7 ms·

It's about following the rules, instead of making the rules. Uber tried to make the rules in Europe: they failed. Europe has a stronger governance then in the

• jltsiren 5y ago
  It's more appropriate to say that the EU is pro-competition. They don't care as much about free markets than about competition as means to an end. If there is not enough competition in the market, they often deliberately change the rules to create more.
  • nix23 5y ago
    >It's more appropriate to say that the EU is pro-competition. No, they fear competition that comes from the outside, because Europe has no competing counterpart...in nearly everything.
    • mijamo 5y ago
      The US is much more protectionist than the EU, there are lots of sectors where entering the market is nearly impossible in the US. And saying that Europe has no competing counterpart is ridiculous, just look at Amazon total market share in the different European countries and compare to the US.
      • nix23 5y ago
        >just look at Amazon total market share in the different European countries and compare to the US. Since when is Amazon a European company?
        • cdirkx 5y ago
          The parent probably meant that Amazons market share is much higher in the US than in the EU [1], meaning that in the EU there is thus more competition. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183515/amazon-market-share-region-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183515/amazon-market-sh...
          • nix23 5y ago
            It's because cloud-act and that many company's are not allowed to have their customers data in a US cloud. However Europe has nothing like AWS or Alibaba, Europe and especially Germany is a shitshow par exelance in that regard.
    • estaseuropano 5y ago
      This is obviously nonsense. EU has companies in all businesses and in many many fields the market leaders. Two big weaknesses though: They are generally behind in the tech world (but even there it depends, see e.g. ASML) where scale really matters and scale is much easier and quicker to achieve with a single language and legal system like US and China. Where Europe is also weaker is finance, which in the US is a barely regulated free for all compared to the EU context. This in turn reflects in market capitalization and stock prices where a US company with equal (or lower) output than an EU company will generally have a much higher valuation.
      • chrisseaton 5y ago
        > EU has companies in all businesses and in many many fields the market leaders. I think this is an increasingly optimistic view. The EU cannot even begin to compete with big US, Canadian, Chinese tech companies. It just doesn't have the drive or initiative to do so. And now that almost everything is a big tech company... the outlook looks bit worrying.
        • sofixa 5y ago
          There are other markets other than tech, you know? OP explicitly excluded tech ( with some exceptions like ASML). Cars, aviation, logistics, trains, elevators, chemistry, pharmaceutical, energy, engines, turbines, defence, to name just a few sectors where there are huge EU-based companies which are market leaders worldwide. And there are lots of tech companies, most are just focusing on their local and sometimes neighbouring markets - Back Market, Doctolib, N26, Revolut (to name a few i know and have used in France), and are thus smaller than their American counterparts. It has nothing to do with drive or initiative.
          • chrisseaton 5y ago
            My point was that other markets are being eaten by tech. Cars are a great example - Tesla for example operates as a tech company. Logistics another great example - being eaten by Amazon. Bio is probably next with all the tech funded work being done in Boston now. Etc etc. And focusing on local markets… we’ll yeah that is a lack or drive and initiative. While you’re focusing on your local market US tech is coming for you.
    • MagnumOpus 5y ago
      Bull. If they wanted to kill competition from the outside, they could just block FANG from doing business there like Russia and China are doing with massive success. If anything, the EU's fairness is a massive giveway to US tech firms who could hoover up any fledgling EU competitors.
      • nix23 5y ago
        >Bull No Europe would have no search-engine to replace.
        • intellirogue 5y ago
          Qwant.
          • nix23 5y ago
            C'mon be real...
        • pmontra 5y ago
          If the EU blocks Google today there will be a decent search engine in a few days (I think I used a German one until it shut down a few months ago,) a good one in a few months and a Google level one maybe never. The real problems are: almost everyone use gmail and most people have an Android phone. There will be a 90s like fragmentation for email, maybe by ISP. Not bad at all IMHO. Bigger problem with Android: maps, driving directions, apps delivery and updates. Somebody will provide a plugin replacement for the Play Store, there are alternative map services but it's going to be an interesting season or two.
          • nix23 5y ago
            >If the EU blocks Google today there will be a decent search engine in a few days Ah yes we just buy yandex or baidu.
            • pmontra 5y ago
  • nickpp 5y ago
    You can't create competition through regulation. Free markets allow competition and entrepreneurship creates it. You need both. Regulations reduce competition by raising the bar to entry and the unforeseen consequences of compliance.
    • Isinlor 5y ago
      Actually the opposite is true. Only trough regulation you can create nonviolent free market competition. Otherwise, you end up with military competition as the easiest way to win is to dominate and subjugate opponents trough raw force. Slavery and colonization are this types of free market distortions when unrestricted by regulation. So, regulations are necessary part of free markets. The question is what regulations are good and what regulations are bad. There are empirical and game theoretical examples where regulations create better outcomes than nonviolent free market competition. There are games where the tragedy of the commons occur i.e. Nash equilibrium creates bad outcome [0]. This is also true in the real world e.g. collapse of the Atlantic northwest cod fishery. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wNj9hOIt9g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wNj9hOIt9g [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_north...
      • nickpp 5y ago
        Having a rule of law is not a regulation, is the most basic fundamental prerequisite to having a functioning modern, democratic society. Free markets are built on top of that and regulations come on top of free markets. And free markets imply free people - slavery is the opposite of that. Taxing externalities is also necessary, and it's tax, not a regulation. But that is something we're still working on, with little success it seems. See the carbon/pollution international issues with China, Russia, Australia.
        • Isinlor 5y ago
          You are bending words like regulation and tax to fit your preconceptions in way that disagrees with how other people understand them. Also, a simple tax can not solve the tragedy of the commons for fisheries as long as fishing will remain profitable. Nash equilibrium involving full exploitation remains as long as there is a profit. Fish are not an externality that can be reduced to avoid taxation, but the objective. While cap on fishing will work.
  • panick21_ 5y ago
    Its a strange world to me where being pro-competition is a god thing when it means to deliberately hurt outsider and prop up internal alternatives that are not competitive. And I think at least in the cases I observed it hasn't fixed the 'problem' either.
    • sneak 5y ago
      It's not really pro-competition. It's pro-competitors-who-maximize-employment-and-tax-revenue. "We will back your participation in this "competition" only as long as your participation furthers our preconceived objectives about how the world and society and economy should work." It stems from the idea that being an FTE at one place for a long time (and not really having any class mobility) is a good and decent thing to encourage for most of your society. Stability above upside. It's the root cause of why the USA has a startup culture and Europe does not. It's fine if that is your belief, but to pretend that it's "competition" when they have their thumb on the scale tilting it toward a specific social ideology is a bit disingenuous.
      • malermeister 5y ago
        The term you're looking for is social market economy or rhine capitalism [1] The core idea is that we see the market as a means to an end, not some end in itself. When the market is incompatible with societal good, the market needs to change, not society. A market by itself only optimizes for maximum profits for shareholders, at the expense of everything else. Often, you want your economy to optimize for different things, so you direct the market to support your goals. It's the root cause why inequality is so much worse in the US, why you have a much bigger housing crisis, why health care in the US is such a mess, why there's homeless people everywhere etc etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
        • sneak 5y ago
          > It's the root cause why inequality is so much worse in the US, why you have a much bigger housing crisis, why health care in the US is such a mess, why there's homeless people everywhere etc etc. I don't think a single part of this claim a) logically follows from the previous paragraphs, or b) is actually true. For just one example: the housing crisis is a lack of supply, which is the result of the exact same kind of status-quo-maintaining, market-forces-secondary-to-regulatory-aims (NIMBYism by property owners and their representatives) thing you describe as being the European norm. To say that these philosophical differences are the root cause of failures in very complex systems is of course the popular and prevailing European narrative about the USA. (There is another, equally popular and equally false (but self-congratulatory) one in Europe about gun violence in the USA.) I just don't see much evidence to substantiate it.
  • johnisgood 5y ago
    Proponents of the free market love competition. If by changing the rules you mean government interference, that they of course oppose. Still, free market people are pro-competition as well as opposed to pro-monopoly and such.
• est31 5y ago
  It's not about strong vs weak governance. It's just that the US government represents the 401ks invested in the FAANGs, as well as the FAANG employees, and the european governments represent the people that the FAANGs offer services for.
  • thomasz 5y ago
    Exactly. For a counterpoint, compare what VW had to pay in the US to what they had to pay in Germany.