5 ms·

It's interesting to see the HN reaction to this. The last time the EU fined Google a huge amount of money for anti-trust reasons the general sentiment here was

It's interesting to see the HN reaction to this. The last time the EU fined Google a huge amount of money for anti-trust reasons the general sentiment here was that it was just socialist Europeans taxing American companies trying to make an honest living. I guess Google is a lot less popular now compared to like two years ago.

microcolonel 8y ago
HN has been slowly alienating the people who would disagree (mostly by downvoting without replying), it seems. If I were designing HN today, I'd probably make it only possible to downvote a post if you have either replied, or upvoted an existing reply.
fwdpropaganda 8y ago
> The last time the EU fined Google a huge amount of money for anti-trust reasons the general sentiment here was that it was just socialist Europeans taxing American companies trying to make an honest living. That was a common sentiment amongst Americans. As a European, you don't really think "yeah, screw those American monopolies... but I like the European ones"
adventured 8y ago
I happen to believe the US should begin reciprocal economic targeting against the EU if they continue down the path of attacking our tech companies via massive fines as a means to offset their inability to compete. Indeed, this outcome is guaranteed to occur. The US isn't going to just watch as the EU continuously steals billions of dollars from its top companies. They're so far behind in the EU, the US would have to stop all technological progress for at least a decade to allow them to partially catch up. When Britain exits the EU, the EU GDP per capita will nearly be 50% lower than the US. Realistically they have no means to keep up with the US over time, they simply don't have the financial capability to do it, I almost sympathize with their desperation. The US is booming, it'll add a trillion dollars to its GDP this year alone. Meanwhile half the EU is a perpetual rolling economic disaster still, a decade after the great recession began. Populists keep gaining more and more traction in EU countries, with Italy looking like it might be the next to leave the EU. It really is hard to blame the EU leadership for trying to find some way to extract value from the US economic dominion, given how weak the EU outlook is.
- MBCook 8y ago
  I think the US should control it’s own tech companies instead of letting them run wild so the rest of the world has to do it.
  - fwdpropaganda 8y ago
    You just have to briefly skim that guy's post history to learn that he's an ideological warrior.
    - yesco 8y ago
      How would his post history be relevant? Do you think only like-minded individuals should be debated with?
      - fwdpropaganda 8y ago
        > How would his post history be relevant? Post history is relevant to assess if the person you're talking to has a very strongly set view on an extremely complex matter. If they do, that suggests that the reasons for the person spending time defending that view might not be motivated by exploration of ideas, but by evangelization of their view. I think having an estimation of the person's motivation is important because conversations with people motivated by exploration of ideas can make for interesting, insightful and educational conversation, whereas the ones movitated by evangelization tend to be reduced to the same catchy but superficial arguments that they've learned over the years.
        yesco 8y ago
        > Post history is relevant to assess if the person you're talking to has a very strongly set view on an extremely complex matter. If they do, that suggests that the reasons for the person spending time defending that view might not be motivated by exploration of ideas, but by evangelization of their view Strange, perhaps we have different motivations for debating? My goal is generally to learn and understand why someone would think a certain way in contrast with my own way of thinking. Their motivations for the exchange are irrelevant to this, if at the end of it they agree with me that's nice but it's not the objective. Personally my favorite occasions are when I'm proven to be wrong. > I think having an estimation of the person's motivation is important because conversations with people motivated by exploration of ideas can make for interesting, insightful and educational conversation, whereas the ones motivated by evangelization tend to be reduced to the same catchy but superficial arguments that they've learned over the years. This is the part I'm finding confusing, the entire paragraph feels very hypocritical. How can you claim to be open to ideas while simultaneously dismissing the ones you deem unworthy? Is it that your own motivations don't matter but the ones you choose to speak to do? Superficial arguments don't matter when the goal is to understand the reason THEY believe something. If you believe you have heard it all before and choose not to spend your time on it then that's one thing, but you purposefully injected yourself into a discussion without adding anything other than a snarky comment that implied another poster was unworthy of being spoken to due to their more polarized views. How can you justify this?
justin66 8y ago
> I guess Google is a lot less popular now compared to like two years ago. Or all antitrust cases are not identical on their merits.

microcolonel 8y ago

HN has been slowly alienating the people who would disagree (mostly by downvoting without replying), it seems. If I were designing HN today, I'd probably make it only possible to downvote a post if you have either replied, or upvoted an existing reply.

fwdpropaganda 8y ago

> The last time the EU fined Google a huge amount of money for anti-trust reasons the general sentiment here was that it was just socialist Europeans taxing American companies trying to make an honest living. That was a common sentiment amongst Americans. As a European, you don't really think "yeah, screw those American monopolies... but I like the European ones"

adventured 8y ago

I happen to believe the US should begin reciprocal economic targeting against the EU if they continue down the path of attacking our tech companies via massive fines as a means to offset their inability to compete. Indeed, this outcome is guaranteed to occur. The US isn't going to just watch as the EU continuously steals billions of dollars from its top companies. They're so far behind in the EU, the US would have to stop all technological progress for at least a decade to allow them to partially catch up. When Britain exits the EU, the EU GDP per capita will nearly be 50% lower than the US. Realistically they have no means to keep up with the US over time, they simply don't have the financial capability to do it, I almost sympathize with their desperation. The US is booming, it'll add a trillion dollars to its GDP this year alone. Meanwhile half the EU is a perpetual rolling economic disaster still, a decade after the great recession began. Populists keep gaining more and more traction in EU countries, with Italy looking like it might be the next to leave the EU. It really is hard to blame the EU leadership for trying to find some way to extract value from the US economic dominion, given how weak the EU outlook is.

MBCook 8y ago
I think the US should control it’s own tech companies instead of letting them run wild so the rest of the world has to do it.
- fwdpropaganda 8y ago
  You just have to briefly skim that guy's post history to learn that he's an ideological warrior.
  - yesco 8y ago
    How would his post history be relevant? Do you think only like-minded individuals should be debated with?
    - fwdpropaganda 8y ago
      > How would his post history be relevant? Post history is relevant to assess if the person you're talking to has a very strongly set view on an extremely complex matter. If they do, that suggests that the reasons for the person spending time defending that view might not be motivated by exploration of ideas, but by evangelization of their view. I think having an estimation of the person's motivation is important because conversations with people motivated by exploration of ideas can make for interesting, insightful and educational conversation, whereas the ones movitated by evangelization tend to be reduced to the same catchy but superficial arguments that they've learned over the years.
      - yesco 8y ago
        > Post history is relevant to assess if the person you're talking to has a very strongly set view on an extremely complex matter. If they do, that suggests that the reasons for the person spending time defending that view might not be motivated by exploration of ideas, but by evangelization of their view Strange, perhaps we have different motivations for debating? My goal is generally to learn and understand why someone would think a certain way in contrast with my own way of thinking. Their motivations for the exchange are irrelevant to this, if at the end of it they agree with me that's nice but it's not the objective. Personally my favorite occasions are when I'm proven to be wrong. > I think having an estimation of the person's motivation is important because conversations with people motivated by exploration of ideas can make for interesting, insightful and educational conversation, whereas the ones motivated by evangelization tend to be reduced to the same catchy but superficial arguments that they've learned over the years. This is the part I'm finding confusing, the entire paragraph feels very hypocritical. How can you claim to be open to ideas while simultaneously dismissing the ones you deem unworthy? Is it that your own motivations don't matter but the ones you choose to speak to do? Superficial arguments don't matter when the goal is to understand the reason THEY believe something. If you believe you have heard it all before and choose not to spend your time on it then that's one thing, but you purposefully injected yourself into a discussion without adding anything other than a snarky comment that implied another poster was unworthy of being spoken to due to their more polarized views. How can you justify this?

justin66 8y ago

> I guess Google is a lot less popular now compared to like two years ago. Or all antitrust cases are not identical on their merits.