Ask HN: What is so different between EU and US govt? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is so different between EU and US govt?

I only have my own experience and understanding of the world to go by as evidence for this presumption, but I'll ask the question anyways:

What is so different about EU vs US that the EU govt tends to lean toward protecting its citizens and US govt tends to lean toward protecting its corporations?

EDIT: I'm mostly looking at this not to define the types of government in each region. I'm more looking at this from the human nature perspective. Why is one group of people more interested in protecting citizens and the other more interested in protecting corporations?

Obviously neither government is exactly the same now as it was when it was started. How did one group of people evolve their government to be more interested in protecting people, and the other evolved to be more interested in protecting corporations?

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The US has a president, most EU countries don't have most of the power concentrated in one person! as a side effect, US presidency is winner take all, that forces 2 party system. parliamentary systems don't have that side effect.

Add money contribution system of US to the mix and voila you are going to get the same system no matter where on earth it is located!

The United States is a representative republic (e.g. voters get to choose whoever represents them in the House and Senate, their local governments and their President) while the EU as it is today can be best described as a Oligarchy.

Let me explain.

Citizens in the EU can only vote for the European Parlement (EP) which takes place every five years. However, the European Parlement only exists to make it look like citizens have any influence in European politics which is not the case.

The true power of European politics lies within the European Commission (EC) which is NOT elected by the people but are politicians within the EU chosen by politicians within the EU. The EC doubles as both the executive and legislative branch of the EU.

However, Citizens within the EU have no influence on execution or legislation by the EC whatsoever (they would like to pretend that the people do have this influence, because the pretence of "democracy").

Many HN members residing in the US are currently quite angry that they have Donald Trump as their president. But actually they have to be glad, because in about four years his first term has ended and you, as citizens of the US, at least have the ability to choose a better president (if the majority agrees, ofcourse). In Europe, unless European law and government will be seriously reformed, we will never have that opportunity. We are stuck with a unchosen and thus undemocratic legislative and executive branch who have total control over the democratically chosen local leaders and governments.

Still think the EU is so awesome? I hope you will reconsider.

PS: Source being me, I live in the EU and know pretty much all you would ever need to know about local and European politics around these parts.

I don't think that such a clear-cut distinction based on motivation or general intent can be made. There are political factions in the US whose goals are quite similar to those of more left-leaning factions in the EU.

In general, you could probably say that the EU is more left-leaning than the US because two of its major powers - France and Germany - tend to be more left-leaning as well as Scandinavian countries, which from a US perspective are sometimes considered almost socialist (though that's not exactly true).

While more left-leaning factions in general seem to favour the rights of the average citizen over those of corporations this isn't unanimously good or a clear distinction either. In some ways, the EU is a good example of the road to hell that's paved with good intentions. Its regulations often are so complex that - intentionally or not - they favour big corporations because they're too difficult to implement for smaller companies. Being an entrepreneur for instance is - very broadly speaking - more difficult and unusual than in the US, simply because employment in a big corporation pretty much is the assumed default model in the EU. Anything that deviates from that is more difficult to accommodate in the existing legal framework.

The United States is generally considered to be a free-market hegemony (and has been at the helm of the pecking order since the early 1900s), and the system was set-up (at least when it was originally conceived) in a manner so as to cause minimal Big Government interference in day-to-day affairs of the people and the states of the Union. Freedom is something folks in the United States take very seriously, and this includes freedom to trade and open-up businesses freely, with minimal regulation and taxation -- heck the American Revolution itself was triggered because of tiff over taxation, extending more broadly to tyranny. [0]

Now, contemporary EU on the other hand has a vastly different and divergent history from that of the U.S. and Europeans, generally speaking, aren't as skeptical of their government as Americans are. Also, EU leans more to the left (generally speaking) relative to the United States, most "right-wing" parties in the EU would be considered to be slightly left-of-center if they were based in the U.S. [1]

Now, with that out of the way, to address your question -- both places have vastly different history and the divergent histories has given birth to vastly different cultures, helped by the fact that they're separated by the second-biggest body of water on the planet, making it even harder for inter-culture interaction. Right-leaning countries, like the U.S. for example, generally advocate for more free trade, less regulation and less taxation which is directly antithetical to the core principles of left-leaning countries, like the EU-bloc for example. [2]

[0] http://www.tep-online.info/laku/usa/rights.htm [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_s... [2] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/19/5-ways-ameri...

Thank you for the feedback. Interesting info. I definitely think my question was not as precise as I was looking for.

I definitely get the "right leaning" vs "left leaning" dichotomy. I'm wondering more about the human nature element. What's so different about people in EU vs US that one would find more value in protecting citizens and the other would find more value in protecting corporations?

Generally speaking, Americans tend to prioritize individual liberty, while Europeans tend to value the role of the state to ensure no one in society is in need, and thus individual liberty by extension extends over to the property the individual owns, like businesses and corporations, for example.

Europeans on the other hand are more 'collectivist' RELATIVE to the United States, which I assert might be due to the bad hangover from earlier empires; U.S. has been a pretty stable Democratic Republic for close to 250 years now.

Do the individual liberties in US exist as approximately "freedom from government" or also "freedom from fellow citizens"? Same for EU - does EU "collectivism" work to ensure citizens are well in all aspects, freedom included?

I find it's more about fundamental individual freedoms in the US vs statistical best outcomes in the EU.

If removing the right to self defence makes Europeans statistically 10% safer then it's a good move and damn the people who are left defenceless.

Likewise in the US it's thought to be better to have the right to defend yourself even if that makes society overall a bit more dangerous.

Maybe it's the wrong thing to get from this, but I'm imagining that in this scenario, in the US, one man's property is in most cases more valuable than another man's existence?

This is literally expressed in some state laws, search "Castle Doctrine". Stand your ground laws are also somewhat related.

And self-defense law in Germany has is much more robust than all those castle doctrine laws.

Here, proportionality of response explicitly doesn‘t come into the balancing test, only erforderlich (necessary), geeignet (useful) and least forceful method that leads to guaranteed success.

What do you mean by robust?

Most US laws related to Castle doctrine pretty much allow the use of maximum force for forced entry. No evaluation of whether lethal force was necessary, no evaluation of whether less force would have sufficed.

The US has negative rights rather than positive ones. Society can’t just come after your property or your existence. Society is also not required to provide you with property or existence.

Americans work for corporations, buy products from corporations, and hope to retire on the growth of the corporations they own in their investment accounts. Most Americans are also their own landlords. As such, policies detrimental to business and capital may be worthwhile but are never free. It’s not like business activity is some optional thing that we can afford to do without if it’s not 100% perfect.

> What's so different about people in EU vs US that one would find more value in protecting citizens and the other would find more value in protecting corporations?

That is a misleading and one dimensional way to highlight the difference between the two groups.

American capitalism has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Would it be fair to ask why does the US care about the poor and needy while the EU only cares about itself?

And even the freedom to capture your regulator.

It's kind of funny to say that free trade is antithetical to the EU when economic integration and lowering barriers to trade were among the primary motivations for it (it was preceded by various economic agreements).

It just depends on at what point you are in the economic game.

If you've your bucket of wealth full. You'll against the free market, which can transfer your wealth to other nations.

If you are a poor nation, you are more likely to try your luck after all what you can lose when you've nearly nothing.

Or if you are confident in your companies' methods of extracting wealth from other nation, then you are more likely to favor free trade.

Europe after imperialism was a bucket full of wealth and just wanted to shut off the door to prevent wealth from escaping.

Today, Europe's population is aging fast, plus they do not allow immigration. They just can't compete today!

Europe is in wealth preservation mode and American companies like Apple, Facebook, Google are superior at "value extraction".

Europe no longer wants to play this game and signals by enacting unreasbly difficult to comply with laws like GDPR.

EU has quite some immigrants coming in from outside the union. I certainly wouldn't characterize it as 'do not allow immigration'.

There's even reactionary right wing movements claiming that immigrants are going to make everything go to hell.

You seem to have settled on economics as a zero sum game. Trade ministers in most countries haven't.

>You'll against the free market, which can transfer your wealth to other nations.

That's not how trade works. It's beneficial to both parties.

In an efficient free market sure.

But not in practice. The biggest proponent of free trade, the US had been protectionist and only lifted trade barriers when its local industries got strong enough to compete globally.

I think it goes like that:

-US government is a capitalist one semi-controlled by corporations (corporations control the funds, but the public is the one to vote - thanks to a duopoly, the latter have limited options and the former decides which one to support).

-EU "government" is a social one semi-controlled by social organizations (basically a lobbying body, mostly socialist that can create a short-term momentum to push their agendas. The main power that matter is Germany, but there is a possibility for a coalition of a mixed majority of other top 6 countries to outweigh their decisions both vote-wise and politically).

If you want to truly understand the difference. You'll have to travel far back in history.

America did not exist yet and Europe was a poor place. India and China were rich and had a huge trade surplus, they were getting richer and Europe was getting poorer. And they were not interested in invading other countries.

Europeans invaded and robbed India and Africa from where they got most of their wealth.

This wealth helped Europe industrialize.

During this time someone looking to travel to India accidentally discovered America.

I'll leave rest on you to research.

Fast forward today, American companies (facebook, google) have succeeded in extracting huge value from the European continent. Partly due to their economic policies and immigration of talented labor from other countries.

Europeans do not welcome immigration, considering the fact they are the nations who've robbed developing nations.

And Europeans do not like it because they've rapidly aging population, they are not in a position to compete with America and rising nations (India/China etc...)

Europe is now in wealth preservation mode. They want to stop wealth from leaving their shores.

As Europeans come together to protect the wealth and they've somehow made a case for the welfare state.

Today, Europeans ride their moral high horse and advocate for high standards, but why should anyone give them any creditability when their roots are imperialism / plundering poor nations.

GDPR is yet another unreasonable and difficult to comply with policy coming out of Europe. It's their wealth preservation plan.

As a European, it might hurt your feelings but you should blame it on your ancestors.

Europeans have never been apologetic towards the nations they've robbed during Imperiasic Era.

Until they correct their mistake. Only nation who we should trust the ones who have never robbed other nations.

I would love to know how Europeans can defend their actions of past.

Quite funny: you're more describing the US than Europe. Maybe because you're only interested by US and not by Europe..? ;-)

No, I am describing Europe only.

Europe got its most of the pre-industrial era wealth from plundering nations of South Asia and Africa.

Winners write history, but still, it's damn too hard to make elephant in the room disappear.

> Europe got its most of the pre-industrial era wealth from plundering nations of South Asia and Africa.

Do you have some data to back it up? Because there are some quite prominent examples that seem to contradict this claim. Take Poland, which was one of the major powers of the pre-industrial Europe (around XV-XVII centuries), and which never ventured outside Europe.

If Poland did perfect industrial processes where did it got the natural resources from if not from rest of Europe which were brought into Europe through imperialism? Becoming an Industrial power is not possible without importing resources.

>> Take Poland, which was one of the major powers of the pre-industrial Europe (around XV-XVII centuries), and which never ventured outside Europe.

It seems to support my claim perfectly. Poland was only able to become a major power because it did not have an excess of those resources, partly because it did not venture outside Europe. It had no option but to polish its industrial strength in order to compete with rest of Europe.

There was literally no incentive for other European countries of that time to become a major industrial power, they were awash with wealth and resources.

Poland was a major player in the pre-industrial era (the period that you referred to in your original comment, I am not saying anything about the industrialization period). It accomplished it without any ventures to Asia or Africa. Your original claim still looks invalid to me.

Polish per capita GDP that the county already lagged behind Western Europe in economic development at the end of the Middle Ages

Polish living standards in the sixteenth century were below those of Italy and The Netherlands but on par with those of England. The author demonstrated that the Polish series began to also lag behind the English values in the seventeenth century due to growth in the latter series. According to a study of GDP made by Wójtowicz and Wójtowicz (2009), people living in Poland enjoyed only around 70 % of the goods and services available to the inhabitants of Western Europe in the sixteenth century. This value declined to around 40 % in the late eighteenth century

source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11698-016-0154-5

Interesting. Do you have data on the various Germanic states from that period? As far as I know, they've only joined the colonization/exploitation game in the late XIX century, and yet I think they did ok before that?

> Today, Europeans ride their moral high horse and advocate for high standards, but why should anyone give them any creditability when their roots are imperialism / plundering poor nations.

How is it different from Asian imperialism? (Genghis Khan, Imperial Japan, Soviet Union).

We must judge nations by todays standards, not by that of centuries ago.

Genghis Khan (1206-1368)

Imperial Japan - 14th century

The Soviet Union - They mostly annexed poor territories. I am not sure, how much wealth they extracted but 2 bads don't make 1 good.

In comparison, European Imperialism started at 1400 ended just 70-years ago.

Till then the world had a global currency, industrialization had started. Heck, we even had structures representing modern companies, banks, and the stock market.

So, yea something which ended roughly 70 years ago is too old on nation timescale?

According to your argument, is it ok to rob your grandfather, so that your father and you are born in near poverty and judge you by your success today?

No one can deny, Europe has robbed other nations of their prosperity.

> In comparison, European Imperialism started at 1400 ended just 70-years ago.

As did Asian imperialism. Look at Japan just about 70-years ago.

> No one can deny, Europe has robbed other nations of their prosperity.

No one can deny, Asians and Arabs robbed other nations of their prosperity.

>> As did Asian imperialism. Look at Japan just about 70-years ago.

2 wrongs don't make 1 right.

>> No one can deny, Asians and Arabs robbed other nations of their prosperity.

Scale vastly differs. You should be checking how much Europe extracted out of Asia/Africa before bringing Japan into the discussion.

I bet most Europeans are not taught about Europeans atrocities committed in Africa/Asia at school. That's why you are not able to even perceive scale of exploitation correctly. Europeans killed 4 million people deliberately engineering famine in South Asia. Pretty, sure they've removed these things out of their textbooks but feel free to do your own research. These things are less than 100 years old.

Yes, Japan/Europe are both rich today so are those Arab nations too.

What about the countries who they robbed?

Not a European but learned about this in American public school.

Also learned about the 35 million Chinese people the Chinese government killed via famine in a couple year period.

The west has no monopoly on causing suffering.

Chinese dying in China because of China's policy is their national problem but European powers going to some other country and meddling with their administration causing famine and benefiting economically is a different issue. This is an apple to orange comparison, I am afraid.

We'll have to disagree then. The Chinese government was not representative, it was won by conquest (at brutal cost to the ethnic populations of the territories conquered).

That they now claim national sovereign status seems immaterial. Thats like saying that it was ok for the Delhi Indians to slaughter the Mewat because they are now the same nation. They weren't then.

Haha, you had to put GDPR in this, didn't you?

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