[btilly]

See https://en.irefeurope.org/Publications/Online-Articles/Regul... for lots of examples showing that regulatory capture is a real issue in Europe. The fact that you turn a blind eye towards it shows that jingoism isn't a purely American trait.

And for the record, I grew up in Canada. I am not opposed to the idea of regulation in principle. However every approach has failure modes. And regulation works a lot better in practice when you exercise skepticism about the actual aim as opposed to the stated one.

If you wish to build your skills at skepticism, I highly recommend watching the series Yes, Minister. It is from the UK in the 1980s. However the lessons about how bureaucrats manage to get their way while pretending to listen to politicians are timeless. It also came out much later that it is less fiction than it first appears - most episodes were based on actual incidents. And some were downright prophetic - compare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37iHSwA1SwE with actual British policy towards the EU since.

I have no reason to believe that the picture painted then of the bureaucracy in Whitehall is significantly better than the bureaucracy that has sprung up in the EU.