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Comment by shermanyo | Hacker News Reader

As a non-american / non-european, I find this interesting.

For a lot of things, I see countries of the EU are _more_ unanimous on topics than the US is internally.

The death penalty is a prime example. It varies state to state in the US, but (AFAIK) is consistent across EU countries.

Gambling is another, I didn't realize it was actually illegal in some US states. I'm not aware of any individual countries in the EU that differ from the majority there.

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> For a lot of things, I see countries of the EU are _more_ unanimous on topics than the US is internally. The death penalty is a prime example. It varies state to state in the US, but (AFAIK) is consistent across EU countries.

Ah. I wasn't trying to say we as a country have univeral political positions, but rather shared beliefs and values. Americans certainly don't agree on the death penalty, gun ownership, the limits of free speech, or hell, even gambling, but most everyone believes in things like one man one vote and equality (once again, even if we behave differently sometimes for the latter).

Gambling actually is a big point of contention in the EU, because countries try to control it/grab profits from it and regularly get in conflict with the free market rules. E.g. Germany is under pressure because most German states only allow state-run organizations to offer sport bets, "to limit gambling addiction". Which would be ok, but at the same time they heavily advertise for it, which made the argument hard to believe to EU courts. (State monopoly on gambling is just so very, very profitable...)

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