Every time these GDPR discussions come up, someone is always quick to say the US is worse, US is getting a taste of its own medicine, that dissenters must want surreptitious data collection, and on and on. Oddly enough, bringing it full circle, the tendencies for humans to argue in these directions instead of stay focused on the issue at hand make me glad to have more strict boundaries that are less subject to the whims of idle thought. Obviously this can't be absolute, so we should craft our rules to limit their scope at least from the outset. It's not about one country/continent vs another, it's about the goals and how they are achieved. Some believe and/or have experienced difficulties conforming to all sorts of government rules, it is a human thing not a location one. IMO, we need to stop deflecting and we need to stop being so absolute. People that are feeling pain of impending laws are not hysterical and laws are not magically OK because other forms/interpretations have downsides.
But in essence people are missing the bigger context.
It's true, I do think that a more principles-based approach is usually preferable. (And I will happily marshal anecdata to that end!)
But it's naive to think that any approach comes without a cost. Even the PayPal example I mentioned above could be coloured the other way: A company makes a major investment in a foreign market, only to find the rules changed underneath them by a capricious government agency! (Someone brought up IR35 down-thread, and that's an excellent example too.) Is that an acceptable cost for the outcome? I'd look at the overall state of (eg) consumer financial protections in the US vs the UK and say "yes"; but I'm open to evidence-based disagreement.
This sounds like it would make an interesting blog post!
It has no statistics behind it, just made-up stories.
Edit: I realized this might sound passive aggressive. I like the idea of human judgement in regulation, but I really want to know what checks are commonly used to account for all actors involved potentially being malicious.