They don't approve it, they're just going to get their arse tickled by California, then absolutely fuckin reamed out by the EU if they don't

It's a bit more complex than that unfortunately. Governments have not invested significantly in regulation, the people writing the regulation have almost no idea how the underlying tech works and as a result they have to lean on tech companies to help write the regulation that's going to regulate them. It's a weird line to walk, but if they don't walk it they end up with regulation that just gets thrown out of courts every time they try to enforce it.

One recent example, a few months back the GDPR slapped Facebook with a $13B fine for the way they transfer user data from the EU to the US. It was all over Reddit, people were celebrating, but it's going to be thrown out if it hasn't been already. Why? Because there is currently no legal method of transferring user data from the EU to the US, and, like it or not, that's critical for the operation of thousands of global companies.

The high level TLDR is that the EU courts invalidated the only legal way to transfer user data from the EU to the US, causing a conflict in US and EU data transfer laws. Companies started using a different method, which was agreed to be allowed until the EU and US came to an agreement on how data is legally transferred. This was in the works when the Irish DPC used the GDPR to throw a $13B fine at Facebook for using the only data transfer method available to them, causing thousands of companies across the world (including mine lol) to collectively shit their pants.

When this shit happens once, whatever, but when tech regulation starts getting laughed out of court regularly we've got a bigger problem on our hands.

BuT coORPEratIOns arE PeOplE