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Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

352 points by M2Ys4U 3y ago

tiptup300 3y ago
[flagged]
- krtab 3y ago
  This is currently the only comment on the 1st post of the front page. Peak HN moment.
  - Traubenfuchs 3y ago
    At last, schizoposting has arrived on HN.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
  The EU being discussed is, in fact, the European Union.
  - tiptup300 3y ago
    The article as of now on HN is showing "Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management" while the actual article title is "Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management". Very obviously I was not talking about what a "EU" is. But instead what the article is talking about, whatever big thing is going on with the EU, if you click in and miss the actual title, they are burying the lead quite heavily. In some form this seems to be how EU is putting tighter push on Apple in some way, but the headline as shown on HN doesn't give you any information. Just telling you that you are bad at your job if you don't think correctly about this big thing going on with EU, and if you don't even know what big thing is going on with the EU, while you're already out of the game.
e12e 3y ago
Editorialided headline, the title is: > Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management
- lapcat 3y ago
  That's 13 characters too long for the HN title limit.
  - blowski 3y ago
    This fits: > Facing reality, whether Apple or EU, is core requirement of good management
    - e12e 3y ago
      That is much better, the initial change focus on "Facing reality about the EU", rather than "Facing reality is a core requirement of good management". Granted, the EU aside is also important.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  Not really, but I guess they should have left 'Apple' in? It's not like they added anything to the headline.
  - e12e 3y ago
    They (probably inadvertently) added emphasis on EU, rather than: > Facing reality (...) is a core requirement for good management
- M2Ys4U 3y ago
  Yeah, I had to make the change because HN has a length-limit on headlines
hef19898 3y ago
Expected some meme-worthy content about bad EU-regulations and such. Was surprised to read a well thought out piece about how good managers have to accept and work with facts and reality. Take my upvote!
abtinf 3y ago
Everything you need to know about government bureaucracy, including the EU’s, you can learn from watching the TV show “Yes, Minister.”
- pavlov 3y ago
  And the next level of enlightenment is that you can further learn everything about corporate bureaucracy by combining the learnings from "Yes, Minister" with the American "The Office". It's not any better in the private world, but the sociopaths are a bit more money-oriented.
  - ltbarcly3 3y ago
    So you agree government agencies are run by sociopaths? Then we should strive to reduce their influence on us, just like we would want to reduce corporate power over us?
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Money, sex and power are interchangable when it comes to sociopathic, power hungry people.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  I think you meant to say, "Everything I know"
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
What amazes and perplexes me is that Apple thinks it can effectively play politics against the EU and that somehow their customers will back them in the face of the "consequences" Apple applies, which are pretty transparent and really quite amateurish (eg no more web apps for you!). As the article states, the first mistake Apple makes is thinking the EU is somehow like the US, but I can't see how any large proportion of Apple's customers will back Apple's actions against their own government. EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy, at least not to the same extent as the US.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  And even if they are thinking that government is their enemy. That doesn't mean companies like Apple are their friends or allies either...
- pokepim 3y ago
  [dead]
- mjburgess 3y ago
  It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better". Since we have so many consumer protections, much of how we end up engaging with the law around business practices is to our benefit. We're always aware we can raise bad business practices with an ombudsman (etc.). So our lived experience of government regulation is, in large part, positive. The fringe american "all regulation is bad" is hyped up for certain media causes, but very alien to most in practice. It's essentially unimaginable to the ordinary european that large corporations would have a better social conscience than government.
  - pydry 3y ago
    >It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better". The notion of regulation as being on a sliding scale where "more is worse" was a manufactured American meme created by the Kochs in the 1980s. It emerged from some of their epic fights with the environmental protection agency and their subsequent lobbying and public relations outreach efforts that followed. They set up and funded number of institutions dedicated to telling this story (and others, including that one about hairdresser licensing). The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute to name a few. If you think about it for a few seconds, dumbing down a complex system like laws or regulation to "more vs less" is quite stupid. It's like saying that some programmers believe in "more lines of code" and some believe in "fewer". Do you want more laws or fewer laws? The question doesn't make sense. You want the right kind of laws, right? Ones that are as simple as possible and no simpler. The same for code. I think it's important to put this type of thing in a historical context though. These ideas and stories don't emerge out of nowhere - there is usually money behind them. In this case, it was money from an oil and chemicals company that had a singular goal - to fight the EPA - so it could destroy the natural environment in America with absolute impunity.
redwood 3y ago
I understand where the author is coming from and It is important to have a realist perspective on what is driving European strategy or else we will be in denial. I think it's also important to recognize that the west are interconnected in many real ways beyond economic. The first and most clearly top of mind recently is the US defense umbrella which allows the EU to invest on other things instead of defense. Another less talked about is how the US subsidizes most of global R&D for healthcare by virtue of the obscene amount Americans pay and hence make profitable that industry to the benefit of all of humanity. For American companies to contemplate selling into or building offices and having employees in Europe is to contemplate a set of trade-offs.. there's a reason why European employees are typically paid far less, it has to do with the fact that there's far less flexibility if they are a bad hire coupled with the fact that they have much better benefits provided by their governments and hence their money goes a lot further. That is of course related to the fact that they are not generally paying much for defense. Everyone is self interested and when we see the Europeans talk about human rights on the one hand but then do big wine and dine trips in China to sell their luxury goods on the other hand you see clear evidence of that fact. As much as many Europeans may loathe the united states, in the grand scheme of things we are far more interwoven with each other and ultimately entering a new cold war with China and decisions will need to be made over time around where to place bets around self-reliance. I'm sure Europeans love to sell to China but they will not love the glut of Chinese Imports that will decimate their protectionist economies at a level far more aggressive than they've ever experienced across the Atlantic
- hef19898 3y ago
  See, and therw I was worried we'd have a discussion HN involcing the EU without anyone sharing all those meme and myths about the EU, labour laws, salaries... Thank you for holding up the flag!
  - jdright 3y ago
    incredibile amount of delusion of grandeur on that one.
- tsak 3y ago
zarzavat 3y ago
At least in the case of Apple, it’s not at all specific the the EU. That company is run by children. Everybody who works with Apple, be it developers or suppliers complains about how shitty they are to work with. They maintain relationships by the strength of their market power alone. Bridge burning is ingrained into the company culture. Apple is treating the EU like they do everyone else: they are being dicks. Unfortunately they seem to have missed that the EU is not able to be bullied or pushed around.
- noirscape 3y ago
  I wouldn't say they're children. Rather, Apple is ran by people who are used to the ~20 years of free corporate reign granted to them by the complete defanging of groups like the FTC in the US while Europe was still trying to fruitlessly coax them into being cooperative. It's not just Apple who is struggling to work in an environment where regulators have teeth; Amazon tried to treat the EU the same way and got banned from lobbying the EU parliament for not taking them seriously. Basically the only GAFAM company that took regulators seriously for a while was Microsoft (due to the IE lawsuits) but even they are starting to act out again as of late.
  - Sammi 3y ago
    The meteoric rise of MS Azure in Europe is best explained by how they have already had their war with the EU and learned how to work with the EU instead of against it.
- overstay8930 3y ago
  Apple saw what happened when Google was nice to developers and got shitty camera views in apps and adobe flash. Apple has rightfully concluded that developers do not deserve to have any freedom on their platform because they immediately abuse it for their benefit and to the detriment of the user. Devs got so bad meta lost billions in value when Apple set up a privacy transparency feature in the App Store, say what you want about their repair practices but no other tech company takes this much care in managing their platform.
dsign 3y ago
> And, as an institution, they are largely all too convinced that an all-seeing universal surveillance state would be a good thing, actually. Not that I disagree, but where is the light in this tunnel? Increased police surveillance seems to be a common theme in USA, UK and Australia. And countries with less advanced democracies--to say nothing of Russia or China--are not climbing faster into the surveillance wagon mostly because of financial reasons.
spacebanana7 3y ago
Ironically, many of Apple's most aggressive policies are designed to protect its own 'Single Market'.
oatmeal1 3y ago
Are there any counterexamples to what the author presents as the inevitability of European open market regulations? > And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world. Boy, wouldn't it be horrible if we got more Tesla's, SpaceX's, Starlink's, and freedom of speech on social media in the world!
- hef19898 3y ago
  More governmwnt subsidized launch companies, car makers building shitty cars with bad servicing networks and more right wing BS on the internet? Yes, why puldn't we want that?
- mst 3y ago
  SpaceX is awesome and I'm glad we have -one- Elon Musk but I'm not convinced we need more than that.
- Mashimo 3y ago
  > freedom of speech on social media in the world! Did that get better? I though twitter fired a lot of lawyers who held up freedom of speech and now the company is folding against governments like Turkey. But I have mostly only read headlines. Would love to read more about it.
  - oatmeal1 3y ago
    Twitter revealed illegal government censorship of US social media because Elon bought it and was transparent. That's what I'm referring to. I don't know much about Twitter's legal fights against authoritarian countries' censorship of free speech, but that doesn't seem like a particularly winnable battle anyway.
    - Mashimo 3y ago
      Well they tried. For example here: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0UL13A/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0UL13A/ Even if it would result in twitter being blocked in Turkey. Now they rolled over https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-censoring-content-recep-tayyip-erdogan-turkish-presidential-election/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-censoring-content-recep... Do you have more information about the "illegal government censorship of US social media"?
ltbarcly3 3y ago
This reads like a 10th graders report, just repeating arguments found on the internet. The criticism of forcing apple to abandon a superior connector for phones to standardize charger cords, while every other building you go into in Europe has a different outlet that is incompatible with the charger you want to plug in is perfectly reasonable. The idea that there is some great benefit to making sure there is only one connector on the so cheap they are basically disposable cords is fundamentally stupid. The fact that the EU regulators can arbitrarily go after companies is a real problem.
- Mashimo 3y ago
  Gosh damn you Denmark! You where super late to the party and then choose to be special :( https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1545/5143/files/Plugs_of_the_World_8e1e3925-09c0-4550-94db-04451a88864c_480x480.png?v=1652109070 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1545/5143/files/Plugs_of_t... That really grinds my gears. But I think the narrow 2 pin plug can be used in most EU countries. --------- >The fact that the EU regulators can arbitrarily go after companies is a real problem. Do they go arbitrarily after companies though?
  - ltbarcly3 3y ago
    At least all the phones will use the mechanically defective USB-C connector though. Huge win for labor unions and internal market?
    - Mashimo 3y ago
      I have no idea about USB C connector being mechanically defective, but how would that relate to labor unions? And how does that relate to my question?
      - ltbarcly3 3y ago
        In the original article it references internal market and labor unions a dozen times or more. I would say you should read it, but it is not worth your time.
entropyie 3y ago
Can't believe this had to be spelled out... The article is very well written and simple to understand, so hats off to the author. Ironically, I've been putting off buying an iPhone because of the walled garden... Being able to side-load app stores and charge via USB-c might actually get me to switch. Because the surveillance inside Android apps is frankly obscene at this stage.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 3y ago
Reminds me of trump repeatedly trying to make trade deals with individual EU countries. Only had to explain it 11 times until for it to sink it. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-eu-2017-4?amp https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-e...
- ajuc 3y ago
  It worked for Putin (see Nord Streams for example) so Trump wanted it too :)
  - s_dev 3y ago
    That still needed EU approval. Ireland can sell it's beef to the US at a different rate than other EU countries (all Irish beef is grass fed and thus premium grade) again needs EU approval. The EU doesn't mind exceptions to her rules once it can approve or disapprove of them thus preserving the EU trading bloc. People really do think there is a 'gotcha' though e.g. US President Trump getting schooled by Merkel thinking he could just repeat the question and she would give in. I can assure you though these things are very rules based.
    - ajuc 3y ago
      > That still needed EU approval Half the EU (basically the whole Eastern Europe) protested. Germany did it anyway.
      - s_dev 3y ago
        Germany holds a lot of sway in the EU. My point is that Germany didn't do this unilaterally.
        ajuc 3y ago
        No, they did it bilaterally (with Russia) because France didn't mind. This is the problem with EU.
mdrzn 3y ago
Finally more people are figuring out that the EU is a net positive and not a net negative. Love my Europe.
- overstay8930 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - simonbarker87 3y ago
    Most people work for big companies or smaller companies supplying big companies. A tiny percentage of the economy is the typical start up model. Start ups !== the economy.
    - overstay8930 3y ago
      It’s almost as if large investments are a sign of a good economic outlook.
  - 7moritz7 3y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-netherlands-companies/more-brexit-companies-shift-to-the-netherlands-as-uncertainty-persists-idUSKBN2AI0DR/ https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-netherlands-co...
    - overstay8930 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - 7moritz7 3y ago
        > rapidly declining Source? I need it urgently because a lot of my money is on the stock market both in the US and EU and I seem to have missed something significant
        3y ago
bschne 3y ago
> "(...) best seen in the popularity of mass lay-offs – a strategy that has been resoundly proven to be counter-productive, costly, even disastrous, along multiple dimensions, over multiple decades of study." This is the first time I read that big layoffs are "disastrous" for companies vs. some other approach in these situations (other maybe than the rather obvious fact that companies who are conducting mass layoffs are often in dire straits to begin with). I'm assuming "for companies" is implied here, because the way I read the sentence, the author is saying doing mass layoffs is misguided from the point of view of company management, not someone altruistically trying to maximize welfare in society overall or something like that. Does anyone have a good source for this?
Luker88 3y ago
It's rare to find someone with a very different starting point of view, and still don't feel any antagonism at all during the reasoning. As an European for example I would attribute most of his general criticism of EU to the US but after much entrenching on "Apple vs EU" this felt like a reasonable third view. Kudos to the author
huijzer 3y ago
> There are a few examples of this trend towards denying reality. The starkest one being Elon Musk behaving as if European labour unions don’t exist and that labour is entirely powerless, leading his companies to lose money on strikes and other collective actions. > And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world. I can agree that labour unions are real, but I see little evidence that Elon Musk denies reality. Maybe that's the picture you get when you read only the news. If you watch any full length interview with him he seems pretty down to earth (or "grounded" if you want to call it like that).
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago
  Give an impression and actually be are two different things.
roenxi 3y ago
I quite like the article as far as it goes; but this begs the follow up question - is the strategy working? Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America. This should be an article about how Nokia or equivalent is approaching the US all wrong and not understanding the realities on the ground. I'd put energy in a similar frame. Energy matters a lot, and for all the optimistic noise around the Energiewende, the solar industry ended up in China. Wind power Europe has managed a company in the top ten, so that is pretty good [0]. Given the growing energy crisis in Europe, this seems to be an area of failure that needs more focus in how the common market is performing. The EU's successes seem a bit mild. I remain sceptical that harmonizing charging cables is an important enough dot point to appear on these lists, it looks like there is just a lack of success stories out of the EU. The failures are catastrophic; last I heard the farmers had just started rioting too [1] which is a bad omen. [0] https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-wind-power-companies/ https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-wind-power-companies/ [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/26/farmers-protests-brussels-eu-agriculture-leaders-riot-police https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/26/farmers-...
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America. Seems like this holds true more generally. The manufacturing is happening in China, the decisions are being made in North America, and the regulation in the EU. Its like direct (US), produce (China), react (EU)
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    China can regulate more effectively than the EU. They have actual concentration camps. Look at Jack Ma. The EU has cookie banners. That’s not regulation, it’s a speed bump. Consider that the US cannot manufacture things because our environmental and labor regulations are so strict as to make it impossible. The idea that America doesn’t have regulations is not accurate. We have regulated the regulation, so it appears less regulatory but it is not.
bengale 3y ago
"They were behaving like Elon Musk. And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world." I'm not a fan of his behaviour on Twitter, but the idea that the world does not want more Elon Musks seems insane to me. Theyre not for me personally, but whatever you think about Teslas I don't see how you would not want a person who can build a new car company. Just look at other entrants like Rivian, it's so hard, and he managed to will that into existence. The fact that I can then move onto SpaceX is unbelievable. He willed reusable rockets into existence and made it into a sustainable business. Starlink, just look at starlink. Where is Blue Origin? Would we really not want more of that, even if it led to more nonsense on Twitter?
- kitsune_ 3y ago
  Insane is a bit of a strong word, no? If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars. Musk started SpaceX in 2002.
  - bengale 3y ago
    Maybe one of the Musks this person doesn't want would build trains. It's another huge undertaking.
  - gizmo 3y ago
    Maybe, but imagine how large a rocket SpaceX would have to build to launch a train into orbit.
    - _visgean 3y ago
      Maybe thats the true motivation for the starship?
  - Sebb767 3y ago
    > If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars Cars are not going anywhere and train lines are incredibly hard to build [1]. You have to work with the world you have, not with a perfect green field dream. [1] You need massive amounts of connected land, a lot of it in places where land is really expensive and people are not willing to sell to you easily. Additionally, you have building restrictions (not a lot of cities will let you bulldoze hundreds of homes for your train line) and - I can't stress this enough - all of this land needs to be connected, which makes avoiding problematic areas just so much harder.
ryukoposting 3y ago
Nicely written. Great management processes the reality of workplace and society, and applies that information to maximize their employees' effectiveness. Managers are human and thus they have opnions, but great management doesn't let their opinions cloud their judgement when it comes time to manage. I'll admit that, as an engineer, I appreciate that someone is trying to rein in my industry's worst instincts, even if that someone isn't America and they aren't necessarily succeeding on every front. So yes, I have a bias.
lettergram 3y ago
This honestly just sounds like a lot of whining from the author. As someone who’s set in rooms with loads of regulators (1) you can pretty much always compromise with them. (2) they want to ensure criteria is met & typically not penalties nor want you to leave a market It’s more accurate to think of regulators as customers. They just have different requirements they need to solve their problem. Rarely are they protecting consumers imo. Usually they’re there protecting government or other powerful interest. Regardless, we would do something similar to Apple with regulators. “Look it’ll take 18 months to implement X. It’ll also cost $Y. If you push this issue we won’t make a profit and we will exit the market. Are you sure you want us to do that?” “No no no. We just need this and that safe guard in place.” “Alright, we can implement the first one in 2 months, that last one will take time, let’s work on a roadmap.” And that’s how it really functions.
- mousetree 3y ago
  In your meetings with regulators how often have you seen the "we'll exit the market" bluff actually work? I can't see many companies wilfully exiting the third largest market in the world.
  - seszett 3y ago
    This is basically just an American fantasy. It's a way to make the point that "since these foreigners are so ungrateful, we will stop blessing them with our wonderful products if they don't please us, and then they will have to live in the mud and the cold like they used to do before, without an iPhone or a Twitter account".
pjc50 3y ago
This is a really excellent article. It's very important to have a good understanding of what the other side's argument actually is in situations like this. EU politics is not at all like Anglosphere politics; it remains very machine-technocratic, rather than the clickbait-circus that dominates Anglo politics at the moment.
Beretta_Vexee 3y ago
A common mistake is to think that the EU is limited to a few large economies (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland), but this is not the case. Ensuring that a Croatian SME can win contracts with the French or Germans is one of the EU's priority objectives. This is how the EU has lifted millions of people out of poverty. This is a very tangible reality. It worked with East Germany, Spain, Poland, the Baltic States and now the Balkans. The European Commission is litteraly there to ensure that a water heater designed by an Italian, made by a Romanian from Polish steel, inspected by an Italian and put on the market by a Frenchman guarantees high quality standards. They take this mission very seriously because it's not just about protectionism or trade competition. It's a political project of peace and improvement of the living standards for Europeans. You'd have to know very little about the European Union to believe that it was prepared to negotiate or grant a free pass to Apple.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  The practical implication of this is also that it is a huge market. You can ignore that at your own peril. And another thing is that the EU is inspiring other countries to also change their regulations. In the end what companies need to decide is if they can afford losing and alienating major markets across the globe. E.g. Apple sells lots of iphones and other hardware in the EU. That should be more valuable than giving themselves preferential treatment in their own store, banning competitors from using their browser on IOS, and other anti competitive things that they are doing. And that's just Apple. Arguably, Google, Amazon, Meta, etc. each have their own issues with regulations in the EU.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  When Bulgarian truckers started outcompeting French truckers the EU came up with new rules to shut that down. Requiring that the truck has to go back to the country the company is from every 2 months is ridiculous. Not the driver, the vehicle.
  - bojan 3y ago
    Why would it be ridiculous, if a truck has a Bulgarian license plate it's a reasonable expectation that it's based in Bulgaria.
mgoetzke 3y ago
Well designed argument, the weird Elon Musk references aside.
nonethewiser 3y ago
> You can’t be a good manager or executive, in any industry, if you operate in constant denial of the facts on the ground. Arguing from ideology or beliefs that aren’t grounded in observation, measurement, or study, is the hallmark of a politician or media personality, not a manager responsible for other people’s jobs. This makes me think of John Mearsheimer’s breakdown of realism vs liberalism in the context of inter relations on Fridman’s podcast. He suggests American leaders are particularly idealistic (operating on “should”) whereas others are realists (operating on “what is”). I wonder if its more universal than political leadership.
klabb3 3y ago
The author is right but makes a similar mistake as the Americans, given he’s European. He does not clarify what market means. This can be perplexing and misunderstood by an American audience. Market in the US is such a different thing. American companies like TurboTax and Comcast are operating (by American standards) right within the market. In fact, probably “better” than everyone else. The market is a Wild West where the goal is domination of a segment, ideally multiple ones. Like United healthcare is today. In the EU markets mean competitive (more traditional) markets. For instance, the telecom roaming charges he brings up, are a perfect example of a Comcast-like perverted industry that simply got broken up. It used to be ludicrous prices - pushing people towards hotel WiFi or a surprise bill - then suddenly there are 10s of GB free. Nobody died and everyone got it better. In America, this would be the equivalent of waking up one day and ISP prices had dropped by half and there are 10 providers to choose from, basically no matter where you lived. Having lived in the US, nobody expects this. Even with things like student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare etc nobody actually expects these things to come without absolute giant catches - layering of new bureaucracy and hidden fees. So there’s a skepticism against these things. By extension, there is skepticism against the EU. “What are they up to, those sneaky fucks?” As a European with a decent leaning towards classical markets and liberalism, my take is that the US has truly reached market perversion, to the extent that Milton Friedman would roll in his grave. The neo-liberalist pro-corporate tilt that we're seeing in the US today is beyond what I’d argue even the most laissez faire economical thinkers of the 20th century. It’s the opposite of what a free market should be. All the arguments for economic liberalism are based in the freedom to compete fairly. Without that, it’s just oligarchy with a different flag.
- dboreham 3y ago
  Agree. Nobody in the US expects anything to ever get fixed. Prime example: healthcare.
- spuz 3y ago
  I'm also from the EU, not the US but I have a hard time believing that Americans believe that monopolies or large dominant companies represent anything but the corruption of the concept of a market. Anti-trust laws in the US are some of the strongest in the world even if they are rarely enforced. I acknowledge they don't experience the benefits of free markets in many areas but I think they know what they should look like.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
But that is nothing compared to the reality that the EU is not facing: You know who is even more important than the EU to the peace and security of Europe? The United States. The audience for the whining of the American tech companies isn’t the EU consumer, it’s the US voter. They are pushing the narrative that the EU is a bully beating up on innovative American companies. And with the rise of the “America First” isolationist faction in the US, they might find an audience for the US Government to start taking action against the EU and/or retaliate against EU companies for the perceived bullying of US companies by the EU.
nprateem 3y ago
You could just write "PESTLE analysis" and be done
f0e4c2f7 3y ago
This article feels fairly naive to me. One possibility is that the EU is doing what is written on the tin and executives and companies are foolishly misunderstanding. Another possibility is that reality is more nuanced and that executives are playing edge cases where profitable, like they do in other countries and jurisdictions. Instead of seeing the EU (or any other system) explicitly as what is described in founding documents or official meetings, there is another perspective. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w...
dangus 3y ago
I think the one place where the author is mistaken is in the incentives for these big tech companies. I think they fully understand what the EU is about. If Apple can delay for a month or a year on giving the EU what they want it’s very unlikely that any fine is going to be a net negative for them. One more month of the App Store pulling in its Monopoly money is a huge amount of revenue for Apple. One more month of Facebook collecting private data is another month of higher profits. The EU cellular companies benefitted from the removal of roaming charges but Apple won’t benefit from being forced to allow alternate app stores. Corporations in Europe may benefit from their single market regulations but not many corporations in the EU are the size of Apple or Google and have the same profit incentives. (I also think that equating Elon Musk’s bad management to companies like Apple and Google that have generally good management is something of a false equivalency)
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
pjerem 3y ago
In fact I’m really amazed that Apple is trying to play games trying to circumvent a brand new regulation (the DMA), while totally ignoring the fact that they are amongst he primary targets of those regulations. It’s like they don’t understand that any circumvent will just sharpen the 1.01 version of the regulation. They are only gaining some time until the next iteration but it just shows that they are afraid they can’t function anymore by just providing greater products than competitors. DMA isn’t banning the App Store, it still can be the number one store and it still can be a money printer. Except that it will have to be better than competitors.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  I doubt they are gaining time. Any judge will just look and say "hey, that's clearly what the legislators meant from the beginning".
seydor 3y ago
The discussion about Apple is kind-of meh, as apple is not such a big deal in europe, as most phones are not iphones. But the nostalgic view of the EU as some kind of free market pioneer is stuck in the 90s. Today's world and EU are very different. Nobody rememebrs WW2 and europe is too weak to start another war. The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyway. Standardization is something that is happening in all global markets, not just in the EU, and that's how we have resorted to using the same standards with everyone in the world (including on the internet), not just with europe. The USB-C became a global standard because it dominated in the free market , before the EU standardized it. The single market is becoming a laggard , the global markets are dynamic enough to create their own standards, fast, now (e.g electric cars) Despite costly standardization processes, european brands did not gain in worldwide reach and competitiveness, in fact they have lost for the past 20 years and more. There used to be strong international brands (philips? siemens?) which are now much less global and arguably have lost from chinese and US companies. EU Cars are a strong market, but look at where these cars are made and sold, China is their main target market, not the Single market anymore. You rarely-or never- hear about a EU company that found EU-wide success before it became a global success. What the EU does have a is a lot of money, to subsidize businesses all over EU , but that has ended up eroding competitiveness, because companies end up competing for funds instead of competing for profits. The single market is of course a great idea, and mandatory in today's globalized world, but the EU today is much more than that.
- raizer88 3y ago
  >The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyway. Eu is giving much more aid than US https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tracker-europe-clearly-overtakes-us-with-total-commitments-now-twice-as-large/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    The suggestion that "russia won't last long anyway" sounds like famous last words. They might manage to lever Putin out, sometime in the next couple of decades; but I can't envisage a route to a Russia that's at peace with its neighbours, short of complete Russian military defeat in Ukraine.
rho4 3y ago
> "To Apple, the App Store is a side line." > "And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world." Apart from these 2 statements, I largely agree.
myaccountonhn 3y ago
> But the single market is what it’s for. Without it, the EU would cease to exist. To understand what motivates EU, as an organisation, you need to understand the single market The author writes that really the only point of the eu is to be a single market, but that’s not true. It has other goals, well stated in its principles and values, in which one is “establish an internal market.” It’s important because it’s a common right wing talking point where I live in the EU. The right wing use it as an argument for making EU weaker, because they think that it “has moved away from its original purpose, to be an economic union.”. No, its stated aim and values are not just that but many other. The author seems to make an argument the other way around, that it is only an economic union; there is a disconnect and both parties are wrong. It is not just an economic union and its stated goal was never to just be one. I also take issue with the claim that EU thinks an all-seeing surveillance state is a good thing. They recently repelled the chat control law proposal, and I know they consistently condemn Swedens surveillance for being too intrusive. This just doesn’t match with what he is saying. But I digress. It's important to realize that if you only understand eu in terms of a market without its other values, then you as a company might be working against their stated goals and be punished for other reasons. The author is far too reductionist.
alecco 3y ago
[flagged]
- 7moritz7 3y ago
  Because left-right patterns from the US don't properly transfer to pluralist democracies like most in the EU as well as the federal politics. You need more nuance than a black-white view.
  - alecco 3y ago
    > Because left-right patterns from the US don't properly transfer to pluralist democracies like most in the EU Perhaps you should check your own biases. The political spectrum comes from Europe. And I'm not American. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Historical_origin_of_the_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Historical_... My point stands, this post adds nothing of value. Even as opinion is a very average socialist position we've heard many, many times.
    - 7moritz7 3y ago
      > very average socialist position There is no such thing as an "average left-wing socialist opinion". Socialists can be both right- and left-wing by your superficial spectrum. You are probably talking about Social Democrats, rarely labeled Socialist Democrats. Which is not the same as Socialists.
      - alecco 3y ago
        Again, it's obvious what I mean by socialists. It's not other groups using the word "socialist" in their name, like some communists (USSR) or national-socialists (Nationalsozialismus). I mean what universally is called "socialism" as a single word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International And you argue against my wording but not against my actual points. The post is bland and unoriginal.
overstay8930 3y ago
You can say the EU is doing good or bad, but what is reality is that this blog post is ignoring is that the European economy is kind of just falling apart right now directly because of these types of regulations and reforms. German labor unions are the weakest they’ve been in decades, Europe as a whole is an incredibly undesirable place to run a business in 2024, and EU companies have rested on their laurels so long that they couldn’t hope to even match American and Chinese R&D numbers in the next decade because of these types of regulations pretty much enforcing the status quo. Europeans have just relegated to the fact that they will always be subservient to American tech companies, which is just brain dead economic policy that will reverse course in 5-10 years once France and Germany shake hands and realize they’ve just fucked themselves over again. I know it’s not about that, but if you’re going to use anecdotes they should be accurate. The only people who think the EU is doing a good job handling tech are populists, not economists.
- screenobobeano 3y ago
  I’m an economist and the EU is clearly doing better than anyone right now and all my economist friends agree with me. I’m actually starting a business Europe right now and it’s going great.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  Yeah Europe (EU) has not performed the last 15+ years. Falling further behind the USA and parts of Asia is set to replace them in terms of stature. Limited technical innovation, disastrous energy policy, weak international demand, and an unaddressed migrant and reproduction crisis that will pressure their 20th century social systems, spell a bleak future for the EU. I expect tourism to continue to be strong as the prosperous from the US and Asia take in the charm of the old world.
- _visgean 3y ago
  >that the European economy is kind of just falling apart right now directly because of these types of regulations and reforms Is it though? GDP seems to be growing similarly to US, not as good but definetely not falling apart. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=EU-US-CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat...
kome 3y ago
This is a very good article. Overall, I believe that the American lifestyle, media, and politics are so pervasive and have such a global reach that many American managers (as well as academics) find themselves unable to work internationally. They truly believe that everything operates just like it does at home, and, on the surface, it appears to: everyone speaks English and has watched Friends. However, institutions are complex and multi-layered entities. Americans often struggle to deeply understand the institutional specificities of other countries, resulting in behavior that can be perceived as lacking humility or even as arrogant—worse yet, as superficial. A case in point is Apple. It's paradoxical: the more global your home culture becomes, the less able you are to perceive nuance and depth.
xkcd1963 3y ago
"Any time you see two entities of similar size fight" The EU and apple are certainly not of similar size. EU represents one sixth of the global economy (20 trillion) apple with 230 billion is a tiny insect in comparsion.
simonw 3y ago
The title of this piece is actually: "Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management"
bambax 3y ago
Really great article! With simple yet profound and general observations, such as: > The EU, as an organisation, has a specific economic theory that guides most of its actions. Once you understand the theory, they become very predictable. > Any time you see two entities of similar size fight, bet on the one that thinks it’s fighting for its life.
richrichie 3y ago
[flagged]
sealeck 3y ago
There's also another option where Apple is just going to wait/lobby the US government to apply pressure on the EU in the hope that this is effective (as it has been historically). In in the event of another Trump presidency (let us hope this doesn't happen) this is very likely to happen and Biden has made some moves in this direction. The fact that Europe is 100% reliant on the US to stop the Russians conquering Ukraine at the moment doesn't really help. See for example this letter https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-urge-biden-probe-eu-targeting-tech-firms-letter-2023-12-18/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-urge-biden-p... or https://www.politico.eu/article/senator-ted-cruz-slams-us-agency-collusion-eu-tech-rules-dsa/ https://www.politico.eu/article/senator-ted-cruz-slams-us-ag...
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Neither of those "examples" support the idea that the EU will "back off", especially since pummeling Big Tech is pretty much the only thing these days that has widespread bipartisan support. Your first link is just about congresspeople wanting the laws to be applied fairly. Of course, though, it is (the article also mentions that ByteDance is included), it's just that most big tech companies are from the US. The second article is just about Ted Cruz screeching "collusion!!" because some people in US government are meeting with their counterparts in the EU. That troll's gonna troll, it's a day ending in y.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  > The fact that Europe is 100% reliant on the US to stop the Russians conquering Ukraine at the moment This appears to be an "alternative fact", a type of fact that is popular in the USA. It's true that EU countries have historically underspent on defence. But as far as I can see, US supplies of materiel amount to be some MANPADs, some handheld anti-tank missiles, and some Patriot batteries. The (14?) promised Abrams tanks don't seem to have arrived yet; nor have the promised F-16s.
  - olabyne 3y ago
    Yes. Looking in the details the US is #1 in material goods. Financial #1 supporter is EU. And things are changing, with doubts and critics in the US and unity and wake-up calls in the EU https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...
kragen 3y ago
> The single market is, from the perspective of the EU itself, its single most important project. although i am not of course the eu itself, nor do i even live there, i think this is incorrect world war i lasted from 01914 to 01918 and killed 17 million people world war ii in europe started 21 years later, lasting from 01939 to 01945 (though it started earlier in china) and killed 73 million people, mostly in russia the 'european communities' were founded in 01952, 7 years later, and later grew into the eu. their single most important project was, and is, preventing or at least delaying world war iii, because it was, and is, widely believed that world war iii will kill a substantial fraction of the world's population, reducing the level of human development substantially and possibly causing human extinction this is commonly believed to be more important than the single market, even, i venture to say, within the eu world war iii may have started now; in retrospect, we may decide that it started in february 02014 the post is of course correct that the single market was a major instrument of this peace from the beginning, but it was and is only one such instrument, not the final product. in terms of keeping governments from bombing each other, probably the atomic cooperation is even more important
- olabyne 3y ago
  it's really not easy to read your way of writing dates.
- Isinlor 3y ago
  > probably the atomic cooperation is even more important That's why I don't understand why Budapest Memorandum signatories allow Russia for breaking the security guarantees. Ukraine gave up fully the third biggest nuclear arsenal for security guarantees from Russia, USA, France and UK. To me it seems pretty clear that if Ukraine falls then nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation is dead. And that my country, Poland, should seek to develop nuclear weapons.
  - kragen 3y ago
    i agree that nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation is dead. and clearly it is the case that countries that do not develop nuclear weapons will not enjoy westphalian sovereignty as they did for the previous few centuries, but it's not clear that westphalian sovereignty in the nuclear age was the stable equilibrium that it was in the gunpowder age, and now drones have probably made nuclear weapons obsolete, with so-far-unforeseeable consequences for the contours of international relations it's possible that pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of westphalian sovereignty under those circumstances will just make the situation worse and increase the chances of human extinction, which (i feel safe in saying) would be a worse outcome for poland
Aissen 3y ago
I mostly disagree on the analysis, because it starts from the premise that Apple will lose more by continuing with the current stance. IMHO, that's backwards: being a for-profit company, Apple (and to a lesser extent, Google) has been using every lever they get to stall for time and get a few more quarters of those sweet App Store profits. Whether it's a bad strategy to wait until the very last time to comply is still to be seen. Still, a very interesting read I'll keep to the back of my mind.
epistasis 3y ago
> But the single market is what it’s for. Without it, the EU would cease to exist. To understand what motivates EU, as an organisation, you need to understand the single market. > Whenever I point out on social media that the single market is the purpose of the EU, I get bombarded by replies saying: “No you’re wrong. The EU was founded to preserve peace in Europe. Gotcha! I think the author is right here, and that this misapprehension is way too common. The EU was a way for a bunch of colonizing countries to get rid of their colonies and still keep their level of wealth. Call it "peace" but that all comes back to having enough economic productivity that had previously come from their colonial wealth extraction. I think that to the extent that the EY does not understand that it's there for economic productivity, the more that the EU will fall further behind the US on productivity and wealth of the populace.
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  The EU was created in 1993, not sure how at that time colonies were anywhere relevant to the creation. The starting point was the European Coal and Steel Communion in 1951 (conceived 1950, with France, W Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) which had as an objective to create lasting peace between France and Germany by making it practically impossible from resource pooling to go to war.
  - epistasis 3y ago
    The EU is the continuation of the efforts at integration started in the 1950s. It took the loss of the colonies to really cement the future economic integration. The idea that economic integration prevents war has been fairly well shattered by Russia's warmongering. There are often reasons cited that sound good to the public, but these are not necessarily the same as the true reasons that really motivate the actions of nations and individuals. That's actually the entire idea behind markets: simply asking people what they want or having them vote is not a substitute for putting their actual material interests into play by spending money in a market. The idea of "less or no war" is a good sell, but "we need to keep prosperity after giving up our colonies" is a material interest that comes down to the basic need to eat.
Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago
Speaking of facing reality about European politics, the so-called “fascism” that commentators such as this like to clutch their pearls over bears absolutely no resemblance to any of the actual 20th century European fascist movements. It’s just plain old Christian Democratic centrism of just a few of decades ago, of which coincidentally the EU happens to be the very brainchild. Anyone who values the EU single market should be very wary of pushing the Overton window so far to one side that the values that it was founded on and is sustained by falls off the other edge, and this goes for both directions, left and right.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zx10rse 3y ago
"Remember what I wrote about electrical plugs? The EU is pro-business – often criticised for being essentially a pro-business entity – and not in favour of regulation for regulation’s sake." Complete nonsense, where is the competitor to Apple in Europe? Google? Meta? SpaceX? Microsoft? Overregulation is completely destroying the market in which the whole power is consolidated to a few big monopolistic players backed, and liked by the EU. They are completely suffocating small, and medium businesses. Brussels was on fire just the last week if you haven't seen the news, farmers from all over Europe are protesting, because they are being suffocated with regulation to the point they need to throw their productions on the streets, and file for bankruptcy. I also find pretty funny the USB-C standardization praise as some sort of genius move by the EU bureaucrats, especially since Apple in 2015 decided that USB-C is the future and the whole industry followed. A single market is a totalitarian market it has nothing to do with free trade.
bjornsing 3y ago
I guess this is a good summary from someone with a primarily positive view of the EU. I’m a EU citizen with a more negative view of the union. Core to my understanding of the EU is the idea that “Europe is a garden, while the rest of the world is a jungle – we have built a garden” [1]. It’s a fundamentally different approach to legislation: instead of thinking about what rules would be fair and reasonable, European politicians start with the end result (“the garden”) and try to craft rules that will accomplish that result. If the rules turn out to be unreasonable from some perspective… “well you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs”. For Americans, coming from a common law system, this has a totalitarian feel to it. At least that’s my personal feeling. 1. https://youtu.be/ufAHg6hN4OA?si=OaZE89rGTZOtE0Hk https://youtu.be/ufAHg6hN4OA?si=OaZE89rGTZOtE0Hk
soueuls 3y ago
The author makes some good points. But then he also spends the few paragraphs laughing about executives operating based on beliefs/ideologies instead of facts. Just to talk about EU letting some countries sliding into fascism. Fascism : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition It seems that the author is also reasoning by pure ideology, ignoring simple facts. Absolutely no countries in the EU are remotely close to being a fascist state.
nojvek 3y ago
Apple is a bully. It is a bully well because it needs to show growth. Without growth their stock get hit and the leadership feels pain. Apple is in a tough position. It is losing market share in China to Huawei. The Chinese economy is feeling the pinch and they are spending less. EU is hitting them with fines. In US they aren’t growing much. The Vision Pro was a dud. The easiest option is to be a bully.

352 points by M2Ys4U 3y ago

tiptup300 3y ago

[flagged]

krtab 3y ago
This is currently the only comment on the 1st post of the front page. Peak HN moment.
- Traubenfuchs 3y ago
  At last, schizoposting has arrived on HN.
ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago
The EU being discussed is, in fact, the European Union.
- tiptup300 3y ago
  The article as of now on HN is showing "Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management" while the actual article title is "Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management". Very obviously I was not talking about what a "EU" is. But instead what the article is talking about, whatever big thing is going on with the EU, if you click in and miss the actual title, they are burying the lead quite heavily. In some form this seems to be how EU is putting tighter push on Apple in some way, but the headline as shown on HN doesn't give you any information. Just telling you that you are bad at your job if you don't think correctly about this big thing going on with EU, and if you don't even know what big thing is going on with the EU, while you're already out of the game.

e12e 3y ago

Editorialided headline, the title is: > Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management

lapcat 3y ago
That's 13 characters too long for the HN title limit.
- blowski 3y ago
  This fits: > Facing reality, whether Apple or EU, is core requirement of good management
  - e12e 3y ago
    That is much better, the initial change focus on "Facing reality about the EU", rather than "Facing reality is a core requirement of good management". Granted, the EU aside is also important.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
Not really, but I guess they should have left 'Apple' in? It's not like they added anything to the headline.
- e12e 3y ago
  They (probably inadvertently) added emphasis on EU, rather than: > Facing reality (...) is a core requirement for good management
M2Ys4U 3y ago
Yeah, I had to make the change because HN has a length-limit on headlines

hef19898 3y ago

Expected some meme-worthy content about bad EU-regulations and such. Was surprised to read a well thought out piece about how good managers have to accept and work with facts and reality. Take my upvote!

abtinf 3y ago

Everything you need to know about government bureaucracy, including the EU’s, you can learn from watching the TV show “Yes, Minister.”

pavlov 3y ago
And the next level of enlightenment is that you can further learn everything about corporate bureaucracy by combining the learnings from "Yes, Minister" with the American "The Office". It's not any better in the private world, but the sociopaths are a bit more money-oriented.
- ltbarcly3 3y ago
  So you agree government agencies are run by sociopaths? Then we should strive to reduce their influence on us, just like we would want to reduce corporate power over us?
- hef19898 3y ago
  Money, sex and power are interchangable when it comes to sociopathic, power hungry people.
mjburgess 3y ago
I think you meant to say, "Everything I know"

dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago

What amazes and perplexes me is that Apple thinks it can effectively play politics against the EU and that somehow their customers will back them in the face of the "consequences" Apple applies, which are pretty transparent and really quite amateurish (eg no more web apps for you!). As the article states, the first mistake Apple makes is thinking the EU is somehow like the US, but I can't see how any large proportion of Apple's customers will back Apple's actions against their own government. EU citizens haven't been brainwashed into thinking that their government is their enemy, at least not to the same extent as the US.

Ekaros 3y ago
And even if they are thinking that government is their enemy. That doesn't mean companies like Apple are their friends or allies either...
pokepim 3y ago
[dead]
mjburgess 3y ago
It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better". Since we have so many consumer protections, much of how we end up engaging with the law around business practices is to our benefit. We're always aware we can raise bad business practices with an ombudsman (etc.). So our lived experience of government regulation is, in large part, positive. The fringe american "all regulation is bad" is hyped up for certain media causes, but very alien to most in practice. It's essentially unimaginable to the ordinary european that large corporations would have a better social conscience than government.
- pydry 3y ago
  >It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better". The notion of regulation as being on a sliding scale where "more is worse" was a manufactured American meme created by the Kochs in the 1980s. It emerged from some of their epic fights with the environmental protection agency and their subsequent lobbying and public relations outreach efforts that followed. They set up and funded number of institutions dedicated to telling this story (and others, including that one about hairdresser licensing). The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Cato Institute to name a few. If you think about it for a few seconds, dumbing down a complex system like laws or regulation to "more vs less" is quite stupid. It's like saying that some programmers believe in "more lines of code" and some believe in "fewer". Do you want more laws or fewer laws? The question doesn't make sense. You want the right kind of laws, right? Ones that are as simple as possible and no simpler. The same for code. I think it's important to put this type of thing in a historical context though. These ideas and stories don't emerge out of nowhere - there is usually money behind them. In this case, it was money from an oil and chemicals company that had a singular goal - to fight the EPA - so it could destroy the natural environment in America with absolute impunity.

redwood 3y ago

I understand where the author is coming from and It is important to have a realist perspective on what is driving European strategy or else we will be in denial. I think it's also important to recognize that the west are interconnected in many real ways beyond economic. The first and most clearly top of mind recently is the US defense umbrella which allows the EU to invest on other things instead of defense. Another less talked about is how the US subsidizes most of global R&D for healthcare by virtue of the obscene amount Americans pay and hence make profitable that industry to the benefit of all of humanity. For American companies to contemplate selling into or building offices and having employees in Europe is to contemplate a set of trade-offs.. there's a reason why European employees are typically paid far less, it has to do with the fact that there's far less flexibility if they are a bad hire coupled with the fact that they have much better benefits provided by their governments and hence their money goes a lot further. That is of course related to the fact that they are not generally paying much for defense. Everyone is self interested and when we see the Europeans talk about human rights on the one hand but then do big wine and dine trips in China to sell their luxury goods on the other hand you see clear evidence of that fact. As much as many Europeans may loathe the united states, in the grand scheme of things we are far more interwoven with each other and ultimately entering a new cold war with China and decisions will need to be made over time around where to place bets around self-reliance. I'm sure Europeans love to sell to China but they will not love the glut of Chinese Imports that will decimate their protectionist economies at a level far more aggressive than they've ever experienced across the Atlantic

hef19898 3y ago
See, and therw I was worried we'd have a discussion HN involcing the EU without anyone sharing all those meme and myths about the EU, labour laws, salaries... Thank you for holding up the flag!
- jdright 3y ago
  incredibile amount of delusion of grandeur on that one.
tsak 3y ago

zarzavat 3y ago

At least in the case of Apple, it’s not at all specific the the EU. That company is run by children. Everybody who works with Apple, be it developers or suppliers complains about how shitty they are to work with. They maintain relationships by the strength of their market power alone. Bridge burning is ingrained into the company culture. Apple is treating the EU like they do everyone else: they are being dicks. Unfortunately they seem to have missed that the EU is not able to be bullied or pushed around.

noirscape 3y ago
I wouldn't say they're children. Rather, Apple is ran by people who are used to the ~20 years of free corporate reign granted to them by the complete defanging of groups like the FTC in the US while Europe was still trying to fruitlessly coax them into being cooperative. It's not just Apple who is struggling to work in an environment where regulators have teeth; Amazon tried to treat the EU the same way and got banned from lobbying the EU parliament for not taking them seriously. Basically the only GAFAM company that took regulators seriously for a while was Microsoft (due to the IE lawsuits) but even they are starting to act out again as of late.
- Sammi 3y ago
  The meteoric rise of MS Azure in Europe is best explained by how they have already had their war with the EU and learned how to work with the EU instead of against it.
overstay8930 3y ago
Apple saw what happened when Google was nice to developers and got shitty camera views in apps and adobe flash. Apple has rightfully concluded that developers do not deserve to have any freedom on their platform because they immediately abuse it for their benefit and to the detriment of the user. Devs got so bad meta lost billions in value when Apple set up a privacy transparency feature in the App Store, say what you want about their repair practices but no other tech company takes this much care in managing their platform.

dsign 3y ago

> And, as an institution, they are largely all too convinced that an all-seeing universal surveillance state would be a good thing, actually. Not that I disagree, but where is the light in this tunnel? Increased police surveillance seems to be a common theme in USA, UK and Australia. And countries with less advanced democracies--to say nothing of Russia or China--are not climbing faster into the surveillance wagon mostly because of financial reasons.

spacebanana7 3y ago

Ironically, many of Apple's most aggressive policies are designed to protect its own 'Single Market'.

oatmeal1 3y ago

Are there any counterexamples to what the author presents as the inevitability of European open market regulations? > And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world. Boy, wouldn't it be horrible if we got more Tesla's, SpaceX's, Starlink's, and freedom of speech on social media in the world!

hef19898 3y ago
More governmwnt subsidized launch companies, car makers building shitty cars with bad servicing networks and more right wing BS on the internet? Yes, why puldn't we want that?
mst 3y ago
SpaceX is awesome and I'm glad we have -one- Elon Musk but I'm not convinced we need more than that.
Mashimo 3y ago
> freedom of speech on social media in the world! Did that get better? I though twitter fired a lot of lawyers who held up freedom of speech and now the company is folding against governments like Turkey. But I have mostly only read headlines. Would love to read more about it.
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  Twitter revealed illegal government censorship of US social media because Elon bought it and was transparent. That's what I'm referring to. I don't know much about Twitter's legal fights against authoritarian countries' censorship of free speech, but that doesn't seem like a particularly winnable battle anyway.
  - Mashimo 3y ago
    Well they tried. For example here: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0UL13A/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0UL13A/ Even if it would result in twitter being blocked in Turkey. Now they rolled over https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-censoring-content-recep-tayyip-erdogan-turkish-presidential-election/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-censoring-content-recep... Do you have more information about the "illegal government censorship of US social media"?

ltbarcly3 3y ago

This reads like a 10th graders report, just repeating arguments found on the internet. The criticism of forcing apple to abandon a superior connector for phones to standardize charger cords, while every other building you go into in Europe has a different outlet that is incompatible with the charger you want to plug in is perfectly reasonable. The idea that there is some great benefit to making sure there is only one connector on the so cheap they are basically disposable cords is fundamentally stupid. The fact that the EU regulators can arbitrarily go after companies is a real problem.

Mashimo 3y ago
Gosh damn you Denmark! You where super late to the party and then choose to be special :( https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1545/5143/files/Plugs_of_the_World_8e1e3925-09c0-4550-94db-04451a88864c_480x480.png?v=1652109070 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1545/5143/files/Plugs_of_t... That really grinds my gears. But I think the narrow 2 pin plug can be used in most EU countries. --------- >The fact that the EU regulators can arbitrarily go after companies is a real problem. Do they go arbitrarily after companies though?
- ltbarcly3 3y ago
  At least all the phones will use the mechanically defective USB-C connector though. Huge win for labor unions and internal market?
  - Mashimo 3y ago
    I have no idea about USB C connector being mechanically defective, but how would that relate to labor unions? And how does that relate to my question?
    - ltbarcly3 3y ago
      In the original article it references internal market and labor unions a dozen times or more. I would say you should read it, but it is not worth your time.

entropyie 3y ago

Can't believe this had to be spelled out... The article is very well written and simple to understand, so hats off to the author. Ironically, I've been putting off buying an iPhone because of the walled garden... Being able to side-load app stores and charge via USB-c might actually get me to switch. Because the surveillance inside Android apps is frankly obscene at this stage.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Havoc 3y ago

Reminds me of trump repeatedly trying to make trade deals with individual EU countries. Only had to explain it 11 times until for it to sink it. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-eu-2017-4?amp https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-merkel-germany-e...

ajuc 3y ago
It worked for Putin (see Nord Streams for example) so Trump wanted it too :)
- s_dev 3y ago
  That still needed EU approval. Ireland can sell it's beef to the US at a different rate than other EU countries (all Irish beef is grass fed and thus premium grade) again needs EU approval. The EU doesn't mind exceptions to her rules once it can approve or disapprove of them thus preserving the EU trading bloc. People really do think there is a 'gotcha' though e.g. US President Trump getting schooled by Merkel thinking he could just repeat the question and she would give in. I can assure you though these things are very rules based.
  - ajuc 3y ago
    > That still needed EU approval Half the EU (basically the whole Eastern Europe) protested. Germany did it anyway.
    - s_dev 3y ago
      Germany holds a lot of sway in the EU. My point is that Germany didn't do this unilaterally.
      - ajuc 3y ago
        No, they did it bilaterally (with Russia) because France didn't mind. This is the problem with EU.

mdrzn 3y ago

Finally more people are figuring out that the EU is a net positive and not a net negative. Love my Europe.

overstay8930 3y ago
[flagged]
- simonbarker87 3y ago
  Most people work for big companies or smaller companies supplying big companies. A tiny percentage of the economy is the typical start up model. Start ups !== the economy.
  - overstay8930 3y ago
    It’s almost as if large investments are a sign of a good economic outlook.
- 7moritz7 3y ago
  https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-netherlands-companies/more-brexit-companies-shift-to-the-netherlands-as-uncertainty-persists-idUSKBN2AI0DR/ https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-netherlands-co...
  - overstay8930 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - 7moritz7 3y ago
      > rapidly declining Source? I need it urgently because a lot of my money is on the stock market both in the US and EU and I seem to have missed something significant
      - 3y ago

bschne 3y ago

> "(...) best seen in the popularity of mass lay-offs – a strategy that has been resoundly proven to be counter-productive, costly, even disastrous, along multiple dimensions, over multiple decades of study." This is the first time I read that big layoffs are "disastrous" for companies vs. some other approach in these situations (other maybe than the rather obvious fact that companies who are conducting mass layoffs are often in dire straits to begin with). I'm assuming "for companies" is implied here, because the way I read the sentence, the author is saying doing mass layoffs is misguided from the point of view of company management, not someone altruistically trying to maximize welfare in society overall or something like that. Does anyone have a good source for this?

Luker88 3y ago

It's rare to find someone with a very different starting point of view, and still don't feel any antagonism at all during the reasoning. As an European for example I would attribute most of his general criticism of EU to the US but after much entrenching on "Apple vs EU" this felt like a reasonable third view. Kudos to the author

huijzer 3y ago

> There are a few examples of this trend towards denying reality. The starkest one being Elon Musk behaving as if European labour unions don’t exist and that labour is entirely powerless, leading his companies to lose money on strikes and other collective actions. > And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world. I can agree that labour unions are real, but I see little evidence that Elon Musk denies reality. Maybe that's the picture you get when you read only the news. If you watch any full length interview with him he seems pretty down to earth (or "grounded" if you want to call it like that).

cynicalsecurity 3y ago
Give an impression and actually be are two different things.

roenxi 3y ago

I quite like the article as far as it goes; but this begs the follow up question - is the strategy working? Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America. This should be an article about how Nokia or equivalent is approaching the US all wrong and not understanding the realities on the ground. I'd put energy in a similar frame. Energy matters a lot, and for all the optimistic noise around the Energiewende, the solar industry ended up in China. Wind power Europe has managed a company in the top ten, so that is pretty good [0]. Given the growing energy crisis in Europe, this seems to be an area of failure that needs more focus in how the common market is performing. The EU's successes seem a bit mild. I remain sceptical that harmonizing charging cables is an important enough dot point to appear on these lists, it looks like there is just a lack of success stories out of the EU. The failures are catastrophic; last I heard the farmers had just started rioting too [1] which is a bad omen. [0] https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-wind-power-companies/ https://www.zippia.com/advice/largest-wind-power-companies/ [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/26/farmers-protests-brussels-eu-agriculture-leaders-riot-police https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/26/farmers-...

nonethewiser 3y ago
> Because for all their standards and harmonisation, the manufacturing is happening in China and the decisions are being made in North America. Seems like this holds true more generally. The manufacturing is happening in China, the decisions are being made in North America, and the regulation in the EU. Its like direct (US), produce (China), react (EU)
- 2devnull 3y ago
  China can regulate more effectively than the EU. They have actual concentration camps. Look at Jack Ma. The EU has cookie banners. That’s not regulation, it’s a speed bump. Consider that the US cannot manufacture things because our environmental and labor regulations are so strict as to make it impossible. The idea that America doesn’t have regulations is not accurate. We have regulated the regulation, so it appears less regulatory but it is not.

bengale 3y ago

"They were behaving like Elon Musk. And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world." I'm not a fan of his behaviour on Twitter, but the idea that the world does not want more Elon Musks seems insane to me. Theyre not for me personally, but whatever you think about Teslas I don't see how you would not want a person who can build a new car company. Just look at other entrants like Rivian, it's so hard, and he managed to will that into existence. The fact that I can then move onto SpaceX is unbelievable. He willed reusable rockets into existence and made it into a sustainable business. Starlink, just look at starlink. Where is Blue Origin? Would we really not want more of that, even if it led to more nonsense on Twitter?

kitsune_ 3y ago
Insane is a bit of a strong word, no? If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars. Musk started SpaceX in 2002.
- bengale 3y ago
  Maybe one of the Musks this person doesn't want would build trains. It's another huge undertaking.
- gizmo 3y ago
  Maybe, but imagine how large a rocket SpaceX would have to build to launch a train into orbit.
  - _visgean 3y ago
    Maybe thats the true motivation for the starship?
- Sebb767 3y ago
  > If Musk was a visionary he would have built trains, not cars Cars are not going anywhere and train lines are incredibly hard to build [1]. You have to work with the world you have, not with a perfect green field dream. [1] You need massive amounts of connected land, a lot of it in places where land is really expensive and people are not willing to sell to you easily. Additionally, you have building restrictions (not a lot of cities will let you bulldoze hundreds of homes for your train line) and - I can't stress this enough - all of this land needs to be connected, which makes avoiding problematic areas just so much harder.

ryukoposting 3y ago

Nicely written. Great management processes the reality of workplace and society, and applies that information to maximize their employees' effectiveness. Managers are human and thus they have opnions, but great management doesn't let their opinions cloud their judgement when it comes time to manage. I'll admit that, as an engineer, I appreciate that someone is trying to rein in my industry's worst instincts, even if that someone isn't America and they aren't necessarily succeeding on every front. So yes, I have a bias.

lettergram 3y ago

This honestly just sounds like a lot of whining from the author. As someone who’s set in rooms with loads of regulators (1) you can pretty much always compromise with them. (2) they want to ensure criteria is met & typically not penalties nor want you to leave a market It’s more accurate to think of regulators as customers. They just have different requirements they need to solve their problem. Rarely are they protecting consumers imo. Usually they’re there protecting government or other powerful interest. Regardless, we would do something similar to Apple with regulators. “Look it’ll take 18 months to implement X. It’ll also cost $Y. If you push this issue we won’t make a profit and we will exit the market. Are you sure you want us to do that?” “No no no. We just need this and that safe guard in place.” “Alright, we can implement the first one in 2 months, that last one will take time, let’s work on a roadmap.” And that’s how it really functions.

mousetree 3y ago
In your meetings with regulators how often have you seen the "we'll exit the market" bluff actually work? I can't see many companies wilfully exiting the third largest market in the world.
- seszett 3y ago
  This is basically just an American fantasy. It's a way to make the point that "since these foreigners are so ungrateful, we will stop blessing them with our wonderful products if they don't please us, and then they will have to live in the mud and the cold like they used to do before, without an iPhone or a Twitter account".

pjc50 3y ago

This is a really excellent article. It's very important to have a good understanding of what the other side's argument actually is in situations like this. EU politics is not at all like Anglosphere politics; it remains very machine-technocratic, rather than the clickbait-circus that dominates Anglo politics at the moment.

Beretta_Vexee 3y ago

A common mistake is to think that the EU is limited to a few large economies (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Holland), but this is not the case. Ensuring that a Croatian SME can win contracts with the French or Germans is one of the EU's priority objectives. This is how the EU has lifted millions of people out of poverty. This is a very tangible reality. It worked with East Germany, Spain, Poland, the Baltic States and now the Balkans. The European Commission is litteraly there to ensure that a water heater designed by an Italian, made by a Romanian from Polish steel, inspected by an Italian and put on the market by a Frenchman guarantees high quality standards. They take this mission very seriously because it's not just about protectionism or trade competition. It's a political project of peace and improvement of the living standards for Europeans. You'd have to know very little about the European Union to believe that it was prepared to negotiate or grant a free pass to Apple.

jillesvangurp 3y ago
The practical implication of this is also that it is a huge market. You can ignore that at your own peril. And another thing is that the EU is inspiring other countries to also change their regulations. In the end what companies need to decide is if they can afford losing and alienating major markets across the globe. E.g. Apple sells lots of iphones and other hardware in the EU. That should be more valuable than giving themselves preferential treatment in their own store, banning competitors from using their browser on IOS, and other anti competitive things that they are doing. And that's just Apple. Arguably, Google, Amazon, Meta, etc. each have their own issues with regulations in the EU.
Aerroon 3y ago
When Bulgarian truckers started outcompeting French truckers the EU came up with new rules to shut that down. Requiring that the truck has to go back to the country the company is from every 2 months is ridiculous. Not the driver, the vehicle.
- bojan 3y ago
  Why would it be ridiculous, if a truck has a Bulgarian license plate it's a reasonable expectation that it's based in Bulgaria.

mgoetzke 3y ago

Well designed argument, the weird Elon Musk references aside.

nonethewiser 3y ago

> You can’t be a good manager or executive, in any industry, if you operate in constant denial of the facts on the ground. Arguing from ideology or beliefs that aren’t grounded in observation, measurement, or study, is the hallmark of a politician or media personality, not a manager responsible for other people’s jobs. This makes me think of John Mearsheimer’s breakdown of realism vs liberalism in the context of inter relations on Fridman’s podcast. He suggests American leaders are particularly idealistic (operating on “should”) whereas others are realists (operating on “what is”). I wonder if its more universal than political leadership.

klabb3 3y ago

The author is right but makes a similar mistake as the Americans, given he’s European. He does not clarify what market means. This can be perplexing and misunderstood by an American audience. Market in the US is such a different thing. American companies like TurboTax and Comcast are operating (by American standards) right within the market. In fact, probably “better” than everyone else. The market is a Wild West where the goal is domination of a segment, ideally multiple ones. Like United healthcare is today. In the EU markets mean competitive (more traditional) markets. For instance, the telecom roaming charges he brings up, are a perfect example of a Comcast-like perverted industry that simply got broken up. It used to be ludicrous prices - pushing people towards hotel WiFi or a surprise bill - then suddenly there are 10s of GB free. Nobody died and everyone got it better. In America, this would be the equivalent of waking up one day and ISP prices had dropped by half and there are 10 providers to choose from, basically no matter where you lived. Having lived in the US, nobody expects this. Even with things like student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare etc nobody actually expects these things to come without absolute giant catches - layering of new bureaucracy and hidden fees. So there’s a skepticism against these things. By extension, there is skepticism against the EU. “What are they up to, those sneaky fucks?” As a European with a decent leaning towards classical markets and liberalism, my take is that the US has truly reached market perversion, to the extent that Milton Friedman would roll in his grave. The neo-liberalist pro-corporate tilt that we're seeing in the US today is beyond what I’d argue even the most laissez faire economical thinkers of the 20th century. It’s the opposite of what a free market should be. All the arguments for economic liberalism are based in the freedom to compete fairly. Without that, it’s just oligarchy with a different flag.

dboreham 3y ago
Agree. Nobody in the US expects anything to ever get fixed. Prime example: healthcare.
spuz 3y ago
I'm also from the EU, not the US but I have a hard time believing that Americans believe that monopolies or large dominant companies represent anything but the corruption of the concept of a market. Anti-trust laws in the US are some of the strongest in the world even if they are rarely enforced. I acknowledge they don't experience the benefits of free markets in many areas but I think they know what they should look like.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

But that is nothing compared to the reality that the EU is not facing: You know who is even more important than the EU to the peace and security of Europe? The United States. The audience for the whining of the American tech companies isn’t the EU consumer, it’s the US voter. They are pushing the narrative that the EU is a bully beating up on innovative American companies. And with the rise of the “America First” isolationist faction in the US, they might find an audience for the US Government to start taking action against the EU and/or retaliate against EU companies for the perceived bullying of US companies by the EU.

nprateem 3y ago

You could just write "PESTLE analysis" and be done

f0e4c2f7 3y ago

This article feels fairly naive to me. One possibility is that the EU is doing what is written on the tin and executives and companies are foolishly misunderstanding. Another possibility is that reality is more nuanced and that executives are playing edge cases where profitable, like they do in other countries and jurisdictions. Instead of seeing the EU (or any other system) explicitly as what is described in founding documents or official meetings, there is another perspective. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_w...

dangus 3y ago

I think the one place where the author is mistaken is in the incentives for these big tech companies. I think they fully understand what the EU is about. If Apple can delay for a month or a year on giving the EU what they want it’s very unlikely that any fine is going to be a net negative for them. One more month of the App Store pulling in its Monopoly money is a huge amount of revenue for Apple. One more month of Facebook collecting private data is another month of higher profits. The EU cellular companies benefitted from the removal of roaming charges but Apple won’t benefit from being forced to allow alternate app stores. Corporations in Europe may benefit from their single market regulations but not many corporations in the EU are the size of Apple or Google and have the same profit incentives. (I also think that equating Elon Musk’s bad management to companies like Apple and Google that have generally good management is something of a false equivalency)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

pjerem 3y ago

In fact I’m really amazed that Apple is trying to play games trying to circumvent a brand new regulation (the DMA), while totally ignoring the fact that they are amongst he primary targets of those regulations. It’s like they don’t understand that any circumvent will just sharpen the 1.01 version of the regulation. They are only gaining some time until the next iteration but it just shows that they are afraid they can’t function anymore by just providing greater products than competitors. DMA isn’t banning the App Store, it still can be the number one store and it still can be a money printer. Except that it will have to be better than competitors.

marcosdumay 3y ago
I doubt they are gaining time. Any judge will just look and say "hey, that's clearly what the legislators meant from the beginning".

seydor 3y ago

The discussion about Apple is kind-of meh, as apple is not such a big deal in europe, as most phones are not iphones. But the nostalgic view of the EU as some kind of free market pioneer is stuck in the 90s. Today's world and EU are very different. Nobody rememebrs WW2 and europe is too weak to start another war. The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyway. Standardization is something that is happening in all global markets, not just in the EU, and that's how we have resorted to using the same standards with everyone in the world (including on the internet), not just with europe. The USB-C became a global standard because it dominated in the free market , before the EU standardized it. The single market is becoming a laggard , the global markets are dynamic enough to create their own standards, fast, now (e.g electric cars) Despite costly standardization processes, european brands did not gain in worldwide reach and competitiveness, in fact they have lost for the past 20 years and more. There used to be strong international brands (philips? siemens?) which are now much less global and arguably have lost from chinese and US companies. EU Cars are a strong market, but look at where these cars are made and sold, China is their main target market, not the Single market anymore. You rarely-or never- hear about a EU company that found EU-wide success before it became a global success. What the EU does have a is a lot of money, to subsidize businesses all over EU , but that has ended up eroding competitiveness, because companies end up competing for funds instead of competing for profits. The single market is of course a great idea, and mandatory in today's globalized world, but the EU today is much more than that.

raizer88 3y ago
>The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyway. Eu is giving much more aid than US https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tracker-europe-clearly-overtakes-us-with-total-commitments-now-twice-as-large/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  The suggestion that "russia won't last long anyway" sounds like famous last words. They might manage to lever Putin out, sometime in the next couple of decades; but I can't envisage a route to a Russia that's at peace with its neighbours, short of complete Russian military defeat in Ukraine.

rho4 3y ago

> "To Apple, the App Store is a side line." > "And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world." Apart from these 2 statements, I largely agree.

myaccountonhn 3y ago

> But the single market is what it’s for. Without it, the EU would cease to exist. To understand what motivates EU, as an organisation, you need to understand the single market The author writes that really the only point of the eu is to be a single market, but that’s not true. It has other goals, well stated in its principles and values, in which one is “establish an internal market.” It’s important because it’s a common right wing talking point where I live in the EU. The right wing use it as an argument for making EU weaker, because they think that it “has moved away from its original purpose, to be an economic union.”. No, its stated aim and values are not just that but many other. The author seems to make an argument the other way around, that it is only an economic union; there is a disconnect and both parties are wrong. It is not just an economic union and its stated goal was never to just be one. I also take issue with the claim that EU thinks an all-seeing surveillance state is a good thing. They recently repelled the chat control law proposal, and I know they consistently condemn Swedens surveillance for being too intrusive. This just doesn’t match with what he is saying. But I digress. It's important to realize that if you only understand eu in terms of a market without its other values, then you as a company might be working against their stated goals and be punished for other reasons. The author is far too reductionist.

alecco 3y ago

[flagged]

7moritz7 3y ago
Because left-right patterns from the US don't properly transfer to pluralist democracies like most in the EU as well as the federal politics. You need more nuance than a black-white view.
- alecco 3y ago
  > Because left-right patterns from the US don't properly transfer to pluralist democracies like most in the EU Perhaps you should check your own biases. The political spectrum comes from Europe. And I'm not American. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Historical_origin_of_the_terms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Historical_... My point stands, this post adds nothing of value. Even as opinion is a very average socialist position we've heard many, many times.
  - 7moritz7 3y ago
    > very average socialist position There is no such thing as an "average left-wing socialist opinion". Socialists can be both right- and left-wing by your superficial spectrum. You are probably talking about Social Democrats, rarely labeled Socialist Democrats. Which is not the same as Socialists.
    - alecco 3y ago
      Again, it's obvious what I mean by socialists. It's not other groups using the word "socialist" in their name, like some communists (USSR) or national-socialists (Nationalsozialismus). I mean what universally is called "socialism" as a single word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_International And you argue against my wording but not against my actual points. The post is bland and unoriginal.

overstay8930 3y ago

You can say the EU is doing good or bad, but what is reality is that this blog post is ignoring is that the European economy is kind of just falling apart right now directly because of these types of regulations and reforms. German labor unions are the weakest they’ve been in decades, Europe as a whole is an incredibly undesirable place to run a business in 2024, and EU companies have rested on their laurels so long that they couldn’t hope to even match American and Chinese R&D numbers in the next decade because of these types of regulations pretty much enforcing the status quo. Europeans have just relegated to the fact that they will always be subservient to American tech companies, which is just brain dead economic policy that will reverse course in 5-10 years once France and Germany shake hands and realize they’ve just fucked themselves over again. I know it’s not about that, but if you’re going to use anecdotes they should be accurate. The only people who think the EU is doing a good job handling tech are populists, not economists.

screenobobeano 3y ago
I’m an economist and the EU is clearly doing better than anyone right now and all my economist friends agree with me. I’m actually starting a business Europe right now and it’s going great.
nemo44x 3y ago
Yeah Europe (EU) has not performed the last 15+ years. Falling further behind the USA and parts of Asia is set to replace them in terms of stature. Limited technical innovation, disastrous energy policy, weak international demand, and an unaddressed migrant and reproduction crisis that will pressure their 20th century social systems, spell a bleak future for the EU. I expect tourism to continue to be strong as the prosperous from the US and Asia take in the charm of the old world.
_visgean 3y ago
>that the European economy is kind of just falling apart right now directly because of these types of regulations and reforms Is it though? GDP seems to be growing similarly to US, not as good but definetely not falling apart. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=EU-US-CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locat...

kome 3y ago

This is a very good article. Overall, I believe that the American lifestyle, media, and politics are so pervasive and have such a global reach that many American managers (as well as academics) find themselves unable to work internationally. They truly believe that everything operates just like it does at home, and, on the surface, it appears to: everyone speaks English and has watched Friends. However, institutions are complex and multi-layered entities. Americans often struggle to deeply understand the institutional specificities of other countries, resulting in behavior that can be perceived as lacking humility or even as arrogant—worse yet, as superficial. A case in point is Apple. It's paradoxical: the more global your home culture becomes, the less able you are to perceive nuance and depth.

xkcd1963 3y ago

"Any time you see two entities of similar size fight" The EU and apple are certainly not of similar size. EU represents one sixth of the global economy (20 trillion) apple with 230 billion is a tiny insect in comparsion.

simonw 3y ago

The title of this piece is actually: "Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management"

bambax 3y ago

Really great article! With simple yet profound and general observations, such as: > The EU, as an organisation, has a specific economic theory that guides most of its actions. Once you understand the theory, they become very predictable. > Any time you see two entities of similar size fight, bet on the one that thinks it’s fighting for its life.

richrichie 3y ago

[flagged]

sealeck 3y ago

There's also another option where Apple is just going to wait/lobby the US government to apply pressure on the EU in the hope that this is effective (as it has been historically). In in the event of another Trump presidency (let us hope this doesn't happen) this is very likely to happen and Biden has made some moves in this direction. The fact that Europe is 100% reliant on the US to stop the Russians conquering Ukraine at the moment doesn't really help. See for example this letter https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-urge-biden-probe-eu-targeting-tech-firms-letter-2023-12-18/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-lawmakers-urge-biden-p... or https://www.politico.eu/article/senator-ted-cruz-slams-us-agency-collusion-eu-tech-rules-dsa/ https://www.politico.eu/article/senator-ted-cruz-slams-us-ag...

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Neither of those "examples" support the idea that the EU will "back off", especially since pummeling Big Tech is pretty much the only thing these days that has widespread bipartisan support. Your first link is just about congresspeople wanting the laws to be applied fairly. Of course, though, it is (the article also mentions that ByteDance is included), it's just that most big tech companies are from the US. The second article is just about Ted Cruz screeching "collusion!!" because some people in US government are meeting with their counterparts in the EU. That troll's gonna troll, it's a day ending in y.
denton-scratch 3y ago
> The fact that Europe is 100% reliant on the US to stop the Russians conquering Ukraine at the moment This appears to be an "alternative fact", a type of fact that is popular in the USA. It's true that EU countries have historically underspent on defence. But as far as I can see, US supplies of materiel amount to be some MANPADs, some handheld anti-tank missiles, and some Patriot batteries. The (14?) promised Abrams tanks don't seem to have arrived yet; nor have the promised F-16s.
- olabyne 3y ago
  Yes. Looking in the details the US is #1 in material goods. Financial #1 supporter is EU. And things are changing, with doubts and critics in the US and unity and wake-up calls in the EU https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/ https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-s...

kragen 3y ago

> The single market is, from the perspective of the EU itself, its single most important project. although i am not of course the eu itself, nor do i even live there, i think this is incorrect world war i lasted from 01914 to 01918 and killed 17 million people world war ii in europe started 21 years later, lasting from 01939 to 01945 (though it started earlier in china) and killed 73 million people, mostly in russia the 'european communities' were founded in 01952, 7 years later, and later grew into the eu. their single most important project was, and is, preventing or at least delaying world war iii, because it was, and is, widely believed that world war iii will kill a substantial fraction of the world's population, reducing the level of human development substantially and possibly causing human extinction this is commonly believed to be more important than the single market, even, i venture to say, within the eu world war iii may have started now; in retrospect, we may decide that it started in february 02014 the post is of course correct that the single market was a major instrument of this peace from the beginning, but it was and is only one such instrument, not the final product. in terms of keeping governments from bombing each other, probably the atomic cooperation is even more important

olabyne 3y ago
it's really not easy to read your way of writing dates.
Isinlor 3y ago
> probably the atomic cooperation is even more important That's why I don't understand why Budapest Memorandum signatories allow Russia for breaking the security guarantees. Ukraine gave up fully the third biggest nuclear arsenal for security guarantees from Russia, USA, France and UK. To me it seems pretty clear that if Ukraine falls then nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation is dead. And that my country, Poland, should seek to develop nuclear weapons.
- kragen 3y ago
  i agree that nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation is dead. and clearly it is the case that countries that do not develop nuclear weapons will not enjoy westphalian sovereignty as they did for the previous few centuries, but it's not clear that westphalian sovereignty in the nuclear age was the stable equilibrium that it was in the gunpowder age, and now drones have probably made nuclear weapons obsolete, with so-far-unforeseeable consequences for the contours of international relations it's possible that pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of westphalian sovereignty under those circumstances will just make the situation worse and increase the chances of human extinction, which (i feel safe in saying) would be a worse outcome for poland

Aissen 3y ago

I mostly disagree on the analysis, because it starts from the premise that Apple will lose more by continuing with the current stance. IMHO, that's backwards: being a for-profit company, Apple (and to a lesser extent, Google) has been using every lever they get to stall for time and get a few more quarters of those sweet App Store profits. Whether it's a bad strategy to wait until the very last time to comply is still to be seen. Still, a very interesting read I'll keep to the back of my mind.

epistasis 3y ago

> But the single market is what it’s for. Without it, the EU would cease to exist. To understand what motivates EU, as an organisation, you need to understand the single market. > Whenever I point out on social media that the single market is the purpose of the EU, I get bombarded by replies saying: “No you’re wrong. The EU was founded to preserve peace in Europe. Gotcha! I think the author is right here, and that this misapprehension is way too common. The EU was a way for a bunch of colonizing countries to get rid of their colonies and still keep their level of wealth. Call it "peace" but that all comes back to having enough economic productivity that had previously come from their colonial wealth extraction. I think that to the extent that the EY does not understand that it's there for economic productivity, the more that the EU will fall further behind the US on productivity and wealth of the populace.

RandomLensman 3y ago
The EU was created in 1993, not sure how at that time colonies were anywhere relevant to the creation. The starting point was the European Coal and Steel Communion in 1951 (conceived 1950, with France, W Germany, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) which had as an objective to create lasting peace between France and Germany by making it practically impossible from resource pooling to go to war.
- epistasis 3y ago
  The EU is the continuation of the efforts at integration started in the 1950s. It took the loss of the colonies to really cement the future economic integration. The idea that economic integration prevents war has been fairly well shattered by Russia's warmongering. There are often reasons cited that sound good to the public, but these are not necessarily the same as the true reasons that really motivate the actions of nations and individuals. That's actually the entire idea behind markets: simply asking people what they want or having them vote is not a substitute for putting their actual material interests into play by spending money in a market. The idea of "less or no war" is a good sell, but "we need to keep prosperity after giving up our colonies" is a material interest that comes down to the basic need to eat.

Tabular-Iceberg 3y ago

Speaking of facing reality about European politics, the so-called “fascism” that commentators such as this like to clutch their pearls over bears absolutely no resemblance to any of the actual 20th century European fascist movements. It’s just plain old Christian Democratic centrism of just a few of decades ago, of which coincidentally the EU happens to be the very brainchild. Anyone who values the EU single market should be very wary of pushing the Overton window so far to one side that the values that it was founded on and is sustained by falls off the other edge, and this goes for both directions, left and right.

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zx10rse 3y ago

"Remember what I wrote about electrical plugs? The EU is pro-business – often criticised for being essentially a pro-business entity – and not in favour of regulation for regulation’s sake." Complete nonsense, where is the competitor to Apple in Europe? Google? Meta? SpaceX? Microsoft? Overregulation is completely destroying the market in which the whole power is consolidated to a few big monopolistic players backed, and liked by the EU. They are completely suffocating small, and medium businesses. Brussels was on fire just the last week if you haven't seen the news, farmers from all over Europe are protesting, because they are being suffocated with regulation to the point they need to throw their productions on the streets, and file for bankruptcy. I also find pretty funny the USB-C standardization praise as some sort of genius move by the EU bureaucrats, especially since Apple in 2015 decided that USB-C is the future and the whole industry followed. A single market is a totalitarian market it has nothing to do with free trade.

bjornsing 3y ago

I guess this is a good summary from someone with a primarily positive view of the EU. I’m a EU citizen with a more negative view of the union. Core to my understanding of the EU is the idea that “Europe is a garden, while the rest of the world is a jungle – we have built a garden” [1]. It’s a fundamentally different approach to legislation: instead of thinking about what rules would be fair and reasonable, European politicians start with the end result (“the garden”) and try to craft rules that will accomplish that result. If the rules turn out to be unreasonable from some perspective… “well you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs”. For Americans, coming from a common law system, this has a totalitarian feel to it. At least that’s my personal feeling. 1. https://youtu.be/ufAHg6hN4OA?si=OaZE89rGTZOtE0Hk https://youtu.be/ufAHg6hN4OA?si=OaZE89rGTZOtE0Hk

soueuls 3y ago

The author makes some good points. But then he also spends the few paragraphs laughing about executives operating based on beliefs/ideologies instead of facts. Just to talk about EU letting some countries sliding into fascism. Fascism : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition It seems that the author is also reasoning by pure ideology, ignoring simple facts. Absolutely no countries in the EU are remotely close to being a fascist state.

nojvek 3y ago

Apple is a bully. It is a bully well because it needs to show growth. Without growth their stock get hit and the leadership feels pain. Apple is in a tough position. It is losing market share in China to Huawei. The Chinese economy is feeling the pinch and they are spending less. EU is hitting them with fines. In US they aren’t growing much. The Vision Pro was a dud. The easiest option is to be a bully.