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Comment by Yizahi | Hacker News Reader

EU needs to evolve to become closer to USA (imo). Not be a loose union with a central suggestion organ, but a real federation, with unified laws, army etc, provisions to punish sabotage and collaborators with enemies of such new federation and so on. Then internal monetary transfers would make sense, because Iceland and Greece would just be two internal regions. PS: of course it's ok if that never happens. But then EU can't expect to compete, due to not having good properties of truly decentralized collection of countries and neither of a true federation. Any startup will/is be hobbled by the mandatory EU law framework and structure, but won't benefit from the single law set or single language because those don't exist in EU.

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Will never happen because Germany and France.

I wonder in the coming years if we'll see the US actually become more like the EU. I expect there to be significant competition between Texas and California, in terms of industry, polity and philosophy. As the US continues to be internally fragmented politically, we're bound to see states compete actively, sometimes even to the detriment of other states. While we won't see a significant fragmentation like the EU, we will see a country that's so internally divided, there would be saboteurs and collaborators with enemies. We're kind of already seeing this, for example Texas and Florida shipping their illegals into Massachusetts and NY, states being firmly in the control of one party, with no room for switching governments, and the ever present question of states' rights.

> We're kind of already seeing this, for example Texas and Florida shipping their illegals into Massachusetts and NY

Which is a game-theoretically sound choice given the lack of legal authority to prevent unlawful entry to begin with.

Exactly, which is akin to a country self-sabotaging itself and dividing itself internally. It's a very unique problem that frankly doesn't exist elsewhere in the world.

It will never happen because maybe the EU is faaaaar more diverse than the US? Yes there were/are more than one ethnic group, but it's always been massively dominated by Anglo-Americans, culturally as politically.

The US states are a mosaic between themselves, and I would say that they diverge more aggressively than the EU in terms of politics, philosophy and policy.

In the EU, you don't see countries arguing about which bathrooms people should use, or what model of creation they should teach children in schools. Yes, there is linguistic separation, but there is very little political and even cultural distinction between European countries, save for some hot button issues like immigration (which is also seeing alignment now).

Ask any European what European culture is, and you'll get a fair melange of what make Europe European (they might mention elements such as architecture, classical music, heck Roman Empire even). Ask an American about American culture and you'll get definitely different answers between Americans from even two red states.

Fortunately, even if hypothetically Texas and California will diverge even more and implement even more diverging laws, they will still be more similar than two random EU countries. They will have common legal language, they will have common federal law applied to both, they will have the same freedom of personal movement as exists today. All of the more important things for the business. I'm talking about business outlook here, not personal freedoms or other problems applied to individuals.

Let's imagine for a second you want to create a startup making cell phones, or cars, or TVs etc. You base in say Texas for the taxes, but workforce can freely move to the Texas from California. They have zero language barrier, they have zero legal barrier. Legal, highly skilled immigrants in California can freely move to Texas for work. The product you make has to conform with both Cali and Texas laws, bud federal ones are unified. It needs to be localized for 1 single language. And it can be immediately sold to the 350mil market with minimal changes. Now if you do the same in France, you are limited with French workforce, because of the language barrier and legal barriers. Then to sell to the whole EU you need to comply with 24 laws and localize to 21 language. And support all that. EU company is less competitive on this basis alone, plus USA doing brain drain (which they foolishly want to limit now) is not helping.

That's exactly what I meant by the US becoming more fragmented (but not as fragmented as the EU). There's going to be a lot of separation and distinction between states, including some cultural, but also regulatory and policy-wise. The only thing differentiating it from the EU is the language bit (which is now increasingly solvable with AI translations).

The US isn't the only possible model for states to cooperate as part of a larger entity. There are many examples of federations with little fiscal transfers - which are also highly successful - Switzerland is an extreme example.

Switzerland is a perfect example, thank you. Even without going deep into laws and nuance, the mere fact that we are referring to it by a single name and consider a mostly single entity at least as far as outside is concerned, tells us all. That's what EU needs to become (again, only in my opinion) - a bigger Switzerland.

I think I don’t understand which problem this unification would solve?

Startups?

Putin. It solves the problem of Putin.

Startups and bigger companies too, up to international megacorporations. Companies get more workforce and faster time to market for less cost. EU gets better financial regulation (not more, but better). Competitive products means competitive salaries, which slows brain drain and allows for better export to import ratio. It is always better to export as much refined and hitech product as possible.

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