4 ms·
Who Strikes Fear into Silicon Valley? Margrethe Vestager
- wnevets 8y agoIs she the one to blame for those silly cookie warnings all over the internet?
- runesoerensen 8y agoNo, Vestager left danish politics in 2014 to serve as European Commissioner for Competition. The EU cookie law was adopted in 2011.
- ronilan 8y ago“Vestager has been a professional politician since the age of 21” This is kind of sad. A little for Europe, but mostly for her. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager
- sjg007 8y agoWhy?
- runesoerensen 8y agoVestager is an extremely skilled politician and I'm certain she's not sad about the situation. Denmark and Europe (and to some degree, the US) have certainly benefitted from her work. It's not sad that she has chosen to apply her many skills in something she's passionate about and good at.
- gaadd33 8y agoSo her whole career is based off of playing different people against each other and pandering to whomever holds the most power? I don't think it's any better than an American politician but still a far cry from those who felt that politicians should serve their communities for a few years and then go back to an actual career.
- runesoerensen 8y ago> So her whole career is based off of playing different people against each other and pandering to whomever holds the most power? That's a very loaded and negative way to portray a career politician, but more importantly it's also completely unsubstantiated -- how is this relevant to Vestager? For instance, why do you use the word "pander" to describe her work? Pander means to "gratify or indulge (an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or habit or a person with such a desire, etc.)". I think that sort of language should be used carefully, and at the very least it should be substantiated in terms of how it relates to the person you're talking about. I've followed Vestager's career for over 15 years, and I don't think your characterization of her work is accurate at all. You might be able to clarify why you describe her that way, and that seems to be necessary for a substantive discussion on this. > I don't think it's any better than an American politician There are great American politicians for sure, but one thing I would note here is that there are significant differences in public trust and corruption levels between the US and Denmark (where Vestager has spent the vast majority of her public life). There's a high level of accountability, public scrutiny and public interest in how politicians work, and corruption is very low [0]. I think this plays a role in terms of how "good" the politicians are "on average" in a country, and to what degree they can be trusted. [0] Corruption is obviously hard to quantify, but one way to measure/approximate it is the Corruption Perceptions Index [0] where "Denmark is the least corrupt country in the world, ranking consistently high among international financial transparency", and the U.S. ranked 18th in 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
- ardit33 8y agoIf you view the "Athenian" version of democracy as the purest form, career politicians (aka, the political class), should not exist. But in theory, it did exists in antique Greece and even more so later in the Roman Republic. Career politicians create the "political class" which eventually over time becomes a corrupted class. What the OP meant, is that a country is best served by normal citizens, or specialist (in their industry), helping out, getting elected, serving their term, and moving on with their private lifes, then people that pursue politics for the politics sake. They will/tend to create dramma, even when it is not there. "Political class, or political elite is a concept in comparative political science originally developed by Italian political theorist theory of Gaetano Mosca (1858–1941). ... Elected legislatures may become dominated by subject-matter specialists, aided by permanent staffs, who become a political class." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_class
- wingerlang 8y agoWhy?
- abenedic 8y agoSome people believe that entering politics "dirties" a person since some politicians are corrupt or self serving. People like that tend to believe that private enterprise is somehow more wholesome or honorable.
- Applejinx 8y agoWhich is mighty hilarious, in 2018 :)
- new299 8y agoThat's quite clearly not the only reason (and I'm be surprised if it was the majority reason in Europe) that people object to "career" politicians. The other, reason I've heard is that people who have not worked in industry (at any level) do not have real world experience required to guide policy effectively, and means they are out of touch with voters in general.
- hendzen 8y agoGuiding policy is a rather small part of being a politician and usually something (at least in the US) that is dealt with partially by aides. Being a politician in a democracy is about winning elections and forming consensus in democratic bodies once elected. Being in industry doesn't necessarily prepare one to have those skills - example left to the reader.
- bitwize 8y agoIt's European politics. In Western Europe, there are career politicians who actually fight for the common people and get good things done.
- goletcho 8y agoLike implementing mini jobs at 450/mo? http://www.bmas.de/EN/Our-Topics/Social-Security/450-euro-mini-jobs-marginal-employment.html http://www.bmas.de/EN/Our-Topics/Social-Security/450-euro-mi... Mini jobs in research: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/224824 https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/224824
- eksemplar 8y agoMost our top politicians (I’m Danish) are career politicians. They typically get a candidate in law or political science at the university and then get into national politics where they do little else until they are done with politics if ever. It’s much more of a trade or a career in Scandinavia than it is in America. If you’re building a space program, you hire engineers. If you’re leading a country you hire people who know law, economics and political science. Aside from that the road to the top in Europe is a little different than it is to the top of America. You need to be actually great at the political craft because you can’t just buy your way up. Vestager is so great at the craft that even though she’s in the opposition to the three parties that currently lead our country, they still appointed her. Possible because they fear her return to national politics, but more likely because she’s actually that good.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoVestager is an extremely skilled politician, but she is also extremely ambitious. She is leveraging a crusade against American tech companies to try and vault into the EU President's office. Vestager is very slick and talks a great game about protecting competition but this is just a thinly veiled attempt to raise populist support for her own political ambitions and implement protectionist policies across the EU.
- mtgx 8y agoIt's too bad the US doesn't have someone like Vestagar at the FTC, too. The FTC almost never seems to use anti-trust laws anymore, and when it punishes companies it's more of a symbolical punishment than an actual deterrence. And that's when it doesn't settle with the wrongdoers, where they don't even have to admit any wrong or stop what they've been doing in the future.
- runesoerensen 8y agoNot sure why this is currently being downvoted, the U.S. does seem to be relatively less effective at enforcing anti-trust laws. That's hurting American companies as well and one example of it is included in the article: “Europe is acting to enforce antitrust laws where the U.S. is not,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, who feels that American regulators dropped the ball when they decided not to pursue a case against Google in 2013 (Yelp is a longtime Google antagonist). “Ironically, many of the complainants in the E.U. antitrust case against Google are U.S. companies, pursuing justice in Europe precisely because the U.S., has not acted,” he said in an email.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- adventured 8y agoThe EU has the most to fear from Margrethe Vestager. At a time when the US and China are accelerating rapidly out ahead of the EU in tech, her policy approach adds up to regressive protectionism that will do nothing but further cripple the EU's tech industries (which are already 10 to 20 years behind the US). Margrethe Vestager is doing the US a favor by breaking the leg of the EU as a competitor. If the US were more clever, it would poach all of the EU's best engineers and scientists, paying them 2x what they can ever earn in the EU and stapling a green card to a welcome note. For the US, now is the time to take advantage of the EU's policies to drain as much talent out of Europe as possible. That goes for Russia as well, which is loaded with talented engineers and scientists that are being entirely wasted in Putin's authoritarian nightmare featuring zero economic progress.
- eksemplar 8y agoAn average engineer that I employ in the public sector is paid $86544 a year with a yearly pension of $12981 added on top of this. They get 7 weeks paid vacation a year. Stuff like New Years, January first, Easter and Christmas as well as a range of other national holidays is considered paid leave. They get paid sick leave with no questions asked for the first 3 days, then a follow up on day 3 and 7 and an actual meeting on day 14. They get paid leave on their child’s first two sick days, per child. If they have children under 3 they get 2-4 days of paid leave a year per child to spend quality time with them. If they are older than 55-60 they get a suited amount of time off each year ranging from 4 days a year to one day each week. At 4 days it’s paid leave, at one day a week they are only paid for a 34 hour week (down from 37). They work 37 hour weeks. Have flexible hours and can to work from home when it fits their schedule. They get $4000 worth of paid education a year + paid days to actually take it. The $4000 doesn’t sound like that much, but it’s enough to cover 2 university courses of around 20 ECTS. Good luck attracting them. :)
- olavgg 8y agoIt's not like that in every region of Europe. Though that is what I would expect getting in Oslo, Norway.
- money_talks 8y agoAntitrust and competition regulation is built entirely on arbitrary quantitative definitions of competition rather than reasoned and objective qualitative definitions of competition. There's a big difference between qualitative and quantitative definitions of competition. Anyone is free to compete with Google (qualitative), while Google dominates search with ~90% market share (quantitative). Even if they had 100% market share, they still exist in a qualitatively competitive market. But antitrust and competition regulation isn't concerned with that, and we've heard calls by EU regulators to break up Google based on their market share. Same with Facebook.
- montrose 8y agoI wonder if there will ever come a time when the biggest danger to SV from Europe is competitors, rather than regulators. It may be that competitors can't become more of a threat till regulators become less of one. It's hard for a society to focus simultaneously on multiple things, and regulation and startups seem not merely orthogonal, but opposed.
- money_talks 8y agoThere's a big difference between regulation that affects all players fairly and equally (like safety codes requiring buildings be built to certain specs, requiring insurance, food labeling laws, etc.), and regulation like antitrust which affects only select companies that are successful and meet unpublished post-facto and mostly arbitrary criteria.
- digi_owl 8y agoA few years back i looked into some European tech news to counterbalance all the hype from the valley. What i recall finding was that European tech focused more on helping the sick and elderly (or at least that was what got coverage). Things like garbage bins that would move to the curb on its own when full.