That’s what nearly all UE regulation is. Most of these regulators are on the payroll of 200 year old companies who maintain their control of the economy by preventing any real challengers from rising.
Unhealthy people get left behind in Europe all the time. I hope as a European you’ll never have to go through the hell of trying to deal with any kind of complex chronic illness. The doctors have no clue how to treat these kinds of problems, and any specialists are very few and far between. Go spend some time on forums for people dealing with chronic health problems and you’ll find many Europeans who’ve had to empty out their savings in order to get treatment.
Yes, there is a public health system, but people tend to avoid it when they can. Most opt to go private for their dental, for example. And if they have any kind of systematic (sibo, ibs, autoimmune, etc) problem the public system is useless and they will have to travel to find a private specialist. On the other hand, the private system is really good here, and also pretty cheap.
The enlightenment era gave us two separate definitions of freedom. At its foundation, the US govt is granted whatever rights it has to constrain freedom by wholly autonomous and free individuals, and in the other (French, continental) conception freedom is both defined and granted by the state. Authoritarianism is baked into the definition.
It will take future historians living in more intellectually permissive times to give a full account as to why the first concept of freedom only ever took root in the US and why the majority of countries have adopted the second.
Europeans will continue to buy the hardware, except rather than being able to afford the Apple devices they’ll buy some very low quality knockoffs from Shein.
How does low pay affect the “liveability” of work conditions? A waitress in the US makes as much or more than a software engineer in most of the EU. While the EU worker may receive more vacation time, and while he certainly has better personal financial skills (poverty will do that to you), he has no path towards a better future. A blue collar American worker, in the (increasingly unlikely) event that he chooses to manage his money well, can end up wealthy. A European who isn’t born wealthy will never become wealthy.
>public healthcare
Which everyone avoids, if they can afford it. The private system is really good though.
>parental leave
Because of the cost and risk of employing someone in the EU, when an employee takes maternity leave it’s the other employees who end up having to do the missing employee’s work. This is especially true with small businesses.
>communist nightmare
Over-socialized neo-feudal peasants who embrace their own impoverishment because they’ve been convinced that they’re superior to everyone else is pretty dystopian.
Twenty years ago it was quite expensive for an American to visit Europe. Typically only the upper middle class could afford it. Since then the European system has become stagnant and for every US tech company that’s ballooned in value many thousands of investors have become wealthy.
In Europe, the average person has no recourse (or will) to take advantage of the wealth creation that’s taking place elsewhere. In fact people seem to think that the economy is a zero-sum game. Economic illiteracy reigns. The public healthcare system is not even good. Anyone who can afford to goes private, and if you have any kind of problem that’s not well-known (like SIBO) you will have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket in order to heal yourself. Housing is far more expensive relative to wages. Taxes are far higher than anywhere else (the middle class pays the majority of the taxes in Europe). Most of the population subscribes to some form of “enlightened” atheist humanism or hedonism, but due to low fertility and immigration, the population will soon be replaced by Muslims. People go to visit and marvel at Cathedrals and other great works of their ancestors but then refuse to ask themselves why they’re incapable of making anything of such value today. It’s true that the high-speed rail is very convenient, but in the end its tourists who benefit most from this, and those tourists are increasingly foreign.
Meanwhile, many words are spilled over electronic media by overly-socialized Europeans and the corrupt elite who lord over them about how great Europe is compared to everywhere else. European cities top the “best in the world” lists while the native people who actually live here struggle to improve their lives.
How long will Europeans continue to delude themselves into believing the Reddit-view of the world?
It will be interesting to find out why Cortes is depicted as a Roman. Considering the church inventory, it reminds me of the Holy Week processions in Spain where you often see people dressed as roman soldiers.