Charlemagne's been reading the Plex

More from The Economist...

In a post mortem following up on Microsoft's bad week, the Charlemagne column in The Economist looks to be hanging on my feed...or at least gaining inspiration from my editorial mojo.

Here's my piece on laissez-faire v. activist government -- "Once Upon a Time in America".

Charlemagne takes it quite a few steps further than my guerrilla pass, doing better research, citing Mark Shapiro's book ("Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power") and by actually being European.

In Europe corporate innocence is not assumed. Indeed, a vast slab of EU laws evaluating the safety of tens of thousands of chemicals, known as REACH, reverses the burden of proof, asking industry to demonstrate that substances are harmless. Some Eurocrats suggest that the philosophical gap reflects the American constitutional tradition that everything is allowed unless it is forbidden, against the Napoleonic tradition codifying what the state allows and banning everything else.

At least a comp subscription would do.