Seems good that people would discuss and make value judgements on said policy. Europeans seem to have no trouble loudly voicing their opinion on American law, and I don't see Americans getting thin skin about it.
Why should we operate under the assumption any policy implemented by any politician (German or otherwise) is inherently good by default? Specifically in the case of Germany, we have many recent and historical examples of not great ideas being implemented...
Might be good to be willing to question these things instead of retorting "THE LAW IS THE LAW" and bowing to the overlords with the rubber stamps, no?
People here aren't criticizing the policy, but the very idea that Germany is allowed to make said policy. Americans in this thread are absolutely getting thin skin about the idea that a US company has to follow German laws.
This sentiment been around for seemingly forever. I can still remember Americans arguing against AirBnb and Uber being banned for not following laws around the country, and somehow being surprised that they got fines for it.
Thinking a law is dumb is not the same thing as “being surprised that there are laws.”
The whole point of the Uber and Airbnb strategy was to force each market to re-evaluate whether long-standing laws (protecting special interests like the taxi lobby) were actually desirable by bringing legal challenges to them in each market after already winning the support of the people.
They were largely successful at this. Most markets democratically voted to change previous laws.
I know for people on the spectrum the idea of rules brings lots of comfort, but you do realize the whole point of a democracy is that rules can be debated and changed?
> Why should we operate under the assumption any policy implemented by any politician (German or otherwise) is inherently good by default?
That's not loudly voicing an opinion. Nobody said you should "operate under the assumption". If you have a criticism to make, make it.
> Specifically in the case of Germany, we have many recent and historical examples of not great ideas being implemented...
And we have many recent and historical examples of Germany taking human rights more seriously after WW2 than people who haven't had their whole continent ravaged by war in living memory can even fathom. That you talk of "overlords with rubber stamps" to project the ambition for private corporations to have ZERO accountability just shows me that that you live on a wholly other planet than Germans do, and that you're playing to an American audience. These laws aren't there to please non-German companies, they are here to protect Germans.
> Europeans seem to have no trouble loudly voicing their opinion on American law, and I don't see Americans getting thin skin about it.
That's not my experience. Try arguing in favor of European hate speech laws, healthcare, consumer protection regulations, rent control, social democracy or anything else at odds with libertarianism and you'll get heavily downvoted both here and on US-centric subreddits.
If there is one thing very common among Americans, it is the belief of "American exceptionalism" despite more than enough evidence that whatever Americans are doing is just outright Not Working At F...ing All.
Sure, plenty of Americans will downvote your bad ideas on HN, but you won’t generally find them discussing how bad they think xyz thing in Europe on a weekly basis. If they mention Europe at all, it will probably be in the context of a vacation someone took or is planning.
The thing is most Americans just don’t think much about Europe at all. Outside of the UK, I saw far more films from Hong Kong or Japan in normal movie theaters while growing up than all of Europe combined. It might be different for someone on the east coast but for most Americans, the EU just doesn’t have much impact culturally or in business either.
> The thing is most Americans just don’t think much about Europe at all.
Well they don't even know what's out there. 40% of Americans never left the US, 11% never even the state they were born in [1]. And even if you travel to another state, culturally it will be pretty similar to where you came from - same language, same TV/radio stations, same car dependence, same politics.
In contrast, in Europe... pretty much anywhere outside of Russia only needs about two to three hours worth of car drive and you're in a country where you don't know anything, in the Balkans you won't even be able to read because Serbs write in Cyrillic, and on the eastern border you can even play warzone tourist if you don't mind the risk of getting arrested or shot (or you can sign up for a combat tour with the Foreign Legion). Every one of our countries does stuff differently and you have so many opportunities of learning, it is mind blowing sometimes.
And yet, as a kid, I was able to go to Sakura Square in Denver on weekends and see several blocks where everything was Japanese, including a mini mall, a grocery store, book stores, music stores, etc. It's been there for generations and even has plaques written back when Japanese used katakana instead of hiragana to conjugate verbs. Another area in the suburbs was mostly Cantonese for a few blocks. Somewhere around 10-15% of my classmates spoke Spanish at home. And Denver is over a thousand miles from either border and only had a population of one and a half million at the time!
America is a huge country, but don't underestimate its cultural or linguistic diversity. It's had large immigrant populations from far flung places around the world for a very long time, whereas most of Europe has only become like this in the past generation or two.
In any case, your comment is missing the point. However little you believe Americans understand about the world, we get more media, cultural influence and business influence from places outside of Europe. Half the cartoons I grew up watching were from Japan, my family had Japanese cars and video games, popular business books talked about Japan and a lot of people saw it as almost a futuristic place. Hong Kong exported quite a bit of its culture through movies in the 90s and early 2000, and in recent years, Korea has become a major cultural force as well, while China has become the the key market to understand in terms of business opportunities.
In the past the US government stepped in multiple times to protect the interests of big tech against European legislation.
I guess people became used to assuming non American laws would not matter and I cannot blame them, it really looked like that.
The interesting point about trump is, that he is burning lots of “threat potential”: If I announce tariffs and withdrawal of military cooperation anyways I run out of threats at some point.
I have yet to see anyone argue that twitter has a right to operate in Germany in defiance of German laws. I have seen people in other threads argue that, rather than comply with Chinese laws, american companies should cease to to business in China.
Britannica
> sovereignty, in political theory, the ultimate overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order.
Merriam-Webster
> a: supreme power especially over a body politic
> b: freedom from external control : autonomy
> c: controlling influence
Wikipedia
> Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority.[1][2][3] Sovereignty entails hierarchy within a state as well as external autonomy for states.[4] In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people and to change existing laws.
None of these match Germany. Maybe you have your own one that does, and I'm fine with that.
EU law isn't above national law. Yes as a member each country has to implement EU laws if they want to be a member, but they're also free to just leave.
That's like saying you're not free after you've entered a shopping mall and have to obey their house rules.
