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Comment by orwin | Hacker News Reader

Not really, he said in substance: "America do this, EU will not". Using this example to somehow gain a moral high ground.

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The intended effect was to provide some context and to take away a worry. I can see why Americans would be worried because there are many examples of where America has 'exported' its laws all over the globe. The EU is emphatically not doing this, they simply require that if you do business in Europe that you have a European presence so they can enforce their local laws against you.

That "European presence" requirement is, by itself, an attempt to force their laws on the world, and if it's going to have teeth, will require other countries to bow to pressure to enforce it even though they had no input.

If Jamaica passed a law fining any company that hired homosexuals, we'd consider it bullshit even if they tried to abstract it a level up by only passing it as a local law, and then passing another law saying companies that serve Jamaicans have to have local representatives. I'm not sure why you think this is any less bullshitty a tactic, other than the fact that the law they're trying to push seems more reasonable (which I agree with).

So you're saying F. local laws that get in the way of international commerce? You could stop doing business with Jamaica, and hence put pressure on it's elected bodies.

If you don't like foreign markets, don't enter them.

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