"The need to feed one's self and family is pretty historically important "

So is, say, the need to defend yourself, but would you be happy about the military holding the same amount of de-facto power in the EU as the farmers do? Or would you consider it excessive?

"the use of slave labor and chemicals that damage human health and the environment."

So, there is no unnecessary regulation in your view? All of them are very virtuous and protect us all against horrible things? And as a consequence, the more, the better?

If so, how come that their level can vary from country A to country B and yet country B doesn't suffer an epidemic of grisly deaths?

Nope, not all regulations are necessary and not every one of them is virtuous and good. Some are just a byproduct of the office needing to show some activity and keeping their budget.

"Sounds like a local council issue to me, not an EU issue."

Because you are uninformed. She wasn't fined by the local council, which DGAF about an improvised shed with no fixed foundation. She was fined by authorities overseeing agricultural regulations, because that shed meant that she exceeded the allowed extent of her facilities for goats by half a square meter. (Five square feet for USians.)

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joe_mamba 3 hours ago | parent [-]

>So, there is no unnecessary regulation in your view?

Why are you making it sound like the issue is binary?

>Some are just a byproduct of the office needing to show some activity and keeping their budget.

Agree.

>She was fined by authorities overseeing agricultural regulations

Were those authorities doing the inspection from the EU or the local nation?

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inglor_cz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

"Why are you making it sound like the issue is binary?"

Because your declaration about the regulations seeking to protect us from big evil sounded quite absolutist in itself.

A bit of a motte-and-bailey. Some of them are undoubtedly good, some less so, and we shouldn't lobotomize ourselves by immediately dragging slavery out when starting discussions about the current regulatory level.

"Were those authorities doing the inspection from the EU or the local nation?"

EU law gets transposed into national laws of the constituent nations and local authorities then enforce it, but it is still EU law.

It is very different from the US where state authorities aren't tasked by enforcing federal regulations, because the Feds have their own enforcement infrastructure.

Compared to the US, EU-own enforcement infrastructure is tiny and mostly outsourced to local governments.

	▲	joe_mamba 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>Because your declaration about the regulations seeking to protect us from big evil sounded quite absolutist in itself. I didn't mean it to be absolutist. But then riddle me this, if the EU regulations are the problem holding us back, why not get rid of some of them to boosts domestic production, and instead kneecap our agriculture industry with regulations and make ourselves dependent on imports from potential adversaries who don't follow our regulations? Because I don't see the logic behind this being an advantage for us. It makes the EU incompetent at best, or malicious at workst. >EU law gets transposed into national laws of the constituent nations and local authorities then enforce it, but it is still EU law. Yeah but enforcement is still local. A lot of countries choose to be very lax with enforcing some EU laws if the laws are stupid and nobody's getting hurt. So ultimately it's still the fault of the local nation for being overly pedantic with enforcement. Blaming EU laws for local issues, is the ultimate cope the UK also tried, and once they left the EU, their problems persisted, because guess what, their issues were all domestically inflicted by local politics and not coming from the EU as they claimed.