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Comment by stickfigure | Hacker News Reader

Multinational corporations are going to have it rough in the future, as governments with competing (and sometimes contradictory) interests discover they have the ability to punish corporate behavior anywhere in the world. China is leading the way here.

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Italy seems to be right there too. Just saw they deemed a car model name illegal because it sounds Italian but isn’t made in Italy: https://www.thedrive.com/news/italy-tells-alfa-romeo-its-ill...

It'd be legal to produce it in Italy outside of the city of Milan. But it's illegal to produce it abroad.

I don't think they even pretend it's not protectionism.

Wait 'til they hear about the Pepperidge Farm cookies.

None of those words sounds even vaguely italian

The single most famous one is Milano, and there is also Verona.

So Milano and Verona are products in the Pepperidge Farm brand?

I was not familiar with the brand or their product naming

Also Italien: make liquorice candies named "Fjord" [1] :)

[1] https://www.liking.it/en/products/candies/hard/balsamic-fjor...

Yeah… the Italian badge has to produce the Milano in Italy… absolutely crazy. Marketing guys who want to sell a Polish car should not be able to use the cultural cache built by Italy to do it.

It's going to take a bit more persuasion to get auto manufacturers to move to an entirely different state than silly rules around names. And while the Italian government fixates on the past, the rest of the world is hooked straight up to the fire hose of American culture, which is to the benefit of Americans.

> while the Italian government fixates on the past, the rest of the world is hooked straight up to the fire hose of American culture

Much of modern Italian culture has direct roots in its post-War boom, with substantial portions having been grafted from Americana, e.g. pannetone, parmesan, tiramisu and quite a few "classic" pasta dishes like carbonara [1].

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6ac009d5-dbfd-4a86-839e-28bb44b2b...

That is a great article on the invention of tradition in Italian cuisine, rightwing politics, the fallibility of popular memory, and the realities of prewar life in Europe.

It does not state that pannetone, parmesan, tiramasu, or 'quite a few "classic" dishes' are Americana.

According to the article pizzerias as a phenomenon are American. The most traditional Parmesan is American. Carbonara was an American innovation or at least arose due to American ingredients.

Whoops, bad sentence construction. That reference was for the first phrase, regarding each of those dishes being post-War concoctions or reinventions.

No worries. I often do it myself and I appreciate the article so thank you.

What are your feelings about the Ferrari California?

Great car.

Similar feelings.

It leads to balkanization -- see Google's total withdrawal from China.

As a consumer, I recently selected a new device in large part because its cloud-affiliated software (and bespoke operating system) was written, stored, and administered in countries with appropriate and ethical legal frameworks. The competition was more feature-complete, but I concluded that I couldn't trust any of those options.

> It leads to balkanization -- see Google's total withdrawal from China.

True balkanization does not occur in Italy, except Trieste and perhaps parts of Friuli-Venezia Giulia... and I put that in Italics!

Seems more and more that to lead a completely ethical existence means sacrificing luxury, happiness, and time. Or surrender to willful ignorance.

> to lead a completely ethical existence means sacrificing luxury, happiness, and time

Hasn’t this always been true? It’s also getting increasingly easy to buy things that meet ethical standards (or more cynically, it’s easier to buy things that meet some low bar that someone setup).

I feel like EU is ahead of the curve here with cookie pop-ups. In order to comply don't you have to go out of your way to block EU viewers? At least that's how it seems to be handled by ones that care, la times I believe was one example.

And I know some of their other policies specifically call out fining based on global revenue, not EU revenue.

At some point, people will realize that companies without a physical EU footprint can just ignore it. Has anyone _ever_ been extradited over cookie banners?

The "problem" is that you could get on a list to be denied entry at the border if you ever choose to travel.

Who? The CEO? I like European travel more than most, but there's definitely a price you could pay me to give that up. LatAm is wonderful too.

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