Hypothesis: Why the US is so anti-consumer

[YellowJersey]

Context: So I'm currently working my way through yesterday's WAN Show and am at the bit where Linus and Luke are talking about the proposed legislation in the EU that would open up platforms owned by major tech companies and Linus is responding to a comment against the legislation that goes something like, "Oh great, more government control."

 

Question: Why does such pro-corporate anti-consumer rhetoric seem to be so concentrated in the US while, seemingly paradoxically, being framed as a libertarian argument? (This is not suggesting that all Americans are like this, obviously, but the US seems to have a higher than average concentration of corporate apologists)

Hypothesis: I think at least part of this "regulation is bad" attitude comes from American law. Now, I'm Canadian and a legal professional, but I regularly have to go sifting through American legislation, and I can tell you it's a complete nightmare. Frustrations include:

• laws and regulations being extremely difficult to find online
• documents often not being searchable (as in literally typed up on a type writer and then scanned)
• laws and regulations on a single subject being scattered across many pieces of legislation
• trying to ensure that what you do find is the latest version
• the names of Acts as they are referred to aren't actually what the legislation is called
• the often indecipherable meaning of the words you reach in a given section (example: "you need a business license unless a exemption applies" but then not giving you any clue about what those exemptions are or whether you qualify for one)

 My hypothesis, then, is that American laws and regulations are so difficult to find and understand that it creates the impression that "laws and regulations = bad." It's, at least partially, an accessibility problem: the law is completely inaccessible to the lay person and so all laws and regulations are bad by association. (This is not a complete explanation, obviously, as there are huge educational problems, corporate and government propaganda problems (muh freedums!), and so on. But I think the inaccessibility of American law contributes to this "laws = bad, laws = government control.")

 By contrast, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and UK legislation tends to be much more straight forward. It's much easier to find the relevant Act, all/most of the relevant law is contained within that one Act/document, and the wording is such that it is much easier to understand. Example: The Residential Tenancies Act (Alberta). Can be found on the Queen's Printer website along with all other Alberta provincial legislation. It contains everything you need to know about renting a house/apartment to live in. It is fairly straight forward to understand.

[thrasher_565]

19 minutes ago, YellowJersey said:

Context: So I'm currently working my way through yesterday's WAN Show and am at the bit where Linus and Luke are talking about the proposed legislation in the EU that would open up platforms owned by major tech companies and Linus is responding to a comment against the legislation that goes something like, "Oh great, more government control."

 

Question: Why does such pro-corporate anti-consumer rhetoric seem to be so concentrated in the US while, seemingly paradoxically, being framed as a libertarian argument? (This is not suggesting that all Americans are like this, obviously, but the US seems to have a higher than average concentration of corporate apologists)

Hypothesis: I think at least part of this "regulation is bad" attitude comes from American law. Now, I'm Canadian and a legal professional, but I regularly have to go sifting through American legislation, and I can tell you it's a complete nightmare. Frustrations include:

• laws and regulations being extremely difficult to find online
• documents often not being searchable (as in literally typed up on a type writer and then scanned)
• laws and regulations on a single subject being scattered across many pieces of legislation
• trying to ensure that what you do find is the latest version
• the names of Acts as they are referred to aren't actually what the legislation is called
• the often indecipherable meaning of the words you reach in a given section (example: "you need a business license unless a exemption applies" but then not giving you any clue about what those exemptions are or whether you qualify for one)

 My hypothesis, then, is that American laws and regulations are so difficult to find and understand that it creates the impression that "laws and regulations = bad." It's, at least partially, an accessibility problem: the law is completely inaccessible to the lay person and so all laws and regulations are bad by association. (This is not a complete explanation, obviously, as there are huge educational problems, corporate and government propaganda problems (muh freedums!), and so on. But I think the inaccessibility of American law contributes to this "laws = bad, laws = government control.")

 By contrast, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and UK legislation tends to be much more straight forward. It's much easier to find the relevant Act, all/most of the relevant law is contained within that one Act/document, and the wording is such that it is much easier to understand. Example: The Residential Tenancies Act (Alberta). Can be found on the Queen's Printer website along with all other Alberta provincial legislation. It contains everything you need to know about renting a house/apartment to live in. It is fairly straight forward to understand.

working as intended. confusion has been a thing for a long time.

there are things being argued for a bill to be passed for years and all of a sudden some bill the government wants passes over night... seems one sided dont you think?

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Because everyone wants to chase the American dream.

[Arika]

2 hours ago, YellowJersey said:

I think at least part of this "regulation is bad" attitude comes from American law consumerism culture.

fixed.

 

[Imbadatnames]

It depends. The EU is overreaching in a lot of the acts they’re pushing through. The messaging thing is literally just so they can spy on everyone, we already have a messaging standard. It’s called SMS. 
 

The legislation they’re currently passing is extremely anti consumer and I’m happy we’re not in a block now rapidly descending into authoritarianism  

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

Welp, this is not going to be polarizing!

I think the current USA landscape is the way it is because the USA won the Cold War. During those times, any form of socialist policy was demonized, and to this day, things like: "perhaps young adult should not be hundreds of thousands of dollar in debt to specialize in fields needed to retain technological hegemony." are seen the same as "the state should sieze all private property and redistribute it to corrupt politicians connected to the central committee."

[8tg]

I like how all these types of discussions are poorly disguised “America bad” threads.

It’s not laws = bad, it’s federal laws = bad, state laws = good.

The reason people dislike a lot of the laws and regulations around corporations and businesses and really any American commercial endeavor is because they’re federal laws which overarch everything and it annoys the hell out of people to see things bound by the decisions of the federal government.

Nobody really cares if two states have polarizing firearms laws, that’s the states decision, what they hate is federal firearms laws.

Same applies to the regulations placed on corporations, it’s why so many businesses are registered in Delaware, the state has great political and legal conditions for businesses to be there, other states not as much, the federal government should have minimal say over anything.

 

The purpose of the federal government is to keep the states together and make sure they can all function together, Florida doesn’t start making Disney Dollars again, or California is reminded that secession is encouraged but they’d be annexed by Arizona, and that no state basically makes an environment where a corporation can exist to skirt international standards.

However the federal government is enacting too many restrictions on what state governments laws can do, and imposing regulation that trumps the states lesser regulation.

 

Thats where “law bad” comes from, our federal government is not respecting its bounds, and is acting over the state governments, not with the state governments.

 

[SolarNova]

Agreed.

 

Personally I think its down to the higher desire in the USA for being self made, or otherwise owning their own business. As such laws are more focused in protecting businesses rather than consumers.

Meanwhile in the UK for example, its the other way around. Consumers have a lot more protections and rights while businesses have a lot more hurdles to jump and rules to follow.

While its a lot harder to own ur own business in the UK, as a consumer the chances of being completely ripped off are lower, and when it does happen you have protections in place that usually allow you to get back what u've lost.

 

On balance I much prefer the UK style over the US.

In fact while i very much admire the US 'freedoms' and its constitution protecting them, the consumer laws along with its Health service, and a few other 'issues', still leaves me thinking the UK is the better place to live despite recent draconian reactions to 'events'.

 

As for the EU, their 'overreach' has been par for the course for a while, it/they are like Jekyll and Hyde. Some laws they put forward are great for the average person and a no brainer, whilst others seem to impede on the very fundamentals on which western freedom and democracy were built on.

 

In the end its all a balancing act, its never going to be perfect, the whole foundation of freedom and liberty for 'ALL' makes it impossible for a perfect system that EVERYONE is happy with. if you allow everyone in, u cant keep everyone happy.

 

'The balance', it exists in all things, woven in the fabric of reality.

[thrasher_565]

1 hour ago, 8tg said:

I like how all these types of discussions are poorly disguised “America bad” threads.

It’s not laws = bad, it’s federal laws = bad, state laws = good.

The reason people dislike a lot of the laws and regulations around corporations and businesses and really any American commercial endeavor is because they’re federal laws which overarch everything and it annoys the hell out of people to see things bound by the decisions of the federal government.

Nobody really cares if two states have polarizing firearms laws, that’s the states decision, what they hate is federal firearms laws.

Same applies to the regulations placed on corporations, it’s why so many businesses are registered in Delaware, the state has great political and legal conditions for businesses to be there, other states not as much, the federal government should have minimal say over anything.

 

The purpose of the federal government is to keep the states together and make sure they can all function together, Florida doesn’t start making Disney Dollars again, or California is reminded that secession is encouraged but they’d be annexed by Arizona, and that no state basically makes an environment where a corporation can exist to skirt international standards.

However the federal government is enacting too many restrictions on what state governments laws can do, and imposing regulation that trumps the states lesser regulation.

 

Thats where “law bad” comes from, our federal government is not respecting its bounds, and is acting over the state governments, not with the state governments.

 

were sapostoo have the right to bare arms its in the amendment but fuck the amendment federal says they do what they want. at lest for Americans dont no about Canadians

 

it all comes down to education. when pizza becomes part of the food pyramid were doomed... 

[Donut417]

On 3/27/2022 at 12:16 AM, YellowJersey said:

Why does such pro-corporate anti-consumer rhetoric seem to be so concentrated in the US while,

Corporate America owns the government. They put the money in to our political system and out elected representative listens to them instead of the people. Also the two party system doesnt work, especially when they are polar opposites and dont want to work together. 

[Mister Woof]

It's because everyday Americans don't have the money or the lawyers to avoid the laws that impact them the way big corpos and government do. Big corpos will find a way out of a law that financially impacts them, or will just pass the cost down. Regular folks just get screwed.

 

Many American voters will also often fear "big government" programs even if those programs would directly improve their lives, a big part of that being that big corpos and a certain political party fear mongers voters into actively voting against their own interests.

 

So you'll often see people making comments such as these out of ignorance. Not saying this is the case here, because I haven't seen the show. But often you'll see it when discussing health care, unionizing, etc.

 

Oh and, in before the lock/delete.

[wseaton]

This is easy. US consumer laws tend to be reactionary and the FTC only gets involved with their Thor hammer when they have to.

 

Consumers are basically protected via litigation, so its a hodge podge of regulation. You also have state and federal rules.

 

As for Canada, I've seen videos of Canadian mounties forcibly pulling people out of homes while visiting their neighbors during lockdown. I would expect that from the CCP. 

[darknessblade]

1 of the main reasons why PROPER Consumer Protection in the USA is near non-existent, is because of something called LOBBYING 

 

This can be clearly seen when it comes to doing Taxes, Where the EU has RETURN FREE FILING {not to be Confused with FREE filing}

The following videos Explain it In a overly simplified manner

------------

 

[BrandonTech.05]

On 3/27/2022 at 2:21 AM, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Because everyone wants to chase the American dream.

Very true. I'm in my 10th grade year and throughout english and history that's all we've been talking about all year.

 

[12345678]

Pretty much like Italy and almost every else state?

 

I mean if laws are written to prevent abuse, why are they written in such way that does enable abuse? They have found the loophole