We all know the stereotype about the US being the turbocharged free market economy versus Europe as the semi-socialist slackers’ paradise with generous welfare states. There’s probably a lot of truth in it, like in so many stereotypes. But I thought it’d be fun to collect examples where the opposite is true. I’ll give it a start with three examples that I’ve observed:
Professional sports. MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL are centrally managed businesses where rookie players are assigned to teams via drafts and where salary caps ensure the teams never grow too far apart in terms of strength. Compare that to Europe’s soccer leagues, which are dominated by a few uber-rich clubs and where players are freely traded as a commodity.
The mail. A government operation in the US which is supposed to just break even, versus (mostly) privatised for-profit corporations in Europe.
Security screenings at airports. Usually outsourced to private companies in Europe, versus firmly in government hands in the US in the form of the TSA.
Britain privatized a lot of previous government industries mostly during the Thatcher administration. While most of these were already privatized in the U.S. two exceptions were the water and sewer utilities and airport authorities which are overwhelmingly government owned in the U.S.
But salary caps aren’t required by law, are they? That’s a decision of the private agency managing their own stuff, isn’t it? The fact that the government doesn’t interfere with the league’s decision to have or not have salary caps is an example of free market economy.
More to the point, the sports leagues in the US have been largely given protection from antitrust laws so they can lawfully limit their own competition.
Then there were of course the old electric and telephone companies before the 90s – “private” but endowed as franchised monopolies by law; and the pre-1978 airlines, again, “private” but with a system of allocated protected markets.
Airports and water utilities in the USA are indeed almost all government-owned and operated but mostly in the form of local independent authorities, often not even subordinate to the municipality but having their own taxing/bonding powers and separately elected managing boards. So it’s socialized but decentralized.
The US also has the phenomenon that its freight rails are private, but its long-distance passenger rail is yet another government-owned corporation but only because that was a bailout measure as otherwise all the lines would have just gone bankrupt and shut down in the 1970s (and even this one is hanging by a thread).
The US have had a minimum wage since 1939, but it got only put into effect in Germany in 2015. The current US minimum wage is $7.25, while the German will be raised to €12.42 on Jan 1 2024, though.
Housing and zoning, perhaps? Many big US cities greatly restrict where and how big new housing can be built. Not sure if the restrictions are as great in Europe (I’d assume not because Europe is generally denser than the US).
Where I live in the US, even though it is relatively sympathetic to environmental concerns, the vast majority of restrictions on land use are NIMBY. Keep our property values high by preserving green space and then restricting access by providing no parking. Voila! A few dozen houses have a 45 acre park that only they have access to. Purchased and maintained by public funds.
Utilities definitely. In the UK at least, they were privatized but also there was competition built into the system. So while there is only one pipe/wire bringing the utility to your home, the company that owns it is required to rent it out to other companies, so the consumer has choice.
It’s arguable how well it’s worked in the twenty years since I left the UK (it’s not like the UK has stood out as being particularly awesome for energy consumers lately ) But when I first got a place in the US it was a shock to learn, in this society allegedly built on customer choice, that I had a choice of exactly one company for each of my utilities.
The whole airline situation in Europe seems more capitalist than the US system. Or at least a different kind of capitalist. Lots of small players. Race to the bottom price-wise, but nickel and dime for everything. Airlines going out of business and leaving passengers stranded seems like a fairly common occurrence. Even the airports somehow actually seem to manage to more focused on selling you stuff than US ones.
The US seems more dominated by a few big players that seem to get government back-stops if they start to fail as businesses.
It depends on the country, I guess, I don’t know the details of all of them, but actually, being more densely populated means there are more restrictions. It depends too on the level of government you are considering. In Europe it is usually the local government that regulates zoning – with all the possibilities for corruption that opens up.
So building renovation its arguably less regulated in the UK, though as with most these things, its more different than less per se. In the UK the regulation is primarily concerned with changing the outward appearance of the building, particularly on old buildings (that are “listed” as historic), there are regulations about hte safety of the work, but they are secondary to preserving the appearance. In the US the opposite is true, there are some regulations about a few historic buildings, but most of the regulation is about the building “code” which is a very precise list of the things the government will let you do to your house.
My wife and I watch UK renovation shows as our light entertainment, and while they are usually obsessed with pleasing the planning people who need decide whether the renovation matches the historical appearance of the building (admitedly these are usually at least grade 2 listed buildings) they will regularly get away with stuff that an american code inspector would lose their shit about:
“so while we are finishing the historically appropriate thatch roof installation, we’ll be sleeping in the unfinished cellar beneath the 1950s electrics that we are getting our 18 year old nephew to fix as we spent our electrician budget on the roof”
Hell, and that’s the lucky ones, the staple of the show (Grand Designs) is that they have to live in a trailer (“a caravan”) next for the “few weeks” of the build and they end up living there for 2 years. I don’t think you’d get away with that in the US?
Close, but Amtrak (the government-operated passenger rail) system was established to prevent the railroads from simply abandoning passenger rail service, which had become a money-losing proposition for them, due to competition from airlines and passenger cars.
While some of the railroads were doing all right overall financially, thanks to revenues from freight traffic (particularly in the western half of the country), in the Northeast, it was a different story. The New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad had merged to form the Penn Central in the late '60s, which, itself, went bankrupt a year before Amtrak began operations.
I’d call monopolies a failure mode of capitalism, but I do agree that things like government protected sports leagues are non-capitalist. So if those count, then I’d say broadband/telecom providers in the US are another example where Europe is generally more capitalist. In the US most people can only have one or two choices of provider, while in Europe people can generally choose from a much larger list of providers that are actually in competition with each other.
Yes, you would, and no one would think anything of it, in many rural parts of the US (where living in trailers is pretty common anyway). The usual reason you don’t want to do that is that you want to roll over your very expensive construction loan into a regular mortgage as soon as you can.
I’d assume somewhere that is zoned for residential single-family homes wouldn’t allow you to setup a trailer next to your house, and live in it for months/years. But I’ve never looked into it.
There are gradations. In a housing development seems unlikely. Rural residential zoning on say at least 5 acres, I bet it depends on politics and housing pressures.
) But when I first got a place in the US it was a shock to learn, in this society allegedly built on customer choice, that I had a choice of exactly one company for each of my utilities.