5 ms·

It is not the EU which is the problem. It is the reluctance of the political establishment (both within the countries and across the EU) to acknowledge the oppo

by rmind 8y ago

It is not the EU which is the problem. It is the reluctance of the political establishment (both within the countries and across the EU) to acknowledge the opposition to such laws.

golergka 8y ago
With structures such as EU, the distance between the voter and decision-making center gets longer, and voter's influence smaller. Exiting these structures, just as limiting the power of any central or federal government in favour of moving this power to lower-level elected authorities (such as states in US or Russia) decreases this distance.
- atq2119 8y ago
  This is fine in theory, with a big caveat. Our lives are increasingly dominated by big entities, and the political ones are often small fish compared to giant international corporations that can play smaller political entities off against each other (example: Amazon headquarters). The idea of limiting the size of political entities has merit, but it will backfire unless you also limit the size of economic entities. (And you need to do this first or possibly somehow simultaneously, because once you reduced the size of political entities, it may no longer be possible to limit the size of the economic entities.)
  - golergka 8y ago
    This argument has solid logic, but I don't agree with underlying view of the world. The governments of the world can, and do force tech companies to do whatever they want in terms of privacy, security and other stuff. GDPR and Article 13, Net Neutrality, censorship and privacy issues in Russia and China... The only pushback I've seen by corporations is by PR and lobbying, and in the end, politicians seem to do whatever they want. Yes, company may be even wealthier than the government - but as long as government has monopoly on violence and can enforce it laws, corporations would only be comparable to banana republics and african failed states.
    - toyg 8y ago
      What you list were all continent-sized efforts. Look at what happened when people tried to introduce Linux in the public sector in early 2000s at regional level - Microsoft promptly bought up anyone who could be bought, country by country, with discounts and (likely) bribes.
  - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
    It's really the opposite. These large entities are created by centralized governments. If you have a small business that only operates in New York, they don't care what the law in California is, it doesn't affect them. Walmart and Amazon care, because it does. And what they want is for the law to be the same everywhere, and for that law to be the one that benefits them. So they get that law passed by the central government. Then they take over everywhere because a) all the laws are the same, so there is no opportunity for a local business to carve out a local niche, b) the laws being the same increases economies of scale and lowers compliance costs for huge companies that operate everywhere but has no advantage for companies that only operate locally, so it increases the scale advantage of being large, and c) larger entities are the ones large enough to have a voice in the central government, whereas local entities have a stronger voice in local governments, so the laws that do get passed centrally are the ones that benefit the large players over the smaller ones. We also have really bad central policies like the federal tax laws that make it so that when companies return profits to shareholders they pay heavy taxes but companies that retain the profits or use them to buy other companies do not, which naturally promotes mergers and consolidation and hoarding cash which then becomes a lobbying piggybank for huge companies. So your theory is that we need a large government to rein in large entities. But the large government is already owned by the large entities. It isn't reining them in, and it won't. But the smaller governments could do so locally if they weren't being preempted at the federal level -- good luck being a huge conglomerate when every state is passing laws to give their local businesses a different advantage over you.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        > The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. First, it still can be. If the US has one set of laws and the EU has another set, a conglomerate has two sets of laws to navigate. That is still much easier for them than having dozens in each place. Second, companies do their "harmonization" game with treaties as well, which of course only works by having a sufficiently powerful central government that can be controlled to sign onto such treaties and use their power to get other governments to do the same, using many of the same problematic shenanigans that happen at the federal level to create bad federal laws. > Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage. But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
Roxo 8y ago
The non-democratic EU is not the problem? The people having the real power in the EU are not elected (the European Commission).
- Gaelan 8y ago
  Yes, but the elected body approved it. So (to the extent that the European Parliament is democratic) "more democracy" won't fix this. (Yes, something like direct democracy would fix this. But exiting the EU wouldn't get you that)
- toyg 8y ago
  > The people having the real power in the EU are not elected (the European Commission). Sigh, how many times do we have to confute this lie? The real power is in the European Council, aka national governments assembled. That's the body that sets the agenda. The Commission takes its marching orders from the Council, then goes to the Parliament to figure out what it will accept. The Commission is a smokescreen, it's your national governments who desperately wanted this. They pushed and pushed until they got it, because it benefits the national press -- whose support they need for re-election. Commissioners don't care, their jobs have different rules.
  - LoSboccacc 8y ago
    except we pushed back and pushed back until they got us by outrage fatigue and honestly fuck that, democracy shouldn't require constant protests not we want to transform democracy into a mob rule the issue is too much power too far from constituents and with little balances to prevent easy lobbying of few key people - it's basically broken at its core. "just vote for different people next time" yeah as if people don't say one thing and then do another. and once in power a rotation is simply too long, searching a candidate by trial and error to weed out the liars* would require a lifetime of committment, meanwhile the young generation would outweigh all the voting of those that have been keeping track of the politician scores by sheer demographic. *spoiler alert: they all lie to some extent, or "compromise" if you prefer. but it's easy to fool voters on technical issues like these while gaining consensus with the popular topics of taxes, jobs and housing.

by rmind 8y ago

It is not the EU which is the problem. It is the reluctance of the political establishment (both within the countries and across the EU) to acknowledge the opposition to such laws.

golergka 8y ago

With structures such as EU, the distance between the voter and decision-making center gets longer, and voter's influence smaller. Exiting these structures, just as limiting the power of any central or federal government in favour of moving this power to lower-level elected authorities (such as states in US or Russia) decreases this distance.

atq2119 8y ago
This is fine in theory, with a big caveat. Our lives are increasingly dominated by big entities, and the political ones are often small fish compared to giant international corporations that can play smaller political entities off against each other (example: Amazon headquarters). The idea of limiting the size of political entities has merit, but it will backfire unless you also limit the size of economic entities. (And you need to do this first or possibly somehow simultaneously, because once you reduced the size of political entities, it may no longer be possible to limit the size of the economic entities.)
- golergka 8y ago
  This argument has solid logic, but I don't agree with underlying view of the world. The governments of the world can, and do force tech companies to do whatever they want in terms of privacy, security and other stuff. GDPR and Article 13, Net Neutrality, censorship and privacy issues in Russia and China... The only pushback I've seen by corporations is by PR and lobbying, and in the end, politicians seem to do whatever they want. Yes, company may be even wealthier than the government - but as long as government has monopoly on violence and can enforce it laws, corporations would only be comparable to banana republics and african failed states.
  - toyg 8y ago
    What you list were all continent-sized efforts. Look at what happened when people tried to introduce Linux in the public sector in early 2000s at regional level - Microsoft promptly bought up anyone who could be bought, country by country, with discounts and (likely) bribes.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  It's really the opposite. These large entities are created by centralized governments. If you have a small business that only operates in New York, they don't care what the law in California is, it doesn't affect them. Walmart and Amazon care, because it does. And what they want is for the law to be the same everywhere, and for that law to be the one that benefits them. So they get that law passed by the central government. Then they take over everywhere because a) all the laws are the same, so there is no opportunity for a local business to carve out a local niche, b) the laws being the same increases economies of scale and lowers compliance costs for huge companies that operate everywhere but has no advantage for companies that only operate locally, so it increases the scale advantage of being large, and c) larger entities are the ones large enough to have a voice in the central government, whereas local entities have a stronger voice in local governments, so the laws that do get passed centrally are the ones that benefit the large players over the smaller ones. We also have really bad central policies like the federal tax laws that make it so that when companies return profits to shareholders they pay heavy taxes but companies that retain the profits or use them to buy other companies do not, which naturally promotes mergers and consolidation and hoarding cash which then becomes a lobbying piggybank for huge companies. So your theory is that we need a large government to rein in large entities. But the large government is already owned by the large entities. It isn't reining them in, and it won't. But the smaller governments could do so locally if they weren't being preempted at the federal level -- good luck being a huge conglomerate when every state is passing laws to give their local businesses a different advantage over you.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      > The largest entities are multinationals operating on multiple continents, so it's pretty clear that regulations being passed at federal level isn't the primary source of their economies of scale. First, it still can be. If the US has one set of laws and the EU has another set, a conglomerate has two sets of laws to navigate. That is still much easier for them than having dozens in each place. Second, companies do their "harmonization" game with treaties as well, which of course only works by having a sufficiently powerful central government that can be controlled to sign onto such treaties and use their power to get other governments to do the same, using many of the same problematic shenanigans that happen at the federal level to create bad federal laws. > Sure, companies can use regulatory harmonization to their advantage, but they can also use tax and labour law competition between localities to their advantage. But that has nothing to do with entity size, and in fact is the opposite. If one state has advantageous laws then local companies there have an advantage over companies of any size that operate elsewhere.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

Roxo 8y ago

The non-democratic EU is not the problem? The people having the real power in the EU are not elected (the European Commission).

Gaelan 8y ago
Yes, but the elected body approved it. So (to the extent that the European Parliament is democratic) "more democracy" won't fix this. (Yes, something like direct democracy would fix this. But exiting the EU wouldn't get you that)
toyg 8y ago
> The people having the real power in the EU are not elected (the European Commission). Sigh, how many times do we have to confute this lie? The real power is in the European Council, aka national governments assembled. That's the body that sets the agenda. The Commission takes its marching orders from the Council, then goes to the Parliament to figure out what it will accept. The Commission is a smokescreen, it's your national governments who desperately wanted this. They pushed and pushed until they got it, because it benefits the national press -- whose support they need for re-election. Commissioners don't care, their jobs have different rules.
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  except we pushed back and pushed back until they got us by outrage fatigue and honestly fuck that, democracy shouldn't require constant protests not we want to transform democracy into a mob rule the issue is too much power too far from constituents and with little balances to prevent easy lobbying of few key people - it's basically broken at its core. "just vote for different people next time" yeah as if people don't say one thing and then do another. and once in power a rotation is simply too long, searching a candidate by trial and error to weed out the liars* would require a lifetime of committment, meanwhile the young generation would outweigh all the voting of those that have been keeping track of the politician scores by sheer demographic. *spoiler alert: they all lie to some extent, or "compromise" if you prefer. but it's easy to fool voters on technical issues like these while gaining consensus with the popular topics of taxes, jobs and housing.