Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous

Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by ppeetteerr on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @04:41PM (#17761700)

Cities and states pick up where federal governments do not. Airbnb is being restricted by the cities (not federally) and so is Uber in a lot of places.

> I'm sure those numbers have been crunched and that they're walking that line.

A large company is not going to leave a market because it doesn't want to comply with regulation, esp. one the size of the US, the EU, or China.

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Re:Americans Own Less Stuff, and That’s Reason to Be Nervous by _bxg1 on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @04:50PM (#17761776)

They do a little bit, but in some cases the federal government has overruled them.

They would if it became unprofitable, between the fines and the costs of compliance. Google was recently fined $5 billion; that's a significant chunk of their annual revenue, of which Europe is probably a minority. Add onto that the cost of updating for GDPR, and the EU is pushing about as hard as they can afford to.

I'm not saying this is a reason for Europe not to take a strong position. I'm just saying their leverage is finite, and less than that of the U.S. government.

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