Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mahd43 3328 days ago
Politicians both across Europe and USA are often making exactly the same point and drawing exactly the opposite conclusions from it, but the details don't always paint the same picture.

In the USA they say we have capitalism and free markets and that is great, in Europe they have 'socialism' and that is bad. Or the Democrats sometimes make the point that something is better in Europe because it's run by the state and therefore not subject to corporate greed etc.

In Europe they same the same thing but inverted. In the states they have ruthless capitalism, they're all greedy, working long hours, shooting each other in the streets, homeless people everywhere. Europe is better because there's more regulation, more services ran by government monopolies, more fair, more "social".

But reality is never so black and white. The US is far from free-market competition in many markets and niches, although it's aggressively marketed as such all the time. And policies in Europe are often far from the "social" "we care for people not profits", and in fact empower small interest groups close to leading parties to profit in state monopolies and other types of dodgy weird stuff under the pretence that it's good and fair for the people.

When you look closely often Europe and America have similar problems, they're just marketed in a vastly different way.