8 ms·

Off the top of my head as a non-European: GDPR, 2-year warranties and other consumer protection laws

lawlessone 2y ago
:-)
nkrisc 2y ago
Oh, those pesky consumers getting in the way of the innovation of the free market with their protections. If only they could be fully exploited for maximum value extraction without interference.
- stavros 2y ago
  That's exactly what I think when I read one of these "EU stifles innovation" comments. It sounds to me like the equivalent of not wanting socialized healthcare because "the poors" might get it, not caring about the fact that you're the one who will benefit. This is the "everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" of consumer rights. Everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed capitalist overlord.
  - newfriend 2y ago
    This is a strawman. "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it". Also the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is another strawman, used by those who dislike capitalism. People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them.
    - stavros 2y ago
      > "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it". That's fair, I should have said "because the poors might benefit". Rich people don't like socialized healthcare because they, by definition, will pay for people who can't afford it. The problem is when people who will benefit from this identify with people who will lose from it. > People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them. They do, but here we're talking about the opposite: People being against policies they benefit from, because they identify with the group that will not. P.S. I liked your comment, it was a reasoned reply that furthers the debate, thank you.
      - EgregiousCube 2y ago
        You'll find very few people who don't want poor people to have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way. The two commonly held arguments against socialized healthcare in America are: First, a distrust that the government will create a system that is good and a belief that quality will decrease under such a system, and; Second, that such a system would be funded by a large tax increase and that Americans are in general hard to get excited about tax increases. The financial concern is in the taking, not in the getting.
        danaris 2y ago
        > You'll find very few people who don't want poor people to have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way. I'm afraid your experiences are not universal. There is a very strong streak of this in the US, significantly (though probably not wholly) traceable to the Calvinist roots of the Puritans who were a profound influence on the early culture of the country. When you believe that people's position on Earth is due to their level of deserving (Just World Fallacy), it's very easy to extend that to "and therefore we shouldn't try to help poor people; they're just being punished for being bad people."
        EgregiousCube 2y ago
        There is a wide gap between not wanting to be responsible for helping the poor and actively wanting the poor to fail. You're confusing the two.
        danaris 2y ago
        You're right about the first part, but I'm not confused about anything. There are genuinely many people who wholeheartedly believe that the poor deserve to be poor, and that helping them is bad. Some of them aren't even that well off themselves, but have bought into an ideology that's detrimental to them. If you haven't encountered these people, then count yourself lucky, but don't try to deny their existence or assume your own experiences are universal.
  - danem 2y ago
    The resistance to socialized healthcare in America can be easily understood without resorting to bizarre strawmen about hating poor people. Healthcare is of course a huge part of our economy and lives. Many (most?) people are satisfied with the status quo and are hesitant to see (what they consider to be) a huge increase in government power, spending, and general involvement in their lives. It's the same impulse that motivates people to oppose new housing -- people are loss averse and hate change.
    - stavros 2y ago
      Will it be a huge increase in spending? Isn't it estimated to reduce costs by a lot?
      - antisthenes 2y ago
        Yes, the resistance is because the private sector will lose a lot of (parasitic) jobs. It's a non-starter to attempt to reduce health insurance companies power, because it would gut their employee numbers. It's an unsavory thought, but the US has a significant amount of people employed in the business of denying healthcare to other people, which amounts to hundreds of thousands of jobs. Any politician attempting to fix this would be committing political suicide.
      - rockemsockem 2y ago
        I think they mean it's an increase in government spending, which would of course be true even if overall healthcare overhead spending is reduced.
      - moduspol 2y ago
        We do not have an established history of accurately predicting or managing the costs of overwhelmingly expensive government programs, at least here in the US.
        marcinzm 2y ago
        The US already runs two government healthcare programs. There are 65 million people in Medicare and 83 million in Medicaid. For less money per patient than private insurance.
- wyager 2y ago
  This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    People die from inability to afford something as fundamental as healthcare in the US. You are poorer than any European ever could be.
    - wyager 2y ago
      > You are poorer than any European ever could be Are you talking about me, personally, or Americans in general? I suppose it doesn't really matter - you'd be wrong in either case. The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. Most Americans grumble about paying for healthcare, and we are getting ripped off, but it's also very rare for someone to actually die because they can't afford it. Anyone in the top, say, 80% of American society has some form of employer-subsidized insurance.
      - troupo 2y ago
        > some form These words are doing some very heavy lifting.
      - csomar 2y ago
        > The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. This is due to the garbage GDP numbers. Based on these, the quality of life in the Mississippi is better than in Japan. Not a single chance. The US numbers are highly inflated by the financial sector and real estate. It'll take a financial crisis and dethroning of US dollar to show how truly poor these places are.
        wyager 2y ago
        There are multiple reasons that Japan is better than Mississippi, but "Japan is actually materially wealthier" is not one of them.
andy_ppp 2y ago
GDPR is really sensible legislation that largely only applies to companies who should be treating your personal data as sensitive data. I built a GDPR complaint system and was really happy about the security we put in place that we definitely wouldn’t have thought to do without these laws. Things like having someone you can ask and request personal data from at big companies is also an extremely well thought through idea. I don’t understand the issues people have with it to be honest…
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Most people have no problem with the GDPR. It only seems otherwise on this forum and similar echo chambers / bubbles where lots of people made their fortunes with adtech.
  - ajford 2y ago
    I love the intention of the law, but it's so... flexible... in implementation that shitty implementers ended up making the browsing experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking. On mobile every page load ends up with me spending the first minute or so on page dealing with the half-screen "don't sell my info" cookie dance, followed with the ad-block pop-ups.
    - troupo 2y ago
      > but it's so... flexible... in implementation It usually isn't the law's job to dictate an implementation. > shitty implementers ended up making the browsing experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking. How is the law that doesn't even talk about browsers or cookies responsible for this?
  - flaminHotSpeedo 2y ago
    My only complaint with GDPR is when I have to do boring work in the name of GDPR compliance :) But it's also driven some pretty interesting projects, so I'd probably call it a wash or perhaps a slight positive, even if I were to ignore the major benefits as a consumer
glitchcrab 2y ago
What an utterly ridiculous response. In your eyes, businesses should be able to run roughshod over the consumer? Yes, maybe the laws could have been more polished or have been implemented in a better way, but the underlying idea of protecting the consumer is the important takeaway from these laws.
- lawlessone 2y ago
  >What an utterly ridiculous response. To be fair to them, i think it was sarcasm.
  - glitchcrab 2y ago
    You may well be right, or at least I hope you are anyway.
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    Poe's Law applies
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    On HN, you can be sure there are several people who literally believe the world would be better without any regulations or laws forcing businesses to do anything. This place is the pinnacle of anarcho-capitalism.
    - permo-w 2y ago
      at least here there's a spectrum of views that largely get by peacefully, and the entire place isn't focused on that conflict, a la twitter. yes there are lot of right-wing headcases entirely taken up by their own bottom-line, and yes the place itself is broadly funded and owned by people who think like, or at the very least, act like anarcho-capitalists, but they only really float to the surface when a post about regulation comes up, and even then, the discussion stays mostly civil. it could be a lot worse
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
atif089 2y ago
Lol, as a European, thank god that people like you don't make our laws here

:-)

Oh, those pesky consumers getting in the way of the innovation of the free market with their protections. If only they could be fully exploited for maximum value extraction without interference.

stavros 2y ago
That's exactly what I think when I read one of these "EU stifles innovation" comments. It sounds to me like the equivalent of not wanting socialized healthcare because "the poors" might get it, not caring about the fact that you're the one who will benefit. This is the "everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" of consumer rights. Everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed capitalist overlord.
- newfriend 2y ago
  This is a strawman. "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it". Also the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is another strawman, used by those who dislike capitalism. People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them.
  - stavros 2y ago
    > "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it". That's fair, I should have said "because the poors might benefit". Rich people don't like socialized healthcare because they, by definition, will pay for people who can't afford it. The problem is when people who will benefit from this identify with people who will lose from it. > People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them. They do, but here we're talking about the opposite: People being against policies they benefit from, because they identify with the group that will not. P.S. I liked your comment, it was a reasoned reply that furthers the debate, thank you.
    - EgregiousCube 2y ago
      You'll find very few people who don't want poor people to have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way. The two commonly held arguments against socialized healthcare in America are: First, a distrust that the government will create a system that is good and a belief that quality will decrease under such a system, and; Second, that such a system would be funded by a large tax increase and that Americans are in general hard to get excited about tax increases. The financial concern is in the taking, not in the getting.
      - danaris 2y ago
        > You'll find very few people who don't want poor people to have things and it's disingenuous to put it that way. I'm afraid your experiences are not universal. There is a very strong streak of this in the US, significantly (though probably not wholly) traceable to the Calvinist roots of the Puritans who were a profound influence on the early culture of the country. When you believe that people's position on Earth is due to their level of deserving (Just World Fallacy), it's very easy to extend that to "and therefore we shouldn't try to help poor people; they're just being punished for being bad people."
        EgregiousCube 2y ago
        There is a wide gap between not wanting to be responsible for helping the poor and actively wanting the poor to fail. You're confusing the two.
        danaris 2y ago
        You're right about the first part, but I'm not confused about anything. There are genuinely many people who wholeheartedly believe that the poor deserve to be poor, and that helping them is bad. Some of them aren't even that well off themselves, but have bought into an ideology that's detrimental to them. If you haven't encountered these people, then count yourself lucky, but don't try to deny their existence or assume your own experiences are universal.
- danem 2y ago
  The resistance to socialized healthcare in America can be easily understood without resorting to bizarre strawmen about hating poor people. Healthcare is of course a huge part of our economy and lives. Many (most?) people are satisfied with the status quo and are hesitant to see (what they consider to be) a huge increase in government power, spending, and general involvement in their lives. It's the same impulse that motivates people to oppose new housing -- people are loss averse and hate change.
  - stavros 2y ago
    Will it be a huge increase in spending? Isn't it estimated to reduce costs by a lot?
    - antisthenes 2y ago
      Yes, the resistance is because the private sector will lose a lot of (parasitic) jobs. It's a non-starter to attempt to reduce health insurance companies power, because it would gut their employee numbers. It's an unsavory thought, but the US has a significant amount of people employed in the business of denying healthcare to other people, which amounts to hundreds of thousands of jobs. Any politician attempting to fix this would be committing political suicide.
    - rockemsockem 2y ago
      I think they mean it's an increase in government spending, which would of course be true even if overall healthcare overhead spending is reduced.
    - moduspol 2y ago
      We do not have an established history of accurately predicting or managing the costs of overwhelmingly expensive government programs, at least here in the US.
      - marcinzm 2y ago
        The US already runs two government healthcare programs. There are 65 million people in Medicare and 83 million in Medicaid. For less money per patient than private insurance.
wyager 2y ago
This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  People die from inability to afford something as fundamental as healthcare in the US. You are poorer than any European ever could be.
  - wyager 2y ago
    > You are poorer than any European ever could be Are you talking about me, personally, or Americans in general? I suppose it doesn't really matter - you'd be wrong in either case. The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. Most Americans grumble about paying for healthcare, and we are getting ripped off, but it's also very rare for someone to actually die because they can't afford it. Anyone in the top, say, 80% of American society has some form of employer-subsidized insurance.
    - troupo 2y ago
      > some form These words are doing some very heavy lifting.
    - csomar 2y ago
      > The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example. This is due to the garbage GDP numbers. Based on these, the quality of life in the Mississippi is better than in Japan. Not a single chance. The US numbers are highly inflated by the financial sector and real estate. It'll take a financial crisis and dethroning of US dollar to show how truly poor these places are.
      - wyager 2y ago
        There are multiple reasons that Japan is better than Mississippi, but "Japan is actually materially wealthier" is not one of them.

andy_ppp 2y ago

GDPR is really sensible legislation that largely only applies to companies who should be treating your personal data as sensitive data. I built a GDPR complaint system and was really happy about the security we put in place that we definitely wouldn’t have thought to do without these laws. Things like having someone you can ask and request personal data from at big companies is also an extremely well thought through idea. I don’t understand the issues people have with it to be honest…

lupusreal 2y ago
Most people have no problem with the GDPR. It only seems otherwise on this forum and similar echo chambers / bubbles where lots of people made their fortunes with adtech.
- ajford 2y ago
  I love the intention of the law, but it's so... flexible... in implementation that shitty implementers ended up making the browsing experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking. On mobile every page load ends up with me spending the first minute or so on page dealing with the half-screen "don't sell my info" cookie dance, followed with the ad-block pop-ups.
  - troupo 2y ago
    > but it's so... flexible... in implementation It usually isn't the law's job to dictate an implementation. > shitty implementers ended up making the browsing experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking. How is the law that doesn't even talk about browsers or cookies responsible for this?
- flaminHotSpeedo 2y ago
  My only complaint with GDPR is when I have to do boring work in the name of GDPR compliance :) But it's also driven some pretty interesting projects, so I'd probably call it a wash or perhaps a slight positive, even if I were to ignore the major benefits as a consumer

glitchcrab 2y ago

What an utterly ridiculous response. In your eyes, businesses should be able to run roughshod over the consumer? Yes, maybe the laws could have been more polished or have been implemented in a better way, but the underlying idea of protecting the consumer is the important takeaway from these laws.

lawlessone 2y ago
>What an utterly ridiculous response. To be fair to them, i think it was sarcasm.
- glitchcrab 2y ago
  You may well be right, or at least I hope you are anyway.
- cratermoon 2y ago
  Poe's Law applies
- ok_dad 2y ago
  On HN, you can be sure there are several people who literally believe the world would be better without any regulations or laws forcing businesses to do anything. This place is the pinnacle of anarcho-capitalism.
  - permo-w 2y ago
    at least here there's a spectrum of views that largely get by peacefully, and the entire place isn't focused on that conflict, a la twitter. yes there are lot of right-wing headcases entirely taken up by their own bottom-line, and yes the place itself is broadly funded and owned by people who think like, or at the very least, act like anarcho-capitalists, but they only really float to the surface when a post about regulation comes up, and even then, the discussion stays mostly civil. it could be a lot worse
    - shiroiushi 2y ago

atif089 2y ago

Lol, as a European, thank god that people like you don't make our laws here