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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much everything the EU does, is inconveniencing most of its population, often in the name of "climate change" (while not actually making any impact).

Positives: no mobile roaming charges

Negatives:

- less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier)

- cookie law

- car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit")

- paper straws

- attached bottle caps

- LED lights

- expensive electricity (a lot of this is caused by individual countries, but probably also the EU plays a role, e.g. by not classifying nuclear as "green" / "renewable" and banning Russian gas)

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Have you ever visited the EU? Let me help you with the positives: common market, freedom of movement, rule of law, clean and beautiful cities and towns.

Also, war is costly—so is preparedness. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, e.g. you have a strong polity neighboring you that insists your are by gods grace their zone of influence.

I’m sad about nuclear to, but that’s on a culture in specific countries; not on Brussels.

Also, there’s heaps of mistakes in the regulations they churn, but that’s another story.

Not in the EU but have similar regulations

> less efficient home appliances (dishwasher, washing machine, drier)

How exactly are they less efficient?

> cookie law

The fault being those trying to steal my data

> car annoyances (e.g. "beep if over the speed limit")

I haven't seen that

> paper straws

I'll give you that one, however in my country its businesses that stopped it just to customer pressure, not a law, indeed it's perfectly legal to serve plastic straws to people, its just people don't ask for them

> attached bottle caps

These are great

> LED lights

These are also great

> expensive electricity

In my country that's due to the price of gas

Banning Russian gas is the right thing to do, and good for long-term energy independence & prices.

I wouldn't even mind the speed limit beeping if it was paired with correct data. But the rental car I recently used in Germany actively reduced the engine power when it detected going "over the limit", which was frequrently triggered by e.g. motorway exit lane speed limits being incorrectly parsed. Since there is talk in the EU to actively prohibit going over the limit, this issue needs to be urgently fixed.

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