Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management | Hacker News Reader

Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

baldurbjarnason.com

352 pointsM2Ys4U497 comments

A common mistake is to think that the EU is limited to a few large economies (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland), but this is not the case.

Ensuring that a Croatian SME can win contracts with the French or Germans is one of the EU's priority objectives. This is how the EU has lifted millions of people out of poverty. This is a very tangible reality. It worked with East Germany, Spain, Poland, the Baltic States and now the Balkans.

The European Commission is litteraly there to ensure that a water heater designed by an Italian, made by a Romanian from Polish steel, inspected by an Italian and put on the market by a Frenchman guarantees high quality standards. They take this mission very seriously because it's not just about protectionism or trade competition. It's a political project of peace and improvement of the living standards for Europeans.

You'd have to know very little about the European Union to believe that it was prepared to negotiate or grant a free pass to Apple.

The practical implication of this is also that it is a huge market. You can ignore that at your own peril. And another thing is that the EU is inspiring other countries to also change their regulations. In the end what companies need to decide is if they can afford losing and alienating major markets across the globe.

E.g. Apple sells lots of iphones and other hardware in the EU. That should be more valuable than giving themselves preferential treatment in their own store, banning competitors from using their browser on IOS, and other anti competitive things that they are doing. And that's just Apple. Arguably, Google, Amazon, Meta, etc. each have their own issues with regulations in the EU.

When Bulgarian truckers started outcompeting French truckers the EU came up with new rules to shut that down. Requiring that the truck has to go back to the country the company is from every 2 months is ridiculous. Not the driver, the vehicle.

Why would it be ridiculous, if a truck has a Bulgarian license plate it's a reasonable expectation that it's based in Bulgaria.

If a worker has Bulgarian nationality, they are free to live and work anywhere in the EU, including France. And a Bulgarian business can also operate anywhere in the EU. It's a single economic market, so it's clear that rules like that are arbitrary and designed to be appease special interests.

This is about the vehicle. The Bulgarian company is welcome to acquire a French registered vehicle and let it drive in France for years - it might come with extra requirements around having a French subsidy.

As stated elsewhere: This is politics and does not really change the fundamentals. Change take time. When countries in the EU gets more assimilated, more and more of these restrictions will be lifted.

You ought to see the trajectory and direction more than the absolute position of the legislation.

yes and no. They are free to live and work anywhere in the EU, but through multiple rules they are obligated to pay income, city and employment taxes in the country they live and work.

I've heard that there are long term goals of unifying healthcare, retirement and the way work and local taxes are calculated so that it's more flexible and less based on small local bureaucracy. Similar to what they did with mobile phone subscriptions, where you pay to the country you spend your time in, but can use it anywhere. but that requires a lot more financial systems to interoperate.

In a "free" market why would a Bulgarian be forced to operate only near Bulgaria?

As an example, all food in Romania is from the Netherlands or other foreign countries. But you don't see the EU imposing regulations to make foreign food more expensive.

Essentially eastern Europe is an exploitation market: everything is manufactured in the west, and when the east has an advantage it's immediately shut down.

This is also very polluting: forcing eastern European drivers to migrate to their home countries frequently, transporting food from western Europe to eastern Europe.

> In a "free" market why would a Bulgarian be forced to operate only near Bulgaria?

But this isn't about a Bulgarian person - this is about a truck registered in Bulgaria. That means that the registration fees and taxes, which are a national responsibility and are not at the EU-level, are paid in Bulgaria.

So if you only drive the truck in, say, France, you're essentially evading French taxes for the said truck.

> As an example, all food in Romania is from the Netherlands or other foreign countries.

Why?

Probably because Romanian farmers make more money selling their produce outside of Romania and the Netherlands and other countries can produce so much cheap produce that it's cheaper for Romania to import it rather than pay the price Romanian farmers are willing to sell it in the internal market.

I don't see any issue with that, it's a win-win.

As with any large political entity, politics is gonna happen. Doesn’t really detract from the basic point.

Well sure, no political project is perfect. But you can't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

And that is wrong why? Because at the same time, drivers have to be paid at least minimum wages in the countries they drive in.

The EU made us all poorer, it hasn't lifted many out of poverty

Go and explain that to a Romanian or a Latvian. Not so long ago, their citizens were prepared to give up everything to leave these countries. That is no longer the case. You're deluding yourself.

As a Romanian, I find this comment funny. To think that Romania improved because of the EU, not because we got rid of communism in 1989 followed by a period of wild west capitalism years before even entering EU. Most EU money in here are wasted on corruption with infrastructure projects.

Have you seen pictures in these countries from pre-2000 to today ?

- ireland is probably the only western europe country that was a net beneficiary,

- but also the whole eastern bloc : poland, romania, slovenia, croatia, hungary, czech, estonia, latvia, lithuania

Was there any other big event that happened in the eastern bloc in, say, the early 1990's?

And cooperation with EU (then still EEC) was one of the things helping build up, and even more later with accession process and post-accession cooperation.

Despite rampant crime post 1989 in many eastern bloc countries that flourished in the chaos, and the predatory capitalism plundering.

Especially since the foreign debt (to western countries!) that was big chunk of economical issues of some of the eastern bloc countries didn't disappear.

haha, have you seen how many problems the UK created for themselves when they left the EU? It's better to be a part of Europe than not.

The data disagrees with you.

Eu gdp 2013: 11,516.141 billion euro

Eu gdp 2023: 15,907.189 billion euro

39.58% increase

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union

Oooh right, money. Numbers in a bank account equals wealth of course, yeah you're right

What amazes and perplexes me is that Apple thinks it can effectively play politics against the EU and that somehow their customers will back them in the face of the "consequences" Apple applies, which are pretty transparent and really quite amateurish (eg no more web apps for you!).

As the article states, the first mistake Apple makes is thinking the EU is somehow like the US, but I can't see how any large proportion of Apple's customers will back Apple's actions against their own government. EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy, at least not to the same extent as the US.

And even if they are thinking that government is their enemy. That doesn't mean companies like Apple are their friends or allies either...

It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better".

Since we have so many consumer protections, much of how we end up engaging with the law around business practices is to our benefit. We're always aware we can raise bad business practices with an ombudsman (etc.).

So our lived experience of government regulation is, in large part, positive.

The fringe american "all regulation is bad" is hyped up for certain media causes, but very alien to most in practice. It's essentially unimaginable to the ordinary european that large corporations would have a better social conscience than government.

>It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better".

The notion of regulation as being on a sliding scale where "more is worse" was a manufactured American meme created by the Kochs in the 1980s. It emerged from some of their epic fights with the environmental protection agency and their subsequent lobbying and public relations outreach efforts that followed. They set up and funded number of institutions dedicated to telling this story (and others, including that one about hairdresser licensing). The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute to name a few.

If you think about it for a few seconds, dumbing down a complex system like laws or regulation to "more vs less" is quite stupid. It's like saying that some programmers believe in "more lines of code" and some believe in "fewer". Do you want more laws or fewer laws? The question doesn't make sense. You want the right kind of laws, right? Ones that are as simple as possible and no simpler. The same for code.

I think it's important to put this type of thing in a historical context though. These ideas and stories don't emerge out of nowhere - there is usually money behind them. In this case, it was money from an oil and chemicals company that had a singular goal - to fight the EPA - so it could destroy the natural environment in America with absolute impunity.

The idea that anyone who's opposed to narrow government regulations is somehow brainwashed by the Kochs is just an unsufferably smug attitude towards people you disagree with. It's like the "funded by George Soros therefore bad" you sometimes see on the right.

I'm sure they've spent money on promoting this, but there's many reasons you'd come to this conclusion other than having it "manufactured" for you by billionaire conspiracies.

You have to start by considering that your political opponents are capable of thinking for themselves if you want to ever do more than just preach to the choir. Declaring them idiots in the guise of "providing historical context" isn't helpful.

It is worthwhile contemplating who is benefiting from “my opponents are brain dead retards”.

> Even on death’s doorstep, Trevor was not angry. In fact, he staunchly supported the stance promoted by his elected officials. “Ain’t no way I would ever support Obamacare or sign up for it,” he told me. “I would rather die.” When I asked him why he felt this way even as he faced severe illness, he explained: “We don’t need any more government in our lives. And in any case, no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans or welfare queens.”

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/jonathan-m-metzl-dying...

There is nothing more smug than the point-and-laugh hit piece, where a journalist finds some ignorant rube for the college-educated to sneer at.

The author is not a journalist, but a doctor who studied public health issues.

I don't think the author's credentials alter the dynamic at play here.

Would it be better if he just kept quiet and let the health issues he is seeing go unmentioned because otherwise it would make people look bad? Do you think his book is just an exercise in mockery because he enjoys it?

"You suffer because of your politics" is laundering a political statement under the guise of health.

And yes, I do think mockery has become de rigeur in American politics, both left and right.

If people are indeed suffering because of their politics, is there any way to ease their suffering without making a political statement of some kind?

I think viewing things that way is akin to thinking wet streets cause rain. It is placing (often very selectively) an undue amount of agency upon a voter, whose effect on the political system at scale is essentially nil.

Nobody likes to be sneered at but the story illustrates the corrosive impact of oligarchic domestic propaganda pretty well, which is pretty relevant to the topic at hand.

Practical politics is more visceral than intellectual. A lot of people have first-hand experience with government-provided healthcare through the military and VA, and for many of them, it's not a positive experience.

A lot of effort could be expended by the government to improve the quality of its own workforce and the incentive structure under which they operate, but that is boring and unsexy work, which always gets put aside in favor of some new ambitious piece of legislation that makes a politician feel good about his or her accomplishments.

Then the backers of said legislation turn around and wonder why the purported beneficiaries don't like it. But politicians and the upper-crust live in an alternate universe where their own needs are met through special systems and their own view of government employees comes from the sycophants and yes-men.

>Practical politics is more visceral than intellectual. A lot of people have first-hand experience with government-provided healthcare through the military and VA, and for many of them, it's not a positive experience.

I mean, a majority of Republicans want single payer. A majority of the people where I live (in a country with single payer)... also want single payer.

It's objectively a very popular policy. The majority of people on medicare and VA benefits would probably try to fight you if you tried to take them away.

Nonetheless, socialized medical care is objectively not an oligarchy friendly policy. Some of them make EPIC mind bending profits from private healthcare.

And, they have a lot of control and influence over the media, which results in rather a lot of anti-single payer propaganda.

The mix of these two forces can sometimes have interesting results. Like this: https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dont-ste...

Which is definitely more visceral than intellectual.

Identifying why this person thinks they're two different things and why they're opposed to what seems to you to just be an extension of an existing, popular thing would be more useful than looking at the apparent contradiction and inferring there's something deficient about the messenger. American politics is suffused with propaganda from all sides; people latch onto available messages based upon feelings.

Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, I'm pretty sure people opposed excessive government regulation before the 1980s.

The idea of opposing excessive regulation isn't the same thing as this idea that regulation is a sliding scale with "more = worse" and "less = better". But yes, opposition to regulations did exist before. The former isn't a Koch thing, the latter is.

Atlas Shrugged was more the manifestation of the wet dreams of snowflake industrialists who felt intimidated by union power and communism (which were significant in the 50s, hence the rise of the middle class).

As someone who lived through this time period (albeit as a child), there was a phase transition in the way mainstream America treated government regulation around this time. It was much more common for politicians of both parties to advocate micromanaged regulation before this; hell, Nixon imposed price controls on private business to fight inflation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock#:~:text=Nixon%20....

Rand's work wasn't held in high regard... or any regard at all, really, until after her death in the 80's.

I don't disagree with the general sentiment though.

Spoken like someone who has never seen the waste, lack of reason, and counterproductive incentives of a highly regulated market such as healthcare and telecoms in the US.

Also, if you are not selling in the EU you would never start a high tech company in the EU. Whereas people travel across the world to found high tech companies in the US that are not even selling product in the US.

I was trying to say that you can't boil the topic of regulations down to "more" vs "less".

It appears that you were incapable of hearing this message and have responded as if I just said "MORE REGULATION! NOW!"

No. It seems you were incapable of understanding what I was saying ... which is MORE IS WORSE. In other words, the only people who think MORE IS WORSE is a meme are people who think the exceptions are the rule.

Almost always more regulation doesn't work in complex markets. Incentives are very very difficult to get right ... the exceptions where the regulations work are extremely rare. And for the most part people don't get them right.

> Almost always more regulation doesn't work in complex markets. Incentives are very very difficult to get right

As if the simple incentives of a deregulated market (aka: profit above all) do work in complex markets.

That's OP's whole point, you want the right laws, not more or less, sometimes more regulation is needed due to the complexity of an industry, sometimes less is completely fine. That nuance is what's missing, and it's exactly the hard part of the whole system to be balanced.

> the exceptions where the regulations work are extremely rare. And for the most part people don't get them right.

For the most part, companies don't get it right either. Case in point: Boeing self-regulation, USA's finance industry self-regulation pre-2008, etc.

Just let go of the dogma.

Given that the EPA was happy to watch American industry die on the vine while foreign competitors operating under different regulatory regimes swooped in, the "manufactured American meme" had some merit. Regulation has to be responsive. Of course, a lack of responsiveness, or even basic consideration for the average person, has defined the U.S. Government as a whole for the better part of several decades.

Ever since industrial workers sided with Nixon, the government has become a class warfare tool where highly educated but not-that-well compensated professional managers have worked to denigrate and disenfranchise the rough-and-tumble bullies from their primary school days. This deep-seated resentment explains a lot more than money alone explains, especially since the government itself is in control of the money supply and thus not that beholden to monied interests.

>Given that the EPA was happy to watch American industry die on the vine while foreign competitors operating under different regulatory regimes swooped in

You don't have to let foreign competitors that ruin the environment and oppress their employees compete directly with local competitors. You can slap them with tariffs or even prohibit their goods entirely.

When the US is fighting to maintain influence in Eastern Europe it understands this logic and applies this lever.

When the environment and labor rights are at stake though, it's like "what lever? I don't see a lever anywhere"

Yes each time we see these cookie warnings, we admire a system that does so much to our benefit

Nothing in the law requires those cookie banners. If you don't agree, you can quote to me the exact passage in the GDPR where it talks about cookies, banners, or browsers.

Or you can read what Github has to say about this: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/

This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU. The more of this they layer on the more ordinary people get irritated by the EU.

This is how Brexit happened, remain tried to explain this stuff over and over again and no one wants to hear it. They want the cookie banners gone, or the bendy banana rules gone. The EU makes itself an easy target everytime they add more.

If nothing else was learned from Brexit that should have been the thing. There actually isn't a point where you can spend enough money to convince people of this stuff when they don't want to hear it.

> This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU.

European here. I squarely blame the business, and often turn back when hit by a particularly obnoxious banner.

> This is how Brexit happened, remain tried to explain this stuff over and over again and no one wants to hear it. They want the cookie banners gone, or the bendy banana rules gone. The EU makes itself an easy target everytime they add more.

Nah, that's stupid. The bendy banana thing isn't a law, it's a class descriptor. It just says that if you want to sell bananas labelled as "class A" they can't be bent into a pretzel. Because go figure, when a restaurant buys what is advertised as high quality produce, they don't want to get a shipment full of ugly stuff that doesn't look good on the plate.

But you absolutely can sell weird, ugly but still edible bananas. They just have to be described properly.

That's again, what the article is speaking about here.

> If nothing else was learned from Brexit that should have been the thing. There actually isn't a point where you can spend enough money to convince people of this stuff when they don't want to hear it.

Haven't changed my mind in the slightest on that. Brexit was a stupid idea and as far as I can see, the UK failed to profit from it.

> European here. I squarely blame the business, and often turn back when hit by a particularly obnoxious banner.

You're in the minority. Most people will not think every business is responsible for that, they'll assume they're being forced into it.

> The bendy banana thing isn't a law, it's a class descriptor.

Missing the point. Even with millions of pounds you can't convince a majority of people that is true.

> Haven't changed my mind in the slightest on that. Brexit was a stupid idea and as far as I can see, the UK failed to profit from it.

Continue to miss the point here. It doesn't have to be a good idea, years of meddling made it so people were willing to vote for a bad idea. That's my point.

> You're in the minority. Most people will not think every business is responsible for that, they'll assume they're being forced into it.

They've gotten far less annoying as of late, in good part because the EU made it clear annoying the user into acceptance isn't going to fly.

But early on, when websites had the great idea to make me opt out of 78 "partners" one by one, my annoyance was not at the EU, but at the website forcing me to click 78 checkboxes, and a reaction of "WTF? Why are 78 companies being informed I'm reading an article?"

> Missing the point. Even with millions of pounds you can't convince a majority of people that is true.

Did you know the US also has equivalent banana regulations?

> Continue to miss the point here. It doesn't have to be a good idea, years of meddling made it so people were willing to vote for a bad idea. That's my point.

Yeah, to their detriment to the point that it killed pretty much every other eurosceptic movement, and apparently they're not that happy with Brexit anymore themselves either.

> This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU. The more of this they layer on the more ordinary people get irritated by the EU.

You're very much speaking from inside a bubble here. The only people I ever hear blame the EU for this, are on HN.

> There actually isn't a point where you can spend enough money to convince people of this stuff when they don't want to hear it.

A bit chicken and the egg, this. Persistent and well funded influence campaigns are precisely how people came to hold the views you describe. I personally wouldn't treat "leave" logic as some kind of particularly organic position. Rather its success demonstrates how one form of persuasion was more effective than another.

> Rather its success demonstrates how one form of persuasion was more effective than another.

This is true. I'm not sure anyone has demonstrated it working the other way though so it seems to be infinitely more effective.

It's happening again now with EVs. "The EU is forcing you to swap your car for an expensive EV with their Euro6 rules." There doesn't seem to be any come back to it at all.

The cookie law predates the GDPR by several years. See discussion at https://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/11/13/1348222/breathtaking... for instance

Even that law (which got updated along to align with GDPR IIRC) does't require the cookie banners that the industry has barfed up.

Can you tell that to these guys: https://www.europa.eu

That website basically has an infinite budget and doesn't have to make a single cent. It is also for the group that should have the best understanding of the law. Yet they still give you the cookie popup.

has to disable ublock to see it. if you link the link and see what they do with them basically they use cookies for analytics, tracking/surveying site usage, user auth, dupral, moodle, and 3rd parties websites like youtube, google, facebook, etc.

why do you think a banner should not be in this case ? devs are lazy they aren't going to recreate all the service inhouse from scratch. I don't think the dev team has infinite budget either.

That cookie popup is within the law:

- it offers an explanations that cookies are used, and offers a link to read why

- it offers a way to opt out that is as easy as the way to opt-in

- it doesn't prevent the site from functioning

However, I agree that they shouldn't require non-essential cookies to begin with.

I don't agree, but I can't quote GDPR because it's much older than GDPR.

It's from a 2002 ePrivacy Directive, which is still in force, but on its way out and therefore less heavily enforced. ePrivacy Regulation is supposed to eventually deprecate it. The initial idea was for both GDPR and ePR to be enforced from the same date, but that obviously hasn't happened.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603540

> Even that law (which got updated along to align with GDPR IIRC) does't require the cookie banners that the industry has barfed up.

Yeah it does[0], and no it didn't get updated. ePrivacy Regulation which was supposed to make it deprecated was never voted on.

[0] "Where such devices, for instance cookies, are intended for a legitimate purpose, such as to facilitate the provision of information society services, their use should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC about the purposes of cookies or similar devices so as to ensure that users are made aware of information being placed on the terminal equipment they are using. Users should have the opportunity to refuse to have a cookie or similar device stored on their terminal equipment. This is particularly important where users other than the original user have access to the terminal equipment and thereby to any data containing privacy-sensitive information stored on such equipment. Information and the right to refuse may be offered once for the use of various devices to be installed on the user's terminal equipment during the same connection and also covering any further use that may be made of those devices during subsequent connections. The methods for giving information, offering a right to refuse or requesting consent should be made as user-friendly as possible. Access to specific website content may still be made conditional on the well-informed acceptance of a cookie or similar device, if it is used for a legitimate purpose."

> Yeah it does[0]

Not the ones that the industry has barfed up, and I specifically chose this wording

ePrivacy: "their use should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information"

GDPR (among other things): "the request for consent shall be presented in a manner which is clearly distinguishable from the other matters, in an intelligible and easily accessible form, using clear and plain language... It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent."

Nothing in any law requires the "accept by default, go through hundreds of checkboxes to opt-out". If anything, those are actually illegal.

Which is precisely why those, often non-compliant if not outright illegal, warnings exist.

Their purpose is to push you towards working against your own privacy.

The cookie warnings are a result of companies not taking a pretty obvious hint: don't do tracking.

Any lawmaker with an ounce of foresight would have recognized the pervasive cookie banners as the logical consequence of the law.

If you give companies an easy copy-and-paste way to get around a single regional law then they will do the quickest dumbest thing possible to get what they want no matter who the visitor is and where they're located.

The EU laws are poorly conceived, poorly written, and now we all have to live with them. They can make privacy laws, but they need to make them better.

I truly believe that the EU ruined the web for everyone with their haphazard legislation. And now they're trying to do it again with AI but thankfully they're just getting blocked now instead of everyone trying to comply.

Since you seem to know so much about EU law, can you show me where exactly GDPR requires cookie banners. Or talks about cookies, banners, or even browsers?

I don't know, I can say the EU uses them itself...

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

If that site needs a cookie banner I'm guessing nearly all sites do.

> I don't know

Exactly. And this doesn't surprise me.

The law states: if you collect more data than is strictly required for your site[1] to function and/or send user data to third parties, you have to:

- tell the users about it

- let the users to opt out, where opt out must be as easy as opt in

- if the users opt out, the site[1] must continue working

So yes, that site does send some extra data to third-parties, and informs the user about it. And lets the user know about it. IMO it shouldn't use third-party services, but oh well.

These days it's a source of my constant amazement that 8 years after its publication the people who complain about GDPR the most have not had even the tiniest attempt to read anything about it or understand anything about it.

[1] I simplified this to sites. GDPR is General Data Protection Regulation. All this equally applies to sites, apps, offline businesses, governments etc. To cookies, local storage, offline paper documents, tape records, cloud storage etc.

8 years. The law has been around for 8 years. It has been enforced for 6. It takes about half an hour to read the most relevant parts of it (chapters 1—5). An hour if you're not too familiar with legalese. And yet... "I don't know".

> And yet... "I don't know".

What is there to know? Nearly every website on the western internet has these cookie banners including the EU's own government sites.

The practical consequences of the laws are now apparent.

So what did we all miss that was hidden in the legalese?

> What is there to know?

Rarely do you see people flaunt their willful ignorance.

> Nearly every website on the western internet has these cookie banners

Well, since you approach is "I don't know and what is there to know", it's no surprise that the industry so easily sold you the lie of "the EU's laws are at fault"

> including the EU's own government sites.

Compare the banner on the site linked above and the usual dark patterns employed by the industry.

Just to be sure that we're talking about the same thing,

are you saying that the explosion of opt-in cookie banners on the web is not the result of the EU's privacy laws?

Those cookie warnings make me immediately close every website that doesn't make it very easy to opt out from tracking. I don't think I miss much, since the correlation between websites that tries to make as much as possible from every visit and those that puke out shallow, easily produced, content is very strong.

I agree that EU laws are far from perfect, but I 100% would rather have the GDPR than not have it.

With AI what I saw in the news mostly made sense and did not hinder development too much. But again I would rather they regulate the use because it will have real negative consequences for many people if they don't

The GDPR and DMA are mostly good. GDPR should have exemptions for organisations with smaller amounts of data who do not trade in it.

A lot of EU laws have also been bad. VATMOSS (especially with the very low initial limit to register) was initially a disaster. It actually deterred people from trading within the EU! The commission's attempt at chat surveillance was thrown out by the parliament, but they will try again. The new AI regulations look problematic. The draft I saw of the AI one was far too broad (included old tech like expert systems) - not checked recently whether it has changed. There are also issues with a lack of FOSS exemptions in the other current law (forgotten what it is called) imposing greater liability for faults in some categories of software.

I don't know the details about VATMOSS but will look into it. I agree that chat control and the initial thing about software security not having a FOSS exemption were problematic. As far as I know, an exemption for FOSS authors was added.

I think it is important to acknowledge that many regulations are not perfect and I would push for more revisions on the details (although changes in the law also have a real cost associated) that don't hit their target.

> As far as I know, an exemption for FOSS authors was added.

last time I caught up on it, it was a very narrow exemption that was only of use to pure hobby projects.

> Any lawmaker with an ounce of foresight

Where would you find a lawmaker with an ounce of foresight?

The European Commission's own announcement of the fine against Apple has a cookie banner:

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

"This site uses cookies to offer you a better browsing experience."

Which of course is total crap. There's no better experience, only a worse experience with the banner.

Finding good js developers can be a challenge.

Because they should clarify for every web dev that technical relevant cookies that do not track the user with third parties are not requiring a banner.

It uses the same cookies as most official EU website. You can check why there: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/content/legal-notice/legal-notice....

They seems to use this https://piwik.pro/, which as far as i read seems ok (i did not audit the code personally), i think this data might be legit useful for UX (im really shit a UX, you should ask people working on it though).

The cookie warnings are dumb, because if an individual wishes not to use cookies, he is free to configure his browser to refuse to use cookies. It is entirely and 100% under the user’s control.

Heck, the way the cookie protocol works the server already says ‘hey, may I store this cookie?’ by sending the Set-Cookie header. The user’s browser doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want it to!

It is not a cookie-warning, it is a tracking-warning.

It is not a question of cookies per se. You can use localStorage and other techniques to track users without using cookies. But you still have to show the warning if you are tracking.

And there a plenty of legitimate uses of cookies.

If those scum-of-the-earth add tech companies would have respected the DO NOT TRACK flag, I'd concede that you have a point.

There are plenty of use-cases that are covered by implicit consent where the website uses cookies for basic functionality (like login sessions or shopping carts) where no banner is required.

Its worse than that. I used to use a cookie whitelist addon in firefox, so only a few sites could set cookies at all.

I stopped using it because if you blocked websites from setting cookies, that meant the cookie consent banner showed on every page rather than the first you viewed because the cookie consent cookie had been blocked. That made blocking cookies entirely apart from whitelisted sites impossible.

Wanting to limit what kind of cookie is the purpose of the law. I want some cookies (like user preferences, session tokens) but not the one from advertisers to follow me across domain names.

Not every one is tech-savvy and that is why we have regulations.

I actually like them. It's eye opening when a a website wants to share your data with their 283 partners.

283? You're talking about a personal blog, right?

I have seen 500+. Which is like wtf is going on.

I can't even name 500+ companies or websites, who the hell are these companies?

My personal best: 1609. We care about your privacy! https://www.neverbeclever.org/blog/we-care-about-your-privac...

Obviously they do care, in the sense that they want to dissolve any remaining semblance of it.

And while searching to confirm the meaning of the word `semblance`, I found that the Cambridge Dictionary needs to up their game at only 775 partners.

https://imgur.com/a/arX6Z6S

I hit back instantly when I see the Admiral logo. That network IIRC claims >1,500 partners. And last time I bothered looking even though there is a few “no to all” checkboxes you still needed to individually object to “legitimate interest”¹ for most of the companies.

[1] which I read as “we see you and your privacy preferences, but fuck you and your preferences we want to stalk you anyway”

TrustARC is also a really shitty one that tries to make you wait if you dare to opt out (and then sometimes even errors out halfway because "not all partners support SSL")

> "not all partners support SSL"

Meaning “we've vetted our partners and found their security practises to be seriously wanting, but haven't kicked them to the curb because a very small amount of money is far more important to us than our claims to care about your security and/or privacy”.

This "legitimate interest" crap should be hit hard, with a few big examples made to warn others. The cases where you can claim legitimate interest are essentially "when the user agrees with you that it's legitimate", not "we have a legitimate interest in profiting off your data".

I'd much rather have a properly-enforced GDPR (see the modified version of the US's CAN-SPAM act, and in particular the near-universal presence of one-click and two-click "unsubscribe" links on commercial email) that actually gives me a one-click opt-out.

Just install some browser extension that automatically refuses them.

The next step for the EU is Global Privacy Control, which is basically the old Do-Not_track header, but legally enforceable this time (the EU is not alone in this, it's already the law in California). If your browser sends that header, the website will have to not show you a cookie popup and treat it as a "Reject All" instead.

It's a wonderful reminder of who is trying to spy on me.

Now consider an alternative website which does not track you and therefore does not have to show a cookie warning each time.

Even in its worst form, the cookie warning is giving a significant material advantage to the non tracking website over the tracking website, which without the cookie warning the 2 websites would have appeared exactly the same to all users.

But cookie banner seriously hurt the big tech sector in delivering better persobalized adds! It prevebts innovation! /s

Judging by the adverts they show me, Facebook thinks I'm originally from a small city in Florida, that I moved from the US to the UK and want to give up my US citizenship for tax purposes, that now live in specifically both Cambridge and Waterlooville even though those are opposite sides of London, that I own a potentially dangerous breed of dog that the UK just banned, and that I'm a hermaphrodite in need of both a custom-fitted bra and dick pills.

None of those are accurate.

The only adverts they've shown which are relevant to my interests are for Babbel, except I already had that years before they started showing me the ads.

So, you are telling me that you live two seperate and secret lives to hide the fact you own illegal dogs?

In all seriousness so, for all the effort and data companies like facebook have, the product, targeted ads, is just bad. And sometimes hilariously so.

Even if I owned a dog, which I don't, UK law is irrelevant because I live in Berlin.

So, you are an international spy? :-)

Seriously so, how is something like targeted ads a product worth paying for if the results are, quite often, so incredibly wrong? I get search context ads and such things, but all that targeted stuff is just so pointless. I never got a single one that was relevant for me. Since I aggressively turned off anything ad related on my phone, ad quality actually got better. Still not really relevant for me, but better.

That's the craziest part. All the exabytes of information gathered, and the ads are still entirely irrelevant 95% of the time. Except when you've just purchased a product, then they think it's a great idea to show you ads of the very product you already bought!

The cookie warning regulation is bad, but only mildly so.

There's no regulation that mentions cookie warnings.

There are two systems at play when you see a cookie warning:

1. Businesses trying to violate your privacy. 2. A government trying to protect you from said businesses.

Either of these entities could avoid the cookie warning, but there are very different reasons why they do not.

If you use government websites within EU countries, most of them have cookie warnings. And a large part of them also use dark patterns to "forget" that you selected "only necessary" cookies each time you visit.

So what is your conclusion? "It's a bad law"? Government websites breaking GDPR is an important thing to know, in order to fight against it.

I think it's a law with good intentions which was horribly implemented for which now the rest of the world will be feeling the effects for decades.

I think there are very, very few people who are earnestly proud of the work the EU did with this regulation every time they waste finite brain cycles on yet another cookie banner. I don't really know why Europeans use this as an example of their system of governance working as hoped.

It's possible that the EU thought: "This is likely enough to end cookie tracking. Surely no company would want to put their users through horrible consent UX just to retain their tracking!" ...and were wrong about just how far companies would be willing to abuse their user's experience, either because of the benefits of tracking, or purely out of malicious compliance.

The anticipated effect of requiring consent is that by forcing companies to shine a flashlight on their own bad behavior, they will instead choose to correct their behavior. That didn't end up happening in practice.

Much as I like the law, I'm sure I saw a headline when it first went live along the lines of "EU's own website about this law violates it", which suggests[0] that perhaps it could have been done better.

That said, I just looked at it, and this is my idea of a well-made popup: https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/

[0] But for the Betteridge law of headlines and Gell-Mann amnesia

"Forgetting" doesn't seem to be common, making the dialog confusing and conducive to "accidentally" allowing everything, that's somewhat common. It would be difficult to prove innocence in the former case.

I'm pretty sure it's less "dark patterns" and more "remembering your preference isn't 'necessary'".

Which, technically, it isn't.

> I'm pretty sure it's less "dark patterns" and more "remembering your preference isn't 'necessary'".

> Which, technically, it isn't.

That's still a dark pattern, because by definition, dark patterns aren't illegal - just barely legal, and detrimental to the consumer.

and to be clear, the european attitude to this regulation would be, "try again, better this time"

not ah yes, let's go back to having no regulation of corps tracking people.

People would be quite enthusiastic to more regulation which required no cookie banners where users had, eg., expressed a preference for no tracking at the browser level. And likewise, to require the provision of such "no-tracking signals".

I suspect something like this is on the horizon, and in part, something google was trying to head-off with its 3rd party cookies stuff.

"more, better!"

> "try again, better this time"

this is so true and kind of hilarious to see Americans not understand this. When a regulation happens and it's day to day effects are not working out great. The answer will always be to regulate more, add more rules and restrict things more.

The EU is inclined not to create regulations at first. They prefer to hold meetings, seminars and inform companies of their effects to encourage them to self regulate. If after years this does not help they will either:

A) create subsidies to help companies implement changes. but only if they have shown they are will to interact with the EU governing bodies.

B) Add rules and regulations to force companies to act a certain way.

The beautiful disconnect pointed out in the article where Apple thinks the meetings are negotiation and EU is basically showing that their smiles and friendly words are just formalities and change is happening no matter what Apple thinks or not.

This is particularly true in the case of Cookie Banners. regulation has been clarified and now most sites do have a explicit "reject all" button/link that is next to "accept all". This was not the case when the law was first introduced.

> 2. A government trying to protect you from said businesses.

While still protecting the “business freedom” of the said business.

They could have forbidden cookies and tracking altogether, but they are too probusiness for that.

This reminds me of the Cloudflare vs Archive.is shitfest. I do not care why CF DNS doesn't work with Archive, all I know is that it doesn't work, and others do.

I do not care why cookie banners are there. All I know is that they weren't there N years ago and now they are, and they are annoying.

> This reminds me of the Cloudflare vs Archive.is shitfest.

Is there some background reading on this? I would like to use Cloudflare as one of my DNS providers but this issue has always bothered me.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28495204

Archive.is wants to know where your request is coming from, so they can serve content to you from a server that's in a legally offshore place to you, so they can continue operating. Cloudflare doesn't want to give them this information, so Archive.is blocked them.

Let us all cater to what annoys you.

> 1. Businesses trying to violate your privacy

This is false. The GDPR does not mandate privacy - the GDPR mandates the protection of certain kinds of personal data, much of which (e.g. IP addresses) has legitimate reasons for being collected (e.g. abuse protection). Claiming that every business that shows a cookie warning is trying to violate your privacy is not only objectively false, but extremely intellectually dishonest - although that's about par for the course for GDPR enthusiast zealots.

They should be opt-in though, not opt-out. I believe the current pattern is illegal, but unenforced.

I see a lot of people from the US rail hard against loss of privacy, but when you get protections it's bad?

Obviously it's a flawed implementation and the powers that be fought hard against an automated flag, but that's what we should be fighting for to fix it.

If we're talking about _systems_ then there's a lot more to GDPR than this tired, facile soundbite about "cookie banners".

Yes, GDPR is absolutely beneficial to citizens. And quite often in invisible ways, since e.g. we never hear about the breach of customer data that didn't happen.

There will eventually be a court case that will establish the DNT header as "no" and every website showing a popup will be in violation.

Actually most popups are already in violation since there needs to be a "no to all" option. Lots of them get fined, but there's just so many.

They should probably make the fine more like: "your domain goes down for 2 months" to be taken more seriously.

I've learned to never attack the cookie banner here on HN. EU citizens seem to absolutely adore them here.

No, it's just counterproductive to attack warning signs instead of attacking the thing they are warning you about.

See?

> See?

I see you being deliberately antagonistic and strawmanning an opinion you disagree with.

I will never understand "I said $dumb_thing and the fact everyone downvoted me for saying $dumb_thing proves that $dumb_thing is right!"

That's the same logic cookie banner lovers are using in this very post. I am just matching that energy.

Have you really not noticed how defensive and antagonistic cookie banner supporters become when people say anything negative about it?

Don’t bully them, they’re just a little slow in the head.

You can attack both when the people trying to warn you are incompetent. This was an obvious second order effect; if they tell businesses "we don't want you to do this, so you can't unless you put up a sign" it should never be a surprise to see signs sprouting up on the landscape.

Teenagers could have predicted this was the likely outcome.

Whoever wrote it was either incredibly incompetent in not predicting this outcome or intended this outcome.

Yes, the regulation had loop-holes and the EU underestimated the creativity of companies to try to use those loop-holes. The most annoying thing were the dark patterns used - default being "allow all cookies", and then making sure that rejecting cookies took you spending 10 minutes in sub-menus. That loop-hole has now been closed.

The correct way to get rid of cookie banners is businesses using cookies in a responsible fashion, and sooner or later this is going to happen.

Also, your framing misses one important point: If I have the choice between mildly frustrating cookie banners that raise awareness for the situation and simply having all your data sent to 500 advertising "partners" the moment you enter a website, like it is in the US, I choose the mildly frustrating cookie banners.

Freedom does come at a cost.

Do not blame regulators for evil forces trying to circumvent those regulations.

It's what the article you are commenting on is all about. Go (re-)read it.

Cookie banners are largely a form of malicious compliance.

"malicious compliance", an euphemism is straight out of 1984

Boss: "Oh, also, add those cookie warnings for the gdpr".

Me: "No. We are not in the EU. I refuse. I also refuse to abide by Congolese law or Peruvian Navy doctrines. If I break Myanmar PII laws, I will take my chances. EU is no better than anyone else, pushing their crappy laws, I refuse to care about."

Boss: "Ok! Np."

In a delicious bit of irony, there is a very large, peculiarly villainous American company whose website has never shown me a cookie pop up…

Strictly speaking, those fat Cookie banners are unlawful under the regulation of the GDPR; the GDPR mandates that a site must not behave functionally different given consent or not, as long as the functionality is not related to a specific user.

Unfortunately there are only so many GDPR compliance officers around, and they have to focus on the bigger fish to fry.

This is just a small example between the difference of EU and USA.

Here is another. Work for a company that made a machine used in automation. Designed around US regulations it had a clamping force of 1600 N, same biting force as an adult panda. This thing can take off fingers and arms.

Only know about the 1600 N because it was risk assessed for EU market. After a year of design changes. Moved to fail-safe motors and changed order of operation. The machine no longer leaves someone limbless, it cannot take off a fingernail.

EU requires safety to be engineered into the product while USA allows for deforming machine operators and victim blaming when something goes wrong. Company has discontinued the USA model and only manufacturers the EU model.

EU regulations can help USA citizens when our politicians reject good regulations for personal profit.

A bit of a cherry-pick, no? You can’t just look at one bad thing that happened, you need to weigh the good and bad that comes with a particular policy stance.

Concretely in this case it seems quite relevant to include GDPR, which consumers seem pretty happy about, and which many Americans look enviously at while their data is slurped up without recourse by credit bureaus and data brokers.

> the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better".

I'd need to be convinced that's true. More regulation was a huge part of the successful campaign to get the UK out of the EU. It seems to get effusive praise in places like this, but in daily business, I generally hear the term GDPR spat. Is anyone expecting the incoming car regulation around beeps and bongs every time you approach the speed limit to be received well by ordinary people? The USBC stuff that this article heaps praise on is a great example, techies love it, everyone else in everyday life I've only heard complain about it. Maybe it improves things long-term, but I can't remember hearing anyone say "more, better" about any of these things.

I would say the overall sentiment I've heard is that there is a general suspicion that the reason European business lags so far behind the US is that we're held back. I don't think the handful of people that will be able to play Fortnite on their iPhones will change this. It certainly wont if they end up needing multiple app stores for their daily apps.

> the successful campaign to get the UK out of the EU.

Depending on your definition of success of course.

Ah but the campaign was successful. The actual pullout and its consequences, on the other hand...

Even the Daily Telegraph is having second thoughts about Brexit:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/02/28/uk-eu-are-be...

note that since leaving the EU, UK regulators have been widely seen (by business and finance) to take a more risk-averse attitude on the EU across all new comptences brought in (eg, food standards, chemical standards, etc.).

The 52% who voted to leave were not voting for a massive deregulated society. In most cases, actually the opposite: "bring back control"

> I'd need to be convinced that's true. More regulation was a huge part of the successful campaign to get the UK out of the EU.

I think the main reason was that populist politicians where allowed to lie unopposed. £350M per week for the NHS anyone? (End: constants strikes in the NHS about small pay rises to mitigate inflation). Singapore on Thames? Easiest trade agreement in the world? Trade agreement with the US? Free ports everywhere? UK world beating (of course world beating, they can't just be good, or even better than others, they have to aggressive beat them down) in everything ? I haven't heard that for a long time.

As a populist you can say whatever you want as you usually don't have to stand up for it. Same here. Three Prime Ministers in the same legislation period since Brexit was done. The liars are mostly gone but Brexit is still there.

The reason for Brexit was in no small amount that pugilistic lies where allowed unopposed.

I don't believe someone who says everyone in EU trusts the government. I have met a few people from EU and opinion split about the gov between "they are good guys" and "it's all a cabal that mostly tries to profit and only helps accidentally" (or worse) is maybe 60/40 at best.

> More regulation was a huge part of the successful campaign to get the UK out of the EU.

The UK was and is a cultural outlier in Europe. Even if this were true (which I'm not convinced it was), it's not representative of what's going on in the rest of Europe.

Nowhere is the general sentiment towards government regulation "more, better".

The correct sentiment is both "more good ones, better" and "less bad ones, better"

But there is the general sentiment "less, better".

And that's because it's right. That "good ones" is both subjective and a challenge tantamount to "write bug-free code". People aren't worthy of that kind of trust.

This comment explains it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39609172

To summarize: Laws are like lines of code. Nobody in their right mind would put programs on a spectrum between "more lines" and "fewer lines". Lines of code that help do the necessary work are good, and unnecessary lines of code are bad. And so it is with regulations.

"more, better" assumes that most regulations are perceived as good

> So our lived experience of government regulation is, in large part, positive.

I think I'd nuance it a bit. We see it as necessary. Necessary because otherwise powerful companies take advantage I think most can point to bad places in life for government regulations, but when the opposition is more powerful than most governments you need to fight with the most powerful thing you have.

Despite the rise of far right populist parties, Europe tends to lean more on the left side of the political spectrum compared to America, and corporate worship is a relatively new thing over here. People tend to have more faith in governments and treat companies with more distrust, compared to the US which seems to be the other way around.

For some definition of left.

The interesting thing about the article is that all this EU regulatory control over corporations is in fact deeply capitalistic and the very reason for its existence, and in the corporations interest. Which is not what most EU citizens would consider being on the left of the political spectrum.

The idea is: we need regulation to shape the market where businesses can compete freely to the advantage of both businesses and consumers. If we don't regulate, monopolistic corporation would threaten the single EU market.

Or even more simplified: we need rules to have a free market. The US version (or one of the versions) of capitalism is more of a free-for-all, where the most important thing is to reduce regulation, not increase it. It seems to trust the judicial system more than the government.

The European definition of "freedom of speech" interestingly also differs compared to the American one in a very similar way.

Now you are twisting words :)

Capitalism is like a cancer, it will grow endlessly and will become feudalism. Socialism is the government applying rules to capitalism, so it doesn't get out of control.

US policy of neo-liberalism is growing in Europe too, which is giving problems.

In the way Americans use these words, that honestly doesn't sound that far off. But that's a difference in definition similar to how liberal means different things in the US vs everywhere else.

In a European context I would have said that capitalism is companies being owned by private owners, communism is companies being owned by the state (which is supposed to be the extension of the collective will of all citizens, but rarely is). Socialism is whatever you want it to be, but generally includes the state supporting the unlucky, improving worker mobility through unemployment benefits, improving worker rights, supporting the young and the elderly, etc.

The US and EU have some differences in how they approach infrastructure, communication and transportation, but in nearly all other aspects they both bet fully on capitalism. The difference is that the US is very big on free unregulated markets within the US (though with some comically protectionist policies when there's the threat of competition from outside), while the EU is generally of the opinion that a regulated market is a better, more competitive environment with better outcomes.

You are.

Capitalism is government regulation of a market. https://youtu.be/CRPHp2EjNR8

I don't think so. Here are my simplified definition of words, I don't think they are very controversial or meaningless:

Capitalism is ownership of capital by corporations who are protected by the state.

Neo-liberalism is a version of capitalism that thinks the state sucks and must stick with the minimal protection that enables private ownership (vs banditry).

Communism is ownership of capital by the state and the abolishment of private ownership.

Socialism is more fluid, but the core is redistribution of wealth to effect just outcomes.

All of the above involve the government applying rules so 'something' doesn't get out of control, whether its evil bureaucrats or evil corporations. All of these can be done democratically (usually in varying degrees) and with the rule of law, or end up in a form of oligarchy or lawlessness.

I'm not sure if you're joking, but feudalism pre-dated capitalism. And socialism is not "applying rules to capitalism", it's the government siezing the means of production from free enterprise.

I think this is what a lot of people don’t understand about the EU.

The EU is, rightly, seen as fairly far right on the economic spectrum by most in the EU countries. Which is not surprising considering the EU is a neoliberal project (although a very successful one).

So when someone sees a company spitting in the face of the EU one doesn’t immediately think “oh that leftist EU is at it again”. What they naturally and correctly think, wow, this company can’t even deal decently with the highly pro capitalist pro market economically right EU.

While you are right, I think the better formulation is that the US is just super to the right of the normal political spectrum. In Europe you have a pretty good spread across the whole spectrum across the many countries, but in the US the left really doesn't exist as a party. Even the Democrats would be a conservative party in most other countries.

> Democrats would be a conservative party in most other countries.

Ah, that tried and true indicator of "I get all my takes from Reddit".

If you understand that conservatism is just progressivism driving the speed limit, they're not wrong. The speed limit in the US is just lower than it is in much of Europe.

What European country is socially to the left of Democrats? This is only a little bit true in terms of economics.

I don't think Americans worship corporations. They mistrust them too.

But your threat model is messed up if you're more scared of Microsoft or your ISP abusing you than your government abusing you. The latter has way more potential for harm, and it's exacting that harm with your tax dollars to boot.

You make the same point very well.

In the threat model of the average European, corporations are actually seen as a higher risk. Maybe with less impact, but the risk is a lot higher. And they mistrust and complain about the state too, a ton, just a lot less.

Most Europeans don't think the state is evil, just incompetent. Though that sentiment is on the rise too since the covid conspiracies, and still fueled by Russian and Chinese disinfo campaigns.

Especially that they don't seem to get that while the EU is very slow to act, once it's moving it's almost unstoppable.

The time for Apple to get their point across isn't now but a decade ago.

To add to this, Apple is seen as a foreign company trying to cheat with local regulators

>EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy, at least not to the same extent as the US.

The same phenomenon can be seen in other areas, such as digital cash:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dpu6G_UlSdM

On paper, digital cash is superior to both physical cash and digital bank money in almost all aspects, but many Americans oppose it anyway because they see their government as their enemy.

Yet digital cash is seen by actual true patriots as the solution to free themselves from the enemy the government.

As an European I fail to see how I could call myself patriot and at the same time distrust my own government - elected by me. Even if I didn't like the government, I'd still go with it because it's representing my country, and I'd also try to change the aspects which I don't like, again because it's my country. Those "actual true patriots" sound to me more like actual true selfish people which only want things happening according to their own ideas and needs.

Stealing from above;

> Distrust of government, and the limiting of its powers, is an American founding principle

American Patriots believe defending themselves and their country from an oppressive government is true patriotism. It looks and sounds a lot like you think because taken to its logical conclusion thats exactly what it is.

As a European, you almost certainly have better representation than most Americans. We haven't expanded the House of Representatives since 1929. We're approaching a million constituents per rep, an extreme outlier among OECD countries:

https://www.amacad.org/ourcommonpurpose/enlarging-the-house/...

The reason Americans no longer trust Congress is because the Colonists had better representation per constituent (on paper) in British Parliament. Early U.S. representation was in line with Nordic countries today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_ap...

Also the US following UK's FPTP system inevitably creates a 2-party system, you simply cannot have just 2 parties representing all of the political spectrum and needs of a nation of 340 million people, and very diverse people at it, across a vast swath of land.

Even though most Continental Europe elections end up being a race between 2 major coalitions at least there's fluidity in the composition of these coalitions, sometimes the right-wing coalition embraces the centrist parties, or the greens, sometimes it's the left-wing coalition, this fluidity creates a lot more of nuance and compromise in politics rather than choosing Team Blue vs Team Red. FPTP is a dumb election system.

Yes, but voting is up to the States. They're free to adopt RCV, as we have here in Maine. Or ban it, as in five other States.

But only Congress can repeal the Apportionment Act of 1929.

https://nocapfund.org

The 118th Congress is on pace to pass the fewest acts ever. Will they hit double digits?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acts_of_the_118th_Unit...

triple*

> As an European I fail to see how I could call myself patriot and at the same time distrust my own government - elected by me.

Can you see how an Italian might love Italy, but think that Silvio Berlusconi seems like a pretty suspicious chap?

The patriots mentioned in GP don't distrust Biden, they distrust the entire system and elections and representation, everything. Disliking Berlusconi motivated Italians to vote him out of office, not to burn down Palazzo Chigi. That's the difference I meant above.

This particular pathology makes more sense when you recall the traitor statues of Robert E Lee, etc; there's a substantial faction in the US which is against the US specifically because it won the civil war and imposed the end of slavery on them, which they remained upset about into the 20th century and schools in Alabama being integrated at gunpoint.

That's why the "anti-government" faction doesn't care about civilians being unjustly shot dead by police, because they're not federal government.

There's a big difference between cryptocurrency and CBDCs.

Also we have been using digital cash for decades now.

I am not sure they are wrong.

It will be interesting to exactly what the EU does regarding Apple's malicious compliance with regard to allowing third party apps stores.

I hope the EU comes down hard.

It's suprising that the US still holds itself as the champion of the free market where it's more a corporate Oligarchy. It's clear Apple is trying to be as monopolistic as possible, understable from their perspective, but it's the EU job to regulate it, just a shame of the US fell so deep.

> It's suprising that the US still holds itself as the champion of the free market where it's more a corporate Oligarchy.

The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal (both American), have been publishing the Index of Economic Freedom since 1995 and don't put the USA in 25th position: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom#Rank...

In some areas the US is clearly the leader in championing the free market, such as the US Freedom of Navitation Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_navigation#United_S...

The Heritage Foundation & WSJ are both the tip of the spear, driving agenda to let big businesses do whatever they want. Even if America was clearly #1 in corporate freedom, they would never say so; their reason for existence is to commit America to letting big business be less regulated and you only can sell that by making our present stance look moderate or insufficient.

“brainwashed”

Distrust of government, and the limiting of its powers, is an American founding principle. It has resulted in federalism, separation of powers, a Constitution that protects property rights, and a Bill of Rights. This skepticism of government stemmed from the lived experience of the founders.

That this founding principle still permeates American thinking and American life is something I would call culture, or an ethos. But it is not, in my experience, brainwashing.

"federalism, separation of powers, a Constitution that protects property rights, and a Bill of Rights."

These things exist in the EU. Are you sure you are not brainwashed?

The US Constitution maintains that rights defined in the Bill of Rights pre-exist government ("inalienable"). The EU's Charter of Fundamental Rights defines rights granted to the people by the government.

This is a subtle, but important difference.

I agree that the U.S. political tradition often regards our rights as recognized or discovered rather than granted, but the "inalienable" language is from the Declaration of Independence, not the Bill of Rights (and in the original it was "unalienable", which is now archaic).

I still can't reconcile the fact that "Life" is one of those inalienable rights while the US still has capital punishment (and that part of the population even celebrates having it).

Capital punishment is not in the constitution, and it is regularly challenged legally. Many states are continuing to abolish it.

Is distrust of government a founding principle of the EU?

I think there needs to be a word like "Paris syndrome" for when Americans meet actual Europeans and find out their politics.

I've not met anyone who doesn't work in Brussels who thinks the EU isn't a dysfunctional pile of shit. The most spirited defense I've heard of it is "Well at least it keeps the Germans from invading again.".

> The EU, it's better than genocide, by a bit - probably.

-- Enthusiastic EU supporter, 2024.

Great term. Sometimes, I think I must live on a different continent.

It comes down to interest I think, for someone with a bunch of devices and online all the time it sounds great when the EU forces USBC through for example. Even though they don't generally have a good view of how ordinary people interpret it either.

But at the far end something like the damage the common agricultural policy has for ordinary europeans is completely lost on them. There would never be any interest in how it impacts people.

> for someone with a bunch of devices and online all the time it sounds great when the EU forces USBC through for example

Have you never met an Apple user that carried around both Lightning and USB-C cables? This sort of sentiment confounds me, everyone I knew that had seen a Macbook was waiting on a USB-C iPhone for years. The only people I saw defending Lightning were Apple devotees online.

> There would never be any interest in how it impacts people.

You're free to use the extra comment space to explain it to us.

> Have you never met an Apple user that carried around both Lightning and USB-C cables?

Have you ever met someone that just has an iPhone? There are considerably more of them than those carrying ipads and MacBooks and switches and the like.

I have, and I didn't hear one of them complain when USB-C iPhones were released worldwide.

I am an iPhone-only person complaining! The physical USB-C connector sucks. They wiggle loose, stop connecting properly after just months of use, and are more delicate. I have 10-year-old lightning cables that still work great in my kid’s 6-year-old handed-down iPhone. Meanwhile I have been through multiple USB-C cables that last only months, fall out of the ports easily, and can’t be used to charge or even physically stay in the port of my Dell laptop reliably despite looking the same as all other USB-C cables.

Those are good reasons to be mad. It's a shame Apple refused to submit Lightning to USB-IF, licensed the connector design, and then added additional DRM on top of the license fee.

They did a good job with Thunderbolt in the past, hopefully they get the memo and take a similar road in the future. It would really suck if future conveniences get blocked because Apple ignored the standardization process.

Most people who aren't working in Brussels have zero idea about how the EU functions at all.

Brexit voting towns that were shocked to find various programs shuttered once they got what they'd voted for are a great example of this.

Were they? Or did a Yankee journalist write another hit piece about rednecks (with a funny accent to boot) getting what they deserved?

At any rate relying on EU programs is a fools errand, they pull them up at the drop of a hat to discipline governments. Imagine if Trump could block all federal spending in California because he didn't like their politics.

Which towns? Which programmes?

I agree it is dysfunctional, but it is often less dysfunctional than a lot of local government.

- an Italian-living-in-UK that is a somewhat enthusiastic EU supporter

>Italian-living-in-UK

Sounds like someone voted with their feet.

I moved well before brexit and got rag-pulled.

It's been a while since brexit, surely if it was that bad you could go back home by now.

That may be a valid point, but notice that the GP wasn't about the EU government, it's about governments in general.

And notice it isn't exactly about how people do think they are good, but it's about how people are open to the idea that it can do good here or there.

Or, in other words, it's a much more nuanced point than the one you are replying to.

> I've not met anyone who doesn't work in Brussels who thinks the EU isn't a dysfunctional pile of shit.

Then you live in a very biased bubble.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/24/people-br...

I feel the complete opposite. I think the EU is the most efficient and enlightened bureaucracy there is, and it is going to save our ass, and maybe the ass of the rest of the world too. I have more trust in the EU techno-bureaucrats than in the government of my own country. The more EU the better as far as I am concerned. The EU is awesome.

> EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy

I don't think that EU is so homogeneous in this regard. Ask that question to people from Italy and Finland and you will get quite different answers, and rightly so, because Italian and Finnish government, and in general state are quite different.

Ask that question even within Italy or Finland and you're probably going to get different answers.

However, ask an Italian or a Finn about an attitude towards consumers rights, and you're likely to end up with a similar answer.

>EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy

The government is the most powerful entity in society. If brainwashing is to happen, it's almost certain to be done by the state and its allies.

The last 80 years is a history of growing government power and public agreement with the narrative that expansive government control is good:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

anyone who deoesn't think like me must be brainwashed.

Careful, there are some Apple fanboys defending Apple for their beautiful UX that does things only to simplify and make life better, not to monetize - that's just a small side effect.

PS: I own several Apple devices, but I can still recognize mafia methods.

> ...thinking the EU is somehow like the US...

I suspect US-ians in general have a hard time realizing that the US is not the only planet in the universe. It is part of the culture to assume that the US way of doing things is universal.

> EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy, at least not to the same extent as the US.

US citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their friend, at least not to the same extent as the EU.

Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU. Real life is not the same as HN, because most citizens are not part of the "elite" that benefits the most from EU programs and systems. Like all governments there are very good things about the EU and very bad things. And somebody has to pay for their maintenance.

You should be concerned if your thought patterns are healthy if you dismiss everybody with a different opinion as yours as "brainwashed". It doesn't help you in the long run.

> Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU.

The polling seems to be proving you wrong. Even in the UK the attitude towards the EU seems to be net positive.

I wrote "if you talk to people", which is different from what a poll might say. Yes, it's anecdotal.

I talk to people here in the EU, and most of my anecdotes support the EU, even the ones with reservations regarding it.

So anecdotes don't matter in this discussion.

That is because most polling is not a representative sample of peoples' beliefs and is untrustworthy. The "mainstream" polling and coverage of Brexit is a great example, or the polling and coverage around the 2016 US presidential election.

Time to mention the Yes Prime Minister clip on polling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gMcZic1d4U

Perfect video. Youtube is blocking it outside of the UK. VPN with UK exit IP seems to work.

How’d that work out for you with the Brexit vote? Still placing your undivided faith in polls by people that benefit from presenting a particular ideology as being popular?

It's a sort of a myth that Brexit polling got it wrong [1]. There was a visible surge for Leave just before the referendum, and the result did not surprise me.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Unit...

> Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU.

There is exactly one country where that is true: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/24/people-br...

Across the EU, it's one third (i.e. a two-to-one majority sees the EU positively)

> US citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their friend, at least not to the same extent as the EU.

> Honestly, if you talk to real people within the EU, you'll find that maybe half of them are mostly against the EU.

Are you sure these two claims aren't contradictory? Go on, give it a few minutes of thought.

---

Let us be perfectly clear here. People in the EU love to grumble about the EU, like every single human being everywhere loves to grumble about their government. Like all systems made of humans, the EU has big flaws, which everybody acknowledges, although they might not completely agree on what exact set of traits counts as flaws.

That does not mean the large majority of EU citizens seriously thinks the EU should be replaced with something else. Even less so now that the UK went and made itself a cautionary tale of what may happen when you try too hard to use said grumbling as a political tool to pursue your own selfish interests.

>That does not mean the large majority of EU citizens seriously thinks the EU should be replaced with something else.

Who are you quoting when you write "large majority"? I wrote "maybe half", and that's my assessment from talking to people. As for the UK, that's still to be seen. The last time they decided to stand on the side of European unification, it turned out they made the right choice – while still paying a very high price for that choice.

And how biased is your sample? Also, of course we have to have a baseline of being even reasonably informed of the cost/benefit landscape. People who are actively being lied to don’t and cannot count.

People who have a different opinion than you do, do not and cannot count, got it. Because clearly they've been lied to. Your attitude is exactly why I recommend hackers here to go talk to people in real life about these things.

Yes. Also, Apple's market share in Europe is much lower than in the US. Many if not most Europeans wouldn't care if Apple ceased to exist today (or ceased to be able to sell its products in Europe). I certainly wouldn't. We have lots of options.

> What amazes and perplexes me is that Apple thinks it can effectively play politics against the EU and that somehow their customers will back them in the face of the "consequences" Apple applies,

Given the general attitude of many ardent Apple fans, I don't find this so surprising. Especially as while the feature is attractive it is not yet used by a large proportion of the customer base (partly because it is not yet widely used by apps, though it is steadily becoming more so).

I think what tipped it over the balance, so what they judged wrong, is the fact the braking of existing features was only going to happen in Europe. This made it hard for even the most cultish follower of the brand to paint the “well, it isn't a good feature anyway” picture because if that was the case the drop would have been universal. Counter intuitively: maybe if they had made the change globally, making it less obviously the result of a childish hissy-fit, they would have had more support from the core customer base.

>somehow their customers will back them in the face of the "consequences" Apple applies

Could you elaborate on this point? I'm not sure what their customers would even be able to do in apple's favour? Discussions on tax and anticompetitive activity is largely niche, and even here the facts don't get in the way of the court of public opinion:

Take each of these major tax/anticompetitive headline grabbers from the last few years:

Apple Owes $14.5 Billion in Back Taxes to Ireland, E.U. Says - New York Times.

Apple hit with record €1.1bn fine in France - BBC

Italian antitrust watchdog fines Apple, Amazon more than $225m - Al Jazeera.

And it's about there where most readers stop, but what actually happened after this point?

1. The latest ruling in the 14BN irish tax saga was in Apple's favour, and since then it's taken around 3 years for the EU to file their appeal. So that is still on-going with the EU on the back foot.

2. The record French 1.1Bn antitrust fine, reduced to a third, and the appeals process is still incomplete.

3. The 225M fine from the Italian antitrust authority was struck down entirely.

These are judgements from the EU's own courts, which lends credibility to the people who make cynical statements about the various EU agencies application of these fines.

For this reason I scoff when I read an editorial which describes the USA as protectionist in comparison to the EU. The evidence is to the contrary.

ah yes, the "everybody who doesn't agree with me must be brainwashed" cliche

I quite like the article as far as it goes; but this begs the follow up question - is the strategy working? Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America. This should be an article about how Nokia or equivalent is approaching the US all wrong and not understanding the realities on the ground.

I'd put energy in a similar frame. Energy matters a lot, and for all the optimistic noise around the Energiewende, the solar industry ended up in China. Wind power Europe has managed a company in the top ten, so that is pretty good [0]. Given the growing energy crisis in Europe, this seems to be an area of failure that needs more focus in how the common market is performing.

The EU's successes seem a bit mild. I remain sceptical that harmonizing charging cables is an important enough dot point to appear on these lists, it looks like there is just a lack of success stories out of the EU. The failures are catastrophic; last I heard the farmers had just started rioting too [1] which is a bad omen.

[0] https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-wind-power-companies/

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/26/farmers-...

> Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America.

Seems like this holds true more generally.

The manufacturing is happening in China, the decisions are being made in North America, and the regulation in the EU.

Its like direct (US), produce (China), react (EU)

China can regulate more effectively than the EU. They have actual concentration camps. Look at Jack Ma. The EU has cookie banners. That’s not regulation, it’s a speed bump. Consider that the US cannot manufacture things because our environmental and labor regulations are so strict as to make it impossible. The idea that America doesn’t have regulations is not accurate. We have regulated the regulation, so it appears less regulatory but it is not.

Are you actually callong for forced labor camps for certain people???

I’m saying the notion that China doesn’t regulate is ridiculous. If it is true that America leads rather than produces, it is precisely because it has embraced regulation to protect workers and groundwater.

The goal of Energiewende was to crush the price of renewable generation, and it looks like that’s happened. It just turns out that the fastest way to accomplish this was for manufacturing to occur in China, where it’s consistently cheaper year after year. If you set up an optimization problem on one metric, you can’t be surprised when it doesn’t optimize for a different one.

> but this begs the follow up question - is the strategy working? Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America.

But at least some of the decisions that happen in North America are happening because of EU regulation. For example the push to get all phone manufacturers to standardise on USB chargers

It's working for the people that live in the EU.

This is another point that I think Americans miss sometimes - "good for the businesses" is seen as the end goal, and it is assumed that people will benefit in some trickle-down way from that.

The goal for all of this is for people to have good lives. Supporting businesses may or may not be the right way of doing that, but we shouldn't lose sight of the end goal.

Simping for big business is a favorite American pastime. Somehow, so many Americans have been convinced that they're actually business owners, just having a set-back and temporarily working for $20/hr stocking shelves or selling cars. But in their hearts they are actually tycoons, and anything that hurts business surely hurts themselves!

Quote from the West Wing: "That is the problem with the American Dream. Makes everyone concerned for the day they're gonna be rich."

I used to trot this URL[1] out a lot, but it's a pretty old survey now. In 2003, 39% of Americans believed that they either were(19%) or one day would be(20%) among the top 1% of earners.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-ho...

They might not be that wrong Article is paywalled, but I'd expect that a double digit % US citizens are in the top 1% globally. They're pretty wealthy.

1% is like 80 million people. That could translate to around 10% of the US. And the names of those 10% change as people earn more or less through their lives.

Sorry, it used to be non-paywalled. If I recall correctly, the question was scoped to the USA, so indeed 39% of USA people believed they were or would be in the top 1% of the USA.

I'm skeptical of this interpretation.

There is a middle ground between people making $20 an hour and business tycoons. Policies that help big business might not trickle down to people stocking shelves, but they often advantage middle class people.

For example, the US is an excellent place for software engineers. There are far more of them and they make far higher salaries than their European counterparts. Is it unreasonable to believe that American policies that empower big tech companies also benefit a developer making $250k at Google, even though he does not own the company?

What if policies that benefit the top 1% did, in fact, trickle down to the top 30% of Americans, at the expense of the bottom 70%? What if this bloc of people was organized enough to win elections and control politics without relying on people delusionally voting against their own interests?

> so many Americans have been convinced that they're actually business owners

In many cases, this is true. Tesla, for example, paid their early factory workers with stock in the company. As a result, many of the factory workers who worked on the Model 3 assembly line are now millionaires.

The US's relatively lax taxation/regulation on equity compensation is one of the reasons why tech workers in the US get paid so much more. Since they're actually literally part owners of the company, this might explain why they're usually more productive as well.

> point that I think Americans miss sometimes

Definitely. Americans are very quick to prioritise the needs of businesses over those of people.

In Europe, the people come first.

Two companies in the wind power top 10: Siemens of Germany, and Vestas of Denmark. As someone who worked for a while in Canadian wind power industry, the only other turbines I've seen deployed at scale here are the GE ones.

If the decisions were being made in North America, iPhones would still be having a lightning connector.

On the basic premise EU is working wonderfully.

It's the longest period in our thousand years history that we Poles have not had to fight Germans.

We have lost maybe even 1/3 of population in wars with Sweden, 1/5 of population in war with Germany.

Poland didn't exist or 123 years under Russian, Prussian and Austrian occupation.

Given that as a baseline, I'm really grateful for the EU.

Maybe I'm about to display my ignorance, but until 1990 wasn't Poland under the USSR's umbrella? And the US was all but occupying Germany until ... it is almost possible to make that claim up to today. There are 50k US troops in Germany and 60k in the German army. That and the Southwestern Europeans being broken like twigs after WWII.

I don't think it is the EU that is keeping the peace; I reakoon it is the Haber process + the US more than anything else. Although if it was it is failing IMO, there is a land war in Europe right now that is at risk of fighting WWIII. And everyone is arming up again because of it.

Indeed. You're displaying your ignorance.

The Haber process was the single most important thing that brought us WW1 and WW2. War at an industrial scale was suddenly possible because munitions were possible to produce at and industrial scale.

The EU is what changed in Europe.

US "occupation" in Europe after WW2 was weak compared to the influence of the EU. The EU emanates all regulation in Europe. The US certainly didn't create the single market in the EU.

Also the brutal occupation of Easter Europe by the USSR is exactly an example of what the EU peace project is about solving.

If someone was going to start a fight in Europe after WWII, they had a choice of either attacking in the East and going toe-to-toe with the USSR, or the West and going toe-to-toe with the US. That calculation held for the Germans, British and French too if they wanted to start something.

The common market has probably been a net force for peace, but superpowers staking out areas where they were involved can hardly be brushed aside. After the fall of the USSR it hasn't been 30 years and we see land wars in their former sphere of influence.

Economics doesn't stop armies. We saw in WWII that insane politicians are perfectly capable of destroying everything in sight, economic consequences for their own citizens be damned.

Even within the EU it is clear that low income countries have worse life than high income countries, just like everywhere in the world. And Europe's real median income is decreasing in most of the countries. Surely, it will have effect in few decades.

[1]: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/08/21/real-wages-are-down...

Yes. But are you implying that the EU is making this worse? After all, the economic slowdown in Europe can almost fully be explained by the terrible demographics in Europe.

It is easy to imagine a war torn Europe without the EU. Then we would definitely be worse off.

If we had comparable energy prices to the USA then we would also have more manufacturing. It's almost the sole driver behind the current economic crisis.

Europe is sadly not energy independent like the USA is.

It's not economically feasible to operate a large factory in central europe any more, it's barely possible to operate a restaurant (they are closing in droves) -- energy prices are too high.

That's the promise of the renewable transition, it's the trifecta:

- energy independence

- lower energy prices (after the short term)

- addresses global warming

With a huge bonus:

- crushes the evil and collusive petro states

As someone living in the EU, I'm well aware of the EU's failings, but also of the successes, and I think we don't celebrate them enough.

Some things I really like:

* I can travel in a wide area with just my ID card (and practically even without it), no visa or passports required

* sending packages by mail is really easy and cheap compared to non-EU countries

* free mobile data roaming. Not such a big deal for me (but very convenient), but I have friends that travel a lot or are at home in more than one country, for them it's huge

* no need to exchange currencies when visiting lots of places (though not all EU countries)

* my health insurance mostly works in the other EU countries as well

* pretty strong consumer protection laws

* We've been living in peace for quite a few decades now, awesome! (And that's not how it used to be in central Europe, historically)

Note that national politicians often take credit for things mandated by EU, and put all the blame on the EU, so that kinda skews the public discords more negative than it should be.

Just one more data point: only one country has left the EU so far, and it seems they've come to regret it, mostly. Lots of countries have joined the EU since its formation, with more in the pipeline. Would that be the case if negatives outweighed the positives?

I find it ironic that at the time of writing the comment before yours is the one that complains about "simping for big business" (ie, overfocusing on the benifits to the wealthy) and then your comment is mainly lauding the benefits to the people who can afford international travel.

Community discussions are odd beasts.

> the people who can afford international travel.

Who can't afford to travel 100km?

Maybe for you, international travel means hopping on a plane.

Most Europeans live closer to another country than to most of their own.

Turns out to be a surprisingly hard question to answer; so I'm going with such people will exist but I'm not sure how many there are. But regardless, that is a list of things that are either mainly to be enjoyed by people who are well off or (ironically and opposite) part of a program of enabling cheap labourers to migrate large distances.

And I'm not against either of those things, both are good. But it is funny how one comment is complaining about doing things that are good for business and the wealthy, then the next comment was celebrating the same.

A lot of manufacturing actually does happen in EU - it's just somehow concentrated in manufacturing parts necessary to make factories in general or producing other things.

So less in big name end user products, a lot in terms of "drive around EU and you can purchase everything to build any kind of factory"

I understand where the author is coming from and It is important to have a realist perspective on what is driving European strategy or else we will be in denial.

I think it's also important to recognize that the west are interconnected in many real ways beyond economic. The first and most clearly top of mind recently is the US defense umbrella which allows the EU to invest on other things instead of defense. Another less talked about is how the US subsidizes most of global R&D for healthcare by virtue of the obscene amount Americans pay and hence make profitable that industry to the benefit of all of humanity.

For American companies to contemplate selling into or building offices and having employees in Europe is to contemplate a set of trade-offs.. there's a reason why European employees are typically paid far less, it has to do with the fact that there's far less flexibility if they are a bad hire coupled with the fact that they have much better benefits provided by their governments and hence their money goes a lot further. That is of course related to the fact that they are not generally paying much for defense.

Everyone is self interested and when we see the Europeans talk about human rights on the one hand but then do big wine and dine trips in China to sell their luxury goods on the other hand you see clear evidence of that fact.

As much as many Europeans may loathe the united states, in the grand scheme of things we are far more interwoven with each other and ultimately entering a new cold war with China and decisions will need to be made over time around where to place bets around self-reliance. I'm sure Europeans love to sell to China but they will not love the glut of Chinese Imports that will decimate their protectionist economies at a level far more aggressive than they've ever experienced across the Atlantic

See, and therw I was worried we'd have a discussion HN involcing the EU without anyone sharing all those meme and myths about the EU, labour laws, salaries... Thank you for holding up the flag!

incredibile amount of delusion of grandeur on that one.

> US subsidizes most of global R&D for healthcare

Do you have any numbers to back this claim up?

> there's far less flexibility if they are a bad hire

In most European countries any new employee will be on probation for an initial period [1] during which they can be let go easily.

[1] https://www.eurodev.com/blog/probationary-periods-in-europe

Table 3 here [0] provides a breakdown of drug discovery by country and by expenditure. In terms of number of drugs discovered, the US leads with 66%, followed by Canada, the UK, Germany, and Belgium in that order.

[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10134693/pdf/10...

> Another less talked about is how the US subsidizes most of global R&D for healthcare by virtue of the obscene amount Americans pay and hence make profitable that industry to the benefit of all of humanity.

Health Disadvantage in US Adults Aged 50 to 74 Years: A Comparison of the Health of Rich and Poor Americans With That of Europeans - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2661456/#:~:tex....

Differences in Health between Americans and Western Europeans: Effects on Longevity and Public Finance https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3383030/

US spends more than twice as much on health as similar countries for worse outcomes, finds report https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj.p2340

I don't think any of your links substantiate the claim that US healthcare expenditure subsidises global R&D on healthcare, only that healthcare is more expensive in the US (which I personally think is more due to an extremely ineffective system with an unhealthy amount of middlemen that inflate prices).

You know what disproves this, again right wing US BS to oppose universal healthcare? The financial filings of each and every international pharma company.

Regarding defence spending, it is good this point comes up. It replaced masks during Covid as a clear indicator of where a person gets its information from, or how good they are at critical thinking.

> You know what disproves this, again right wing US BS to oppose universal healthcare?

Originally, universal health care was proposed by the Nixon administration, and was a right wing issue. The issue was viewed as an industrial competitiveness issue, and the solution advocated was a single payer system that would move the cost of health off of the balance sheet. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had this idea taken root.

It is quite telling that we reached a point where look back and unironically say: that Nixon policy wasn't bad.

> The first and most clearly top of mind recently is the US defense umbrella

Defense has to be believable, a 50/50 bet that treaties will be honored in the future isn't. All that debt fueled spending doesn't mean a lot.

As a European I always have mixed feelings when this comes up. First things first, the European NATO members signed a contract to use 2% of GDP for defense and some are not doing that. Not right, they have to honor their agreements.

But then why is the US spending so much more than the 2% ? I feel that by and large that Europe and mostly the EU tries to have international influence via commerce. (Trade agreement/or not, customs, economic pressure, regulation, that sort of thing).

When you look at the US then in some instance you can't help but thinking that the military is another arm to execute international influence in the world. For that it might make sense to have a large military budget. If that's not your way of making politics, and let's be honest no European country could even do that if they wanted, then it is also less interesting to have a large army in excess of what has been agreed (the 2%)

All of that also with the view that probably most people are shocked that it is actually possible to have an actual war in Europe again. This was unexpected and most people thought, we have enough weapons to deter any attacker. let's leave it there. And in fairness that still holds. The 2% seem to be about right to have a useful deterrent for an attack.

So in Europe (despite how it looks now with the Ukraine war) a big army was seen less useful and when the Americans say they have to hold a defense umbrella then they are probably right with regards to nuclear defense.

But for the rest the Americans seem to have their own motives to have a large army that goes beyond defense and then it feels a bit strange to hear that America has to pay for a big Army because the Europeans don't do it (except the Europeans really should stick to 2%). As the Europeans have less incentive/possibility to use their military for anything else but defense whereas the Americans do.

> All of that also with the view that probably most people are shocked that it is actually possible to have an actual war in Europe again.

Compound interest is powerful, and works both ways. Under-spending on defense for a decade or too leaves large gaps in defense capability. The US overspends, but doesn't always spend on the right things. A good example not having enough artillery ammunition.

> A good example not having enough artillery ammunition.

US military doctrine doesn’t use much artillery anymore so why would it still spend a lot on artillery ammunition?

US uses maneuver warfare with air support and precision munitions. No one expected to provide a bunch of logistics support to a non-NATO ally that uses our Cold War enemy’s doctrine.

> No one expected to provide a bunch of logistics support to a non-NATO ally that uses our Cold War enemy’s doctrine.

Rephrase: No one expected a real land war in Europe without establishing air superiority.

You can rephrase it all you like it doesn’t change the question: why would the US spend a bunch of money on artillery ammunition when it and its NATO allies don’t use artillery? Why waste money on something we don’t use?

The US armed forces make a lot of dumb choices with their funding but “underspending on artillery we don’t use” is not one of them. Even with hindsight it doesn’t make sense.

Oh, boy. The ones that say "cannon artillery" operate howitzers, mostly M-777, M-109 and M-119. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_field_artillery_regime... Our allies largely manufacture their own 155MM systems.

Plenty of M-777 M-119s and M-109s are still in use. The idea that the US doesn't have or use artillery is just factually wrong. The fact we didn't have substantially more ammunition stocks for those weapons is a mistake.

>> A good example not having enough artillery ammunition.

> The fact we didn't have substantially more ammunition stocks for those weapons is a mistake.

Oh boy, so you just contradicted yourself!

There no contradiction there. The whole point is that the US made a mistake by not producing enough ammunition for artillery.

> As a European I always have mixed feelings when this comes up. First things first, the European NATO members signed a contract to use 2% of GDP for defense and some are not doing that. Not right, they have to honor their agreements.

While its true that some countries do not honor the agreement, there is often some context missing here. The 2% agreement was made in 2006, shortly after that the financial crisis came. Priorities changed and because for most Europeans defense is actually seen as deterrence and not political influence - as you yourself posit, the 2% norm didn't seem particularly important given the economic collapse we were facing. Nobody believed there would be a war, surving the financial crisis was much more critical to us Europeans.

After Russia annexed part of Ukraine in 2014 however, there was a renewed commitment to the norm and spending did actually increase quite a bit - and is still increasing. The EU combined now does spend 2% of its GDP, some countries less and some countries more. Most countries who still do not meet the 2% do have a policy to increase their spending. Since 2014, there is not a single EU country which did not increase their defense budget (in terms of GDP). The only countries where the budget is decreased (again, in terms of GDP) are Turkey and the US.

> But for the rest the Americans seem to have their own motives to have a large army that goes beyond defense and then it feels a bit strange to hear that America has to pay for a big Army because the Europeans don't do it (except the Europeans really should stick to 2%). As the Europeans have less incentive/possibility to use their military for anything else but defense whereas the Americans do.

Excellent point.

There is no such thing as dominance with trade without a navy. These two always go together and it's the reason why china is building up its navy

As an American who pays for healthcare insurance, I must say that this is a bug and not a feature!

> there's a reason why European employees are typically paid far less

American companies also want to pay American employees less who switch from working in the office to working remotely.

> see the Europeans talk about human rights on the one hand but then do big wine and dine trips in China

Those are not the same people.

Those are exactly the same people. E.g. the German leadership is notorious for traveling to China, holding trade talks, getting wined and dined, with a ritual token "but remember to uphold human rights!" sentence somewhere in a speech. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/olaf-scholz-china-reise-... https://www.sueddeutsche.de/meinung/china-merkel-menschenrec...

> Everyone is self interested and when we see the Europeans talk about human rights on the one hand but then do big wine and dine trips in China to sell their luxury goods on the other hand you see clear evidence of that fact.

I think you're falling into another typical mistake, which is to think "Europeans" are one person.

In fact, it's very likely that the Europeans who talk about human rights don't travel to China and those who do "wine and dine trips in China" are different people who aren't very interested in human rights.

Given how the Brussels controls trade with China for all the member-states, the statement is accurate.The same Commission who waves human rights flags will do all kinds of energy deals with saudi& Azerbaijan for example

The European Commission isn't one person either, actually.

I didn't say it is.

> As much as many Europeans may loathe the united states First to get it out of the way, I don't think many Europeans loathe the USA. Some might disagree with some of the major influences from the US, but that comes from a position of respect, something like agree to disagree.

With regards to the health R&D, well. My view is that to call what happens in the US subsidizing others sounds surprisingly charitable when it is all but that. The US health industry is a surprisingly economically unregulated cut-throat market. What the private companies that make up the majority of the American health industry do is what they are supposed to do, maximize profits. No surprise there. What is surprising is that some people expect that maximizing profits leads to good and value for money healthcare for individual people.

What happens is that the US health system/regulations/laws lead to high prices for patients and huge profits for companies. So if the US intention is to have good health care they shot themself in the foot. But I don't know that.

> The first and most clearly top of mind recently is the US defense umbrella which allows the EU to invest on other things instead of defense.

In the past 30-40 years the US has been the direct or indirect cause of most of the world's conflicts and wars. "US defense umbrella" has cost the EU more than its claimed benefit.

> the fact that they have much better benefits provided by their governments and hence their money goes a lot further. That is of course related to the fact that they are not generally paying much for defense.

Ah yes. Europeans have benefits because US spends so much on military. I find no fault in this logic.

> The first and most clearly top of mind recently is the US defense umbrella which allows the EU to invest on other things instead of defense.

And also to have the US stay in control, that was the deal post WW2. This is changing though, looking at how much EU countries spend in terms of GDP they are slowly closing in on the US. Some countries are even outspending the US on this metric. There is a real urgency to become independent of the US for our security of course. Thanks to both Trump and Putin.

This puzzles me most, Americans clearly do not benefit from the arrangement. They spend vast amounts on healthcare, way more than almost any other country, and the health outcomes are quite mediocre. This is not in the interest of the average American, its a broken model.

> For American companies to contemplate selling into or building offices and having employees in Europe is to contemplate a set of trade-offs.. there's a reason why European employees are typically paid far less, it has to do with the fact that there's far less flexibility if they are a bad hire coupled with the fact that they have much better benefits provided by their governments and hence their money goes a lot further. That is of course related to the fact that they are not generally paying much for defense.

I don't think this is the case. America is spending way more on defense, but in terms of GDP its still just 3.5% or so whereas the mean EU country spends just slightly under 2%. I think its rather the sheer size of the US economy and the VC money going into it to stay competitive. When you look at lower paid jobs vs cost of living instead of the privileged, the story is quite different. There is a lot of poverty in America. If you have no education, in most EU countries you don't need 3 jobs just to make ends meet, even with heavy taxes.

> As much as many Europeans may loathe the united states, in the grand scheme of things we are far more interwoven with each other and ultimately entering a new cold war with China and decisions will need to be made over time around where to place bets around self-reliance. I'm sure Europeans love to sell to China but they will not love the glut of Chinese Imports that will decimate their protectionist economies at a level far more aggressive than they've ever experienced across the Atlantic

Absolutely, the EU is no saint. As a general rule, its easier to loathe those that are most like us but just not us. The United States are almost as interwoven with China and in love with its cheap labour and resources as the EU though. And very dependent on it. And I think both the US and EU are now realizing this has a security risk.

However, as the article points out, there is a strong conviction in the EU that economic interdependence prevents war. To the point of ideology I might add, because a lot of Europeans were sure that economic interdependence with Russia would prevent Putin going to war, to the point of blindness. After Ukraine, this doctrine has been challenged to say the least.

Europe is changing now. And so is the US.

> And also to have the US stay in control, that was the deal post WW2. This is changing though, looking at how much EU countries spend in terms of GDP they are slowly closing in on the US

a quick search said the EU spent 240B euro on defense in 2022, that number is likely higher now. That isn't a small amount. If you bundled the EU as a country, that would be 3rd on the list, and puts their military spending in the same class as china. The EU isn't piggy backing off the US for defense, the US is just spending an obscene amount on defense, because how else do you make the shareholders of the military industrial complex obscenely rich?

At least in the case of Apple, it’s not at all specific the the EU. That company is run by children.

Everybody who works with Apple, be it developers or suppliers complains about how shitty they are to work with. They maintain relationships by the strength of their market power alone. Bridge burning is ingrained into the company culture.

Apple is treating the EU like they do everyone else: they are being dicks. Unfortunately they seem to have missed that the EU is not able to be bullied or pushed around.

I wouldn't say they're children.

Rather, Apple is ran by people who are used to the ~20 years of free corporate reign granted to them by the complete defanging of groups like the FTC in the US while Europe was still trying to fruitlessly coax them into being cooperative.

It's not just Apple who is struggling to work in an environment where regulators have teeth; Amazon tried to treat the EU the same way and got banned from lobbying the EU parliament for not taking them seriously.

Basically the only GAFAM company that took regulators seriously for a while was Microsoft (due to the IE lawsuits) but even they are starting to act out again as of late.

The meteoric rise of MS Azure in Europe is best explained by how they have already had their war with the EU and learned how to work with the EU instead of against it.

Apple saw what happened when Google was nice to developers and got shitty camera views in apps and adobe flash.

Apple has rightfully concluded that developers do not deserve to have any freedom on their platform because they immediately abuse it for their benefit and to the detriment of the user. Devs got so bad meta lost billions in value when Apple set up a privacy transparency feature in the App Store, say what you want about their repair practices but no other tech company takes this much care in managing their platform.

Any platform operator needs policies to protect users against spam and abuse. But does Apple do a good job at this? No. Many of the popular app store apps are low quality games that exploit addiction with loot-box mechanics. But those scam apps make money for Apple so it's fine.

Apple does not keep spam and other crap from the App store, but it does police high quality apps that offer their own subscription services. Because Apple feels entitled to their cut.

For every shitty spam app in the App Store there’s straight up malware on the play store

So after your basic premise was demonstrated false, you instead just deflect to a nothing statement that couldn't be more false? "Apple is good" "no, they aren't" "for every bad app Apple let's on the platform that makes them extremely rich that they will never ban, and all the spam apps they seem un able to ban, there are definitely way more malware on the play store because Google lets people do whatever"

Which is just not true. It has permissions, app review, and the same broken financial incentives as Apple.

I don't understand how anyone defends Apple's walled thornbush garden. Sure it's in neat rows with paths and it says it's a garden. But it's designed to maximize the amount it gets out of you for Apple's benefit just like Google, to make sure you can't leave, and to make you feel like the thornbush garden of Google is worse because they use gravel for their paths instead of paved stones.

The basic premise isn’t false, you just decided it was.

Snapchat and Instagram did irreparable damage to Android’s reputation for an entire generation of people because of how relaxed Google’s restrictions were on lazy developers.

Instagram, the application that was so infamously Apple-only for a long time that there was public backlash for making an android version, when one of the main reasons for not having android app was simply that they had a small team and wanted to avoid splitting effort?

You forgot about the 10 years that the instagram app just used the camera preview for pictures (as did snapchat), and now the average person thinks Android phones have bad cameras.

That's how badly Google mishandled Android, they listened to smooth brained tech bros who thought giving developers freedom would be a good idea, and Apple has always said they would ruin the user experience. Years later that "closed" ecosystem is so good Google has to beg lawmakers to let them access it because now there's a whole generation of people who see Android as a steaming pile of garbage, because it's exactly what Google let it become to the average person.

-1: all large companies throw their market power around. There's nothing special about Apple in this regard.

Expected some meme-worthy content about bad EU-regulations and such. Was surprised to read a well thought out piece about how good managers have to accept and work with facts and reality.

Take my upvote!

It's rare to find someone with a very different starting point of view, and still don't feel any antagonism at all during the reasoning.

As an European for example I would attribute most of his general criticism of EU to the US but after much entrenching on "Apple vs EU" this felt like a reasonable third view.

Kudos to the author

In fact I’m really amazed that Apple is trying to play games trying to circumvent a brand new regulation (the DMA), while totally ignoring the fact that they are amongst he primary targets of those regulations. It’s like they don’t understand that any circumvent will just sharpen the 1.01 version of the regulation.

They are only gaining some time until the next iteration but it just shows that they are afraid they can’t function anymore by just providing greater products than competitors. DMA isn’t banning the App Store, it still can be the number one store and it still can be a money printer. Except that it will have to be better than competitors.

I doubt they are gaining time.

Any judge will just look and say "hey, that's clearly what the legislators meant from the beginning".

> And, as an institution, they are largely all too convinced that an all-seeing universal surveillance state would be a good thing, actually.

Not that I disagree, but where is the light in this tunnel? Increased police surveillance seems to be a common theme in USA, UK and Australia. And countries with less advanced democracies--to say nothing of Russia or China--are not climbing faster into the surveillance wagon mostly because of financial reasons.

Finally more people are figuring out that the EU is a net positive and not a net negative. Love my Europe.

I am European and hate all the regulations they’ve done so far. I know it’s a very rare pov, but for me all of these new legislations are terrible both for the consumers AND the small developers (which I am both). The ONLY people getting something are the somewhat big companies.

Which regulations do you feel are terrible for consumers and small developers?

GP told you: all of them.

Including USB-C? I find that hard to believe.

And roaming charges? Who doesn't like paying every time they go abroad for something that is now entirely free.

And the fact that we went from having to pay a few € for 500MB to having (with Iliad) 10 GB FREE roaming in the whole EU? Damn I love the EU so much.

You could not even get near a border without a foreign telecom provider trying to connect you to their network abroad with powerful senders and charge through the roof.

Those where the days ;-)

Still a problem with that pesky Switzerland in the middle. Do not approach any Swiss antenna without reading your telecom contract !

Montenegro in the Balkans is the same.

There's no free lunch

USB-C was the first to grind my gear. Believe it or not I like the feel of the lightning plug and still prefer it over USB-C. I don’t care about transfer speed or whatnot for my phone I use the cable exclusively for charging.

EDIT: In any case it’s not even the lightning vs. USB-C that matters it’s the fact that the plug is mandatory. What if someone discovers a revolutionary plug someday? Well too bad, can’t use it because EU decided USB-C is perfect.

It's not only Lightning, it's the myriad of other, sometimes totally custom, power connectors. Perhaps you're too young to remember the times when a laptop, phone, headphones and game console all required custom adapters?

I know and remember. But the industry had already chosen USB-C, the legislation was kind of a bit F U to Apple more than anything else and I’m still convinced it was completely useless… except it has in effect prevented anything new to appear ever. Everybody is happy of this change because USB-C is an ok plug (and better than everything that existed apart from Lightning AFAIK), but it’s still something that should never have been done.

Right, I can see your point. But I think you're too optimistic and the convergence to USB-C would be a lot slower were it not for this legislation.

You hate (not dislike, actively hate) 861/2007, the European Small Claims procedure? and 1007/2011, you are really that opinionated on textile fibre names?

Hey, textile fibres arw worn by everyone everyday!

I realize you are using these examples as something so innocuous and inoffensive nobody would oppose such regulation. However, you clearly have not read either regulation in full and with due consideration of its effects. You can form your own judgments, but these regulations are not without tradeoffs.

Take 1007/2011, on one hand this just centralizes and codifies some existing regulations to reduce country-specific administrative burdens, on the other hand in Chapter 2, Articles 5 and 6, it places onerous regulatory burdens on anyone wanting to create new textile blends.

You can no longer simply produce such a product and make it honestly available to the market, it’s illegal to sell without first getting the EU to agree to add your textile blend to Annex I, which requires an extensive bureaucratic process with destructive testing requirements.

On one hand, it’s important to know exactly what is in a product, on other hand being so distrustful that you mandate expensive destructive testing before the first offer to market means either you expect people to regularly violate these laws at the margins or you intend to completely stamp out small time inventors. Contrary to what the average person thinks there is a lot of active development in the textile industry trying to find new fiber sources and production methods which lower costs and lower environmental impacts. This is especially true in the production of rayon, with things like the lyocell process, using new cellulose sources like bamboo and eucalyptus, and identifying alternative chemical pathways for the production of viscose.

Regulations like these are a two edged sword, like all regulations. Comparing the US to the EU, the EU generally has higher product quality standards but lags the US in innovation, part of the reason why is due to these types of regulations. It is much easier for a small-time inventor to go from idea to product in market in the US than the EU, including in the textile space.

I struggle to believe anyone actually hates such regulations, but to hate every single one of the thousands of regulations the EU government has passed over the last few decades suggests something somewhat deeper

Wow always interesting hearing new developments in unrelated industries. There just isn't enough time in the day to research each industry. Since you seem knowledgable, do you know what is the state of recycling old fabrics?

I was fascinated by attempts to "process" old fabrics and mix them with other fabrics to create new garments as shown in this video but im not sure if this went anywhere.

[1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obO1PKfXGpQ

Possibly stupid question, but for novel material, why can't you use entry 48 in table 2 of Annex I, which is "descriptive" naming scheme for things outside current list? Plus a bunch of the current standard names includes very generic terms.

Blends are accepted with the descriptive names.

Yeah, no. You just don't follow the EU in detail. Read the EU parliament IG summaries of what happens each week for example. I have much more faith in EU politics than in German ones because they actually seem agile, and run by people with expertise for their respective project.

Nicely written. Great management processes the reality of workplace and society, and applies that information to maximize their employees' effectiveness. Managers are human and thus they have opnions, but great management doesn't let their opinions cloud their judgement when it comes time to manage.

I'll admit that, as an engineer, I appreciate that someone is trying to rein in my industry's worst instincts, even if that someone isn't America and they aren't necessarily succeeding on every front. So yes, I have a bias.

I guess this is a good summary from someone with a primarily positive view of the EU.

I’m a EU citizen with a more negative view of the union. Core to my understanding of the EU is the idea that “Europe is a garden, while the rest of the world is a jungle – we have built a garden” [1]. It’s a fundamentally different approach to legislation: instead of thinking about what rules would be fair and reasonable, European politicians start with the end result (“the garden”) and try to craft rules that will accomplish that result. If the rules turn out to be unreasonable from some perspective… “well you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs”. For Americans, coming from a common law system, this has a totalitarian feel to it. At least that’s my personal feeling.

1. https://youtu.be/ufAHg6hN4OA?si=OaZE89rGTZOtE0Hk

Really great article! With simple yet profound and general observations, such as:

> The EU, as an organisation, has a specific economic theory that guides most of its actions. Once you understand the theory, they become very predictable.

> Any time you see two entities of similar size fight, bet on the one that thinks it’s fighting for its life.

I mostly disagree on the analysis, because it starts from the premise that Apple will lose more by continuing with the current stance. IMHO, that's backwards: being a for-profit company, Apple (and to a lesser extent, Google) has been using every lever they get to stall for time and get a few more quarters of those sweet App Store profits. Whether it's a bad strategy to wait until the very last time to comply is still to be seen.

Still, a very interesting read I'll keep to the back of my mind.

> "(...) best seen in the popularity of mass lay-offs – a strategy that has been resoundly proven to be counter-productive, costly, even disastrous, along multiple dimensions, over multiple decades of study."

This is the first time I read that big layoffs are "disastrous" for companies vs. some other approach in these situations (other maybe than the rather obvious fact that companies who are conducting mass layoffs are often in dire straits to begin with). I'm assuming "for companies" is implied here, because the way I read the sentence, the author is saying doing mass layoffs is misguided from the point of view of company management, not someone altruistically trying to maximize welfare in society overall or something like that. Does anyone have a good source for this?

This is a really excellent article. It's very important to have a good understanding of what the other side's argument actually is in situations like this. EU politics is not at all like Anglosphere politics; it remains very machine-technocratic, rather than the clickbait-circus that dominates Anglo politics at the moment.

This is a very good article. Overall, I believe that the American lifestyle, media, and politics are so pervasive and have such a global reach that many American managers (as well as academics) find themselves unable to work internationally.

They truly believe that everything operates just like it does at home, and, on the surface, it appears to: everyone speaks English and has watched Friends.

However, institutions are complex and multi-layered entities. Americans often struggle to deeply understand the institutional specificities of other countries, resulting in behavior that can be perceived as lacking humility or even as arrogant—worse yet, as superficial. A case in point is Apple.

It's paradoxical: the more global your home culture becomes, the less able you are to perceive nuance and depth.

> The single market is, from the perspective of the EU itself, its single most important project.

although i am not of course the eu itself, nor do i even live there, i think this is incorrect

world war i lasted from 01914 to 01918 and killed 17 million people

world war ii in europe started 21 years later, lasting from 01939 to 01945 (though it started earlier in china) and killed 73 million people, mostly in russia

the 'european communities' were founded in 01952, 7 years later, and later grew into the eu. their single most important project was, and is, preventing or at least delaying world war iii, because it was, and is, widely believed that world war iii will kill a substantial fraction of the world's population, reducing the level of human development substantially and possibly causing human extinction

this is commonly believed to be more important than the single market, even, i venture to say, within the eu

world war iii may have started now; in retrospect, we may decide that it started in february 02014

the post is of course correct that the single market was a major instrument of this peace from the beginning, but it was and is only one such instrument, not the final product. in terms of keeping governments from bombing each other, probably the atomic cooperation is even more important

it's really not easy to read your way of writing dates.

> probably the atomic cooperation is even more important

That's why I don't understand why Budapest Memorandum signatories allow Russia for breaking the security guarantees.

Ukraine gave up fully the third biggest nuclear arsenal for security guarantees from Russia, USA, France and UK.

To me it seems pretty clear that if Ukraine falls then nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation is dead. And that my country, Poland, should seek to develop nuclear weapons.

i agree that nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation is dead. and clearly it is the case that countries that do not develop nuclear weapons will not enjoy westphalian sovereignty as they did for the previous few centuries, but it's not clear that westphalian sovereignty in the nuclear age was the stable equilibrium that it was in the gunpowder age, and now drones have probably made nuclear weapons obsolete, with so-far-unforeseeable consequences for the contours of international relations

it's possible that pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of westphalian sovereignty under those circumstances will just make the situation worse and increase the chances of human extinction, which (i feel safe in saying) would be a worse outcome for poland

> But the single market is what it’s for. Without it, the EU would cease to exist. To understand what motivates EU, as an organisation, you need to understand the single market.

> Whenever I point out on social media that the single market is the purpose of the EU, I get bombarded by replies saying: “No you’re wrong. The EU was founded to preserve peace in Europe. Gotcha!

I think the author is right here, and that this misapprehension is way too common.

The EU was a way for a bunch of colonizing countries to get rid of their colonies and still keep their level of wealth. Call it "peace" but that all comes back to having enough economic productivity that had previously come from their colonial wealth extraction.

I think that to the extent that the EY does not understand that it's there for economic productivity, the more that the EU will fall further behind the US on productivity and wealth of the populace.

The EU was created in 1993, not sure how at that time colonies were anywhere relevant to the creation.

The starting point was the European Coal and Steel Communion in 1951 (conceived 1950, with France, W Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) which had as an objective to create lasting peace between France and Germany by making it practically impossible from resource pooling to go to war.

The EU is the continuation of the efforts at integration started in the 1950s.

It took the loss of the colonies to really cement the future economic integration.

The idea that economic integration prevents war has been fairly well shattered by Russia's warmongering.

There are often reasons cited that sound good to the public, but these are not necessarily the same as the true reasons that really motivate the actions of nations and individuals. That's actually the entire idea behind markets: simply asking people what they want or having them vote is not a substitute for putting their actual material interests into play by spending money in a market.

The idea of "less or no war" is a good sell, but "we need to keep prosperity after giving up our colonies" is a material interest that comes down to the basic need to eat.

What is your evidence for the point around colonies? Are there any primary sources from people like Schuman, for example?

WWI also showed that economic integration doesn't always prevent wars, Russia recently isn't a great example, because the integration was pretty limited.

My main source of the idea comes from Timothy Snyder, who argues primarily based on timing. European countries continued wars after WW2, just their imperial wars, against the people that they didn't think deserved having national self determination.

And as the big maritime empires lost an imperial war, that's when they joined the EU. The Dutch and French lose their colonies, time to join up. UK lost their empire later, then joined in the 1970s.

(BTW, I appreciate the questioning of sources, and wish that I had said more at the start of my comments.)

Thanks.

The French lost most of their colonies later than the concept/creation European Coal and Steel Community, for example, and the UK joined much later. My impression was that in the late 1940s/early 1950s some of the ideas around overcoming the old animosity between France and Germany were genuine (at least from listening to people around at the time). On some of the later moves I have less insight into - perhaps it was a mix and/or varying motives?

Some of the ideas were related to avoiding another Treaty of Versailles issues with Ruhr and other border regions, and stopping effective implementation of Morgenthau plan (which had inane idea of effective depopulation by starvation and total destruction of industry in Germany, leaving a small pastoral population) that was ongoing, while avoiding considerable opposition from population to any idea where germany might endanger others again.

Ironically, many of Apple's most aggressive policies are designed to protect its own 'Single Market'.

The author makes some good points.

But then he also spends the few paragraphs laughing about executives operating based on beliefs/ideologies instead of facts.

Just to talk about EU letting some countries sliding into fascism.

Fascism : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

It seems that the author is also reasoning by pure ideology, ignoring simple facts.

Absolutely no countries in the EU are remotely close to being a fascist state.

Apple is a bully. It is a bully well because it needs to show growth. Without growth their stock get hit and the leadership feels pain.

Apple is in a tough position. It is losing market share in China to Huawei. The Chinese economy is feeling the pinch and they are spending less.

EU is hitting them with fines.

In US they aren’t growing much. The Vision Pro was a dud.

The easiest option is to be a bully.

Editorialided headline, the title is:

> Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management

That's 13 characters too long for the HN title limit.

This fits:

> Facing reality, whether Apple or EU, is core requirement of good management

That is much better, the initial change focus on "Facing reality about the EU", rather than "Facing reality is a core requirement of good management".

Granted, the EU aside is also important.

Not really, but I guess they should have left 'Apple' in?

It's not like they added anything to the headline.

They (probably inadvertently) added emphasis on EU, rather than:

> Facing reality (...) is a core requirement for good management

Yeah, I had to make the change because HN has a length-limit on headlines

The author is right but makes a similar mistake as the Americans, given he’s European. He does not clarify what market means. This can be perplexing and misunderstood by an American audience.

Market in the US is such a different thing. American companies like TurboTax and Comcast are operating (by American standards) right within the market. In fact, probably “better” than everyone else. The market is a Wild West where the goal is domination of a segment, ideally multiple ones. Like United healthcare is today.

In the EU markets mean competitive (more traditional) markets. For instance, the telecom roaming charges he brings up, are a perfect example of a Comcast-like perverted industry that simply got broken up. It used to be ludicrous prices - pushing people towards hotel WiFi or a surprise bill - then suddenly there are 10s of GB free. Nobody died and everyone got it better.

In America, this would be the equivalent of waking up one day and ISP prices had dropped by half and there are 10 providers to choose from, basically no matter where you lived.

Having lived in the US, nobody expects this. Even with things like student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare etc nobody actually expects these things to come without absolute giant catches - layering of new bureaucracy and hidden fees. So there’s a skepticism against these things. By extension, there is skepticism against the EU. “What are they up to, those sneaky fucks?”

As a European with a decent leaning towards classical markets and liberalism, my take is that the US has truly reached market perversion, to the extent that Milton Friedman would roll in his grave. The neo-liberalist pro-corporate tilt that we're seeing in the US today is beyond what I’d argue even the most laissez faire economical thinkers of the 20th century. It’s the opposite of what a free market should be. All the arguments for economic liberalism are based in the freedom to compete fairly. Without that, it’s just oligarchy with a different flag.

Agree. Nobody in the US expects anything to ever get fixed. Prime example: healthcare.

I'm also from the EU, not the US but I have a hard time believing that Americans believe that monopolies or large dominant companies represent anything but the corruption of the concept of a market. Anti-trust laws in the US are some of the strongest in the world even if they are rarely enforced. I acknowledge they don't experience the benefits of free markets in many areas but I think they know what they should look like.

"Any time you see two entities of similar size fight"

The EU and apple are certainly not of similar size. EU represents one sixth of the global economy (20 trillion) apple with 230 billion is a tiny insect in comparsion.

I think the one place where the author is mistaken is in the incentives for these big tech companies.

I think they fully understand what the EU is about. If Apple can delay for a month or a year on giving the EU what they want it’s very unlikely that any fine is going to be a net negative for them. One more month of the App Store pulling in its Monopoly money is a huge amount of revenue for Apple. One more month of Facebook collecting private data is another month of higher profits.

The EU cellular companies benefitted from the removal of roaming charges but Apple won’t benefit from being forced to allow alternate app stores.

Corporations in Europe may benefit from their single market regulations but not many corporations in the EU are the size of Apple or Google and have the same profit incentives.

(I also think that equating Elon Musk’s bad management to companies like Apple and Google that have generally good management is something of a false equivalency)

> But the single market is what it’s for. Without it, the EU would cease to exist. To understand what motivates EU, as an organisation, you need to understand the single market

The author writes that really the only point of the eu is to be a single market, but that’s not true.

It has other goals, well stated in its principles and values, in which one is “establish an internal market.”

It’s important because it’s a common right wing talking point where I live in the EU. The right wing use it as an argument for making EU weaker, because they think that it “has moved away from its original purpose, to be an economic union.”. No, its stated aim and values are not just that but many other. The author seems to make an argument the other way around, that it is only an economic union; there is a disconnect and both parties are wrong. It is not just an economic union and its stated goal was never to just be one.

I also take issue with the claim that EU thinks an all-seeing surveillance state is a good thing. They recently repelled the chat control law proposal, and I know they consistently condemn Swedens surveillance for being too intrusive. This just doesn’t match with what he is saying.

But I digress. It's important to realize that if you only understand eu in terms of a market without its other values, then you as a company might be working against their stated goals and be punished for other reasons. The author is far too reductionist.

"Remember what I wrote about electrical plugs? The EU is pro-business – often criticised for being essentially a pro-business entity – and not in favour of regulation for regulation’s sake."

Complete nonsense, where is the competitor to Apple in Europe? Google? Meta? SpaceX? Microsoft? Overregulation is completely destroying the market in which the whole power is consolidated to a few big monopolistic players backed, and liked by the EU. They are completely suffocating small, and medium businesses.

Brussels was on fire just the last week if you haven't seen the news, farmers from all over Europe are protesting, because they are being suffocated with regulation to the point they need to throw their productions on the streets, and file for bankruptcy.

I also find pretty funny the USB-C standardization praise as some sort of genius move by the EU bureaucrats, especially since Apple in 2015 decided that USB-C is the future and the whole industry followed.

A single market is a totalitarian market it has nothing to do with free trade.

> You can’t be a good manager or executive, in any industry, if you operate in constant denial of the facts on the ground. Arguing from ideology or beliefs that aren’t grounded in observation, measurement, or study, is the hallmark of a politician or media personality, not a manager responsible for other people’s jobs.

This makes me think of John Mearsheimer’s breakdown of realism vs liberalism in the context of inter relations on Fridman’s podcast. He suggests American leaders are particularly idealistic (operating on “should”) whereas others are realists (operating on “what is”).

I wonder if its more universal than political leadership.

> There are a few examples of this trend towards denying reality. The starkest one being Elon Musk behaving as if European labour unions don’t exist and that labour is entirely powerless, leading his companies to lose money on strikes and other collective actions.

> And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world.

I can agree that labour unions are real, but I see little evidence that Elon Musk denies reality. Maybe that's the picture you get when you read only the news. If you watch any full length interview with him he seems pretty down to earth (or "grounded" if you want to call it like that).

Give an impression and actually be are two different things.

The title of this piece is actually: "Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management"

Speaking of facing reality about European politics, the so-called “fascism” that commentators such as this like to clutch their pearls over bears absolutely no resemblance to any of the actual 20th century European fascist movements. It’s just plain old Christian Democratic centrism of just a few of decades ago, of which coincidentally the EU happens to be the very brainchild.

Anyone who values the EU single market should be very wary of pushing the Overton window so far to one side that the values that it was founded on and is sustained by falls off the other edge, and this goes for both directions, left and right.

Well designed argument, the weird Elon Musk references aside.

The discussion about Apple is kind-of meh, as apple is not such a big deal in europe, as most phones are not iphones.

But the nostalgic view of the EU as some kind of free market pioneer is stuck in the 90s. Today's world and EU are very different. Nobody rememebrs WW2 and europe is too weak to start another war. The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyway. Standardization is something that is happening in all global markets, not just in the EU, and that's how we have resorted to using the same standards with everyone in the world (including on the internet), not just with europe. The USB-C became a global standard because it dominated in the free market , before the EU standardized it. The single market is becoming a laggard , the global markets are dynamic enough to create their own standards, fast, now (e.g electric cars)

Despite costly standardization processes, european brands did not gain in worldwide reach and competitiveness, in fact they have lost for the past 20 years and more. There used to be strong international brands (philips? siemens?) which are now much less global and arguably have lost from chinese and US companies. EU Cars are a strong market, but look at where these cars are made and sold, China is their main target market, not the Single market anymore. You rarely-or never- hear about a EU company that found EU-wide success before it became a global success.

What the EU does have a is a lot of money, to subsidize businesses all over EU , but that has ended up eroding competitiveness, because companies end up competing for funds instead of competing for profits. The single market is of course a great idea, and mandatory in today's globalized world, but the EU today is much more than that.

>The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyway.

Eu is giving much more aid than US https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...

The suggestion that "russia won't last long anyway" sounds like famous last words. They might manage to lever Putin out, sometime in the next couple of decades; but I can't envisage a route to a Russia that's at peace with its neighbours, short of complete Russian military defeat in Ukraine.

>Standardization is something that is happening in all global markets, not just in the EU, and that's how we have resorted to using the same standards with everyone in the world (including on the internet), not just with europe. The USB-C became a global standard because it dominated in the free market , before the EU standardized it.

That's missing out some crucial parts of the history of this standardisation effort.

Before the EU mandated USB-C, they basically told the industry "choose a standard or we'll impose one on you". The industry (mostly) went for micro-USB as a result, and then moved over to USB-C.

The EU then saw that there were still some notable outliers (e.g. Apple) and decided to follow through with its threat of imposing a standard connector to force these stragglers in to line with the rest. The point was to have a standard, not necessarily to push any one standard that the EU most preferred.

You could just write "PESTLE analysis" and be done

"They were behaving like Elon Musk. And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world."

I'm not a fan of his behaviour on Twitter, but the idea that the world does not want more Elon Musks seems insane to me.

Theyre not for me personally, but whatever you think about Teslas I don't see how you would not want a person who can build a new car company. Just look at other entrants like Rivian, it's so hard, and he managed to will that into existence.

The fact that I can then move onto SpaceX is unbelievable. He willed reusable rockets into existence and made it into a sustainable business. Starlink, just look at starlink. Where is Blue Origin?

Would we really not want more of that, even if it led to more nonsense on Twitter?

Insane is a bit of a strong word, no?

If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars.

> If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars.

Musk started SpaceX in 2002.

Maybe one of the Musks this person doesn't want would build trains. It's another huge undertaking.

Maybe, but imagine how large a rocket SpaceX would have to build to launch a train into orbit.

Maybe thats the true motivation for the starship?

> If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars

Cars are not going anywhere and train lines are incredibly hard to build [1]. You have to work with the world you have, not with a perfect green field dream.

[1] You need massive amounts of connected land, a lot of it in places where land is really expensive and people are not willing to sell to you easily. Additionally, you have building restrictions (not a lot of cities will let you bulldoze hundreds of homes for your train line) and - I can't stress this enough - all of this land needs to be connected, which makes avoiding problematic areas just so much harder.

We have trains, lots of them, all sorts, from 350kph intercity trains to flywheel powered ones the size of a bus. Some are driven and crewed by guards, some are driver only, some are fully automatic.

What could he bring to the world of trains?

When Musk got involved in Tesla, the idea of an electric car was laughable.

Cars was a better choice than trains on both environmental grounds and business grounds.

First, environment.

• Trains are somewhere from 1/2 to 1/4 the CO2 emissions per passenger over a given distance than are cars.

• For freight are nearly an order of magnitude less per ton over a given distance than trucks.

Second, business.

• Nobody buys sports trains.

Trains are expensive to build and expensive to buy. Almost nobody other than big companies and governments buys trains, and they buy them to do a job. Those buyers tend to be conservative buyers when it comes to technology. They want their new trains to be a lot like their old trains, with just incremental improvements.

With cars you can build a sports car, and people will put up with all kinds of problems as long as you nail the performance (acceleration, top speed, handling). Sports cars are playthings, not work things.

With a sports car you can try very different things and then take what works and use it to develop cars for the more widespread car market.

> Sports cars are playthings, not work things.

And accordingly, they shouldn't be allowed on the public highway; they should be restricted to private racetracks. There's no reason to allow cars that can cruise at 3x the speed limit to be driven among ordinary civilians.

The sheer volume of electric car startup companies shows that Elon Musk was in the right place at the right time. The reason there are a lot of EV startups is because the powertrain is simple. You don’t need an army of engine plants and parts suppliers to build an EV. That is the disruptive part about the EV, which has nothing to do with anything unique to Elon Musk.

Also, he didn’t found the company, he was just an investor. Investors are a dime a dozen and mostly aren’t dinguses on social media, he’s the exception.

It's as if everybody just forgot that the world was full of propaganda against electric cars (hey, hydrogen is the future!), regulation was heavily stopping any car startup, and the catch-22 problem of not being able to charge because nobody had electric cars existed.

Nobody was making a car startup on that scene.

It's been what, a decade and half? It's amazing how people forget.

A hydrogen pump just got installed in my county last month, actually.

> regulation was heavily stopping any car startup, and the catch-22 problem of not being able to charge because nobody had electric cars existed.

Now we have electric subsidies and replete charging stations, and we're not really any closer to democratizing the technology. I'll be real - the focus on scaling-up lithium-ion has been detrimental to the electric car industry, and set them back so far that hydrogen ignition might still win the lower-end market. Tesla put their pearls before their swine, and now it feels like they're paying the price.

Hydrogen powered cars are so full of problems that they won't happen anywhere.

Nowadays electric cars are a visible minority almost everywhere on the planet. People seriously discuss the charging infrastructure. And there are many companies seriously selling those cars, a few even specialized only on the electric power-train that have no model at all immediately moved by combustion (but AFAIK, only Tesla doesn't do hybrids).

Electric cars are here to stay. Tesla may have made some bad decisions, but they moved the entire political framework.

What I’m saying is that just because Tesla was the first doesn’t mean that they or someone else wouldn’t have done something similar without Elon Musk at the helm.

What changed is that batteries got cheap and more dense than they were. That change happened whether or not Tesla existed. China at the very least would still have a massive EV market without Tesla.

Can't believe this had to be spelled out... The article is very well written and simple to understand, so hats off to the author.

Ironically, I've been putting off buying an iPhone because of the walled garden... Being able to side-load app stores and charge via USB-c might actually get me to switch. Because the surveillance inside Android apps is frankly obscene at this stage.

> "To Apple, the App Store is a side line."

> "And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world."

Apart from these 2 statements, I largely agree.

This honestly just sounds like a lot of whining from the author.

As someone who’s set in rooms with loads of regulators

(1) you can pretty much always compromise with them.

(2) they want to ensure criteria is met & typically not penalties nor want you to leave a market

It’s more accurate to think of regulators as customers. They just have different requirements they need to solve their problem. Rarely are they protecting consumers imo. Usually they’re there protecting government or other powerful interest.

Regardless, we would do something similar to Apple with regulators. “Look it’ll take 18 months to implement X. It’ll also cost $Y. If you push this issue we won’t make a profit and we will exit the market. Are you sure you want us to do that?”

“No no no. We just need this and that safe guard in place.”

“Alright, we can implement the first one in 2 months, that last one will take time, let’s work on a roadmap.”

And that’s how it really functions.

In your meetings with regulators how often have you seen the "we'll exit the market" bluff actually work? I can't see many companies wilfully exiting the third largest market in the world.

This is basically just an American fantasy.

It's a way to make the point that "since these foreigners are so ungrateful, we will stop blessing them with our wonderful products if they don't please us, and then they will have to live in the mud and the cold like they used to do before, without an iPhone or a Twitter account".

Reminds me of trump repeatedly trying to make trade deals with individual EU countries.

Only had to explain it 11 times until for it to sink it.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-e...

It worked for Putin (see Nord Streams for example) so Trump wanted it too :)

That still needed EU approval. Ireland can sell it's beef to the US at a different rate than other EU countries (all Irish beef is grass fed and thus premium grade) again needs EU approval.

The EU doesn't mind exceptions to her rules once it can approve or disapprove of them thus preserving the EU trading bloc. People really do think there is a 'gotcha' though e.g. US President Trump getting schooled by Merkel thinking he could just repeat the question and she would give in. I can assure you though these things are very rules based.

> That still needed EU approval

Half the EU (basically the whole Eastern Europe) protested. Germany did it anyway.

Germany holds a lot of sway in the EU. My point is that Germany didn't do this unilaterally.

No, they did it bilaterally (with Russia) because France didn't mind.

This is the problem with EU.

Because even the countries publicly opposing might have ultimately voted for, or fucked up their vote.

For example on Nord Stream 2, there was a polish vote "yes", despite there being a lot of very public opposition from the government to it - NS2 was regularly used as part of scaremongering tactics about germans.

Could you link the vote you mentioned?

AFAIR Poland blocked it several times, including in 2015 and 2021. I googled a bit and couldn't see any EU vote in which Poland supported Nord Stream 2.

I will dig it out - it was effectively deep in the minutiae of arranging framework plans (which are nonetheless important for setting future direction of big infrastructure projects like this).

It wasn't only vote, but by being careless earlier I think at least polish representatives reduced our chances of blocking NS2

Rules and asterisks are one of the Commissions best exports.

Are there any counterexamples to what the author presents as the inevitability of European open market regulations?

> And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world.

Boy, wouldn't it be horrible if we got more Tesla's, SpaceX's, Starlink's, and freedom of speech on social media in the world!

More governmwnt subsidized launch companies, car makers building shitty cars with bad servicing networks and more right wing BS on the internet? Yes, why puldn't we want that?

SpaceX is awesome and I'm glad we have -one- Elon Musk but I'm not convinced we need more than that.

> freedom of speech on social media in the world!

Did that get better?

I though twitter fired a lot of lawyers who held up freedom of speech and now the company is folding against governments like Turkey. But I have mostly only read headlines. Would love to read more about it.

Twitter revealed illegal government censorship of US social media because Elon bought it and was transparent. That's what I'm referring to. I don't know much about Twitter's legal fights against authoritarian countries' censorship of free speech, but that doesn't seem like a particularly winnable battle anyway.

Well they tried. For example here: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0UL13A/ Even if it would result in twitter being blocked in Turkey. Now they rolled over https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-censoring-content-recep...

Do you have more information about the "illegal government censorship of US social media"?

Well, freedom of speech for racists got better, while freedom of speech for critics of authoritarian governments has been reduced. Since the number of people affected by censoring has been reduced, some people call that a win for freedom of speech (as Twitter contains more racists than government critics from countries like India and Turkey).

Not surprisingly, the self-proclaimed "free-speech-absolutionist" has no problem with censoring critics of himself, too, and only token resistance to offer towards demands of censorship by authoritarian governments.

There's also another option where Apple is just going to wait/lobby the US government to apply pressure on the EU in the hope that this is effective (as it has been historically). In in the event of another Trump presidency (let us hope this doesn't happen) this is very likely to happen and Biden has made some moves in this direction. The fact that Europe is 100% reliant on the US to stop the Russians conquering Ukraine at the moment doesn't really help.

See for example this letter https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-urge-biden-p... or https://www.politico.eu/article/senator-ted-cruz-slams-us-ag...

Neither of those "examples" support the idea that the EU will "back off", especially since pummeling Big Tech is pretty much the only thing these days that has widespread bipartisan support.

Your first link is just about congresspeople wanting the laws to be applied fairly. Of course, though, it is (the article also mentions that ByteDance is included), it's just that most big tech companies are from the US. The second article is just about Ted Cruz screeching "collusion!!" because some people in US government are meeting with their counterparts in the EU. That troll's gonna troll, it's a day ending in y.

> The fact that Europe is 100% reliant on the US to stop the Russians conquering Ukraine at the moment

This appears to be an "alternative fact", a type of fact that is popular in the USA.

It's true that EU countries have historically underspent on defence. But as far as I can see, US supplies of materiel amount to be some MANPADs, some handheld anti-tank missiles, and some Patriot batteries. The (14?) promised Abrams tanks don't seem to have arrived yet; nor have the promised F-16s.

Yes. Looking in the details the US is #1 in material goods. Financial #1 supporter is EU. And things are changing, with doubts and critics in the US and unity and wake-up calls in the EU

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...

Everything you need to know about government bureaucracy, including the EU’s, you can learn from watching the TV show “Yes, Minister.”

And the next level of enlightenment is that you can further learn everything about corporate bureaucracy by combining the learnings from "Yes, Minister" with the American "The Office".

It's not any better in the private world, but the sociopaths are a bit more money-oriented.

So you agree government agencies are run by sociopaths? Then we should strive to reduce their influence on us, just like we would want to reduce corporate power over us?

Money, sex and power are interchangable when it comes to sociopathic, power hungry people.

I think you meant to say, "Everything I know"

You can say the EU is doing good or bad, but what is reality is that this blog post is ignoring is that the European economy is kind of just falling apart right now directly because of these types of regulations and reforms.

German labor unions are the weakest they’ve been in decades, Europe as a whole is an incredibly undesirable place to run a business in 2024, and EU companies have rested on their laurels so long that they couldn’t hope to even match American and Chinese R&D numbers in the next decade because of these types of regulations pretty much enforcing the status quo.

Europeans have just relegated to the fact that they will always be subservient to American tech companies, which is just brain dead economic policy that will reverse course in 5-10 years once France and Germany shake hands and realize they’ve just fucked themselves over again.

I know it’s not about that, but if you’re going to use anecdotes they should be accurate. The only people who think the EU is doing a good job handling tech are populists, not economists.

I’m an economist and the EU is clearly doing better than anyone right now and all my economist friends agree with me. I’m actually starting a business Europe right now and it’s going great.

Yeah Europe (EU) has not performed the last 15+ years. Falling further behind the USA and parts of Asia is set to replace them in terms of stature. Limited technical innovation, disastrous energy policy, weak international demand, and an unaddressed migrant and reproduction crisis that will pressure their 20th century social systems, spell a bleak future for the EU.

I expect tourism to continue to be strong as the prosperous from the US and Asia take in the charm of the old world.

>that the European economy is kind of just falling apart right now directly because of these types of regulations and reforms

Is it though? GDP seems to be growing similarly to US, not as good but definetely not falling apart. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat...

If you only look at GDP everything is fine, I’m talking about the whole picture. Germany is only expected to decline in the next few years due to poor governance and it’s bringing the rest of Europe down with it, France can only do so much when the EU is so economically linked.

But that is nothing compared to the reality that the EU is not facing:

You know who is even more important than the EU to the peace and security of Europe?

The United States.

The audience for the whining of the American tech companies isn’t the EU consumer, it’s the US voter.

They are pushing the narrative that the EU is a bully beating up on innovative American companies.

And with the rise of the “America First” isolationist faction in the US, they might find an audience for the US Government to start taking action against the EU and/or retaliate against EU companies for the perceived bullying of US companies by the EU.

This article feels fairly naive to me. One possibility is that the EU is doing what is written on the tin and executives and companies are foolishly misunderstanding.

Another possibility is that reality is more nuanced and that executives are playing edge cases where profitable, like they do in other countries and jurisdictions.

Instead of seeing the EU (or any other system) explicitly as what is described in founding documents or official meetings, there is another perspective.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w...

This reads like a 10th graders report, just repeating arguments found on the internet.

The criticism of forcing apple to abandon a superior connector for phones to standardize charger cords, while every other building you go into in Europe has a different outlet that is incompatible with the charger you want to plug in is perfectly reasonable. The idea that there is some great benefit to making sure there is only one connector on the so cheap they are basically disposable cords is fundamentally stupid. The fact that the EU regulators can arbitrarily go after companies is a real problem.

Gosh damn you Denmark! You where super late to the party and then choose to be special :( https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1545/5143/files/Plugs_of_t...

That really grinds my gears. But I think the narrow 2 pin plug can be used in most EU countries.

---------

>The fact that the EU regulators can arbitrarily go after companies is a real problem.

Do they go arbitrarily after companies though?

At least all the phones will use the mechanically defective USB-C connector though. Huge win for labor unions and internal market?

I have no idea about USB C connector being mechanically defective, but how would that relate to labor unions? And how does that relate to my question?

In the original article it references internal market and labor unions a dozen times or more. I would say you should read it, but it is not worth your time.

At this point I'm suspecting "because libertardian mad libs."

Personally I'm looking forwards to my iPhone using friends no longer being second class citizens when it comes to borrowing a charger, but opinions will naturally vary.

Yes, europlug works everywhere in mainland EU (Not in Ireland and Cyprus) and indeed in most of the world, which is fine for class 2 devices that the majority of kit you typically move around is.

Malta uses type G plugs also. If you're reasonably familiar with electricity, you can use a europlug with a type G socket even without an adapter. (unless you count a pin/screwdriver to bypass the child gates) In fact, I have both an adapted schuko plug and an unadapted europlug wall wart under my desk right now. I should really get an adapter for the latter one though, so it can be individually fused and make better contact.

Personally I wouldn't be happy with a high current europlug in a type-g socket, and given that type-g electrical installations assume a fused plug it's probably not a great idea. If you had a fault you could be drawing 25A up a 3A cable without tripping a breaker.

I pretty much only do it with low-power wallwarts, and only on extension cables (fused to 13A or less) since it's easier to bypass gates on those than a wall socket. My main concern is reduced contact area from putting a circular peg in a rectangular hole. Still, I should get and use an adapter since they're cheap even if standard compliance is a bit random.

This is an explanation of the EU's point of view and motivations and how you can use understanding that to predict their actions.

Calling those actions 'fundamentally stupid' will not, in fact, change reality, and thinking such an opinion has any relevance to doing business in the real world is precisely the class of mistake the author's trying to point out.

The article does not just explain the reality of doing business. I doubt you actually read it. There is an entire paragraph defending the connector situation and justifying inaction on the incompatibility of outlets. Its not saying “this is the reality, do better at accepting it”, it is making policy justification arguments. It is perfectly valid to point out that those arguments are stupid.

I could use your weird, strained logic to just say that you can’t convince me, so you are wrong to try and your attempts to convince me won’t change the reality and therefore you are wrong to discuss anything I do or say critically. That is what you are doing on behalf of EU regulators.

It's explaining the motivation behind the policy choices.

You don't have to agree with the motivation or the choices for this to be helpful.

Being able to better predict both implementation of current policies and what policy choices are likely to be made going forwards is useful and the author's description of the world view driving them seems to me to be accurate.

> I doubt you actually read it.

Saying this in a conversation about denying parts of reality you don't like verges on performance art.

> you can’t convince me

Evidently, but hopefully other readers will still derive value from what I've written here.

You are the one who is not really understanding here. The article again and again wonders why Americans are so aggressively resistant to the EU policies, instead of just trying to optimize within them. This is just a cultural difference and you aren't going to talk Americans out of having an American culture. Once, a long time ago, when I was in Sweden a friend of a friend said that "The government told us we shouldn't have cars so I sold my car" and I laughed very hard, then realized none of the Swedish people were laughing. From an American point of view, saying that could only have been a dry irony, and could never have been meant as a serious statement by anyone, even the people who would most support not owning a car. That level of trust in government is wildly unamerican and could never be expressed in that way by anyone and understood to be a serious statement by other americans. Even a Canadian wouldn't be able to say something like "I did this because the government advised us to do it" without then giving a culturally valid reason and not be considered very odd. In fact, this under states this cultural difference, if I said to basically any American "the government said to do X, so I'm not going to do it" they would immediately recognize and more or less agree with the general sentiment, even if they thought there were other, actually valid reasons to still do X.

I think the behavior of Americans confuses you because you have grown up in a European monoculture (yes you have seen lots of different costumes and heard lots of languages, but western europe is largely all the same in this respect) and lack perspective on actual differences in how different cultures around the world relate to authority.

If lightning cable was really superior why did apple not use it in ipads / macbooks?

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