4 ms·

I am both glad that Margrethe Vestager remains in the same position and sorry that she hasn't been promoted to even more important posts. She has done excellen

by jwr 7y ago

I am both glad that Margrethe Vestager remains in the same position and sorry that she hasn't been promoted to even more important posts. She has done excellent work so far, keeping companies in check. It is largely thanks to her that the ridiculous roaming charges which telecoms used to gouge us with are gone. Her work shows that this kind of regulation is necessary, because "the market" will not magically solve everything. Contrast her work with the ridiculous decisions of Ajit Pai at the FCC to see how you can run things differently.

M2Ys4U 7y ago
> I am both glad that Margrethe Vestager remains in the same position and sorry that she hasn't been promoted to even more important posts. Indeed; I was hoping that she would become the President of the European Commission. But I'm certainly glad she'll still be Competition Commissioner and, now, Executive Vice-President of the college.
shmerl 7y ago
Pai isn't doing any useful work, he only does the bidding of his monopolistic masters.
nolok 7y ago
Agreed, it's a great feeling to see the number of major cases where I felt her team and her and thus the European Competition Comission was in line with what I wished would happened and protected our interests as citizen of the EU. It also sometimes has large ramification outside the EU (like the Apple / Qualcomm case), but unlike what I often see from american commenters in thread about these I genuinely don't feel like the position has been used to give more advantage to the EU, only to ensure fair competitive practice (and if anything, they've been even harder on stricly EU companies they come against).
repolfx 7y ago
Then I'll offer a counterpoint - Vestager sums up everything wrong with the EU and why every country should leave. Firstly, her position violates all known good principles of governance. Her office acts as judge, jury and executioner. There's no clear separation of executive from judiciary from legislature: the Commission creates the laws, enforces the laws, and imposes the penalties under those laws. It can levy massive fines against businesses at will without having to win any kind of court case or in fact convince anyone of anything at all. The resulting fines go straight into the EU budget and the EU is always desperate for cash, giving her a huge conflict of interest. Vestager is the manifestation of the EU's total capitulation to its own forces of stagnation and apathy. There are no big tech firms in Europe, unless we generously count ARM (now owned by Asian countries) or SAP, but SAP doesn't play in the consumer space and is hardly a force for innovation. Rather than encourage tech firms, the Commission under Vestager has repeatedly sent the powerful message that no matter what you do or how hard you try, if you get big and successful you'll be found guilty of violating some vague, badly thought out bit of EU law. Spend hundreds of millions on trying to comply with the GDPR, a piece of law so vague it literally says things are illegal unless you need to do them in which case they aren't? Irrelevant: no amount of spend will protect you from being found in violation. The EU Commission was violating the GDPR itself on the day enforcement began, but the apparent difficulty of compliance is also irrelevant: they simply announced they don't have to follow their own laws. Create Android and actually open source it, thus saving the competitive ecosystem of phone OEMs from the iOS juggernaut? Doesn't matter, you're still "anti competitive" whereas iOS - totally proprietary - isn't. In upside down Vestager world allowing other firms to compete against your own phones with your own OS is worse for competition than building a vertically integrated and totally closed ecosystem. How exactly can you not be found anti-competitive? That's left undefined. Add useful features to your useful search engine? No Comrade, that's illegal. Can't find anyone who actually suffered harm as a result of this new feature, not a single person anywhere? Doesn't matter; Vestager's laws are not justified by actually protecting consumers. The lack of harm doesn't matter. Why should anyone bother trying to create tech firms in Europe, when people like Vestager are waiting for you to get successful so they can step in and "save" the consumer from your products, conveniently funding her own salary and bloated pensions at the same time? Vestager vs Pai sums up EU vs America and in one swift comparison, sums up why America dominates the tech world. It's nothing to be proud of.

by jwr 7y ago

M2Ys4U 7y ago

> I am both glad that Margrethe Vestager remains in the same position and sorry that she hasn't been promoted to even more important posts. Indeed; I was hoping that she would become the President of the European Commission. But I'm certainly glad she'll still be Competition Commissioner and, now, Executive Vice-President of the college.

shmerl 7y ago

Pai isn't doing any useful work, he only does the bidding of his monopolistic masters.

nolok 7y ago

Agreed, it's a great feeling to see the number of major cases where I felt her team and her and thus the European Competition Comission was in line with what I wished would happened and protected our interests as citizen of the EU. It also sometimes has large ramification outside the EU (like the Apple / Qualcomm case), but unlike what I often see from american commenters in thread about these I genuinely don't feel like the position has been used to give more advantage to the EU, only to ensure fair competitive practice (and if anything, they've been even harder on stricly EU companies they come against).

repolfx 7y ago

Then I'll offer a counterpoint - Vestager sums up everything wrong with the EU and why every country should leave. Firstly, her position violates all known good principles of governance. Her office acts as judge, jury and executioner. There's no clear separation of executive from judiciary from legislature: the Commission creates the laws, enforces the laws, and imposes the penalties under those laws. It can levy massive fines against businesses at will without having to win any kind of court case or in fact convince anyone of anything at all. The resulting fines go straight into the EU budget and the EU is always desperate for cash, giving her a huge conflict of interest. Vestager is the manifestation of the EU's total capitulation to its own forces of stagnation and apathy. There are no big tech firms in Europe, unless we generously count ARM (now owned by Asian countries) or SAP, but SAP doesn't play in the consumer space and is hardly a force for innovation. Rather than encourage tech firms, the Commission under Vestager has repeatedly sent the powerful message that no matter what you do or how hard you try, if you get big and successful you'll be found guilty of violating some vague, badly thought out bit of EU law. Spend hundreds of millions on trying to comply with the GDPR, a piece of law so vague it literally says things are illegal unless you need to do them in which case they aren't? Irrelevant: no amount of spend will protect you from being found in violation. The EU Commission was violating the GDPR itself on the day enforcement began, but the apparent difficulty of compliance is also irrelevant: they simply announced they don't have to follow their own laws. Create Android and actually open source it, thus saving the competitive ecosystem of phone OEMs from the iOS juggernaut? Doesn't matter, you're still "anti competitive" whereas iOS - totally proprietary - isn't. In upside down Vestager world allowing other firms to compete against your own phones with your own OS is worse for competition than building a vertically integrated and totally closed ecosystem. How exactly can you not be found anti-competitive? That's left undefined. Add useful features to your useful search engine? No Comrade, that's illegal. Can't find anyone who actually suffered harm as a result of this new feature, not a single person anywhere? Doesn't matter; Vestager's laws are not justified by actually protecting consumers. The lack of harm doesn't matter. Why should anyone bother trying to create tech firms in Europe, when people like Vestager are waiting for you to get successful so they can step in and "save" the consumer from your products, conveniently funding her own salary and bloated pensions at the same time? Vestager vs Pai sums up EU vs America and in one swift comparison, sums up why America dominates the tech world. It's nothing to be proud of.