Comment by antirez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by antirez | Hacker News Reader

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From Europe is easy to notice the difference, random examples: the class actions against tobacco companies are strange from our point of view, or, the other day there was a blog post about somebody losing a member of his family for an illness and he blamed in part a software (it was not the case...), and instead to see a WTF reaction there were plenty of retweets and messages supporting this point of view. Or, even in popular culture like reality shows that are transmitted here, this attitude is constantly present "I did this because of this".

I think you can see it at different levels even on the other side of the medal. I think customer care Americans experience is stellare compared to Europe on average, because Europeans hardly will blame enough the service supplier even when it is the case and this would result in raising the level of service. Apple was one of the first companies to provide US customer service here and at first I and my friends were pretty surprised that this was possible at all.

As with everything I guess this is just a bias and everywhere there are people of all the kinds, but because of culture there are some biases. Like, sicilians can be the most honest often, but surely on average my island exhibits a bias for not being able to stay in line, park the car where it is not possible and so forth. Basically I'm not generalizing.

I had never noticed this about the level of service Apple offers here in the UK, but it is true. Most people don't like making a fuss here, from what I can tell. They grumble about it, but don't actually complain if something is wrong. I think it is changing.

But I would agree that the concept that something you do is someone else's fault is wrong. If anything, accepting that idea leads to daft warning messages on everything, eg. mats on the Land Rover Freelander dashboard for putting stuff with massive warnings reading "Don't put hot drinks here!". It is obvious, but they felt the need to put it there in case someone blamed them for their action of putting a roasting hot drink there and then accelerating swiftly. It's silly.

I thought I'd chip in.

I had a professor visiting from the U.S. and he was absolutely in love with the culture in Europe - how we sort of accept more responsibility.

He told me he would choose building a business in europe vs. the U.S. every single time. He has been sued several times for the most ridiculous things that never would have held any ground over here.

That, he said, was the single best thing about Europe's business culture. Not sure if I agree with that, but he has a point.

funny addendum: he was surprised at the lack of disclaimers on products here. Go figure.

Do not forget that lawsuits in USA have regulatory function. The attitude seems to be: let them sue each other and see who wins. All those lawsuits results and precedents are replacement for European regulations.

While like European way better, it is not fair to compare lawsuits prevalence in isolation. You have to compare the combination of lawsuits and regulations to say which system is better. And Europe has more regulations about a lot of things.

Lawsuits have regulatory function in the UK too. However, the culture is no where as litigiatious.

The thing is that the cost of regulation is borne by the government and thus society at large, while the cost of lawsuits is borne by the few unlucky saps that happen to get hit by the issue first.

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