Comment Re:Yeah, be a man! (Score 2) 608
That just sounds like "regulation"; Europe is known for being more regulated than the US, and for a lot of things, that's a good thing. Just look at the privacy laws Europe has; they prevent a lot of the abuses going on in the US now. The downside to regulation, of course, is that it makes it very hard for new businesses to start up and grow quickly; there's a reason Silicon Valley is in the US instead of Europe. However, for large, established industries, Europe generally does them much better than the US. What kind of fool would choose a Lincoln over a BMW or Mercedes, for instance? Also, have you ever taken a cruise on a multi-billion dollar cruise ship built in the US? Of course not, because the US can't build such a thing. All those ships are built in Europe. Government regulation doesn't seem to be a problem there. They also build a lot of high-end airplanes and helicopters in Europe.
And since when does industry in the US cling to traditional values of right and wrong? Corporations in the US are infamous for being completely sociopathic. I don't think I need to go into too many examples, but the Ford Pinto is a pretty good one (they decided to allow people to die in crashes and just pay out settlements because it was cheaper than adding a $1 part to prevent the cars from catching fire). For a more recent example, look at GM and their ignition switch fiasco which they actively covered up and refused to fix. Strange that I never see that kind of stuff from European corporations, or Japanese ones. The US is also the home of patent trolls. They don't seem to have that problem in Europe either, again probably because of regulation.
The problem with regulation, of course, is that you need a government that has a low enough level of corruption to make it work. That's why regulation never seems to work well in the US; the government is far too corrupt. Why European governments aren't as corrupt, I don't know, but I suspect it's because the US is too large, powerful, and diverse.