There was a job opening I looked at about ten years back where the whole responsibility was writing bin packing algorithms to allocate batches of medications to countries based on the quality control guidelines of that country and the tolerances achieved in manufacturing a particular batch. [Edit] I suspect the rationale is that both products are fine, and the regulations represent overreach, so we're going to mollify them. But the banking and finance industries were complaining about overreach right up until the crash (as they have before every single crash). The money it costs you to comply also costs you your objectivity.
You might be able to overclock the hell out of an Intel processor that was binned several notches down from the top, but that depends on how good the yields were that week. It's possible you just got a slightly shittier processor.
do you really think the Eu and Canada have worse medicine? (seriously). Their stuff is probably better than the one here, as the EU does have tighter controls in substances and what is allowed during manufactoring of medicine, food processing, and beauty products.
They effectvely operate in a 'white list' basis, where a product has to be shown to be safe to be allowed, while the US operates in a 'black list' basis, where anything can be used until it is shown unsafe, and banned, which usually gets banned too late.
That's why you have so many cancerogenic products that are banned in the EU, while they are still used here in the states.
