My perception and view of the US and it's culture also slightly shifted after GDPR came into spotlight (same conclusions as yours).
Just the other day I ended up in a discussion with a US citizen (it started completely harmless and away from culture/politics) and ended up in the same corner: "EU is bad because it limits your freedom, US is great because it gives you freedom".
The problem is - the argument (my understanding of the interlocutor) was about companies, and what they can do.
In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.
In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.
I think it’s more about two different definitions of freedom. The U.S. defines it as the freedom to choose, where harmful outcomes are an accident of letting people freely choose. The E.U. sees it more as the freedom to live, where choices that harm quality of life need to be restrained.
I'm going to guess you're not from Europe based on that definition?
The EU constrains companies to the benefit of individuals. It's not stopping people from hurting themselves, it's stopping them from being hurt by companies who have phenomenal power over us, more power in some ways than states themselves have.
There are over 30,000 [1] paid lobbyists in Brussels, and you think "the EU constrains companies to the benefit of individuals". And these latest outrageous copyright and link proposals are widely regarded to be for the benefit of certain German media magnates.
Whatever criticism the EU attracts for its spending, the PR budget looks to be pretty good value. I'm really baffled by some of these perspectives.
The EU actually has extensive law about lobbying.[1] It actually tries to be transparant in regards to how lobbying happens and what kind of lobbying happens.
Also, your 30K figure also includes lobbyists from civil rights groups and other NGO's. Not just purely companies.
Lobbying happens, it is how people influence politics. Better to be transparant and open about it them to hide it.
Well take the Working Time Directive as an example; relative to my own government in the UK, the EU certainly appear to do more for the demos (with the possible exception of the current copyright directive; which I've not read the draft legislation on yet).
The freedom to conduct business is one of the core freedoms that Americans value. When Americans talk about freedom, they are including the freedom to form a business and create whatever business arrangements you want.
To American values, restrictions on how you do business are as infringing as restrictions on individual rights.
Along that same line of thinking, I think another historical American value/attitude is that a business is a person. More precisely, businesses only exist because individual people decide to take risks with their lives in the pursuit of whatever values they hold. Since they hold the risk privately, they get to hold the rewards privately.
That many people who take such risks value financial profit may be a concern to some, but is a non-concern to society as long as the marketplace is free of coercion.
Yep, one of our fundamental rights is the 'freedom of association', which the Supreme Court has ruled is protected by the first amendment. You are free to join together with others to pursue any lawful interest, and that includes commercial interests.
Never heard of this one, and didn't know anything about it. I tried reading the Wikipedia page. Now I've heard of it, but still don't know anything about it.
I find that article uncompelling. Cory Doctorow makes some pretty bold statements that appear to be at odds with the directive as I read it. Some of it feels like wilful misinterpretation.
I agree with those points and I'd like to add that both approaches (US and EU) have their drawbacks (and advantages).
In limiting businesses more in the EU I found out that it generally means less competition and fewer companies (per capita) than the US, in my limited experience of having lived in the EU most of my life before moving to the US and still visiting Europe every year. One of the most common shocks of moving to the US from Europe is the sheer number of options/choices that you have/can make for every little thing. Back in Europe there was 1-2 supermarket chains, here there are much more. Same for food (fast or otherwise), insurance agencies, banks/credit unions, broker services, pension funds plus countless small stores (not national chains). In most interactions I have in the US I really do feel that "the customer is always right" (there are lots of exceptions to that rule but you will generally see those exceptions also happen because of lack of competition) while in Europe most of the interactions I had as a customer meant I would have to either beg for something or get angry about it/make a scene in order to make progress on an issue.
There are also deeper cultural differences in criteria customers use to pick one company or the other. In the US people seem more willing to vote with their wallets and do not look back while I feel much less of that happening in Europe.
It's hard of course to generalize across such large and varied populations and economies but this has been my experience and it does align with logical explanations of consequences of limiting businesses more or less in a free market environment.
> In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.
The sentence reads funny as if people/individuals don't own companies. A better way to put it would be that they value some kinds of people over other kinds of people. Or users over entrepreneurs, or something besides just the ambiguous "people".
Just the other day I ended up in a discussion with a US citizen (it started completely harmless and away from culture/politics) and ended up in the same corner: "EU is bad because it limits your freedom, US is great because it gives you freedom". The problem is - the argument (my understanding of the interlocutor) was about companies, and what they can do.
In my view, in Europe there is a bigger pressure to value people/individuals over company/corporate interest and that's seems like the crux of the difference.