Also: your equivalency is ridiculous. I have had a "food manager's card", which means that I am certified to oversee an entire restaurant of chefs and cooks who all presumably have their own "food handler's card". The certification took about an hour. Food handler's cards take even less time, and you'll be shocked to know that many people working in restaurants don't actually have them.

a vast majority of the food places in my home country were like that when I was growing up, and such places likely still make up a sizable portion of the food businesses down there now. I can't help but be a bit offended by this attitude, because it seems to not only be implying that these businesses are likely to be operating in bad faith, but that the world would legitimately be better off without them as well. It's great that you probably grew up and live in a situation where that might've been feasible, but I can't in good conscience defend those views having lived in places where such strictness is out of reach for most entrepreneurs.

The world isn't entirely comprised of Europe and North America.

I think there is a subtle difference between negligence and bad faith.

> but that the world would legitimately be better off without them as well

Well, that's precsiely what laws forbidding businesses like that say. "We'd rather not have them if they can't stick to those rules."

Are you making the argument that the west is generally over-regulating food safety and public health? If so, on what basis? Looks to me like a variant of the old "when i was young we didn't have [seatbelts|gun regulation|hard hats on construction sites] and i turned out just fine!"

Right, but the alternative in certain situations is having no businesses at all, as was the case in my home country.

>Are you making the argument that the west is generally over-regulating food safety and public health? If so, on what basis? Looks to me like a variant of the old "when i was young we didn't have [seatbelts|gun regulation|hard hats on construction sites] and i turned out just fine!"

No, and again, it's offensive that this is legitimately the first thing that comes to mind when somebody from a developing nation says that it's local population has reasons for doing things the way it does. Nowhere was I arguing that public safety is a bad thing, and don't appreciate having words put in my mouth. I was merely stating the fact that businesses down there almost unanimously don't have the resources to be hiring lawyers, or whatever other services that they would need in order to guarantee compliance with overly strict regulations like you see in the west. If such regulations were in place, and they were strictly enforced somehow, what would happen is that nearly all entrepreneurship would disappear altogether, except possibly for the wealthy (which are often the most corrupt down there), or outside investors with potentially dubious motives for dealing with the local population. It would literally price-out the very people you'd be trying to help with your regulations.

I never said that situation was better than the west, or that things were somehow better "back then" (I much prefer living in the US today), I was saying it was better than nothing, and that these entitled western sentiments can't feasibly be applied everywhere to positive effect. Has it come to the point now that small villages will be needing to apologize to westerners for liking the convenience of having some semblance of commerce in their neighborhoods, due to all the benefits that brings, like not having to worry about cooking dinner in equally poor conditions every night at home? It's not an attack on the west, it's annoyance with the west's over-the-top moralizing of the choices different people make under constrained circumstances that westerners seem to forget exist.

Do you find it offensive that people prefer to live in countries with a high standard of living if given the choice? Is that somehow disrespectful to the people who do not have that choice? Bringing emotion into this seems counterproductive.

Generally you seem to agree that regulation can be beneficial (if compliance is feasible).

I'm sure you also agree that you'd like the toys you buy for your kids in the US to comply with US safety standards, even when they're made in china, and regardless of whatever standards exist in china?

Because judging countries for not being able to meet standards its incapable of meeting is plain naive colonialist mentality. It's like criticizing a school yard basketball player for not being up to NBA standards, then getting mad when people point out that they aren't in the NBA. Like what are you expecting to accomplish by projecting your beliefs about regulations in a situation like that, and then acting as if people are attacking your way of life? Again, it must be really convenient to have been sheltered and only ever have known environments where abundant regulations are possible, but stop projecting your morals on people that live differently.

>Do you find it offensive that people prefer to live in countries with a high standard of living if given the choice?

I don't see the need for you to be asking such an obvious question, other than to intentionally try to put words in my mouth or paint some kind of strawman of my arguments. The answer should be obvious to anyone.

>Is that somehow disrespectful to the people who do not have that choice?

No, but accusing people of suffering from some kind of cognitive bias ("when i was young we didn't have [seatbelts|gun regulation|hard hats on construction sites] and i turned out just fine!") when all they're doing is explaining why a certain situation is the way it is, is definitely disrespectful. Again, re-read my original comment: nowhere was I even remotely attacking western standards, yet you chose to respond to it by criticizing someone for explaining how they lived through sub-par circumstances. Like seriously, what need was there to get all holier-than-thou about this?

>Generally you seem to agree that regulation can be beneficial (if compliance is feasible).

Only up to a point. I am generally pessimistic about how government intervention in the free market tends to turn out. I'm an entrepreneur here in the US, and enjoy some of the luxuries the US has compared to my home country, but I'd be lying if I didn't think certain regulations were hindering my ability to even start certain businesses (not because I try to do anything questionable, but because I have ADHD and literally can't stand to jump through endless hoops and file mountains of paperwork). I've already switched states once here to move to one that had more favorable business regulations than the one I originally came to.

>I'm sure you also agree that you'd like the toys you buy for your kids in the US to comply with US safety standards, even when they're made in china, and regardless of whatever standards exist in china?

What does this have to do with anything? I'm not opposed to businesses following the regulations of the countries they intend to do business in. The problem with the GDPR is that now a lot of businesses that weren't even intending to do business in the EU, now have a huge universal liability on their hands. Yeah "they've had enough time" and all that, but that still doesn't change the fact that the EU has done the equivalent of police china's toy manufacturers according to its own standards, simply because these toys may potentially get shipped to the EU at some point. It's not the same as having a requirement that toys entering the country meet a certain standard, because a public web server can be accessed by anyone at any time, even if the host was never intending to serve EU people specifically.

In contrast there's so much FUD surrounding this bill that you'll end up having to hire a lawyer to figure out how to clear up your EULA without accidentally leaving a loophole for the predatory lawyers on the American side that are partly the reason those EULAs are such a impenetrable wall in the first place