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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

The fundamental divide in approaching regulation between the US and Europe. The US prefers libertarianism and only regulates (if at all) when problems grow so large they cannot be swept under the rug any more, while European countries generally prefer "big governments" that have an obligation to protect every single citizen.

The US may have more innovation and a more powerful economy as a result, but at least we don't have drinking water taps that can be set ablaze because the drinking water is oversaturated with fracking gas.

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As a European I find your assessment appalling. The oft repeated lie that Europe has protected its citizens against anything is bizarre, European governments only protect their big governments. The ban of US pesticides is to stifle American infiltration of EU agriculture, and basically every other law can be viewed under this lens.

It is as if people live in a lie, they do not understand what has taken place in the past 200 years, the devastating destruction of the environment with pollution worldwide. As for protecting its citizens, what can really be said about this other than: ignorance is bliss.

> The ban of US pesticides is to stifle American infiltration of EU agriculture, and basically every other law can be viewed under this lens.

You really really need to cite some sources for this

For my own opinions, if you'd like to hear more, you can just ask me. I will only provide the citation as a one-off...

<https://www.britannica.com/topic/agriculture/Economics-polit...>:

>Agriculture has always been influenced by the actions of governments around the world. Never has this been more evident than during the first half of the 20th century, when two major wars profoundly disrupted food production. In response to the tumultuous economic climate, European countries implemented tariffs and other measures to protect local agriculture. ---Rasmussen, Wayne D. , Mellanby, Kenneth , Nair, Kusum , Gray, Alic William , Ordish, George , Crawford, Gary W. and Fussell, George Edwin. "origins of agriculture". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Oct. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/topic/agriculture. Accessed 30 October 2024.

This puts it in the context of WW2.

Here's one example where you find the opposite of "protections" at play: in the US you need prescriptions for antibiotics, in EU 7% is without. <https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/sante/newsletter-archives/4487> (their PDF link is broken; one that works is <https://health.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2020-06/amr_arna_re...> "Antimicrobial resistance and causes of non-prudent use of antibiotics in human medicine in the EU" (2017)) Here's their Figure 2.6 e.g. <https://imgur.com/a/wLfoV7h>.

Or it could be that people don't want to eat poison. You only have to look at the furore over chlorine-washed chicken post-Brexit to see that.

> oft repeated lie that Europe has protected its citizens against anything is bizarre

I, for one, enjoy having strict safety requirements for consumer products. I'm also glad to share this endeavour with many similar countries, since it would be wasteful and unfeasible for small nations otherwise.

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