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For context, you always have to keep in mind why those laws exist. What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been re

by arrrg 14y ago

For context, you always have to keep in mind why those laws exist. What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented? Creating a common market, of course! For a common market to exist it is obviously not enough to open up the borders to people, labor, goods and capital. It is also necessary to have common rules and regulations for the goods and services sold throughout the common market. If that weren't the case, individual countries could easily erect trade barriers between them (through rules that are mutually exclusive, e.g. so that a Spanish manufacturer of wine harvesters can't export her Spanish harvesters to France, at least not without massively changing the production process and in essence opening two manufacturing lines, one for Spain, one for France). So the EU parliament gets this stack of laws on fruits from 27 countries and is told to turn that into one unified law for the whole of the EU. That's basically what's happing. The EU is not so much in the business of making new regulations, it very often just unifies. Now, it's important to stay vigilant throughout this and pay attention and tell the EU when it screws up, but I do not see any kind of systemic issue. I think it all works pretty well for what it is.

jacoblyles 14y ago
I wonder how on earth people got through life before we had the government protecting us from misshapen banananas.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Sigh. I feel like you didn’t quite understand the point I was making. I don’t think ridicule is in any way an appropriate response. On a basic level this is not about regulation. It is, of course, in some way, but only a roundabout one. Regulation in EU countries already exists. National regulators have been regulating stuff here forever. EU regulators very often do not wake up in the morning and think "What laws can I add today?”, they mostly think “How can I best unify those complex and already existing laws into one cohesive whole that makes some sense, taking into account the interests of all 27 member nations?” Now, that’s a hard problem to solve, but it is very often not driven by any sort of desire to create more regulation. In fact, if you are a company operating EU-wide (or just a number of EU countries) the complexity of laws you have to adhere to may even go down with a unified EU law, even though the EU law may be more complex than any single law in any single EU member country. It’s a messy process and it’s far from optimal, but I think it’s pretty much an EU wide consensus that the goal of the EU is not to abolish regulation in any kind of grande way. So unifying it is. (It is, of course, also through that through now more and more unified laws the decision process on regulation now moved to the EU level. Where laws are already unified, decisions about future regulation are made on the EU level.)
  - jacoblyles 14y ago
    This thread reminds me never to open a business in Europe.
    - igravious 14y ago
      I ain't a nationalist, but I am a regionalist :) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ee.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... (EU pop. is .5 billion btw and a rounding error off global #1 in GDP terms) We'll survive without your business methinks.
      - jacoblyles 14y ago
        Old Europe strikes me as a place that is great for oligarchs with political connections and lots of capital for regulatory compliance costs, but bad for low-capital scrappy startups. I guess that's why most people in Europe get a job working 40 hours a week for The Man where they can't be fired and take lots of vacation.
        igravious 14y ago
        You can't keep making blanket statements about so diverse a region without eventually offending someone or making yourself look foolish.
EliRivers 14y ago
"What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented?" I thought it was an attempt to stop Europe engaging in endless major land wars.
- seabee 14y ago
  It was, but since then the means has become the end.
- arrrg 14y ago
  Well, yeah, but those two things are connected. For Europe to not even want to have any war among themselves, for Europe to find the idea of war among themselves to be completely ridiculous and idiotic, it is necessary for Europe to be meaningfully interconnected and interdependent. Treaties have again and again shown to be not up to that task. Bilateral or multilateral treaties of the olden times are mostly political in nature, and anything that is just that can also be reversed through a mere political process. That interconnection and interdependence has to be created on a deeper and actually meaningful level. The economy is really the obvious choice here, since no political process can even attempt to reverse interdependence of that kind easily. Plus, it’s sort of obvious. Just as the industrial revolution was hindered by the many tiny kingdoms in what is now Germany (and the huge amount of borders you had to cross and tolls you had to pay if you wanted to ship a product from anywhere in what is now Germany to anywhere else in what is now Germany) – that is, until Germany was unified in 1871 – the many borders in Europe could have hindered Europe globally more had that process towards a common market not existed. It’s the same thing, really, only that I don’t think political integration (beyond creating a common market) has much of a future.

by arrrg 14y ago

jacoblyles 14y ago

I wonder how on earth people got through life before we had the government protecting us from misshapen banananas.

arrrg 14y ago
Sigh. I feel like you didn’t quite understand the point I was making. I don’t think ridicule is in any way an appropriate response. On a basic level this is not about regulation. It is, of course, in some way, but only a roundabout one. Regulation in EU countries already exists. National regulators have been regulating stuff here forever. EU regulators very often do not wake up in the morning and think "What laws can I add today?”, they mostly think “How can I best unify those complex and already existing laws into one cohesive whole that makes some sense, taking into account the interests of all 27 member nations?” Now, that’s a hard problem to solve, but it is very often not driven by any sort of desire to create more regulation. In fact, if you are a company operating EU-wide (or just a number of EU countries) the complexity of laws you have to adhere to may even go down with a unified EU law, even though the EU law may be more complex than any single law in any single EU member country. It’s a messy process and it’s far from optimal, but I think it’s pretty much an EU wide consensus that the goal of the EU is not to abolish regulation in any kind of grande way. So unifying it is. (It is, of course, also through that through now more and more unified laws the decision process on regulation now moved to the EU level. Where laws are already unified, decisions about future regulation are made on the EU level.)
- jacoblyles 14y ago
  This thread reminds me never to open a business in Europe.
  - igravious 14y ago
    I ain't a nationalist, but I am a regionalist :) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ee.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... (EU pop. is .5 billion btw and a rounding error off global #1 in GDP terms) We'll survive without your business methinks.
    - jacoblyles 14y ago
      Old Europe strikes me as a place that is great for oligarchs with political connections and lots of capital for regulatory compliance costs, but bad for low-capital scrappy startups. I guess that's why most people in Europe get a job working 40 hours a week for The Man where they can't be fired and take lots of vacation.
      - igravious 14y ago
        You can't keep making blanket statements about so diverse a region without eventually offending someone or making yourself look foolish.

EliRivers 14y ago

"What is the goal that is towering above all else for the EU? The one it has actually been relatively successfully implemented?" I thought it was an attempt to stop Europe engaging in endless major land wars.

seabee 14y ago
It was, but since then the means has become the end.
arrrg 14y ago
Well, yeah, but those two things are connected. For Europe to not even want to have any war among themselves, for Europe to find the idea of war among themselves to be completely ridiculous and idiotic, it is necessary for Europe to be meaningfully interconnected and interdependent. Treaties have again and again shown to be not up to that task. Bilateral or multilateral treaties of the olden times are mostly political in nature, and anything that is just that can also be reversed through a mere political process. That interconnection and interdependence has to be created on a deeper and actually meaningful level. The economy is really the obvious choice here, since no political process can even attempt to reverse interdependence of that kind easily. Plus, it’s sort of obvious. Just as the industrial revolution was hindered by the many tiny kingdoms in what is now Germany (and the huge amount of borders you had to cross and tolls you had to pay if you wanted to ship a product from anywhere in what is now Germany to anywhere else in what is now Germany) – that is, until Germany was unified in 1871 – the many borders in Europe could have hindered Europe globally more had that process towards a common market not existed. It’s the same thing, really, only that I don’t think political integration (beyond creating a common market) has much of a future.