Comment by arcanemachiner

People die from inability to afford something as fundamental as healthcare in the US. You are poorer than any European ever could be.

> This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies.

Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?

I’m an American. I wish we had these protections.

And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home, 70+ yo still working their ass off in McJobs, crumbling public infrastructure, homeless and billionaires laughing all the way to the bank...

Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP or the presence of billionaires and unicorns, as if between you, Zuck, and Musk you have an average wealth of $500B. There are much poorer GDP-wise countries where people live better and are happier than the US :)

Billionaires making more money sure helps pay my hospital bills.

The resistance to socialized healthcare in America can be easily understood without resorting to bizarre strawmen about hating poor people. Healthcare is of course a huge part of our economy and lives. Many (most?) people are satisfied with the status quo and are hesitant to see (what they consider to be) a huge increase in government power, spending, and general involvement in their lives. It's the same impulse that motivates people to oppose new housing -- people are loss averse and hate change.

This is a strawman.

"Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it".

Also the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is another strawman, used by those who dislike capitalism. People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them.

You may well be right, or at least I hope you are anyway.

On HN, you can be sure there are several people who literally believe the world would be better without any regulations or laws forcing businesses to do anything. This place is the pinnacle of anarcho-capitalism.

Poe's Law applies

Not under the guise. They are consumer protections. As a European, I like them very much.

It surfaces which websites use stronger tactics to track you, and which allow consumer friendly opt-outs. There are even many websites that don’t need the notices as they don’t use cookies for tracking a natural person (their cookies are not associated with personally identifiable information).

So we can choose what we use because we are informed.

AFAIK many cookie consent banners are actually against the law. IIUC denying any non-essential cookies should always be as easy as accepting all cookies. This is something many cookie banners have not managed.

So to me this seems more like the tech-companies and websites being annoying at implementing an easy solution, in order to rebel against the laws and make people angry at it for the inconvenience, then the law itself being bad.

(https://measuredcollective.com/why-your-cookie-banner-is-pro...)

How about not allowing "1579 partners" to track every click on your website?

> Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR consent forms and outright blocks on Websites from EU consumers,

None of which are required by GDPR. In fact, those obtrusive "consent" forms are usually violations of GDPR.

As much as the idea of GDPR (and specifically cookie consent) is well intentioned, the actual laws themselves aren't great. Cookie consent is especially frustrating because it encourages the creators of the consent popups to use dark patterns to try and trick people into just accepting them.

> Between shockingly obtrusive GDPR consent forms

Imagine if companies didn't collect copious amounts of user data and didn't try to use every trick in the book and all known dark patterns to make you give up that data.

"We care about privacy by selling your data to 2765 'partners' and are blaming GDPR for this"

I love the intention of the law, but it's so... flexible... in implementation that shitty implementers ended up making the browsing experience horrible with intrusive pop-ups and geo blocking.

On mobile every page load ends up with me spending the first minute or so on page dealing with the half-screen "don't sell my info" cookie dance, followed with the ad-block pop-ups.

My only complaint with GDPR is when I have to do boring work in the name of GDPR compliance :)

But it's also driven some pretty interesting projects, so I'd probably call it a wash or perhaps a slight positive, even if I were to ignore the major benefits as a consumer