• N1cknamed
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    The EU is of course famous for not protecting consumer interests or regulating corporations. They never do such a thing.

    Compared to the US, where the government does everything in its power to protect the status quo of the wealthy, or China, where the people can’t even vote for, let alone criticize their own government, European countries seem to be making quite a good effort to accommodate the will of the common man.

    • ReadFanon [any, any]@hexbear.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s a lot of whataboutism and goalpost-shifting that you’re doing there. I never claimed that the EU doesn’t ever pass consumer protection laws or that they never regulate corporations.

      In fact, implicit in my argument about regulatory capture is the notion that there exists regulatory bodies who are performing the function of regulation of the market whose interests get perverted by the appointment of business people and executives, often from the exact same industries which said regulatory body oversees. So pointing out that regulatory bodies regulate in the EU is no more proof to the contrary of the existence of regulatory capture than using ice-skates on a hockey rink disproves the fact that ice-skates are designed for use on ice.

      You must be pretty across China to be able to make a call like “let alone criticize their own government”.

      I take it that you don’t consider the White Paper Protests to be criticisms of the Chinese government and its COVID policy for some reason? Have you just not looked into this protest or is there some other reason why it’s not an example of Chinese citizens voicing criticisms of their government?

      And as for elections, China has them. (Remind me again how people are elected to the European Commission, the Secretariat of the European Parliament, the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union, and the Committee of Permanent Representatives…)