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Comment by DrBazza | Hacker News Reader

These articles also gloss over the US market is 400m English speakers with one set of legislation, more or less. Europe is 20+ languages and 20+ sets of legislation. That’s a colossal advantage. And any clicks and mortar business gets the benefit of absurdly cheap shipping costs compared to Europe.

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There are counterexamples in Asia though like South Korea, Taiwan etc. that have massively outperformed Europe over recent decades despite not having those advantages.

Having said that, not sure the SK model is something to emulate given the social problems it seems to have caused

In growth, yes but GDP per capita in South Korea is still 3/4s of France.

That’s an important point, people always compare growth as if growing from the bottom is as hard as growing from (close to) the top. People love to do this with India and china.

That's true - the counter-counterexample is Singapore where GDP/capita shot straight past western European countries and just kept going. They do have the significant advantage of being English speaking though

Singapore also has the advantage of being a significant financial hub. But that only works when being small, it doesn’t scale to something like the EU.

Business law is a state issue in the U.S. The reason that the U.S. has one set of legislation (more or less) is that 50 states (well, 49) have voluntarily adopted the Uniform Commercial Code. There is absolutely nothing stopping Europe from doing the same or similar except lack of political will.

Which state hasn't? I thought all states have adopted it with their own variations / changes.

Wikipedia [0] says Louisiana hasn't adopted all of the UCC articles.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code

Louisiana. I guess it's difficult to reconcile parts of it with the Code Napoleon. All other states have English common law as the basis of their legal systems.

We also have the “dormant commerce clause” as a key protection. Europe doesn’t have anything like that AFAIK

Turns out political will is a hell of a lot easier in a single country like the US, than 27 like the EU. Especially when the US has fucntionally one language, and the EU has who-knows how many.

It’s mentioned in the article and the referenced document from Mario Draghi a few months ago on the plan for EU reforms.

India alone has 20+ languages within itself. It manages perfectly well as a unified economic entity.

I like 'click and mortar business'. Much better then 'bits and atoms'.

This is false. The EU I more harmonised that the US in terms l trade rules.

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