The EU seems to live in a world all on its own. They can’t fine enough to actually change the behavior of big companies, but they can fine enough to kill their own startup culture.

I don’t feel bad for them anymore. Their voters seem to be fine with this status quo. And I get why other countries see these fines as trying to raise taxes by other means because it hasn’t and won’t change anything.

> They can’t fine enough to actually change the behavior of big companies

Of course they can fine enough. They just don't, which is why you see companies get fined again and again profiting from each violation.

The real issue is that fines are hard to set against companies with more money than they could ever need. What we need is for more CEOs to go to prison, but that's hard to do when the company's CEO is a citizen of another country.

Can you think of even 10 notable cases of startups being killed by fines? Let alone the 1,000+ you would need to identify to justify the claim.

I can't think of a single one. It barely registers as a risk.

Although I can think of several US startups that bankrupted themselves with fines for fraud etc....

The startup culture is what is killed by fines. It’s not possible to count how many companies are not started because of over regulation

The very same startup culture of "Screw the law, we could make a lot of money" hasn't exactly endeared me to it

> they can fine enough to kill their own startup culture

But they don't.

Exactly