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The problem is people keep trying to stamp the diversity out. The model in the US is nominally to have few regulations limited to things like enforcing contrac
by AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The problem is people keep trying to stamp the diversity out.
The model in the US is nominally to have few regulations limited to things like enforcing contracts and antitrust laws and pricing major externalities, then leave the rest of it to free market competition. That isn't compatible with a model where regulators are trying to run the economy, because then the regulators get captured by industry and thwart rather than protect competition, and competition can't save you from needing complicated rules if it is not present. And those kinds of complex competition-destroying regulations are showing up everywhere, including in the US.
Conversely, the model in the EU is to not care a lot about small businesses and just regulate the large ones. But that model isn't really compatible with free trade. You can't impose expensive regulations on domestic companies and then put them into competition with countries that don't do that and expect them to succeed. But people want to have their cake and eat it too. They want the expensive regulations but not the correspondingly higher prices, and then the stuff they buy gets made in China where the rules don't exist (or exist on paper but the government waives them in order to capture the market). If you want to have the rules without destroying domestic industry then you have to impose them on the manufacturers of imported products too. Which would actually help the US increase competition, because the regulations would then shackle global megacorps that want to sell into the EU but not smaller domestic US companies that don't. But then foreign-produced stuff sold in the EU would cost as much as domestically-produced stuff -- a boon to local industry but higher prices on local consumers, and apparently they're not willing to suffer the latter.
- throwaway7ahgb 2y agoDoesn't the US allow "diversity" by allowing different states to pass laws that their residence find important? I'm pretty sure CA has some specific right to repair laws. Also, this (to me) is a strange use for the word diversity.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoThe difference of culture between different parts of the world fosters bigger legal variations.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoStates and localities can pass their own laws but they can't remove the federal ones, and federal laws preempt state laws. Naturally large corporations then make a point to capture the federal regulators.
- vlovich123 2y agoIt can be slightly more complicated with things like CARB which has an explicit waiver in the Clean Air Act to enact its own standards and given how big it is it basically ends up setting de facto standards for the state (it’s one of the big complaints from Republican states). A similar issue comes up around education although things are a bit more even there with Texas and Florida also using the size of their markets to set their version of education standards.
- gpderetta 2y agoDo US consumers buy less Made In China stuff than EU ones? According to ustr.gov, US imports from China in 2022 were worth $562.9 billion. According to eurostat EU imports from China were 627.3€ billion, so a significant difference (note the currency). As a rate of the total import/export they are actually quite comparable.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoIt "shouldn't" be a problem for the US to do that, because it's supposed to be minimizing regulatory overhead and promoting competition so its companies are globally competitive. Importing something from a country because they have a large labor market is a different thing than importing things from that country because your country imposes high regulatory overhead on domestic producers but not on foreign imports. This also gets back to my point about the US increasingly failing at its ideal of not imposing high regulatory overhead.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago> The problem is people keep trying to stamp the diversity out. I'm very cynical about this "diversity is our strength" stuff In my opinion the problem is that society has been working hard to reduce "diversity" to mean different skin colors, genitals or sexual preferences, with a sprinkling of different cuisine. What most people refer to as diversity is very superficial Diversity of ideas, diversity of politics, diversity of beliefs are still not very popular The idea seems to be that the superficial diversity automatically produces the meaningful diversity, but I don't think that is true
- account42 2y agoWell said. And ironically "diversity" is a topic where diverse opinions are often met with particularily hard scorn.