[continued from previous message]   
      
   Our unions may be a drag on our economy, but they're politically smart   
   and good at choosing their battles.   
      
   urma_Jones   
   Hall of Famer   
   An unmentioned factor: culture.   
      
      
   Over-reliance on state instead of personal initiative and responsibility   
   has increasingly sapped Europeans of agency and responsibility.   
      
      
   Culture cannot be imposed by fiat but policy and politics have second   
   and third order consequences that cause a self-reinforcing cycle   
   resulting in the mentioned economic ills.   
      
      
   rkla   
   Hall of Famer   
   That is the way the system is set-up. High taxes, over regulation and a   
   safety net that sets a relatively high floor on living conditions strips   
   people of any incentive to work hard.   
      
      
   donald_larson   
   Conversation Starter   
   There is a delicate line between ensuring that the US has the means to   
   produce the goods that the nation needs to survive and European style   
   industry smothering rules.   
      
      
   Ceding all the foundational elements of Maslow's hierarchy to the   
   Chinese is a very bad idea. Arguably it is worse than having an   
   expensive local low productivity factory.   
      
   Central_Coaster   
   Hall of Famer   
   Educated people in the EU aspire to work in the bureaucracy, not in the   
   private sector   
      
      
   john_gustavsson   
   Conversation Starter   
   As an educated person in Europe and also author of this article, I made   
   more money as an entry level policy adviser in the European Parliament   
   than I would if I had been an elected member of the Swedish parliament.   
   Or, if I had been a private sector surgeon with 20 years of experience   
      
   -------------------------------------   
   SpeedRead   
   Hall of Famer   
   Generations of a welfare state lowers IQs. See also the American   
   Democrat political party.   
   -------------------------------------   
      
      
   Andy_Robinson   
   Hall of Famer   
   Here's an example of how Europe fell behind (though it's too long and   
   complicated for folks like the Imbecile @yourotherright, so they should   
   probably do their downvoting and move on).   
      
   When I first started investigating GDPR in 2012 it was in the "proposed   
   rule" stage. I thought some of the provisions, like the Right to be   
   Forgotten (RTBF) were interesting, but my thought at the time is "you   
   can't legislate this, the technological debt will be too high."   
      
   Well, I was wrong, but I was right. They legislated it, but it's far   
   worse in terms of technical debt than anyone bothered to estimate. GDPR   
   classifies nearly everything as personal data (PD). Your IP address at   
   that effete Paris cafe can, through a series of convolutions, be   
   theoretically be tied back to you. So the IP address is PD. Your postal   
   code is PD (even though it only identifies a municipality or subset of a   
   municipality).   
      
   What this means is that data which are entirely incidental and may be   
   tied to dozens, thousands, or even millions of people are PD and must be   
   protected as PD.   
      
   This is great news for people selling storage systems, SEIM vendors, and   
   cloud vendors, because all the logs and records you need to keep take up   
   beaucoup space and processing power.   
      
   Those idiotic cookie advisories you have to deal with on every web site   
   (and often repeatedly)? Thank GDPR. It SEEMS trivial, but it's not. And   
   if some poor rube says "no cookies," a substantial part of a web site''s   
   functionality is unavailable - and that means the web site must be   
   designed to alter its operations based on the cookie option status,   
   which requires a cookie to store.   
      
   In other words, it's pretty much a binary choice between "a site that   
   works" and "a site that doesn't work," so it's a question that never   
   needs to be asked. Tracking can be blocked on the client, so there is no   
   need to harass everyone with those cookie advisories, or to spend   
   significantly more effect to develop a site that will offer even basic   
   functionality without cookies.   
      
   Don't believe me? Due to GDPR,   
      
   Storage costs up 20%   
   Software costs up 24%   
   Labor expenditure up 40%   
   Fines up to 4% of a company's revenues   
      
   And here's the kicker: the EC/EU claim the right to bring American   
   companies to heel in the ECJ, if any EU citizen uses the American   
   company's resources, even if that company does not have offices in any   
   EU country   
      
   GDPR makes *me* a lot of money, just as did GLBA and HIPAA and FedRAMP   
   etc., but that's money American enterprises don't have to do real work.   
      
      
   Willa_C   
   Top Commenter   
   Thanks for the succinct and clear explanation.   
      
   “This is great news for people selling storage systems, SEIM vendors,   
   and cloud vendors, because all the logs and records you need to keep   
   take up beaucoup space and processing power.”   
      
   Oh dear; that doesn’t sound very “green” at all, does it? How dare you,   
   EU?   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)