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Re:The EU act is coming, this time for real probably by robertlagrant on Friday May 12, 2023 @09:29AM (#35915960)
I think the big difference is the US is customer-focused, and the EU is employee-focused.

To be stereotypical: in the US organisations exist to provide value people choose to pay for (e.g. electric cars; cheap rocketry; cheaper accommodation for travel; cheaper and much more convenient taxis); in the EU they exist to employ people, and hopefully they provide value, but if they don't provide much it's fine because it's pretty difficult to start a competitor anyway.

Re:The EU act is coming, this time for real probably by sofixa on Friday May 12, 2023 @11:06AM (#35917328)
> I think the big difference is the US is customer-focused, and the EU is employee-focused

I think this is simply untrue. US is profit focused above all, customer experience be damned. If you need examples, check Boeing killing people to get a plane out as soon as possible with ridiculously bad engineering choices; railroad companies skimping on decades old safety tech to keep profits as high as possible; healthcare being the quagmire that it is; massive companies posting record profits while laying off employees en masse; extremely customer hostile practices like like selling customer data everywhere; abusive pricing models on basic infrastructure like internet and mobile; etc. etc.

The only segment I can think about where you can legitimately say "customer-focused" is in hospitality, and that's only because employees have to, them getting any money depending directly on customers being very happy. For me it's to annoying extents though.

> in the EU they exist to employ people, and hopefully they provide value, but if they don't provide much it's fine because it's pretty difficult to start a competitor anyway.

Also disagree. That's not how things work, even in flag airlines, let alone private companies. And no, it's not difficult to start a competitor outside of capital-intensive market segments, which is the same everywhere.