EU Commissioner as double agent of foreign interference
patrick-breyer.de
patrick-breyer.de
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
This is too on-the-nose. Incredible.
To my knowledge, Apple, Google, Facebook and others absolutely do not want breaking encryption to happen and lobby strongly against it, so who is "tech" really referring to here?
They could easily include secret instructions in the model to mark as malicious content that isn't or use it to build profiles (but respecting your privacy of course). Sky is the limit.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130420162917/http://www.wearet...
Rules for thee not for me.
On the other hand it's clear that many large US and European corporations has a huge amount of influence in specific legislation being passed. Forbidding certain types of goods (like e.g. incandescent light bulbs and plastic straws and much, much more) and forcing the use of certain alternatives. This type of random acts of lobby legislation is seen a lot less often in national legislation around the world.
> It's way harder for an alliance of US tech companies to influence small countries than a big block
Small countries have less resources to combat misinformation, bribery, and corruption of other forms.
It's a lot harder for people to spread misinformation online in a country like Estonia without speaking Estonian and keeping up with Estonian affairs. I think even corruption would be harder to swing against officials in a small European state compared to the EU, because things are less likely to be lost in endless European bureaucracy.
However, I think the nation itself could be "bribed" in a legal fashion. A large company has the resources to make a good enough offer that the country would make concessions on something important. Eg opening a large data center in exchange for more lenient treatment via regulations.
???
Non-native people hire locals for exactly that reason.
Also, there is an abundance of cases of smaller countries being corrupted by foreign influence. It's not just theoretical, it happens widely, and it commonly involves the top ranks (political, military) of those smaller countries.
What does spreading misinformation have to do with corrupting the government? If you want to spread misinformation in the EU, you also must target every individual country. There's no EU-wide propaganda channel.
Euronews ?
Did you know that media companies are owned by foreign companies ? And when they are not, some people from those media companies are members/close to dubious ONGs ?
They are close to 30K lobbyists in Brussels as of this moment. So much for stopping bribery and misinformation. See the current Chat Control law which is sponsored by foreign corporations.
In a world without the EU, those companies would have had to lobby their way into 27 different parliaments and the countries most eager to proceed with a dangerous piece of legislation could have been the canary in the coal mine for the other countries about what not to do.
Instead corporations can now buy their way into the inner circle of a single European commissioner (who is not elected mind you). The EU basically streamlined corruption and lacks the complete oversight to do anything about it.
Finally, the EU as it exists in its current form has only been around for the last 30 years, which is a mere blip in the history of nations like France, Germany and others.
To claim that only an Institution like the EU can bring an end to corruption and bribery seems a complete stretch if not an outright lie.
There are more than 200 sovereign countries in the world out of which 27 decided to completely or partially relinquish their own sovereignty to a supra national agency such as the EU.
This is hardly the norm and history will tell in a hundred years from now that this was bad idea, just like the USSR was a bad idea.
When is this argument going to die? Should all provinces in every country declare independence and take back control from the supra-provincial government? Should all cities in all provinces declare independence from the provincial governments too? Should every neighbourhood....?
You can keep going on about the "supra-national agencies" for as long as you want. At the end of the day your argument rests on the assumption that the nation state is the final form of sovereignty, and there's just no God-given reason for that to be the case.
Entities form political and economic alliances when it is beneficial to do so. There are costs associated with the benefits of course, and those must be evaluated. Your argument that it's inherently bad because "It's not a sovereign nation state any more", is just a rather weak, but infectious, talking point. I don't understand why people keep regurgitating it.
If you are not aware, you should look up the Catalonian referendums and the Scottish National party. Also What about Kosovo? Because something exists does not mean it can not be dissolved or changed.
Bizarrely, when it comes to the EU, most people like you say, well it's there now what do you want to do about it? But the states in Europe were there as well before the CEE and before the EU, shouldn't the same rule apply then?
It is perfectly possible and acceptable for people to decide their fate. If a certain part of a country wants to be independent, why not grant them?
> You can keep going on about the "supra-national agencies" for as long as you want. At the end of the day your argument rests on the assumption that the nation state is the final form of sovereignty, and there's just no God-given reason for that to be the case.
I don't know about the god given reasons. But I do know that a nation is made of a history, a culture, a language, common values and a common identity.
You can't just wave a wand in the air and say to 500 million people, here you go, you are no longer French, German or Spanish, you are European. It's been tried in the past with arbitrary borders being drawn between India and Pakistan and as well in Africa. We can see the results of that now.
> Entities form political and economic alliances when it is beneficial to do so. There are costs associated with the benefits of course, and those must be evaluated. Your argument that it's inherently bad because "It's not a sovereign nation state any more", is just a rather weak, but infectious, talking point. I don't understand why people keep regurgitating it.
Absolutely but there is a difference between an alliance and a supra national authority that can impose rules and regulations to it's members. Then its not an alliance, that's being a vassal to another state/entity.
A sovereign state can decide it's fate and decide what is beneficial for itself and it's citizens. States can agree to implement laws based on pacts and treaties. That is not disputed.
If there is a supreme authority that can compel you to apply laws to your citizens without their explicit approval, then, the state becomes just a shell.
In essence this setup of the EU will lead the the formation of the "United states of Europe". That may be well and good for you but shouldn't the people be asked their opinions about it?
We are all empty shells then, given that the state can apply laws to us without our explicit approval.
Just like you are free to do whatever you want as an individual, as long as you are willing to face the consequences that may be forced upon you by society. So too are the EU member states free to do whatever they want, subject to consequences imposed by the other members.
> In essence this setup of the EU will lead the the formation of the "United states of Europe". That may be well and good for you but shouldn't the people be asked their opinions about it?
The EU consists of mostly functioning democratic societies. Those societies decide. That doesn't mean every single person within must agree. Such is life as part of a society.
Will you move on to claim that the EU is undemocratic now? Because there are "unelected" officials? And this differs from the democratic governments of individual nations how exactly? Because you cannot vote on the representatives from a different EU country, just like you cannot vote on provincial representatives from other provinces in your national government?
That's not the only yardstick, is it? Look at how effective large companies are in exploiting loopholes in the tax code of individual (smaller) countries, like Bermuda, Ireland and The Netherlands. The reason is that individual countries pursue this for their own interest. Corruption is probably also involved, but corruption also exists in large organizations in large countries. Do I even need to mention Trump?
The only way out of this tax explotation is "harmonizing" certain taxes across the EU. That's a sensitive topic, not under the EC's jurisdiction, and progress is slow, but we'll get there.
> a mere blip in the history of nations like France, Germany and others.
Which Germany? Current Germany exists since 1994, and is younger than the EU. Supranational organizations are also not that new, think Holy Roman Empire. That may be taking your argument a bit too literally, but modern states are not that old. Foundations were laid around 200-250 years ago, I'd say, and can hardly be compared with today's. The EU and its predecessors now span 75 years.
> This is hardly the norm and history will tell in a hundred years from now that this was bad idea, just like the USSR was a bad idea.
Just wow. The EU has flaws, but that's an insane comparison.
That has nothing to do with what I said. The Claim by OP was that the EU was better at stamping out corruption because it was bigger.
That's demonstrably false. Corruption and bribery existed before the EU as you pointed out and it exists now as well. So this point is mute.
The only difference as I explained in my comment is that now, the entities wishing to corrupt and/or influence don't have to lobby their way into 27 different governments, they can just get cozy with one of the commissioners and push their agenda. Much more efficient and also less costly.
If there is one thing I have learned in my short career as an SDE is that having a single point of failure in your organization is a recipe for disaster. You want redundancy and checks and balances so that not one person can bring the whole thing down.
Here we have the exact opposite. The commissioners are chosen via back-room meetings between the ministers of the member states, their mandates are not revocable by the people, and since there is only one of them, you don't need to reach a consensus to push a new law. That in itself means that they can be easily influenced and their potential for damage is greater.
> The only way out of this tax exploitation is "harmonizing" certain taxes across the EU. That's a sensitive topic, not under the EC's jurisdiction, and progress is slow, but we'll get there.
I am not sure why you are bringing taxes in this thing. That was never the argument.
> Which Germany? Current Germany exists since 1994, and is younger than the EU. Supranational organizations are also not that new, think Holy Roman Empire. That may be taking your argument a bit too literally, but modern states are not that old. Foundations were laid around 200-250 years ago, I'd say, and can hardly be compared with today's. The EU and its predecessors now span 75 years.
That is such a straw man argument. France has a state or Kingdom has existed for a least a thousand of years. Germany was part of an empire before becoming a country that was divided and re-united later on.
My comment was simply highlighting the fact that to the EU absolutists if the EU did not exist things would be worse.
My contention is that countries/kingdoms/sates such as Germany and France existed in one shape or another long before the EU came along. Therefore it is possible to return to this type of states without the need for a supra national entity.
> Just wow. The EU has flaws, but that's an insane comparison.
The CEE's goal was to bring peace to the continent and to facilitate trade between the countries. Now the EU decides the monetary policy of the Eurozone countries, it has its own parliament, there is talk about having it's own army, there is a flag and an anthem. To top it all of the laws of the EU supersede the laws of the member states.
The EU is not so much an union anymore but a burgeoning federal state that has started to swallow all it's member states.
You can look up countless articles about the projects of the most radical EU absolutists such as Martin Shulz who are explicitly calling for the creation of the "United states of Europe".
That in turns would result in each country's parliament becoming more or less useless therefore removing the ability for these nations to govern themselves.
Except in this case the power won't be in Moscow but in Brussels.
> This is hardly the norm and history will tell in a hundred years from now that this was bad idea, just like the USSR was a bad idea.
Please, which norm are we talking about? The very first states with clear borders and independent government as we know today started to emerge in the 17th century. Germany, the most powerful state in Europe, has barely more than 30 years.
Countries are a new invention in the history of mankind and it's not the most likely that they will still exist in the next 100 years. And if you think that can't be true, imagine yourself as a citizen from the Roman Empire in 350, would you think that your super powerful unrivaled empire would cease to exist 100 years later?
Empires are a few thousand years old.
Unaccountable bureaucracies, disconnected from citizens, but with huge power over their daily lives, is definitely the new kid on the block. And generally not a very succesful one I might add. I think comparison to Soviet seems quite apt.
The list you show there is the latest incarnation of most countries. In almost all cases, something similar preceded it.
Heavily centralized nation states create discontinuities in culture. You can see this clearly with countries such as France and Denmark, where you cross the border and suddenly everything is different. For other countries the borders have historical reasons, but are fairly arbitrary. Consider Germany and the Swiss province of Schaffhausen. Why should the people of Schaffhausen be governed under a completely different set of rules than their literal neighbours? I know Switzerland is not part of the EU, but it highlights the absurdity of your claim.
You rage against unaccountable bureaucracies as if they are new. They're not, and they're more accountable than those of the past. The Roman Empire certainly had a great deal of power over its citizens, and I find it hard to take you seriously when you imply that the EU is less accountable to its citizens than literally any government of similar size that has ever existed...
Where have I suggested anything remotely similar. I have compared the EU to USSR because of the similarly unaccountable bureaucracy. I could however be brought to argue that the Roman bureaucracy was superior to the EU bureaucracy. At least the Romans had sense enough to let many new laws expire after a set period. (Usually a year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision)
> Countries and nation states are different things. Prior to the development of the nation state and national identity, cultural changes were much smoother across Europe. That doesn't mean that the cultural differences between regions weren't larger than they are today, but the change was more gradual. It was only with the development of national ideas that it became important for people living on one end of the country to identify with people on the other end.
This has to be the main confusion of our time. Just because every border is not exactly perfect, it must mean that every border that has ever been drawn is completely arbitrary.
This is just a modern liberal pipe dream. The fact is that European countries are roughly placed where the linguistic, ethnical and religious borders were. . E.g Germany may be a new country, but the German language, was definitely a thing long before Germany. (Clearly, with more dialects than are spoken today, but still languages clearly identifiable as being german). You can still today in Germany, see a clear split between the catholic and protestant parts.
Just because something was not called a nation state, does not mean that it wasn't something very, very close to that. A nation state, when it's not an empire, is just the modern version of a tribe. And many places you see tribes struggling to found their corresponding nation state: see e.g. the Basques, the Kurds and the Irish. (First two having failed, third succeeded). You don't seriously claim that there are no Kurds, do you?
Apologies for taking the analogy too far.
> I have compared the EU to USSR because of the similarly unaccountable bureaucracy.
This is an opinion that is hard to justify, but whatever.
> This has to be the main confusion of our time. Just because every border is not exactly perfect, it must mean that every border that has ever been drawn is completely arbitrary.
I'm not claiming borders are completely arbitrary. I am, however, claiming that more often than not, borders are drawn such that they separate tribes that were previously quite close culturally. Other times borders are drawn through tribes.
Over generations, a strong state manages to assimilate the tribe, and tribes on either side of the divide drift apart as individual members drift toward the national identity.
I make no judgment on whether that is good or bad. I am only stating that the concept of national identity accelerates this process. I obviously do not dispute that the German language, and many parts of German national identity, were shared across modern day Germany prior to its current form. I am only arguing that these cultural regions are more flexible than you seem to think.
The problem with the argument that borders are logical delineations between tribes, cultural, or linguistic regions, is that you have to base that on some criteria. If you choose language and culture, we will have to deal with Alsace-Lorraine, again... and so on, and so on.
Everyone has a right to fight whichever state they are subject to, but they don't have some objective moral high ground just because they want to be free of it. Sovereign citizens can make all the arguments they want, nobody will take them seriously. That's one extreme end of the scale. The area is obviously very grey when it comes to real independence movements such as the Scottish or Catalan. However, at the end of the day, all that matters is whether you have the power on your side to do it, and you are willing to pay the price. We cannot establish any logical framework for when independence is objectively warranted, without also allowing things like sovereign citizens. You have to put the threshold somewhere, and as soon as you do, people will fall on either side based on personal opinion and it won't be logical any more.
I wish we could move beyond the "EU bad because it's a super-state that takes away sovereignty" arguments, because it's so silly. They're rooted in a subjective belief that the EU is bad. That's a completely acceptable opinion to have, and it is one that can have evidence presented for and against it. The sovereignty argument is an emotional excuse with no rational basis.
Nation-states and nationalism are less than 3 centuries old, and so are closed borders. Countries in antiquity were nothing like what we have now.
> Unaccountable bureaucracies, disconnected from citizens, but with huge power over their daily lives, is definitely the new kid on the block.
There are several loaded and emotional words in this, which plenty of room to move the goal posts. Faceless bureaucracies with huge power of the people’s daily lives is definitely not you, any empire has to do this to some extent just to keep existing. Famous examples with plenty of documentation are ancient Egypt and the Maya empire. Hardly brand-new fancy countries.
> And generally not a very succesful one I might add.
Appart from all the others, I suppose. How are we supposed to run those huge countries with tens of millions of citizens? You keep harping about the EU, so please enlighten us and explain how your country (or your ideal country, even) does it better.
> I think comparison to Soviet seems quite apt.
Lol no is about the most serious answer one can give to this assertion. The Soviet Union was an empire. Its problems came from its stupid political system (which has fuck all to do with either the EU or the US), not from the fact that it was a union of states (just like the US or Germany).
Right. Unless something is perfect, then it is worthless. And it’s “moot”.
OP made a claim that being a bigger country means less corruption and less misinformation without giving any evidence. By his or her logic the biggest countries in the world would be corruption free. They are not so the OP's claim is invalidated.
As opposed to your evidence for your claim, because you feel yours is intuitively correct?
How about providing evidence (!) for your own thing first? :)
Meanwhile, there are tonnes of examples of smaller nations that have been corrupted. Look at Africa for several examples, Sri Lanka in the news about a year ago, Myanmar (ongoing), etc. :(
No it is not intuitively correct but it is backed-up by data. The quote I was responding to was:
> Small countries have less resources to combat misinformation, bribery, and corruption of other forms.
The quote in question implies that bigger countries have more power to fight disinformation and corruption. Is that true or false?
> How about providing evidence (!) for your own thing first? :)
If we look at the data, the answer is false. In the top 10 of the least corrupted countries, where do big countries stand?
The response is that they are not in the top 10. US, China, India, Brazil, Nigeria, none are not in the top 10.
That's according to https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022/ which is a non-profit organization that fights and denounces corruption around the world.
So there you go I proved my point even though I did not have too.
Why? because if you tell me that the sky is green and I tell you that I don't agree with your opinion, I don't have to prove you wrong, you are the one claiming something and therefore you have to prove you point or to put it another way, what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
> Meanwhile, there are tonnes of examples of smaller nations that have been corrupted. Look at Africa for several examples, Sri Lanka in the news about a year ago, Myanmar (ongoing), etc. :(
This is a straw-man argument on top of cherry picked data, I can respond with the same sentence and be just as correct as you:
Meanwhile, there are tonnes of examples of bigger nations that have been corrupted. Look at China for several examples, India and so on..
The bottom line is that OP made an assertion, without any evidence which has been proven wrong.
Looking at my quote from before:
> Small countries have less resources to combat misinformation, bribery, and corruption of other forms.
Then looking at your transparency.org link... is has an awful lot of small countries in the bottom rungs of the list.
According to that list, they're far more corrupted than the US (#24), China (#65), Brazil (#94).
Nigeria is definitely in a bad spot though (#150). It's still in a better spot than the 30 other (small) countries below it.
Seriously? Have you bothered to loom around the world, in which countries are large multinationals seeing pushbacks and competition?
Where does google have less than 50% market share? China, Russia. And In russia they had stiff competition from way back, like 2005 days, with Yandex and others.
Where does pharma industry get held to account? India.
Where does big tech get fined for privacy violations? EU.
Boeing has crushed all competitors, in large part through law suits and shady dealing, except Airbus which is unconditionally backed by EU.
Small nations can't seem to hold corporations to account even for blatant crimes.
When UK parliament required Zukerberg to testify, he didnt even bother showing up.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/facebook-...
Every revolution yields extremely positive results at the beginning, during the phase where they seize a lot of private property and redistribute it. Then when it comes to actually producing goods, it may take 80 years for a tyrannical regime to fall down.
The EU, of course, has a few positive trophies. Otherwise, people would notice. Likewise, when it tries to seduce a new country, it pours money into it. Look at Scotland! Every road and building and school seems to be a gift of the EU! Cue the “I like the EU because EU gave us everything!”
Someone else is paying. It’s just a loan - The EU doesn’t “work” for you, doesn’t “pay” for you, it just gives you things it took elsewhere. And while those fines to M$ make me happy, well, I’ve paid a few billions every year to set up the EU, and those fines barely cover the working expenses of MPs, I’m paying for those MPs to work for me. And all they give us is a requirement to open our borders.
The cycle is complete when the “new voters” vote for the EU because it gave them everything.
BTW Spain and Portugal joined the EU in 1986 and are net monetary aid beneficiaries. So your argument about only receiving things initially is hilariously wrong.
Now, rather than using humiliation as part of your handbook, please do not just cherry-pick a counter-example. It’s always mockery that you people are using, not reasoning, not rationality, not taking interest in your enemy’s argument, not taking empathy to understand why would someone ever be doubtful/hateful about the EU, no, just otherise “it”, consider it as an enemy, to take down at all costs, put it on the other side of the fence on a stake, and laugh at him.
And then you take a high air when people get harassed into submission.
You don't like the EU because you don't like "open borders". You'll find any reason to hate the EU without reasoning because you don't like "open borders". Doesn't matter what good the EU has done. It can never outweigh "open borders". The EU "steals" from its members and redistributes. Taxes are theft. Nevermind that modern economies rely on public services and infrastructure funded by taxes.
So the Glorious Revolution in Britain was a mistake, there should be no Bill of Rights, no parliament? The American Revolution has produced a tyrannical regime?
Mr. No Revolutions here would rather still be property of a Medieval Lord. The Lord taxes you as he wishes and has sex with your wife on your wedding night before you do.
> they seize a lot of private property and redistribute it
You mean like when peasants seized the property rights over their bodies and redistributed those rights to themselves? Ye, terrible
> then it comes to actually producing goods
The French revolution produced so many goods that La Grande Armée wooped the asses of every European empire combined. If Napoleon knew when to stop, there would be 10 hours in a day and we'd know a painter called La Hitler.
So where do I sign up for this revolution you are talking about?
So far the only redistribution I see is when tech firms seize my private data and redistribute it to various predatory marketing schemes. So is it like a revolution by corporations against the state?
But much more valuable.
Probably easier as well.
I can write to my national member of parliament, but not to the EU MP, since they’re too far from citizen to care, and too close to corporations to reject a lobby’s proposal.
We’ve cornered Europe into a honey trap that will make us as badly governed as the US in a very short time. I’m constantly wondering where I should flee to.
Overall it leaves a much larger attack surface to lobbying of this kind.
It was supposed to be a community to facilitate trade between countries. Instead they want to make it a new country with its own flag, its own parliament, it's own army, it's own laws that supersede the laws of the member states.
The British knew it and that is why they left. This was not supposed to be the plan.
However nowadays criticizing the EU is like asking 2020 where COVID came from, you shouldn't talk about it because otherwise you may be labelled as a conspiracy theorist or even worse a populist.
I assume the next step is you explaining how and in what respects the EU is like the USSR. Because for now it’s not really convincing. For example, how the current decision process could lead to something like the Holodomor. In which way is the European Parliament like the supreme Soviet. How the political systems works to reinforce the power of the biggest member over its satellites. How the EU could do something like the invasion of Afghanistan. How it could bleed itself dry with a pointless arms race. You know, the sort of reasons why the USSR actually collapsed.
> It was supposed to be a community to facilitate trade between countries.
Sigh. It never was. From the beginning it was a union to prevent war between members. You can read on the Schuman declaration (1950) or the treaties of Paris (1951) and Rome (1957), for a start.
> Instead they want to make it a new country with its own flag
It’s not a new country, and it’s not a country at all.
> its own parliament
The common assembly, which became the European Parliament was created with the treaty of Paris in 1951, it cannot have come as a surprise to any member who joined afterwards.
> it's own army
It does not have an army.
> it's own laws that supersede the laws of the member states.
Again, this has been the case since the very beginning, when it was an alliance of 6 countries. How is this any new? Where is the deception?
> The British knew it and that is why they left. This was not supposed to be the plan.
The British left over internal politics and the dysfunction of their main political parties. One side did use the arguments you mentioned. It was bullshit then, and it is stil bullshit now.
> However nowadays criticizing the EU is like asking 2020 where COVID came from, you shouldn't talk about it because otherwise you may be labelled as a conspiracy theorist or even worse a populist.
You can. We’re living in democracies and we can criticise anything we want. The kind of blatant dishonesty and bad faith in your arguments is why you get those labels.
Mainstream political parties criticise the EU all the time, both from left- and right-wing perspectives. If you’re from the UK, I am sorry but your problems come from your own government.
It was literally called the european coal and steel community originally... It very much was about trade. It still is! Not nessacarily a bad thing but its not like it has an army or conducts other forms of foreign policy right now. It's a common market first and foremost, with most of its laws being product and workplace standards
> It does not have an army.
The prior commenter wasn't saying it currently has an army, and you know that. If you've been paying any attention at all to the news you'd know about the discussions of a common army, especially regarding Macron. 414 Tankbataljon in Netherlands was created as a sort of test, staffed with german and dutch soldiers. The French used to be opposed to this because they wanted their independant army, nuclear force, same with UK. UK left and french president thinks differently, its suddenly a lot more likely.
> It’s not a new country, and it’s not a country at all.
again, I'm convinced you're building a strawman here, nobody claimed its like this now, but its definately going in that direction. There is a ton of discussion around EU federalism, again surrounding macron. I used to be active in a political organisation that supported it, but im not that much of a fan personally nowadays because im disillusioned because of how undemocratic EU is up close.
Those reasons are both related to instances of personal corruption I have seen but also to how I don't agree with the dual parlimentary setup, where elected positions hold much less importance in the lower house, and can't propose legislation. The upper house is entirely unelected and can propose legislation. Sure its members are appointed by in theory elected national governments but I don't think thats a good way to go about things, imo national elections style democracy is already a tenuous way to get the will of the people and each step away from elected positions is progressively worse. I see many people in european parliment patting themselves on the back and laughing about how silly they think american system of electors is while doing an imo even worse system.
There are significant benefits to being a member no doubt, but that doesn't mean its a good system
It was not. You can read the thing and all the political arguments on why making countries interdependent was the means to the end of European peace and union (again, from the times of Schuman and Adenauer, so widely known well before the vast majority of the current member-states joined). Some well-known quotes:
" World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it."
"Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity. The coming together of the nations of Europe requires the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and Germany. Any action taken must in the first place concern these two countries.
With this aim in view, the French Government proposes that action be taken immediately on one limited but decisive point.
It proposes that Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High Authority, within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other countries of Europe. The pooling of coal and steel production should immediately provide for the setting up of common foundations for economic development as a first step in the federation of Europe, and will change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war, of which they have been the most constant victims."
There is nothing in that even alluding to the fact that it was "only trade". And it's not some political fluff distinct from what the member-states signed up for: the language is just as explicit in the treaties of Paris (without an official English translation) and Rome. The coal and steel community had a high authority (with the same role as the European Commission now), a Common Assembly (same as the European Parliament), and drew resolution binding the member states.
> It still is! Not nessacarily a bad thing but it's not like it has an army or conducts other forms of foreign policy right now.
It does not have a foreign policy because its members-states don't want it to have one (well, in this case, mostly France, but others are quite happy about that as well).
> It's a common market first and foremost, with most of its laws being product and workplace standards
That's a profound misunderstanding. It is a political union first and foremost. The regulations are just a byproduct of this and the common market is the logical consequence.
> The prior commenter wasn't saying it currently has an army, and you know that. If you've been paying any attention at all to the news you'd know about the discussions of a common army, especially regarding Macron.
If you've been paying any attention at all, you'd have noticed that this did not happen and that he changed his stance. Do you know why? Because there won't be enough member-states in favour and there is no way the council reaches an agreement. Because fundamentally, all European political decisions are the result of the consensus of the member states and if they want to operate as coordinated national armies instead of an integrated European one, this is exactly what will happen. What won't happen is the Commission deciding one day that the EU has an army.
> 414 Tankbataljon in Netherlands was created as a sort of test, staffed with german and dutch soldiers. The French used to be opposed to this because they wanted their independant army, nuclear force, same with UK.
Are you aware that France and Germany have a very similar common brigade since 1986? So how on Earth do one come to the conclusion that France is hostile to this sort of things? What they don't want is lose their ability to take initiatives.
> UK left and french president thinks differently, it's suddenly a lot more likely.
There is no way in hell France gives up its control on its nuclear weapons. This is outside the scope of all of the European Army hypotheses that have been under discussion.
> again, I'm convinced you're building a strawman here, nobody claimed its like this now, but its definately going in that direction. There is a ton of discussion around EU federalism, again surrounding macron. I used to be active in a political organisation that supported it, but im not that much of a fan personally nowadays because im disillusioned because of how undemocratic EU is up close.
Well, plenty of people claim this. In any case, it is not going to that direction at all. How many federalist parties are there right now in the European Parliament? How many governments are talking about giving up their national sovereignty? And even if some of them wanted, no EU institution has any way of forcing that on the member states.
Macron is not a federalist at all. He wants more integration in some areas (notably military spending and procurement, true). But if you believe he wants to give up things like industrial strategy, foreign policy or the ability to intervene militarily without having to convince the whole European Council, then you haven't been paying attention that much.
Federalism is nothing new, it predates all the European Communities. It fell out of favour significantly after the 1980s, though. It is not a significant force nowadays and if anything, the EU as a single country is all but impossible now after the last rounds of enlargement.
> Those reasons are both related to instances of personal corruption I have seen but also to how I don't agree with the dual parlimentary setup, where elected positions hold much less importance in the lower house, and can't propose legislation. The upper house is entirely unelected and can propose legislation. Sure its members are appointed by in theory elected national governments but I don't think thats a good way to go about things, imo national elections style democracy is already a tenuous way to get the will of the people and each step away from elected positions is progressively worse. I see many people in european parliment patting themselves on the back and laughing about how silly they think american system of electors is while doing an imo even worse system.
I am not going to claim that the EU is perfect; it very much is not. The parliament is more legitimate now than it used to be (direct election of the MEPs is an improvement according to your criteria), but it lacks power and the Commission has too much freedom to ram regulations through parliament. But it has enough flaws and there is no need to make it look worse than it is. All the points the parent mentioned (the single country, the army, the "it's only supposed to be about trade", etc) are populist talking points that are false and dishonest in the mouth of all politicians who ought to know better. People resorting to them uncritically without understanding how absurd they sound is quite annoying.
> There are significant benefits to being a member no doubt, but that doesn't mean its a good system
It'd have to be really, really bad to be worse than what we had before. At the end of the day, if a country is better in it than outside, then it is a good system. Probably not a perfect one, but then no system is.
The USA and the EU have comparable size. Is Washington DC too far away for the USA to work?
> too diverse
The USA is widely regarded as a cultural melting point, and it's ability to attract immigrants from all corners of the world part of the reason for its economic success. I would argue that the EU is less diverse than the USA.
> too big to be trusted
Brussels bureaucracy is in fact relatively small when compared to the national bureaucracies of western countries. This claim was repeatedly made during the Brexit referendum campaign. Interestingly enough, the UK's civil service is aprox 10x the size of Brussels (350k vs. 40k, resp.)
These are claims that are repeated ad nauseam by people who have antipathy towards the EU, but they have very little substance indeed.
I mean the infamous quote by Jean Claude Juncker says it all: “We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.”
The EU very well knows that if most of their policies were up for vote, including each and every job of theirs, they would be out of office within a year.
The EU commissioners are the biggest fault with the EU and it's disheartening how no one addresses that. Even after Brexit, when every EU politician asked how they can make the EU more attractive - they mentioned everything, but a reform that makes it more democratic was out of question.
It's time to let the EU know that we need change, because times are tough. The problem is: there is no mechanism for the people of the EU to petition the commission. Only lobbying groups
This worked fine while socialist parties held majorities in the EP; that's not the case anymore, and it shows: the Commission-Council axis has been excessively strengthened by conservative parties.
In addition, there is so much legislation being passed through the parliament, that the vast majority of MPs don't have much of a chance of knowing what they're actually voting for. Much less anyone else.
Again, i m not sure there s even a procedure to remove the EC president
For some reason, I feel like my sonars are detecting too much of submarines lately. Lots ot messaging on hypothetical dangers without much to show.
> but a reform that makes it more democratic was out of question.
Because the existence of commissioners, and their strange position in the EU is both very deliberate, and incredibly important to the continued existence of the EU.
The EU isn’t a federal government, it’s a super state entity that exists in an uneasy balance with governments of each member state. The consequence is that “more democracy” doesn’t help the EU, or make it more attractive (at least not to national governments, and they’re the ones that sign treaties).
Balancing the powers of the individual EU states, with their elected governments and different democratic processes, with the powers of the EU as a super state entity is hard. No national government wants to hand off their own sovereign power to an external entity they have little direct influence over, so the EU commissioners exist. Their explicit purpose is to allow national governments to place a heavy thumb on the democratic scales in Brussels, to provide assurances to those national governments that their own state can’t be dictated to by other states within the EU who may hold different cultural values.
The result of all this mess isn’t perfect, and is hard to understand as a random citizen. But simply getting rid of commissioners, and introducing “more democracy” which implicitly reduces the power of national governments, doesn’t provide a practical solution for the EU. The real solutions will be convoluted, nuanced, and slow to develop, that’s just the consequence of trying to get 27 very independent nation states to get along.
You might be thinking about the council and not the commission? While commissioners are appointed by national governments they "control" a fairly narrow area, e.g. if you get to appoint the commissioner for fisheries and agriculture he won't be able to influence healthcare policy that much.
I am thinking of the commission, not the council. The EU parliament has no “right of initiative”, so it can’t propose new legislation itself, it can only work in legislation proposed by the EU commission. Which gives the commission a big chunk of soft power, because they effectively set the agenda of the EU parliament.
The EU commission has both an executive role, which is the different ministries you mention, but also a legislative role, which is proposing legislation to the EU parliament. Which where an individual EU commissioner could have serious long term impact, as we’re seeing with these message scanning laws.
There is a picture titled "The Action Day promoted by Brave Movement in front of the EP". You know how one can immediately tell whether a demonstration is a genuine effort that comes from people, or is organized by some shady institution? Look at the signs they have. Genuine demonstrations have home-made signs on pieces of carton, all looking different. Astroturfing operations have signs that all look the same and are professionally printed.
Also, when somebody says "think of the children", I think of billionaires, it's usually closer to the intended meaning. :-)
Source:I've participated to 12 demonstration this year (I missed two :/).
It seems strange to me to require small demonstrations to pretend to not be organised. I think better heuristics should be found.
But all of them looking the same, on high-quality paper with glossy finish, yeah, that implies somebody is organizing it.
this is no longer true. protests in europe have pre printed signs which are distributed by the organisers to protesters before the march starts.
Here is their About page, but of course that is their self-published statement:
> Star of That ‘70s Show and a host of Hollywood hits, 45-year-old Kutcher resigned as chairman of the Thorn board in mid-September amid uproar over a letter he wrote to a judge in support of convicted rapist and fellow That ‘70s Show actor Danny Masterson, prior to his sentencing.
What if they become big enough (and own multiple companies in many industries) to lobby hard for draconian laws forcing seemingly innocuous competitors to buy their services or who knows get fined/arrested because arent "thinking of the children".
I'm all for fighting csam, but do it right and proper in a liberal democracy, not with authoritarian means.
There are things where you can't trust "the EU" (whatever this is supposed to be, the Parliament? The Commission? The countries?) and there are things where you can and absolutely should.
Generalizations are propaganda, and this is what you do here.
I'd never trust neither the commission nor the parliament. They have so many ridiculous failures under their wings, that nobody well-informed would. The best you can hope for with new legislation is that it's so vague and incomprehensible that in practice it's going to be unenforceable. But that's only so long as the judicial stays sane, which you can only hope for.
In addition EU is working hard to gain control of information flows at the moment. Censoring and cooperating with censors to block information providers in EU. All of this happens very discreetly and very silently. And I'd wager 95% of citizens are unaware that their right of free speech and information about events is being curtailed to degrees that is completely incompatible with a free society.
How you can even begin to trust a creation acting like this, is beyond my imagination.
The main difference between a law by most national parliaments and EU legislation is that the EU legislation is usually wildly more complex, oftentimes to the extent that nobody anywhere really can understand it. E.g. take a look at the GDPR or the EU electricity regulation. You will be getting wildly different answers to many questions, depending on who you ask. And the reason is clear: The regulation is unreadable and inconsistent.
On top of that, one would be thinking that EU should be painting legislation with broad clear strokes, for the national parliaments to implement the specifics. But they don't, often the EU commission goes down to a level of detail that you'd never even see in specific national legislation.
I can understand how lawyers see this monster as a great. It's an infinite source of income. But for the average citizen and cooperation, the good EU legislation would have been much better, had it been implemented by national parliaments. And much of the bad legislation would not have been possible in the national parliaments, where completely obscure nonsense usually is read by at least someone, that will call it out.
Isn't this true of any complex law anywhere? The interpretation varies and is eventually decided upon by the courts and following that sometimes additional rectifying legislation.
>On top of that, one would be thinking that EU should be painting legislation with broad clear strokes, for the national parliaments to implement the specifics. But they don't, often the EU commission goes down to a level of detail that you'd never even see in specific national legislation.
I'm curious about what you mean here, do you have any specific examples?
I'm from a country that would benefit immensely from EU laws in pretty much every area, but I also recognize the hazards of pushing legislative decisions too far away.
But for all the criticism the EU gets on that point, it is actually much easier for individual countries to disagree and do their own thing in the EU than it is for states in the United States, it seems to me. It's not like there are "federal" EU agents running around and arresting people.
Yes, but it'd definitely be nice if the lawmakers put some effort into avoiding it. E.g. by considering, whether we really need one more law for this situation (which is probably covered by 20 others anyway)
> I'm curious about what you mean here, do you have any specific examples?
There are many, a famous example was the regulations with regards to size and shape of fruits and vegetables, one example here for bananas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_Regulation_(EC)_No.... but there are many more. Standards to this level of details is definitely uncalled for.
But you can find these tidbits around a huge amount of legislation. See e.g. section (20) of the ePrivacy directive:
"(20) Service providers should take appropriate measures to safeguard the security of their services, if necessary in conjunction with the provider of the network, and inform subscribers of any special risks of a breach of the security of the network. Such risks may especially occur for electronic communications services over an open network such as the Internet or analogue mobile telephony. It is particularly important for subscribers and users of such services to be fully informed by their service provider of the existing security risks which lie outside the scope of possible remedies by the service provider. Service providers who offer publicly available electronic communications services over the Internet should inform users and subscribers of measures they can take to protect the security of their communications for instance by using specific types of software or encryption technologies. The requirement to inform subscribers of particular security risks does not discharge a service provider from the obligation to take, at its own costs, appropriate and immediate measures to remedy any new, unforeseen security risks and restore the normal security level of the service. The provision of information about security risks to the subscriber should be free of charge except for any nominal costs which the subscriber may incur while receiving or collecting the information, for instance by downloading an electronic mail message. Security is appraised in the light of Article 17 of Directive 95/46/EC."
This is all good and fine advice. But for a small company it's really not clear when it's appropriate to give advice on proper security habits for users. More, the vast majority of companies, dealing with communication, will be completely unaware of this law (and the 1000s of others similar provisions in other laws). This level of detail and vagueness should definitely not be in legislation.
A third recent example is the infamous AI act:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/202...
See e.g. any AI system used in education need to be registered in a EU registry. In general there is a lot of good intentions, but there is simply no clear reason why there is a need for special regulation on AI. Everything that is forbidden to do without AI is also forbidden with AI. But EU constantly sees the need to spin new regulation, and all companies without an army of lawyers will be breaking one rule or another entirely without intent.
And these were just the ones on top of my mind. Go dig yourself, there are hundreds of thousands of pages of it.
Please stop spreading FUD. Here's a good overview of the AI regulation including the reasons why it's needed: https://softwarecrisis.dev/letters/the-truth-about-the-eu-ac...
What it certainly does is put burdens on small companies, independent developers and open source projects. For no benefit whatsoever. And this is just the start.
Have you read the link I provided? What exactly do you see as immature or ridiculous?
> What it certainly does is put burdens on small companies, independent developers and open source projects.
Of course it doesn't. That's why the major AI industries are so up in arms about it: because they have to document and describe their foundational models, and make sure their data is sound: something that they definitely don't want to do.
Independent devs and open source will be fine: they already (mostly) do that.
It's GDPR all over again: the industry fights it tooth and nail because they couldn't be arsed to play nice. This time the FUD has been launched preemptively in hopes to stifle this.
This is now true for any 1 or 2 person startup. Making it completely impossible to succeed without huge amounts of capital. Congratulations on completely stifling innovation and making life a lot worse for everyone.
> Independent devs and open source will be fine: they already (mostly) do that.
They are now running the legal risk of the EU commission or some national bureaucrat thinking their models training data are not representative enough or documentation insufficient. How can these things even begin to become judicial questions?
I am also however aware of how much the average person has benefitted from EU regulation such as retail warranty laws and data roaming expense laws.
I think it would be a good thing for some of these laws to only start applying once a business has grown to a certain size. In practice I think it usually is not enforced too harshly for small operators but nevertheless it should be explicit.
Very surprised there are hn comments regarding the gdpr as unreadable and inconsistent.
Which particular parts are you referring to?
Define "broad clear strokes" for, say, food safety. "Make your food safe, EU commission"?
> And much of the bad legislation would not have been possible in the national parliaments, where completely obscure nonsense usually is read by at least someone, that will call it out.
What makes you think that:
- EU legislation is not read by anyone when we're literally discussing the issues in one such legislation?
- National legislation is any better considering reality (how many national laws have you read and discussed?)
> EU legislation is usually wildly more complex, oftentimes to the extent that nobody anywhere really can understand it. E.g. take a look at the GDPR
Tell me you're parroting someone else without telling me you're paring someone else.
GDPR is really clear as day compared to most legislation, and you yourself could read it in one sitting, and understand it, if you ever bothered to do so.
Instead, you're complaining that no one reads EU legislation
We are discussing a marginal part of the total EU regulation. A lot is slipping by, that most people in the EU are unaware of. Btw, I don't think this proposal is being mentioned in any mainstream news.
News don't pay attention to major pieces of legislation unless it can be farmed for clickbait and outrage, news at 11:05.
Give any country (including the one you live in), and I can bet you I can find a major legislation you are not aware of, and news aren't talking about. Why is EU singled out again?
https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/report/?source=nav-head...
What's the problem with that?
In several countries, they even put up billboards next to projects they paid for.
Many things actually since most people know not enough about what, why or how they do things. See my billboard example.
> Second, this is EU taxpayer money they are spending, to american companies
It's not their fault that those popular companies are from the US. What's your point?
> Third , EU having such financial relationship with facebook is problematic, given their legal fights.
Why?
I don't have a Facebook account and even if I had, they seem not to run them in Germany.
I've taken Poland as an example.
You can see the Ads here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t...
With which of those do you actually have a problem?
The EP and the EC don't need an advertising budget, just like how national governments don't need it (and the data shows they don't spend on it) - because they are judged by their outcome.
Now I see where you're coming from and why you're offended.
I'd lie if I'd say that I'm surprised.
I'm in favor of education.
We're not the same thing.
You can "say the same thing", but only within your bubble would that be a valid argument. Everywhere else, it would be an joke or insult.
So please, save me your pitiful excuses. You are the one who, pressed on concrete evidence and examples, ran away into generalizations and Anti-Semitic stereotypes.
You mean when Brexit compaign was financed by dark money, broke electoral law, they were fined wopping £50,000, the parliament has asked Zukerberg to testify and he simply refused to come to uk?
Or how the failure of brexit is good pro-eu propaganda?
It is always a shame when governments get corrupted, but the European view is usually not "welp, the experiment failed, let's get rid of the government completely", but rather "we need to make the government stronger, to have it resist interference harder".
US constitution has "We the people", but Americans don't really see their government as "We", but rather as some incompetent entity they're forced to live under.
Europeans more strongly see governments as their representation. The government is seen as people banding together, through their representatives. Governments exist to resist undesirable forces, like exploitation of people by commercial entities.
This is also the reason why Europeans like regulations, a thing unfathomable in the US. It's not "oh no, those dumb politicians stifle our precious job-creating businesses", but rather "we're the labor force, we're the consumers, and the businesses depend on us, so we won't let them fuck with us". So US firms fucking with us is a terrible thing, but the reaction will probably be to make more regulations to resist US tech even harder.
I think you misunderstand. I'm an American, so I should probably clarify a typical American perspective. Caveat: you probably can't find any statement all Americans agree on :-) ).
The US Constitution does begin with the phrase "We the people", but I think you misunderstand its context. It never says the US government and its people are the same. I can quote that sentence from memory. The text follows with the goals for creating a federal government (e.g., "establish justice" and "provide for the common defense"). It ends by saying that We the People "... do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America". In other words, it's clearly stated that the government is not the people. The US federal government is instead an organization established by the people under rules defined by the Constitution.
So Americans would generally agree that the US government is NOT the people. The US government is instead an organization set up by the people, in order to accomplish certain goals. If we don't like how its current leadership runs things, the intent is that We the People can change the leadership via an election (as established by the Constitution).
> but rather as some incompetent entity they're forced to live under.
You'll find lots of claims about incompetence, especially at political rallies where someone is trying to convince everyone to vote for them. But while many people want someone or other voted in, and there are always proposals for changes, few call for the elimination of the US government. They just want "their side" voted in.
> Europeans more strongly see governments as their representation. The government is seen as people banding together, through their representatives. Governments exist to resist undesirable forces, like exploitation of people by commercial entities.
Americans also view their government as necessary to resist undesirable forces. Per that sentence, the government exists to "provide for the common defense" and "promote the general welfare".
However, the American view is that governments can also be the source of tyranny. This is not a crazy view; see the various dictatorships around the world. Governments can be powerful entities. Therefore, there needs to be a way to ensure that they are (1) representative and (2) constrained so they don't become tyrannical.
> This is also the reason why Europeans like regulations, a thing unfathomable in the US.
The US has lots of regulations, so it's not that the US doesn't have any. However, Americans are generally more skeptical of regulation than Europeans. All regulations have unintended consequences; if the regulation is not carefully crafted, the regulation can be worse than the problem.
For example: I would instinctively ignore the goal of any proposed law or regulation. I don't really care what its goal is. That is mostly irrelevant. What is the actual impact of the law or regulation? If it does something good, but overall makes things worse, then it should be rejected even if it has a good goal.
> In 2008, the eurozone and the US had equivalent gross domestic products (GDP) at current prices of $14.2 trillion and $14.8 trillion respectively (€13.1 trillion and €13.6 trillion). Fifteen years on, the eurozone's GDP is just over $15 trillion, while US GDP has soared to $26.9 trillion.
Seems like they are not protecting their citizens interests nearly so well as they believe they are.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2023/09/04/the-gdp...
The stereotypical view the other ways is "yes, salaries in the US are way higher, but if I go there and get cancer, I'll bankrupt my family for three generations, and still die while on hold angry-calling my insurance provider".
What other metric would you propose? Considering we are on HN maybe laughable SDE salaries in EU would be a more relevant metric?
[0]: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/oops-it-looks-like-the...
It's not the SDEs who keep you alive in this world.
Indeed
> were paid more or less the same and don't want to go back, thank you very much.
Let me guess: because now you're paid ridiculous amounts of money and you couldn't care less about other human beings.
Also Canada has a higher real population growth which skews the data (per capita would be better), and on the per capita basis Canada looks pretty bleak.
https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&...
(nominal)
Canada: 2000: 742B 2018: 1710B (230% growth)
Germany: 2000: 1940B 2018: 3940B (203% growth)
France: 2000: 1360B 2018: 2018: 2770B (203% growth)
Poland: 2000: 198B 2018: 585B (295% growth)
Canada: 2000: 916B 2019: 1970B (215%)
Germany: 2000: 2390B 2019: 4693B (196%)
France: 2000: 1683B 2019: 3241B (192%)
Poland: 2000: 451B 2019: 1316B (291%)
Canada: 2000: 29900 2019: 51600 (172%)
Germany: 2000: 29400 2019: 56400 (191%)
France: 2000: 28600 2019: 49800 (174%)
Poland: 2000: 11700 2019: 34700 (296%)
I think part of the problem is that the EU can't work in the same way the US federal government does or ever did. Culturally the countries are too dissimilar. There are many friction points that make a closer union very difficult to swing without trying to pull a fast one over the population (like they did with the vote over the EU constitution).
One friction point is the "liking of regulations" you mention. Some European countries seem to like that but others don't. People absolutely laugh at the ridiculous German bureaucracy, how dated the way is that the French run things (cheques!!!) or how naive the Swedes are. And they usually do not want that in their own country.
European countries are very different. I'm not sure if more than California vs Alabama. However, people remember that European countries used to have actual wars with each other throughout their history, up until not that long ago, so it's preferable to have disagreements worked out bureaucratically, even if that's a lot of bureaucracy.
So you are saying that one of EUs main purposes is to allow politicians to circumvent the democratic process and so act against people's best interest.
It's a different, bigger forum. This doesn't subvert the process. It may bring additional scrutiny and require international consensus. This is usually a higher bar for ramming bad laws than in local parliaments that may have dodgy deals or loyalties between parties/president/courts.
There are unpopular laws because they are bad ideas (like all the "think of the children" surveillance). There are also laws that are good for society long term, but unpopular due to short-term inconvenience (e.g. pollution limits raising prices, or anti-smoking laws vs smokers' freedoms).
When the EU had some countries do a referendum and the result was something they didn't like, then they just had the people do another referendum.
Oh, and laws are created by people that are appointed, not elected.
The chief problem is different languages - you can't have a debate for an EU level party easilly televised, etc.
The cultural differences are not any worse, than chasms splitting the US, like go ask someone in Alabama and in New York aboit trans people or whatever.
Like sure the food in Romania and france is differrent but its not a relevant issue at election time
The Spanish will occasionally celebrate communism. They even have communist party members in the EU. Meanwhile communist symbols in a country like Lithuania are literally illegal. And this isn't some government holdover.
Things like education, childcare and even a general outlook on life is very different between EU countries.
As any dictatorship, corporate dictatorships want to understand our behaviour and manipulate it. And as any dictatorship there is a not insignificant portion of society that supports and facilitates it - see people that bootlick apple, amazon, microsoft, google and so on. When will people understand that fighting back is crucial? And it doesnt have to be violent. Low rate their services, report them whenever possible to local customer protection agencies (where you even have them), avoid using their products, advice others not to use them, spread knowledge about their doings and starve them of your skills.
Time to take capitalism back. Refuse and resist corporate communism.
But this is capitalism.
That's seems counter to some of the very foundations of capitalism, i.e. the concepts of markets, creditors, and shareholders. In any case, it wouldn't work at the current scale.
The first corporations were monasteries. The monks held all in common, so the property belonged to the abbey.
Should that be illegal?
Should reporters at the New York Times be treated as personal servants of the publisher?
This is capitalism, or what it inevitably devolves into. No need to bring communism into it.
Capitalism means small and medium sized businesses.
Furthermore these corporations want us to live in massive communes controlled by them where they dictate how we dress eat think and live. This is communism disguised as capitalism.
It's why real life capitalism doesn't work on a long enough timescale.
No it doesn't. It means that power structures follow the allocation of capital. And just like power tends to gravitate towards the powerful, so does capital under capitalism. It has nothing to do with movement of capital, which is a property of market strategy rather than of an economic system.
Cartels and anticompetitive agreements are part and parcel of a devolved capitalism where the government provides no rules (or provides rules but no enforcement) to restrain capital.
You know, Louis XIV, that famous commie!
A very large number of words used by Communists have other true meanings than their traditional meanings.
A Communist society is not a class-less society, but is a society where there is a class of privileged people, who have functions in the hierarchy of the Communist party and who exploit the remainder of the population, who are reduced to a state extremely similar to the serfdom of the peasants in feudalism, i.e. it is forbidden for them to own many kinds of things and they frequently are forced to live wherever the privileged communists decide for them and not in the places they would like, and also frequently they may be forced to have jobs decided for them by the privileged class, instead of having the jobs they would like.
This is how Communism has been implemented in Russia, and then in all countries influenced by Russia. Any other kind of Communism is just a fantasy.
You might think it's impossible to implement communism(like I do), but get your basic facts right.
Almost everything in the Communist propaganda corresponds to a Christian concept, which has been renamed and twisted. There are exact Communist correspondents for prophets, saints, martyrs, priests, the Holy Bible, heretics, the Vatican and so on.
The "Communist state" is the Communist correspondent of the Christian Heaven. While the Christians have always been taught that they must be obedient and that they must work diligently, because despite the fact that in this life their good deeds are not rewarded as they should, they will be rewarded in their afterlife, in Heaven, the citizens of the states where the Communists have the power have always been taught that they must be obedient and that they must work diligently, because despite the fact that in this life their good deeds are not rewarded as they should, their children will receive the reward, when living in a "Communist state".
Having been born and raised in a country occupied by Communists, I certainly know the facts about them better than any outsider.
Therefore the "Communist state" has always been nothing more than a propaganda instrument and none of those using this instrument have really believed that it is something that could ever exist in reality.
People keep saying that, but every society that's ever been called "communist" has had classes. I suppose, then, that the distinction between corporatocracy and communism is that the former is more honest?
So, by that definition, all publicly traded corporations are communist :) I mean, significant part of their shares is traded on stock exchanges and owned by anonymous members of proletariat :)
EDIT: Also, think about all those Silicon Valley companies that pay their employees in stock options. Marx would be proud :)
Obviously, the gang that has seized all the means of production claims that in fact those means of production now belong to the entire population, but nevertheless the members of the gang are the only ones who manage all those means of production, supposedly because they are the most competent of all people and not because they are the servants or relatives of those who have seized the power by force, with foreign support.
Oxymoron.
It's just the sad reality of real life capitalism.
(In properly-functioning capitalism, the means of production are split between many independent, competing corporations, and the state uses its monopoly on violence to preserve that competition.)
This is not a description of communism.
In properly functioning communism - means of production are split between many small independent individuals...
Who is roleplaying who?
“As negotiator for my group, many of the organisations mentioned in the report, which call themselves child protection organisations or victims’ associations, also contacted me. But I had no idea that the pro-chat control campaign was being orchestrated and funded by a network of organisations linked to the tech industry and security services, drawing millions in funding from a US-led foundation and paying foreign consulting agencies to create lobbying strategies. I had previously only expected corporations to use such methods of ‘capturing legislation’.
Q. Do you know what the difference is between reality and a conspiracy theory is?
A. About six months
P.S. And before anyone gets all angry at me, if you had told any random person on the street that the Tech and Security Industrial complex were secretly funding activists groups to try and be able to spy on all European data you would've been considered to be daft and people would look at you like your crazy. If it doesn't sound crazy to you it's only because you're familiar with how the sausage is made in this area. So what could be going on in places where you don't know how the sausage is made?
> A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement
There. It's a secret plan. But the word has been twisted into meaning crazy.
"A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with political motivation,[1] while keeping their agreement secret from the public or from other people affected by it."
If you went back 10-15 years everyone was talking about how electric cars are being suppressed.
Now similar people are talking about how electric cars part of some vast conspiracy to limit travel.. oddly most of the people posting this kind of stuff don't really travel at all.
Another is UFOs, conspiracy theorists used to mostly say they are real. Now you are as likely to find conspiracy theories that say UFOs are a conspiracy to unify humanity against an outside threat.
The Illuminati deep state WAS suppressing electric cars until their puppet Elon agreed to normalize the extremely connected and remotely controllable car.
This way, the bioweapon defense mode built into the Tesla can be remotely inverted to invite bioweapon agents into the car remotely incapacitating the ones who know too much.
/s, maybe.
It’s rarely going to be something completely unrelated to what is in the news or on people’s minds.
It's popular to dismiss conspiracy theorists as reactionaries (re: lazide's comment), but here you have a case where the people who allege a conspiracy occurred were looking forward to something new and were allegedly stymied by a reactionary conspiracy.
You are mostly correct here with this, but I definitely know of the odd exceptions turned anti-green the moment green became fashionable. Perma contrarians that can't accept that anything from government could ever be done for a good reason.
The thing about swivel-eyed loons[1] is that they can be right for the wrong reasons. You can reasonably suspect a conspiracy exists without necessarily knowing who the conspirators are.
[0] e.g. by locking out more intricate repairs that require more labor training cost but are way cheaper to do, thus shifting more repair costs onto the owner of the vehicle
[1] in the sense Cory Doctorow uses the term
Can you expand on that? GM claims they took those cars back because they didn't sell well and so GM couldn't/wouldn't commit to providing spare parts and repairs into the future. Lessees countered by offering to release GM from such obligations and handle the repairs themselves but GM refused that offer. But why? It's not as though they might have set a dangerous precedent by allowing EV1 lessees-turned-owners to repair their own cars, since buying out car leases and third party repairs were already normal aspects of the car industry. GM were fine with this generally but in this specific case they refused to allow it.
To me it seems like some GM executives hated having been required by California into making the EV1 in the first place and wanted to destroy all of the cars for some feeling of satisfaction and finality. Pure spite in other words. Maaybe GM were egged on by oil companies who wanted to crush the spirits of people who thought electric cars were viable, but the oil company angle doesn't really seem necessary to explain what happened, unless you believe GM wouldn't make a decision like this out of pure spite.
It’s law enforcement companies trying to lobby for increased chat control. They’re doing it via a scummy way of NGO fronts.
That is not really a conspiracy in the classic sense of something crazy. Lobbying via front organizations happens all the time. I don’t condone it. We should stop this effort. But it ain’t anything special.
This is your hypothesis, and I agree it's a likely one. But frankly nobody knows because it's all being done with dark money. It could also be US national security contractors looking to maliciously exploit EU data networks, or even private data brokers looking for new revenue opportunities. In every case, these possibilities significantly change the tenor of the debate away from "it's just to protect children."
I'm not familiar with the way that EU governance works, but my impression is that dark-money-based lobbying is less common over there. Which is why there seem to be so few defenses against it. Here in the US such lobbying would be less effective, since our structures are more distributed and lobbying would be countered with corresponding lobbying from civil society organizations and the tech industry -- in some sense (and here I only half-jest) we US folks can be more cynical about this because our corruption is more mature.
I think you might mean that it doesn’t involve blackmail, assassinations, etc?*
Notably, a conspiracy doesn’t require those things - but some do. And they’re pretty bad too.
* that we are currently aware of anyway.
"Something crazy" is not the classic sense of a conspiracy. That's the modern corrupt meaning.
These don't exist in Europe for as far as I know, and should not exist anywhere else either. As soon as basic functions like this are outsourced, the state loses its monopoly on violence and a large part of its legitimacy.
The term "private law enforcement company" is unfortunate. There are private providers of security tech, weapons, etc. for law enforcement and there are also private security companies.
But neither seem to really be law enforcement in my opinion.
‘Your winnings sir’
Gotta play the game.
Evidence is the difference.
> if you had told any random person on the street that the Tech and Security Industrial complex were secretly funding activists groups to try and be able to spy on all European data you would've been considered to be daft and people would look at you like your crazy
This reasoning is hindsight. People come up with lots of conspiracy theories, 99% of which are false. The difference is evidence.
When law enforcement publish a bulletin about how they've thwarted a terrorist plot, they act before there is complete evidence, instead judging the intentions of bad actors and the likelihood that they'll act on those intentions. We have to do the same with all bad actors, while realizing there will usually never be any evidence accessible.
> You can only have evidence for things that have already happened.
Logically true and yet irrelevant. Why work so hard to defend conspiracy theories? Why is it so important to you?
> judging the intentions of bad actors and the likelihood that they'll act on those intentions
Based on evidence.
> Life is not a court of law however, and we as humans can use our common sense and intuition to discern what is right and wrong and plan accordingly.
Common sense and intuition are awful without evidence. That's why courts, engineering (metrics!), science, and anyone serious about anything, require it. Common sense and intuition produce witches and inject every bias we have. Intuition is well-demonstrated to be awful without expertise and evidence.
> I actually thought it proven that the microbiota was seeded during vaginal birth and may lead to more issues for caesarean section delivered kids. I guess it all just sounded so logical. I know I know, that’s the most dangerous thing.
True conspiracy theory backed by evidence: Criminal prosecutors present a theory about a gang of bank robbers conspiring to rob a bank. They have a lot of phone records and surveillance footage as evidence.
True conspiracy theories with no evidence: Crimes with two or more participants which have successfully evaded discovery. Somebody smells a rat but has nothing but their gut to go off of. Distinguishing these from false conspiracy theories is impossible (so no example), but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Sometimes people get away with it.
False conspiracy theory with no evidence: wolverine876 is in league with Martians to take over Earth.
False conspiracy theory with some evidence: To understand how this could happen, you must understand that evidence is not the same as proof. Circumstantial evidence and eye witness testimony can often point in the direction of something that isn't actually true. In the case of the Second Gulf of Tonkin incident, radar and sonar evidence lead the Navy to believe that it was under attack from the North Vietnamese. Turns out they were almost certainly shooting at shadows. They believed something that the evidence then available to them supported, but it turned out to be wrong.
"The National Security Agency, a subsidiary of the US Defense Department, deliberately skewed intelligence to create the impression that an attack had been carried out"
What if you didn't find any evidence of something that indeed happen? What category does it fall into? Even courts will sometimes forgo the need to present evidence if they can establish means, motive and opportunity.
Also, of course parent didn't mean it literally. They were referring to a different aspect of how such evidence may be discovered... well, now I feel like I'm explaining a joke.
For example, almost literally every war the US has gotten into after WWII has ended in disaster, with no useful goals achieved and lots of money wasted. There is a consistent pattern where they start off optimistic with an obvious bad guy to get, then over 4-8 years the grey reality sets in and the costs become obvious.
There has to be something I would recognise as a conspiracy going on there, hard evidence or no. It doesn't make sense to be that stupid unless there is a group of people making bank from the spending and organising to push the mad agenda. The decision makers have full visibility into the disasters they are pushing.
Every pattern isn't caused by conspiracy. The nature of knowledge is to first establish that there is a pattern (I've hypothesized the same one), and then look for what correlates with it.
In this case, it's been well-known - or rather the leading issue - in international relations for generations, if not centuries: How do people get into dumb wars (all wars are awful, a very few are necesssary)?
> Evidence is the difference.
Evidence is obviously not the difference between reality and a conspiracy theory. Were that the case, it would be impossible for a conspiracy theory to be correct.
Evidence isn't even the difference between admitting that a conspiracy happened and not making that admission, but that's the best case.
But who is going to arrest those involved and prosecute?
This should be a massive scandal that should lead to closure of security services and creation of new ones from scratch as these people are compromised.
We need integrity and civic duty to protect ourselves from the next totaliterian regimes.
Security apparatus power trips and the erosion of privacy is the wet dream of the Stasi.
I think asking the question what would the Stasi do with this legislation helps warn every day people about the privacy risks.