Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead.
> just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead
Temu is under active investigation for breaching these laws, anyone operating within EU is subject to those laws, not just European companies (e.g. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-ope...)
Then show me the handful of European, medium-sized companies competing for customers. The problem is that you pass DMA, DSA, GDPR, etc. which Google, Apple etc. can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it.
Instead what's happening is that European alternatives (the kind that's actually good, not the kind that's European and half as good) don't exist and the incentives to build one shrink because any scaling company is instantly hamstrung.
Yeah, there's a whole lot of American exceptionalism going on in this thread, assuming the way things are done over here in the states is the best and only way. I live here and let me tell you, it's not. Just the fact that we have gigantic tech monopolies with more money than several nations combined is proof of that - that's not a thing that should ever happen.
Sure, but I doubt there's any country in the world that aspires for its citizens to be treated like American consumers.
I could spend a lot of time comparing the relative benefits and drawbacks of both countries.
The US has a lot of good things going for it which is what makes what is happening now all the more heartbreaking.
Let me ask you guys something else, if EU hates large monopolist companies so much as you claim, then why are all its car companies monopolistic mega conglomerates that rule the world like Volkswagen, Stellantis, Daimler Benz, BMW, and Renault? Where's EU's equivalent of Tesla if they supposedly hate all these big companies?
I'll tell you why: Just like the US, the capital controlled EU also supports its domestic monopolies and only bitches about foreign monopolies in sectors they don't control and threaten their economic hegemony. That's the cold hard truth, everything else is just political hot air and virtue signaling for brownie points, and I'm pissed people are not only buying it but also parroting it when the goal to monopolize business sectors is as strong in EU corporations as it is in US and Chinese ones.
Europe is just more stricter now with controlling large (mostly foreign) corporations since its own economy lost a lot of ground to the US and Chinese ones (it has now half the real GDP it had 2 decades ago), and since it can't create new large companies, all it can do now is protecting what it has left from foreign companies taking over their turf. The upshot being that a lot of those rules are congruent with the consumer protections which also end up globally favoring consumers abroad.
We don't need cars from fascists.
To be fair, that’s not what they said. I believe they’re asking where are the car companies of Tesla’s size and market position.
Like, Tesla are very small (in terms of cars sold) but very large in terms of valuation. Seems like a once-off, not something that would be replicable (anywhere).
Really? Because look up on the history of VW, BMW, Porsche, Fiat, etc and their founding families, some of who still own a large part of the shares of those companies today. Most of them worked with fascists no problem, some by force of the era some by opportunity but none of them opposed them.
You see this is the typical European hypocrisy that I dislike. Pointing fingers that Elon is somehow a fascist cause he raised his arm once, but Porsche or BMW who used slave labor from work camps is somehow not fascist now because ... reasons I guess.
Explain me that with logic and reason, and not with the "Elon is a fascist because reddit told me he is".
If you're claiming to be "fighting" Tesla just for Elon being labeled "fascist" by smooth brain Redditors, why aren't you also fighting VW, Porsche, Fiat, for their owners also being actually documented fascists?
Perhaps the problem here isn’t that smaller brands don’t exist, it’s that if we give examples of smaller brands then you’ll argue
“Never heard of them. Thus proof that the EU is holding them back”
And if we mention household names then you’d argue
“Those aren’t small companies”
You’ve basically crafted an impossible to satisfy condition. A question that would be equally impossible for you to satisfy with US firms as it is for EU firms.
———
By the way, there’s quite a few car manufacturers that are small listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automobile_manufactu...
A few of them are relatively big names despite their small company size, for example Noble Automotive.
Tesla Q4 sales: https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-fourth-quarter-2024... approx 500k.
So Tesla are not the biggest anymore (which honestly surprised me).
Anyway, I’m not celibate. It’s just an excellent vehicle, if you don’t care about hivemind strangers glaring at you.
Saying “Tesla aren’t one of the biggest EV manufacturer” is clearly rubbish.
Tesla is failing both domestically and internationally with declining sales. Arguing that Tesla is successful with falling sales is like arguing that RIM was successful in 2009 when the writing was on the wall.
BYD makes better batteries than Tesla. the EU brands provide a better luxury than Tesla.
the US / Japan brands provide a better car in terms of quality than Tesla.
LOL, what?
Tesla has a bigger market cap than those companies COMBINED. And more. How is it a "medium" player? I don't agree with that market cap, to be clear.
It seems that Tesla is the Schrodinger's automotive manufacturer: snappy young upstart when that's convenient, world's biggest/strongest/brightest when that narrative is convenient.
You just named 5 companies, that’s competition.
US has 1/2 companies controlling 90% market share in several markets. That’s monopoly.
I will just go to the record store get some vinyls.
Competing in category chemicals:
BASF, Akzo Nobel, Lanxess, Air Liquide, and a bunch others
Competing in category engineering:
Siemens, Bosch, ABB, Alstom, ThyssenKrupp, Airbus and a bunch others
Competing in category metals:
Aurubis, Umicore, Norsk Hydro, Gruppo Riva, ThyssenKrupp, and a bunch others
Competing in category pharma:
Novartis, AstraZeneca, Novo Nordisk, Bayer, and others
Competing in category electronics:
Nokia, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Electrolux, Schneider Electric, and lots of others
> any scaling company is instantly hamstrung
You are assuming scaling this way is a long-term positive for consumers, investors, employees, and/or markets. I can find no such evidence.
In addition to them there are also countless small to medium sized companies that nobody's ever heard of, that don't experience hypergrowth but have slow and steady growth - especially in the B2B sector. I've worked at some such companies.
I do have one concern though.
Established markets are more entrenched, and hearing that smaller companies may have "slow and steady growth" here seems excellent.
Yet emerging markets move incredibly fast, and the goal is to discover those trenches and occupy them. Being held back in such a market can be troublesome.
So this is what I'd worry about.
Well, only if you make it a goal to occupy all the trenches. The EU has realized that it does not want all possible trenches occupied. For example: There is a lot of market share to be had in waste disposal by dumping it in the rivers and oceans. Regulation generally prohibits this, because we don't want our rivers and oceans full of waste.
Capitalist market self-regulation wouldn't have done this without external pressure (regulation, litigation, etc.) because the capitalist market would externalize all costs if it would increase profits.
HN is sometimes incredibly biased towards consumer tech.
Engineering plastics used in automotive and electronics applications. Styrenes for same.
Automotive OEM and refinish coatings - one of the bigger suppliers. Industrial coatings and paints.
Some of the bigger fungicides, herbicides, insecticides.
Catalytic converter components, battery components, cathodes, etc.
This is exactly what the GP was saying: you're looking at B2C companies as if they matter more, when in reality the vast majority of commerce (but not profits) is B2B.
Oh, you know, it's only largest chemical producer in the world. Oh, I'm sure they produce some very important things, but it can't hold a candle to Facebook.
European companies compete with US companies, including Apple, in areas where there is competition. In music software, music streaming, engineering and finance software, services and so on.
Apple has around 33% smartphone market share in Europe. Where is the US competition? Google at 3%. The actual competition is non-US in Samsung and Xiaomi. You can argue that Google competes with the Play Store, but then there is no competition with the Play Store on Android from the US.
Big US tech companies don't compete with each other as much as one might think. Most of their revenue comes from dominating one area or platform, with little competition from the rest.
So therefor the common conclusion that Europe should be more like the US to have competition also doesn't make sense as the big US tech companies don't have serious direct competition in the US in their core businesses.
You can't compete with the big tech companies by creating a Google with 3% market share in smartphones to compete with Apple, a Walmart with 6% online retail market share to compete with Amazon, or a Microsoft with 4% search engine market share to compete with Google.
Also, this is not true. These are categories huge enough to be meaningless. They are stock market classifications (at best) which do not reflect market competition.
I use our product, it's better than GCP for my use cases.
We've got Hetzner in Germany doing the same thing we are.
And how do you compete with the big tech companies without it? It's been decades without anyone being able to do it. Not in Europe and not in the US. OpenAI might have a chance, but they also have billions.
The days where someone could drop out of school and start a company in the garage is over. Cost of living is up, so is competition. Companies need to expand and regulation like GDPR makes it easier to do so instead of having to deal with multiple countries regulation. The US always had an advantage in regulation like the DMCA.
To spell it out, before regulation European companies had to...
Deal with privacy regulation of each country. Which in the EU was supposed to be similar, but wasn't entirely. With GDPR not only is it the same in the EU, but other countries are now following the same model.
Register for VAT in every EU country it sold (enough) products in. Making many not sell to other countries at all until Amazon ate their business. With VAT MOSS you only register in you own country.
Accept many form of payments with many different fees since credit card adoption and cost could vary wildly. With interchange fees capped you increasingly only need to accept common credit cards.
Pay large roaming charges when traveling, making starting services like Uber or Airbnb less relevant since you couldn't assume someone had data in another country.
Try to compete with big tech companies that were charging for access to their platforms while minimizing their taxes through royalty payments, VAT deals and offshore holdings. Giving them a huge advantage. This is still the case, but lesser so.
For actually running a company it is a lot better now.
There are other problems with EU regulations. Some things are natural monopolies or in other ways doesn't do well as markets. Privatization and state-aid rules prevent European countries from effectively managing these areas. Any advantage Europe had over the US in cost of living and public services is rapidly diminishing.
It only costs to somehow keep doing the abusive things they exist to prevent.
It's impossible to express how little sympathy this deserves.
I don't care about any companies like Americans do with American business centric laws that hurts normal people. Life isn't about lowest price at any cost model. Buy from china (as everyone is doing but try to hide it) if you want low cost. I don't give a damn if all those companies die for not complying GDPR, fuck them.
as much I'm not a fan of them, Leica is a peer competing against Nikon, Fujifilm, etc.
Doesn't apply to your medium-sized company
> DSA,
Basically says "customers have the right to not be profiled and are entitled to not be shown algorithmic feeds"
> GDPR
Costs about 0 to implement as long as you only user data as intended, and not sending it off to 2763 "partners" who "respect your privacy".
What "insane regulatory burden" are you talking about?
> can fight for years in court and if they have to pay a few billion, so be it.
The only reason these poor poor innocent trillion-dollar supranational corporations fight these laws in court is because they really don't want anyone competing with them, or to respect such minor things as user privacy. Not because the laws are somehow bad or complicated.
Even DMA, the most complex of them all, can be understood by anyone.
> it's better to have a handful medium-sized companies in competition
is impossible in the hyper regulatory environment the EU has made, causing ...
> one or two mega-corps owning and dictating the market
... because they're the only ones that can afford the legal and/or lobbying efforts to do so.
This is a very inaccurate view. I’ve worked with multiple SMEs and no such “complexities” ever become operational challenges. Even as a indie developer, my compliance is a default provided I’m not trying to do something shady.
Looking into the EU regulations, in most cases what they want you to do (or not do) is common sense.
The biggest headaches/issues are normally local regulations (country specific or even more local). The EU directives are more frameworks with a lot of flexibility and well grounded on common sense + expertise. How the different countries implement them in their own laws (with their own historical laws) is a different story.
The US has 50 sets of regulations and I don't hear anyone complaining. Although they should - you're almost certainly controlled by California law because, surprise surprise, complying with 50 sets of regulations is hard.
The DMA (that this article is about) applies to gatekeepers (massive companies like big tech), not mom and pop startups
The same company can have provide CPSs, with different status. For instance, Google is a designated gatekeeper of Android (OS) and Google Maps (Intermediation), but not Gmail. So the DMA won’t dictate anything related to Gmail, even if Google is a gatekeeper in other areas.
But that model you describe is cracking: Cost of living is going through the roof in Europe, taxes/social contributions going up every year, etc.
The problem is that Europe is like an old, rich person who now lives off of the principal of their wealth. For a person that's fine because they'll eventually die. For a government, you should strive for an environment that lets you keep growing wealth.
Cost of living is increasing in the US too (in large part due to geopolitical reasons), and social contributions are rising because of demographic factors. I'm not sure how market liberalism is magically going to fix that latter issue.
Re: demographics. It's relatively straightforward: To keep contributions constant while supporting more people, you need either:
-more people via immigration (which is extremely tricky to get right) who are net contributors, not beneficiaries of social systems -massively increased productivity through innovation/technology -cut benefits from social programs
If you do none of those things, the systems will either collapse or you need to raise taxes/mandatory contributions which are de-facto taxes.
It's not national law that can be bent locally, it's EU law that applies to all companies of certain size.
I think the EU learned the hard way that they can't rely on its members to prioritize common interests
(see Ireland vs. Apple tax avoidance, Germany vs. Car evolution, Austria vs. Reduction of Russian influence, Hungary vs. everything)
> Add to that feel-good green initiatives like a packaging initiative that might lower packaging waste from European companies, but more likely will just make European goods more expensive and cause Europeans to buy from Temu instead.
Does this actually happen or are you just making shit up?
Is Temu exempt of any packaging requirements?
To be fair, the regulations are there because companies are out-of-control paperclip maximisers. For example, the cookie banner didn't have to be obnoxious - companies choose to comply maliciously to adhere to the text and shit over the spirit of the regulations, which have to become more and more verbose and explicit.
Are you arguing that 27 different sets of laws was a better approach? That these countries would just gladly lie down and never regulate the societal-level harms, systemic lawbreaking, and massive infringement of privacy across the board? I don't think so.
For a moment the political system in the US seemed to get to the same conclusions as the EU under Bidens FTC and anti-trust cases. But the conclusions of that remain to be seen.
There's the EU-Inc initiative that the EU has basically made pointless (by wanting to introduce 27 new standards, not one, just making things more complex).
Note that I'm not arguing for zero regulation.
There are no 27 sets of laws to do business in Europe. It's not perfect, but it's a SINGLE MARKET, if you comply to the EU regulation you are allowed to sell everywhere.
It does however not absolve you from additional local market demands to be competitive, i.e. local language support, service infrastructure, etc.
For example: Miele is one of the largest washing machine manufacturers in Europe. They have their front panel translated to local languages for most of its markets. You can sell a washing machine with a English front panel, but you won't be able to compete in e.g. the German/Italian/French market
If true, it's indicative of some American vs European ideology. American tech bro soyjaks keep screaming criticisms about things like GDPR preventing remote-brickable wifi washing machines, and European bases nordic mans are like "bro those things are crap, why would I want them"?
The DMA really isn't particularly complex though. And what complexity it has only becomes complex once you're a manager of a whole consumer platform (a "gatekeeper" in its jargon).
To wit: your point is backwards, the DMA is structured such that the only companies that need to bear its burdens are "big tech or Europe's legacy players". If you're a little company wanting to add a paid app store to your Tiny AI Robot Virtual Experience or whatever, go nuts. The DMA absolutely won't stop you.