I live in a country with a government that only thinks about its own belly, and it rarely cares about regulation for the good of its people. However, GDPR forces it to create and adopt local private information laws, otherwise the EU market becomes unavailable. I understand that the pressure shaping our environmental laws also relates closely to EU desires.
To be blunt, I know that if the EU and US disappeared today, by tomorrow my government would drop all the regulations that don't benefit it directly. It supports a wider range of interests because it's compelled to, with access to the EU market as the prize.
Maybe a global economy needs a region that exports regulation.
It's an imperfect model with a lot of overreach that causes stagnation. But it responds faster and more punitively than global bodies do, and gets better results. I firmly believe that if we didn't have the EU's global regulation mindset, things would be worse and less fair, especially for developing nations. Just look at all the third-world nations in bed with China, Russia, and their 'sovereign hands-off' approach. Those are not great examples of development and free market growth.
Great perspective, thank you! There’s definitely good and bad “overreaching regulation.” Most observers consider California’s overreach within the US forcing higher fuel efficiency standards across the US (and to a material degree, the world) a “generally good thing.” Some of it has been too much or had odd consequences, but that example is one of “mostly good.”
A well-crafted regulation that is enforced globally, especially with major markets all supporting it, is a good thing.
Europe’s are generally unilateral and poorly conceived. I’m not doubting you that GDPR helps push privacy laws, but I would (in the spirit of discussion) openly wonder how much it actually helps. Within Europe, to do anything you have to create accounts that effectively harvest much more information than otherwise, and outside of it you get a proliferation of weak data deletion gestures (that are not clear, or truly enforced unless you’re one of the largest companies in the world) and tons of pop-ups to accept who-knows-what (from the average consumer perspective).
One of the big problems—and distinctions—I see is Europe has limited industries in these areas, so don’t have internal pushback to overtly dumb things. Angry people on the internet dismiss it as lobbying, but lobbying has its place and mainly relies on actual arguments about real things to shape outcomes. California, on the other hand, has to live with its own regulations impacting its own industries and internal operations (at least to some degree).
Maybe then the addendum is, “maybe the global economy needs a region that exports regulation… which also has some level of internal expertise and industry in the relevant area of regulation.”
Thanks for the reply. My point is, though, that global regulations are effectively sovereign principles, and many developing nations wouldn't be bothered if there wasn't the type of pressure that the EU exerts (and the US used to). In fact, there is a clear trend of third-world nations leaning towards Russia and China because those two don't care about principles, just profit.
Even ineffective global regulations still at least put forward a common principle. I think the developed nations are so used to regulations that they focus on the details and don't appreciate the broader cultural value regulations instill on different nations. Trust me, if it wasn't for GDPR, flawed as it may be, or decarbonisation regulations, my country's government wouldn't have done anything about either if it didn't enrich its patronage networks.
Thanks for this interesting analysis.
I live in a country with a government that only thinks about its own belly, and it rarely cares about regulation for the good of its people. However, GDPR forces it to create and adopt local private information laws, otherwise the EU market becomes unavailable. I understand that the pressure shaping our environmental laws also relates closely to EU desires.
To be blunt, I know that if the EU and US disappeared today, by tomorrow my government would drop all the regulations that don't benefit it directly. It supports a wider range of interests because it's compelled to, with access to the EU market as the prize.
Maybe a global economy needs a region that exports regulation.
It's an imperfect model with a lot of overreach that causes stagnation. But it responds faster and more punitively than global bodies do, and gets better results. I firmly believe that if we didn't have the EU's global regulation mindset, things would be worse and less fair, especially for developing nations. Just look at all the third-world nations in bed with China, Russia, and their 'sovereign hands-off' approach. Those are not great examples of development and free market growth.
Thanks again for the good article!
Great perspective, thank you! There’s definitely good and bad “overreaching regulation.” Most observers consider California’s overreach within the US forcing higher fuel efficiency standards across the US (and to a material degree, the world) a “generally good thing.” Some of it has been too much or had odd consequences, but that example is one of “mostly good.”
A well-crafted regulation that is enforced globally, especially with major markets all supporting it, is a good thing.
Europe’s are generally unilateral and poorly conceived. I’m not doubting you that GDPR helps push privacy laws, but I would (in the spirit of discussion) openly wonder how much it actually helps. Within Europe, to do anything you have to create accounts that effectively harvest much more information than otherwise, and outside of it you get a proliferation of weak data deletion gestures (that are not clear, or truly enforced unless you’re one of the largest companies in the world) and tons of pop-ups to accept who-knows-what (from the average consumer perspective).
One of the big problems—and distinctions—I see is Europe has limited industries in these areas, so don’t have internal pushback to overtly dumb things. Angry people on the internet dismiss it as lobbying, but lobbying has its place and mainly relies on actual arguments about real things to shape outcomes. California, on the other hand, has to live with its own regulations impacting its own industries and internal operations (at least to some degree).
Maybe then the addendum is, “maybe the global economy needs a region that exports regulation… which also has some level of internal expertise and industry in the relevant area of regulation.”
Thanks for the reply. My point is, though, that global regulations are effectively sovereign principles, and many developing nations wouldn't be bothered if there wasn't the type of pressure that the EU exerts (and the US used to). In fact, there is a clear trend of third-world nations leaning towards Russia and China because those two don't care about principles, just profit.
Even ineffective global regulations still at least put forward a common principle. I think the developed nations are so used to regulations that they focus on the details and don't appreciate the broader cultural value regulations instill on different nations. Trust me, if it wasn't for GDPR, flawed as it may be, or decarbonisation regulations, my country's government wouldn't have done anything about either if it didn't enrich its patronage networks.