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This feels like the US is going to take a page from Europes book and regulate itself into uncompetitiveness

• close04 3mo ago
  Except without any of the benefits of regulation to its citizens.
  • testfrequency 3mo ago
    Exactly. Europe regulates to protect humanity. USA regulates to protect monopolies and political power
    • smallmancontrov 3mo ago
      Yep. Growing up, I always defaulted to the "enlightened centrist" perspective that antitrust law and IP law and trade law were failing to help the median person simply due to the difficulty of the problem, that insofar as our regulation was inadequate it was inadequate because it had to balance multiple crossed incentives and stay ahead of world class sprinters who had a systemic resource advantage because the economy will always be larger than the regulators. But the more I learn about the history of these subjects the more I realize that the levers were understood, they did work, and that the present outcomes were entirely intentional. Reagan and the Chicago school intentionally shifted antitrust and IP law into monopoly mode (Bork and Bowman+Posner). The Consumer Welfare Standard is an obvious fig-leaf over Robber Baron talking points as defeated earlier by Brandeis, the Nine No-Nos (lol) indicate that the failure modes of modern IP policy weren't just understood but contained, and then containment was turned off. Trade is a messier story but Triffin articulated the distributional problems in the 60s so nobody gets to claim ignorance. The bad news is that there is more corruption that I thought, but the good news is that the problems are more solvable than I thought.
• embedding-shape 3mo ago
  The point of regulation in Europe is usually to protect people. Regulation in the US seems to be done with the purpose of protection companies. I'm not 100% sure, but this feels non-ideal for most people.
  • Sharlin 3mo ago
    To take the point further, the US still protects people. It's just that the people tend to exclusively inhabit the top 0.1% or 0.01% quantiles.
    • WarmWash 3mo ago
      More like the top ~35%, but it's taboo to talk about that.
      • aeve890 3mo ago
        What do you mean ~35% ?
        • WarmWash 3mo ago
          I mean if you cut out the bottom 65% and the top 1% (but perhaps even top 5%) of americans, you are left with a group of generally affluent people who are the actual backbone of the US economy. These people work white collar career jobs, own houses, own stocks, have retirement on track, college debt paid off or soon to be, good health insurance, go on vacations, drive new(ish) cars, let their instagram impulse buying get a bit out of control sometimes, maybe they work from home or are hybrid, and they mostly all go out and vote. These people are the antithesis of "America is a Shithole", and they know it, so they keep their head down and point at the top 1% like everyone else. It's virtuous and pure to do so (and of course keeps the heat off them, the wealthiest contingent). If you isolate this group and compare them globally, it spells out why for decades so many white collar workers wanted to be in the US rather than Europe or the East.
          • embedding-shape 3mo ago
            > If you isolate this group and compare them globally, it spells out why for decades so many white collar workers wanted to be in the US rather than Europe or the East. Given it sounds like you've already done this, care to share the results you got? When I meet peers from the US, it still seems like things are more rough there, regardless of class, compared to in other countries, but this is of course based on my personal experience, would love to see concrete data about it.
• watwut 3mo ago
  The winning monopolies and CEOs seem to be intent into turning into some kind of techno fascists feudalism with the most corrupt government on earth, uncontrollable start the war machine and increasingly less and generally destroying democracy. So, I am not sure it is such a win. These guys seem to be winning.
• Fricken 3mo ago
  Europe wins by knowing better than to play those games.