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The thing about Europe: it's the actual land of the free now

(www.economist.com)
160 points cruzcampo | 1 comments | 11 Apr 25 08:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.219s | source
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palata ◴[11 Apr 25 08:15 UTC] No.43651526[source]▶
> There are few unicorns in Europe, alas, and too little innovation.

There is most definitely innovation in Europe. It just gets bought by the US, who is quick to forget where the technology came from.

As for unicorns and trillion dollars companies... some may say it's a feature, not a bug. It's great to claim to have free speech and competition, but when a few people own a few big monopolies and control the media, is it real? Regulations are not bad.

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mentalgear ◴[11 Apr 25 08:37 UTC] No.43651631[source]▶
Exactly, regulation benefits the consumers by allowing for a competitive playing field on innovation, cost and labour.

Deregulate the market and you get the oligopoly US of today (not the "great" version of the 1950s that had regulation which distributed the wealth much more equally).

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1. amy214 ◴[12 Apr 25 21:25 UTC] No.43668068[source]▶
Regulations are complicated and a double edge sword, they inevitably introduce inefficiency and barriers, so the payoff needs to be greater. For example, regulations about mandating companies to delete your data - wonderful. A great win for California which is otherwise quite an overregulated states. On the flip side, in the UK, you may need a license for that television, or a license for that knife. That's the political thing with regulations. If a politician says "regulations sucks" most would tend to agree as far as that TV license, or getting a permit for a particular fence.

Some regulations spit in the face of logic. It's as if the legislators said, "let's make being sick illegal! Checkmate, modern medicine, now everyone is healthy!" Such style of thinking is erosive of trust towards the political establishment and government.