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Comment by SllX | Hacker News Reader

That’s an interesting point, but I don’t think it’s a matter of trusting one type of organization more than another.

I think we (Americans) don’t trust either without cause, and there’s more corporations than governments so there’s more opportunities to find corporations, actually scratch that, businesses, big or small, that we trust. But by default, I think we trust both about as far as we can throw them and businesses we do trust, maybe only slightly so and in a largely transactional manner. The question is whether we are getting value for the money, not whether the businesses and owners are trustworthy.

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The difference is that in the US we don’t trust the government to the point where even though that’s the one we have more control over, we do not choose to use it against bad corporate behavior for fear that the government will do it wrong. The EU sees that it can effectively regulate corporations so they use their government the way it was intended to.

Governments are self-executing power vehicles. Ascribing intent onto them isn’t particularly useful when a government has a mechanism for rewriting its reason foe existence through law.

That said:

> The EU sees that it can effectively regulate corporations so they use their government the way it was intended to.

What is the basis for your claims on their effectiveness?

I think he used "effective" as in: "they have the power to, they are able to/it fall in their domain", not as in "they did it perfectly without overhead"

I meant it as the EU has imposed regulations on big co and it hasn’t immediately ruined the EU. In the US we have this notion that if we impose even a tiny bit of common sense regulation that it will instantly ruin the economy and the country will fall apart as a result. Take minimum wage for example. Loads of economic research shows that federally mandated minimum of $15/hour would be good for the economy. Yet fully half the voters will scream bloody burger at that idea labeling it as radical. They would rather continue the government supplement the incomes of Walmart workers than having Walmart pay a fair wage because what if this hurts Walmart too much?

I was hoping for some more concrete examples of what the EU has done right, but I’ll address the minimum wage.

> Take minimum wage for example. Loads of economic research shows that federally mandated minimum of $15/hour would be good for the economy.

In what ways has it been shown it would be good for the economy?

How does it address the fact that the minimum wage is actually zero and unemployed is the real minimum wage? How does it help small retail stores that need a minimum number of bodies behind the counter when the store is open in order to stay in business?

I live in a place that did implement $15/hour minimum wage, and ultimately what is been slowly doing is making some businesses unviable. Even before the pandemic forced its closure, one of my favorite shops, one I used to work at in fact when I was younger and I’ve kept in touch since, was slowly going out of business because the owner needed two bodies behind the counter to ensure timely service and his costs were greater than >$30/hour once you factored in mandatory insurance costs and taxes in addition to the usual operational overhead of just being open 16 hours in the first place. What was once a perfectly viable business was already dying just from the extra labor costs alone, with the owner who had been in the business for over 30 years putting in longer hours and making less money just because he wanted to keep his crew employed. He also had to raise prices every single year to keep up with the additional costs. He kept it going, but by the end he was putting in more money than he was taking out, and the pandemic forced its closure when his insurance company wouldn’t pay out for the spoiled product.

The new owner changed business models, rather than freshly made on-site lunch, you get whatever was pre-made at her other business, no customizations, and the product and experience are completely different. The business under the original owner and the business under the new owner share a name, but they are essentially entirely different businesses.

And you know what? That’s business. That’s how things go sometimes, but could he have remained in business if his labor costs weren’t so high? I think he wanted to, and it’s not like he never issued raises. Each generation of staff typically had one or two people who were earning a lot more than the rest of the crew, greater than what the minimum wage eventually became even, because the earned it by making him more money.

The entire economy isn’t Walmart and Apple Stores, but the more costs you impose on businesses and the higher you raise the floor, the sooner it will be. It doesn’t matter if everyone ought to be able to afford 4oz of ice cream at $5, if fewer people are willing to pay for it at that price to cover the additional labor costs.

Ugh. Ok. I don’t have time to understand this for you, but think about it this way: if a Walmart employee makes $7/hour but where he lives he needs to make $15/hour to not fall below the poverty line, you know who pays the extra $8/hour? The government. With all of its overhead of managing a social safety net program. Do you want the government to tax you so that Walmart can underpay by $8/hour? In what way does it benefit you to be taxed for that money? And remember that Walmart has plenty of money from their current prices already to pay $15/hour. Their prices need not go up to pay a living wage to their employees. So really if you are for small government, you are for raising the minimum wage and letting the market sort itself out rather than running social programs for those whose employers fail to pay them.

Small businesses will have to raise prices. But owning wage slaves isn’t justification enough for someone to run a small business.

Lastly, why this is good for the economy: you are free to do your own research but here is why this works. Give a billionaire an extra $1000/month and he will put it into his offshore account and never think about it again, let alone spend it. Give a poor person $1000/month and he will instantly put it back into the economy. This is why trickle down economy doesn’t work but stimulus programs do. If it was the other way around all the US government would have to do is hand over a few billion dollars to like five rich guys instead of negotiating stimulus deals every time there is a crisis. If you think that every time the working class is suffering the best thing to do is to prop up the rich then I, again, cannot understand for you why that’s wrong.

This right here is the difference. In the US we treat the government just like every other corporation. We expect it to screw us over and that we have no control over it and it is a self fulfilling prophecy. Between that and identity politics becoming the main issue voters vote on and we have a recipe for the government becoming self-executing power vehicles just like Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, etc. There is no by the people, for the people currently.

Re. effectiveness, see below. The EU has imposed a large number of regulations, some quite severe like the GDPR, and yet it didn’t fall apart. Not saying the GDPR is good as implemented or anything, just that despite its flaws it didn’t kill the economy or the EU, the perennial fear of right wing fear mongers.

> Between that and identity politics becoming the main issue voters vote on and we have a recipe for the government becoming self-executing power vehicles just like Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, etc. There is no by the people, for the people currently.

I think you’re mixing cause and effect here. The government is a vehicle of power because it has power vested in it and it represents people who wield that power.

Voting is one such power, we vote on laws, sheriffs, representatives at many levels, senators, district attorneys, even for some damned foolish reason, judges. Not just POTUS. Whatever government we have at any point in time is pretty much the government we deserve because we put it there with our choices.

It’s naïve to think power will not be exploited though, and because the difference between the lawful powers of a government and the lawful powers of a private company are so vast and disparate, we’re a lot more concerned with curbing government power.

Any elected official is a person, not a mindless automaton, and people have interests which they can and do put above the public good almost all the time. It’s the exception when they do not, not the rule, even when it is only their own family. If an elected official or a bureaucrat employed by them can use the knowledge and experience and power they have to save a member of their own family or protect them, they bloody will. Similarly many will find ways to profit from their positions, I don’t know why we expect they won’t.

But hey, maybe all the elected officials and bureaucrats of the EU and it’s member nations are actually Angels sent down from Heaven to show the world how it is done. Great if that’s the case, but I wouldn’t put money on that.

Even when elected officials are not involved, people vote for bad laws all the time. California is one such place, San Francisco is another. We have the power to hang ourselves here, and we exercise that right regularly. It gets even worse because elected officials have realized they can punt anything remotely controversial onto the ballot box rather than exercise discretion and judgement in their own decision making, because doing so would make them accountable to their constituents.

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