Europe Regulates Its Way to Last Place | Hacker News Reader

Europe Regulates Its Way to Last Place

wsj.com

24 pointscubefox37 comments

This is blog-post level material. As a citizen of the EU, I have lots of complaints of over-regulation, but the fact that telco monopolies have been prevented and costs have been kept low is not one of them. I haven't met anyone that actually cares about 5G, it would be a meaningless investment in most of our cities. The EU even forced Apple to finally adopt USB type C in the Iphone.

Europe does have significant problems in helping its tech sector, but don't expect good details from this article.

This. Also, no mention of other industries where American regulation has resulted in worse outcomes, higher prices and worse overall customer satisfaction. Banks. Healthcare. Real Estate. The list goes on.

This smells like Tech lobbying buying opinion pieces.

Governments forcing technical standards on innovative companies is not something to celebrate.

In the last 20 years Apple created two connectors (30 pin dock connector and Lightning connector). If Apple had been beholden to USB standards, we might have seen devices with mini-A ports, then mini-B ports, then micro-A ports, then micro-B ports, then micro-B SuperSpeed ports, then USB-C ports, multiplied by all the difficulties of the transition from USB 2.0 to USB 3.0, and the difficulties of compatibility with USB-IF (with damage caused to incompatible devices). And then we'd have all the variance in cable/connector power handling that blights USB - unlike with Apple, whose MFI standards ensure safe and standardised connectivity for consumers.

I cannot begin to fathom the environmental damage of USB standards in mobile devices, and the awful consumer experience, compared to Apple's ecosystem.

Oh, come on, why would Apple use a different charger on Macbooks than on Iphones other than to make more money? And what awful consumer experience are you talking about, that I can charge all my devices with the same charger?

I'm generally against gov. regulations, since they rarely get it right, but forcing the same charger standard for phones and laptops when the industry itself already normalized one is better for almost everyone.

You seem quite decided on the subject anyway, but out of curiosity, would you for instance consider it ok if all cars made by Ford could only be refilled at Ford-certified gas stations?

> why would Apple use a different charger on Macbooks than on Iphones other than to make more money?

Power delivery. 12W is fine for phones, but modern laptops require ~100W

> what awful consumer experience are you talking about, that I can charge all my devices with the same charger?

" things can go wrong, and the results can be ugly:

Overheating cables Overheating devices Possible battery damage from overcharging (this is rare since most batteries have separate charge controllers, but cheaper devices might not) Risk of fire from overheating or overcharging"

https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/smart-office/using-the...

Alternatively (if your only goal is not making the most money), Europe regulates its way to the best protection on the planet for its citizens...

If the article was from "people on the street journal" then I suspect it would be whistling a different tune.

Any actual criticisms of the article except for ad-hominems?

Not necessary in this case. Taking the article seriously is demeaning.

Sure, it falsely implies that electric cars and AI are the most important things for governments to promote. It does not make reference to functioning health care systems, pollution/environmental controls, workplace safety, or my personal favourite, more advanced political voting systems that are less prone to two-party duocracy/Diarchy (UK has this problem but thankfully solved it for the purposes of this comment by brexiting).

Some of what you cited directly relate to well-being like healthcare and other items are inputs but unrelated like the political system. For those that directly relate: it’s pretty unclear that the EU as a whole does better on environmental protection or workplace safety than the US. Can you provide a source?

I'm not publishing an article on a major news site so my fact clearance rates are lower - that said some cursory searching showed better workplace safety results in the UK and EU on the order of 5 to 30% depending on the source (BLS has some data also). Wrt environmental protection, and the political aspect, I would answer that the withdrawal from the Paris agreement demonstrates both.

Also: Workplace safety is connected to cost of care, and if a broken leg costs 10x as much to treat in the US, while simultaneously preventing the person from earning (and thus relying on benefits) then I believe the US would be a less than ideal place to experience that injury.

Just for the curious, here are some reports from respective governments. I am not submitting them as evidence.

US-BLS: ~3.5 deaths/100k https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf

UK-HSE: ~0.5 deaths/100k. https://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/assets/docs/fatalinjuries....

No doubt the criteria for measurement differ in ways that prevent a direct comparison.

The US has strong anti poverty programs and provided more generous pandemic aid than any European country. At some point, you have to consider street homelessness a lifestyle preference of the American political system. A lot of the people on the street in America would be in locked treatment facilities in Europe, but it seems like the American democratic process prefers the current solution.

(Yes I understand a big part of this has to do with high rents and not mental illness, but even that is primarily caused by America’s adherence to the dysfunctional Anglo land use regulatory system. Its solution, to simplify, is less regulation not more. And the best schemes to copy from are in Asia not Europe.)

The mobile network comparison the wsj did between America and Europe is comical. 5g means nothing when the cell sites are over saturated and everyone has a useless web connection. Verizon in particular I awful and a far cry from what it used to be.

At least I get a signal that’s usable in Germany whereas I’ll get a 5g signal with 2g speeds in major us metro areas.

Wall Street Journal gets bought by Rupert Murdoch into last place.

I can picture the EU-philic types that flagged this article in order to sweep legitimate criticism of the EU under the carpet.

In the UK during the Brexit campaign I encountered the cult-like Remain campaign, with their faces painted blue, and their doomsday promises of mass unemployment and empty shelves in the UK if we dared to leave the EU (neither of which happened). Support for the EU is purely ideological at this point.

https://archive.ph/ZAyLI

>European mobile customers as a result pay only about a third of what Americans do. But that’s why European carriers invest only half as much per customer and their networks are commensurately worse, Strand said: “Getting a 5G signal in Germany is like finding a Biden supporter at a Trump rally.”

As usual these articles just go off vibes. 5G coverage in Germany is at 89%[1] compared to like 70% in the US. The obsession with market caps and gigantic firms and the complete absence of the effects these firms have on democracy makes sense if you're in the US-China cold war mindset that's present in the article but we do not need to compete on this.

Being German I remember this same discourse from the late 90s when Britain was praised as the economic frontrunner, we all must be like London, huge and innovative in finance, etc. Today Poland is wealthier than Britain minus London, and UK productivity is 30% lower than in France or Germany.

Small and medium sized private firms were allegedly unable to compete, we should adopt the cutthroat US managerial chase for profits was the tenor at the time, yet weirdly enough it was precisely the Mittelstand that survived the China shock.

[1]https://www.rcrwireless.com/20230926/5g/german-telcos-rapidl...

The fact remains that Germans are becoming poorer (in real wages) while US Americans are getting richer.

https://www.businessinsider.de/wirtschaft/international-busi...

> Today Poland is wealthier than Britain minus London

I'm not sure how to split London out, but the UK has a median wealth of $151,825 and an average of $302,783, while Poland's figures are $20,263 and $52,741.

Living in Europe as I do, I have to say that the north European, rule-bound mindset, and it's almost universal acceptance of government, makes it a more soulless place to be.

The things I like, wonky streets, eccentricities, unsanctioned alternative thinking and living, are mostly being legislated and engineered out of the picture, apart from a few heritage examples. The individuality that made things interesting has been bounded and contained.

In a general sense, I think European culture is homogenising itself into oblivion. The spontaneity of life is not here. (Of course, I'm speaking in ludicrously general terms!)

"rule-bound mindset, and it's almost universal acceptance of government" -- I think this could be similar for non-European countries like Japan. Most countries that are different in this respect, apart from the US, are probably poorer ones.

If competition always means sacrifice the well-being of your population then thank fuck for the EU regulations.

Overregulation means lower GDP, which means we are significantly poorer than US Americans.

That is very true on paper, but I wonder why, when I travel to/through America, everything feels poorer. Maybe it's the stroad landscape in small towns, or the insane cost of living in Brooklyn, but everything that's not Nature feels distinctly more bland, mediocre and futile than Western Europe. Talking to people does not change that feeling. It's like a million facades making the same emptiness, in a peculiar way I can't quite put my finger on. Friendly people, stunning landscape, but a bigger TV does not make one richer in any way that matters.

Or the seemingly crumbling infrastructure, airports that make me feel I'm traveling back to the 90s, metro systems that are filthier and noisier than almost any other I've ever taken (even the ones in developing countries). You being bombarded by ads everywhere, and for bizarre/dystopian products (like healthcare or medicine), payday loans, lawyers. It makes me icky to travel in the US.

I agree with you, there's a hollowness in American urbanscapes that's hard to put a finger on. Even bustling areas in SF or NYC feel... Decadent?

Does it matter that Americans have more money if they have to spend half of it on healthcare?

If it's actually a race to the bottom, you don't want to be first.

The article is paywalled so I can’t read the whole thing, but it seems to be making the flawed assumption that short term financial success is the only things that matters… rather than looking out for things like the long-term well-being of the populace.

If there’s one thing capitalism as a system is really good at, it’s finding efficiences, no matter the consequences. It needs to be kept in check with regulations.

"Keeping captitalism in check" with over-reaching regulations has consequences too.

Hurting businesses hurts jobs, and hurts people.

i have not read the content. and i do not think i will. the headline seems already like some opinion piece which is not worth the electrons with which they are sent.

Who owns WSJ again?

Some monopoly that wasn't allowed to acquire some robot vacuum cleaner company.

so not a bit salty over regulations at all then.

Europe has missed out on creating a true tech giant but it wasn’t because of GDPR or AI regulation.

If I’m being cynical this piece is a combination of misdirection and lobbying on behalf of non European interests.

Edit : Actually Europe has ASML so it does have a tech giant

"Europe" hasn't, every country on the planet aside from the US has. Even China has failed to create a global software company - all their big software companies basically just operate internally.

I shut down a couple of my personal projects when the EU GDPR came along (streetlend.com and cointouch.com). I wasn't doing anything ethically wrong, but ethics and law are two different things, and seeing as I wasn't making money out of my projects, I couldn't justify taking compliance risk.

The GDPR is a bloated, awkward directive, with punitive penalties measured in millions of Euros. To guarantee compliance with complex regulations like this requires legal expertise. I'm not Meta or Google. I don't have a legal team to back me up.

I'd rather not risk starting a tech business in Europe. I'll just keep working remotely for a successful American business instead.

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