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@ kravietz 🦇
2025-02-12 10:48:58
As JD Vance delivered his speech about “European overregulation” and criticized “endless compliance costs imposed on the US companies by GDPR” I have seen some voices from Europe who said something to the effect “I don‘t know a single EU company happy about #GDPR either”.
Well, it’s kind of obvious companies aren’t happy because GDPR was not made to make companies happy but to protect the privacy of consumers 😄
This regulation is based on fundamental differences between US and EU legal systems. In EU, you own and control your personal data. In US it’s owned by whoever managed to extort it from you, and then aggregate, personalise and resell to any other entity anywhere.
For example, if you want to pay higher insurance premium because you have genetic tendencies to diabetes or obesity - well, that’s the US way of doing business, but it’s not the only one, nor it’s somehow axiomatically “better”. And yes, high insurance premiums also have the effect of increasing overall country’s GDP, just as a house burnt and rebuilt also does this magic, yet somehow few people celebrate it 😉
Then someone asked me if I really “feel that my data is better protected thanks to GDPR”. And yes, as a matter of fact the most invasive behavioural profiling aren’t being rolled out by companies like Twitter or Facebook to EU specifically because of GDPR, while in US they just roll them out without asking anyone.
Anyone… of course except for the states which have regulations very similar or even more restrictive than GDPR, such as California. Yet, because California is “their”, these companies and their CEOs with high media presence simply shut up and make their apps compliant with CCPA without all this barking about “how GDPR kills out business”.
It’s the same with EU VAT, about which Vance also whined, whereas US sales tax accounting rules are not even harmonized across states. But hey, you know what? An US business that has to emply a tax consulting company to get multi-state accounting right also increases overall GDP! 😄
So effectively what in US is perceived as each state’s fundamental right, sign of their diversity and key part of their autonomy, in the EU is portrayed as something equivalent to Soviet Union style central planning. And when they post all the memes about “bottle caps” in EU, they of course never mention a gazillion of state-level archaic or absurd regulations which are nonetheless binding, especially if someone likes to build a class lawsuit around them.
And now as Tesla opened a new factory in #China, I’ve never seen Musk make a single critical remark about the overregulation in China, even though it’s even more complex than EU and US taken together due to its vast geographic and administrative diversity.