care to make it safe. Relationship to the parent post: lawsuits as a regulatory mechanism.
- xlii 5y ago
  To add European perspective on same issue: playgrounds are regulated by law and failure to comply results in criminal lawsuits and jail time. Of course the system ain’t perfect but in general when you go to any playground (both public and privately owned) you’re guaranteed (legally) that all equipment is tested and passed periodical inspection. Red tape surrounded playgrounds that looks completely fine aren’t uncommon sight especially during spring season when it’s inspection time.
  - WinterMount223 5y ago
    So what’s the incentive to open and keep a playground? It seems like a huge liability. Part of the problem is adults let children play with cellphones because it’s “safe”.
    - xlii 5y ago
      Money, as always. Commercial entities (kindergartens, schools, etc.) present themselves as well equipped by showing they have well equipped playground or other amenities. Those are filled quicker than those not having one and I've seen instances where few commercial entities decided to create a shared commercial playground. Some are pay-to-enter so it's even simpler. Public ones are more complicated. I know for instance, that where I live there are annual calls for social projects which are voted upon by community and payed for using tax money. There's plethora of them and while budget for the winner projects is limited quite often there are groups trying to push their idea even if it fails and lobby for them. It of course affects local politics and activists which are trying to make various ideas happen. It's not perfect, and sometimes it fails. Arborists are doing periodical inspections yet there is always room for error. Inspections won't prevent strong wind from breaking branch off) but it usually keeps thing together.
fxtentacle 5y ago
I fully agree. Also, this nicely highlights differences in the average mentality between EU and US in multiple areas: Health care: It's private in the US, but government-run in most of the EU. Weapons: You can sell weapons in the US because the new owner is expected to be a responsible citizen. In the EU, who you may sell to is strictly controlled by government rules. Drugs: The FDA will let you sell almost literal poison, as long as you mark the ingredients clearly on the box. The EU has much stricter rules for what may be sold to the general public. In general, US laws are built around the idea that your average citizen is a responsible adult. The EU, on the other hand, is built around the idea that most people need guidance to do the right thing. I dislike the EU system because it limits my freedom. But looking at social media, I feel like the US assumption that most people are responsible adults is simply not true anymore. Maybe by now, we need to treat most people like kids, for their own good ... Oh and I believe it's absolutely appropriate for parents to sue social media companies if they screw up the age check. What they are doing is akin to putting bottles of poisoned water in a public place. It's just that their poison is psychological. At the very least, we can hold them responsible to keep it out of reach of children who simply don't understand the issues yet.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  >But looking at social media, I feel like the US assumption that most people are responsible adults is simply not true anymore. Maybe by now, we need to treat most people like kids, for their own good ... I argue they never were to begin with, but I still fundamentally disagree with the stance that the government should control private consumption. >Oh and I believe it's absolutely appropriate for parents to sue social media companies if they screw up the age check I don't. I see it more as suing a candy store for giving kids cavities. Candy is inherently bad and unnecessary ~~Just like Alcohol, oh wait...~~ But not poisonous ~~alcohol is tho~~. Teach them moderation. Be it with video games, food, or now social media. There is no activity that is safe for you when done in excess, so better to get that lesson instilled ASAP instead of blaming the rest of the world for your problems. It's a good universal lesson to have since you can't protect kids from every bad factor of the world.
zpeti 5y ago
Ok, if you make that point please point me towards data on how the EU is actually better as a society or way to run countries. How much innovation comes out of the eu? How many unicorns have they produced vs the rest of the world? How are the economies of European countries looking in terms of growth vs the rest of the world? How is the percent of global gdp for the eu looking over the last few years?
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Much less homelessness, for starters. Also, not every useful innovation can be measured in unicorn dollars ;) Facebook has a massive market cap, yet it arguably just makes everyone less happy.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    Try again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_... The US is no outlier, in fact it has a lower homeless rate than Germany and Sweden.
    - fxtentacle 5y ago
      Because Germany counts people with a government-provided home as homeless, too, while the US does not.
- Bud 5y ago
  You could start by looking at average life expectancy, income inequality, education, literacy rate (the US is shockingly bad here), and health care access. As for "innovation" and "unicorns", the US has done well, but a lot of the best examples have been European immigrants to the US. When the chips were really down, in the Manhattan Project, who did the US rely on? Overwhelmingly it was Europeans who emigrated to the US: Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, James Franck, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, and Klaus Fuchs. The US would not exist if they hadn't. So let's not get too cocky.

loeg 5y ago

No, the trend GP is describing was started by Texas just last year and allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court's inaction. https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/01/supreme-court-texas-abortion-ban-508275 https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/01/supreme-court-texas...

_delirium 5y ago
Texas did intensify it, in particular by trying to use private enforcement as a mechanism for doing an end-run around federal constitutional oversight of state law (it remains to be seen whether this will work once it's fully litigated). But private enforcement mechanisms have been an almost unique feature of U.S. law for considerably longer than that. This is a pretty good law review article from 10 years ago: J. Maria Glover (2012). The Structural Role of Private Enforcement Mechanisms in Public Law. William & Mary Law Review 53:1137–1217. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol53/iss4/3 https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol53/iss4/3. A quote: > The American regulatory system is unique in that it expressly relies on a diffuse set of regulators, including private parties, rather than on a centralized bureaucracy for the effectuation of its substantive aims. In contrast with more traditional conceptions of private enforcement as an ad hoc supplement to public law, this Article argues that private regulation through litigation is integral to the structure of the modern administrative state. Private litigation and the mechanisms that enable it are not merely add-ons to our regulatory regime, much less are they fundamentally at odds with it.
SkittyDog 5y ago
If you believe this phenomenon started in Texas last year, you might want to do some research, and correct your post. It's been going on a lot longer than that.
- labster 5y ago
  The Texas abortion law is actually quite similar to the one enacted by Augustus Caesar on the topic of adultery.
xdennis 5y ago
I'm not certain, but I think this was started by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Instead of having government officials verifying compliance, it created "professional plaintiffs". [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Act_of_1990#%22Professional_plaintiffs%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...

scarface74 5y ago

I don’t know, it might be a silly idea. But have you ever thought that parents should be responsible for their children? The only thing that the EU has done is make web browsing worse by forcing a damn cookie popup on every damn website.

jdgoesmarching 5y ago
Parents can’t control the social landscape their children are born into. Sure, you can try to block the apps and socially isolate them if you care more about making a statement than their emotional wellbeing. Alternatively we can admit that there is an issue with the amount of power and influence given to a few companies who have privatized all normal communication, especially for the younger generation. There is a reality of psychological and sociological harm that can’t be mitigated by taking your children fishing and giving them a few stern lectures. Full grown adults can’t even fight being manipulated by these apps.
- alar44 5y ago
  Ridiculous. The world is full of choices and kids need to learn how to make them. They don't learn that by being sheltered. And regarding power to a few companies: that's how it's always been.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - beachy 5y ago
    Try telling that to your 13 year old daughter when every one of her friend group is congregating on social app du jure.
    - coryrc 5y ago
      You are presumably an adult. Are your friends only within one year of age? Unlikely. That this happens for children is a consequence of our morally-bankrupt "education" system which isolates children away from the community and only with people the same age for socialization (of which teenagers are known to be poor at). The same way you can't blame an individual for not walking places in, say, Atlanta, because the path between two locations is interrupted by a highway; or you stop all fires from burning in a forest which has had fires for thousands of years then wonder why the fires are so intense; it's silly to point to social media being the primary issue why teens are bad at socializing when it's a direct consequence of your society to concentrate together people with wild hormones without a moderating influence.

jokethrowaway 5y ago

Absolutely not, we don't need any more of that. I've lived in Europe my entire life and things just got worse regulation wise. Every year it feels more and more like living in a totalitarian regime. Social media is a tool like any other, the problem is that parents aren't there to educate kids. Oftentimes because both parents are working or because they're single parents.

ben_w 5y ago
In my childhood, half of Europe was literally a totalitarian regime, including the bit I moved to recently. I’ve been to the Stasi museum; I think they’d have lusted over the surveillance capacity of even just the data analytics in the tracking cookies whose cargo-culted consent [0] popups are merely the most visible consequence. Being able to read direct messages from or to any person, just by court order? Convincing everyone to take photos of everyone around them continuously, with location and time metadata added automatically by the camera, and having an AI that can recognise specific faces in the entire dataset? They’d think every charismas came at once. But the rules and regulations? Not so much. And I’m saying that even though there’s a few specific ones I’m quite unhappy about. [0] they’re not needed for things strictly necessary for functionality (like this website and GitHub), but if you do need them then you need non-coerced consent so the “no” needs to be as easy to click as the “yes”
- ben_w 5y ago
  > every charismas came at once And now I can’t edit it, I spot the typo; should be “every Christmas came at once.”

mellavora 5y ago

As a related note, the reason playgrounds are so sanitized now (along with so many other activities) is because US health care is generally paid by private insurance, rather than universal coverage as in Europe. This means that if a child is injured on the playground, the insurance company will sue the owner of the playground (the owner could be the city) unless it can be proved that the playground took all care to make it safe. Relationship to the parent post: lawsuits as a regulatory mechanism.

xlii 5y ago
To add European perspective on same issue: playgrounds are regulated by law and failure to comply results in criminal lawsuits and jail time. Of course the system ain’t perfect but in general when you go to any playground (both public and privately owned) you’re guaranteed (legally) that all equipment is tested and passed periodical inspection. Red tape surrounded playgrounds that looks completely fine aren’t uncommon sight especially during spring season when it’s inspection time.
- WinterMount223 5y ago
  So what’s the incentive to open and keep a playground? It seems like a huge liability. Part of the problem is adults let children play with cellphones because it’s “safe”.
  - xlii 5y ago
    Money, as always. Commercial entities (kindergartens, schools, etc.) present themselves as well equipped by showing they have well equipped playground or other amenities. Those are filled quicker than those not having one and I've seen instances where few commercial entities decided to create a shared commercial playground. Some are pay-to-enter so it's even simpler. Public ones are more complicated. I know for instance, that where I live there are annual calls for social projects which are voted upon by community and payed for using tax money. There's plethora of them and while budget for the winner projects is limited quite often there are groups trying to push their idea even if it fails and lobby for them. It of course affects local politics and activists which are trying to make various ideas happen. It's not perfect, and sometimes it fails. Arborists are doing periodical inspections yet there is always room for error. Inspections won't prevent strong wind from breaking branch off) but it usually keeps thing together.

fxtentacle 5y ago

I fully agree. Also, this nicely highlights differences in the average mentality between EU and US in multiple areas: Health care: It's private in the US, but government-run in most of the EU. Weapons: You can sell weapons in the US because the new owner is expected to be a responsible citizen. In the EU, who you may sell to is strictly controlled by government rules. Drugs: The FDA will let you sell almost literal poison, as long as you mark the ingredients clearly on the box. The EU has much stricter rules for what may be sold to the general public. In general, US laws are built around the idea that your average citizen is a responsible adult. The EU, on the other hand, is built around the idea that most people need guidance to do the right thing. I dislike the EU system because it limits my freedom. But looking at social media, I feel like the US assumption that most people are responsible adults is simply not true anymore. Maybe by now, we need to treat most people like kids, for their own good ... Oh and I believe it's absolutely appropriate for parents to sue social media companies if they screw up the age check. What they are doing is akin to putting bottles of poisoned water in a public place. It's just that their poison is psychological. At the very least, we can hold them responsible to keep it out of reach of children who simply don't understand the issues yet.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
johnnyanmac 5y ago
>But looking at social media, I feel like the US assumption that most people are responsible adults is simply not true anymore. Maybe by now, we need to treat most people like kids, for their own good ... I argue they never were to begin with, but I still fundamentally disagree with the stance that the government should control private consumption. >Oh and I believe it's absolutely appropriate for parents to sue social media companies if they screw up the age check I don't. I see it more as suing a candy store for giving kids cavities. Candy is inherently bad and unnecessary ~~Just like Alcohol, oh wait...~~ But not poisonous ~~alcohol is tho~~. Teach them moderation. Be it with video games, food, or now social media. There is no activity that is safe for you when done in excess, so better to get that lesson instilled ASAP instead of blaming the rest of the world for your problems. It's a good universal lesson to have since you can't protect kids from every bad factor of the world.

zpeti 5y ago

Ok, if you make that point please point me towards data on how the EU is actually better as a society or way to run countries. How much innovation comes out of the eu? How many unicorns have they produced vs the rest of the world? How are the economies of European countries looking in terms of growth vs the rest of the world? How is the percent of global gdp for the eu looking over the last few years?

fxtentacle 5y ago
Much less homelessness, for starters. Also, not every useful innovation can be measured in unicorn dollars ;) Facebook has a massive market cap, yet it arguably just makes everyone less happy.
- zpeti 5y ago
  Try again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_... The US is no outlier, in fact it has a lower homeless rate than Germany and Sweden.
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    Because Germany counts people with a government-provided home as homeless, too, while the US does not.
Bud 5y ago
You could start by looking at average life expectancy, income inequality, education, literacy rate (the US is shockingly bad here), and health care access. As for "innovation" and "unicorns", the US has done well, but a lot of the best examples have been European immigrants to the US. When the chips were really down, in the Manhattan Project, who did the US rely on? Overwhelmingly it was Europeans who emigrated to the US: Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, James Franck, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, and Klaus Fuchs. The US would not exist if they hadn't. So let's not get too cocky.