I am very much against the type of regulations in the EU (or places like Brazil) that hurt freedom of speech or privacy of chats or whatever else. But I do support regulations to break up monopolies or remove other anti competitive barriers. We have too many large corporations that are so powerful that they are like governments. They distort our market but also our speech and politics and all that. Choice and competition is important. I think anti trust actions against Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Walmart, financial companies (JP Morgan Chase or Visa/Mastercard), medical industries, and others needs to go much further. And it can’t stop at the EU.
Powerful entities influence the world. The difference is that the government (in the EU) is ostensibly democratic and private companies are unaccountable optimization engines.
Not everything is democratic about the EU, since the top representatives are not elected by the people. Just like the United Nations is not a democratic organization. The EU president is not elected by popular vote, for example. She is appointed by the parliament, similar to how kings in the past were appointed by a council of lords.
Yes. But there is a difference between a president being elected by popular vote and a president being elected by a parliament. One of them is democratically elected. The other is not. EU citizens are not allowed to vote for the EU president.
And a parliament is not necessarily a democratically elected body, historically they weren't. The EU parliament is though.
I think this may be a misunderstanding of the word "president". The role you're talking about is more like that of the Speaker of the House in the US or the UK. Both are elected by members of the chamber, not a popular vote.
> The role you're talking about is more like that of the Speaker of the House in the US or the UK. Both are elected by members of the chamber, not a popular vote.
Not really. The commission president is certainly (not even remotely) the equivalent of the Speaker in the British parliament (maybe a slightly closer in the US).
Not even Prime Minister would be a real equivalent since the commission isn't appointed by the parliament and it has relative very little say in what the commission does. In certain ways it's not fundamentally that different from some of the pseudo-democratic European states in the 1800s where the job of parliament was only to rubber stamp the laws written by the appointed government (of course there is no equivalent of the King/Emperor).
I'm confused. We started off talking about how the President of the European Parliament is elected, but now you're talking about the European Commission. Those are separate bodies, the latter drafts laws. There's no country that elects the head of its civil service, is there?
No, I'm not referring to the speaker of the EU parliament, I am referring to the president of the European Commission, which is right now Ursula von der Leyen. She was appointed by the EU parliament and not democratically elected.
The EU leaders makes things as confusing as they are able to, in order to be able to do what they please without the population understanding much, but she (von der Leyen) is very much promoted as being a "real president", acts like a "real president" in foreign affairs. It is only when pointed out that they are not democratically elected that people start making excuses that the EU president is not a "real president".
Which way is it? I think the rulers of Europe want to have it both ways, so that they can smoothly direct their subjects as they please.
IMHO that would be perfectly fine on its own (or do you think that any parliamentary state is not a "real democracy"?).
But the problem is that she was appointed by the Council/National governments and the parliament just rubber-stamped their pick. If the relationship between the Parliament and Commission were the same as between the parliaments and governments of other countries it would be perfectly fine.
> "real president"
You clearly don't speak French? What's a "real president" anyway?
Also if we go that route you do know that the e.g. German, Italian, Greek etc. "presidents" are also not elected directly?
Nominated by the Council and appointed by the Parliament. No, it is not real democracy. It is "representative democracy", at best. And I believe Europeans are defending this system just out of the human habit of defending status quo. If it was arranged anyway else, they would argue that was the best. If the EU had presidential elections by popular vote, do you think anybody here would argue that those should be scrapped for parliamentary appointment?
Europe doesn't have the strong traditions of freedom and individualism. The tradition is collectivism and people accepting that they are to be ruled over, without that bothering them too much.
"There is no "President" of the EU in the US sense of the word." <- This statement by a previous commenter is what I'm referring to when writing "real president". No, I don't speak French, and this conversation hasn't been in French.
In reality they have a somewhat limited say in who the Commission president is going to back and almost no influence on its members. Compared to most national parliaments it's extremely weak and quite pointless.
It's pretty much a joke, it can't propose any legislation since it doesen't really control the "EU government". The could be a majority in the EU parliament that would support passing specific legislation and they couldn't do anything about that, not even have an actual vote.
How did that competition between private companies work out for US hath system? Are Americans getting better bang for the buck? Are they getting faster internet at home due to competition between ISPs? Are Americans getting more paid vacation days due to the private market competition between employers? Why didn't competition between auto makers result in more efficient and less polluting engines until the EPA and EU forced them in the 80's? Did competition between food manufactures got them to eliminate lead and arsenic from food or was it government regulation that did it?
Competition existing doesn't automagically prevent or fix monopolies, duopolies, price fixing and other anti-competitive behavior from private entities who have the power to shape the market in their favor. Do you know why all those things are illegal even in the US? Because they work. If it wouldn't work it wouldn't have been made illegal. Private entities can much more easily collide to screw over consumers than consumers can collectively unite to do anything about it themselves. That's why governments and regulations exist.
The high competition is usually also the root of the evil, since they need to do things that other would not to get an advantage. Like using child labor somewhere. Create a solution for non-existent problem but then lobby some laws which will create this problem. There is no moral in public companies.
Elected politicians compete intensely with each other. Polling, focus groups, and pandering are common in democratic countries because people running for office want to do things that make voters like them. The system is far from perfect but you seem to be arguing that the government is free to use violence however it wants without consequence which is not at all realistic.
Companies collude to eliminate competition all the time. Or use tactics that make competition impossible.
And don't use violence? Give me a break. Even small scale companies like Wizards of the Coast sent the fucking Pinkertons after someone for possessing a magic card. You think Amazon is out here existing violence free? You think Nestle's suppliers are making chocolate without any violence.
Reminder: the term "free markets" originally referred to markets free of the distorting effects of monopoly. To ensure markets remain free, fair and available to all, legislators need to intervene. Otherwise they go to sh*t.
As aside, it's a common misconception that the EU acts to protect EU companies from outside competition. They don't. It's a side-effect of their mission to keep the EU a free market.
uhhh, in your example, a subsidiary of chevron paid the government to attack protestors. I'm sure there are small examples of companies actually conducting violence, but you should feel bad about yourself in that you couldn't even muster the effort to find something that disproved my point.
If you're suggesting the government should not be able to exert violence because corporations aren't, I'm listening but I suspect you haven't thought this through.
>and are not allowed to use violence to exert their will.
Define violence.
You may look at this and think "What are you, stupid?" But stick with me for a bit. Let's grab a few examples of free market atrocities. Asbestos; thalidomide; hexavalent chromium; fossil fuels (and hiding research since the 60's about climate change); the sugar industry (also famous for it's scientific gaslighting); Purdue pharmaceuticals, Oxycontin, and it's coincidental treatment for opiate addiction which was in the pipeline...
Now lets grab a few definitions of violence and see if we can bucket some of these into them without too much trouble.
Definitions numbered top of page to bottom. Are there any acts that fit the word violence that companies regularly do?
Take a look at # 7, quoted here:
7) Injury done to anything which is entitled to respect, reverence, or observance; profanation; infringement; violation.
Companies do that all the effing time. In point of fact, it's practically their reason to exist at all. The corporation was initially formulated as a risk-impact distribution tool. That there is risk associated with it, implies an understanding that the vehicle can do harm.
And before you go saying "but that's not the legal definition..." I'm going to head that off with a single word, "Yet", and further seal off the wiggle room by referring you to the practical outcomes of all these allegedly non-violent exercises of corporate power; the scarring for life if not termination of of life by the thousands to million. You don't get kill counts that high through acts of human artifice, and still get to hide behind the bulwark of "but it wasn't violence" a kill via indirection is still a kill. a life ends or is irrepairably harmed. While their is a practical lenience extended based on the matter of human imperfections and inability to know everything, be everywhere at once; with technology, nowadays the old platitudes tend to ring a bit hollow. Where executives can literally sit on event streams created by their corporate systems; where reports that unequivocally say "bad shit'll happen", and it gets buried instead of escalated for the consideration of all; and to what end? To what benefit are these atrocities committed at the expense of the common good? The self enrichment of the few, and consolidation of wealth and power.
That my friend, is inarguably violence. That doesn't even require the 4th sense of violence either.
I guess I agree with both being a problem. Maybe the way I would put it is that once a company becomes large enough it is a lot like a government. For example, if a a few tech companies ban your speech, you effectively don’t have a useful freedom of expression. Being able to yell on a street corner is not a good substitute if you are censored online.
A government is by definition a monopoly. No company can become large enough to be like a government unless it has government backing. E.g. Walmart was feared to be becoming a monopoly by running smaller shops out of business and yet Amazon was still able to compete. Eventually someone else will outcompete both, as long as the government doesn't step in to protect them.
Google is a monopoly. But this is simply because their product was/is so much better than the rest. Anyone can access bing whenever they want but not many people care.
The question is not the monopoly by itself, it's to conquer other market by abusing it's power. If you own search and mobile os, without régulation, what could you prevent to own mobile service, then fiber, then delivery then car, then train, then whatever ?
Google was better for the five minutes that pagerank lasted. The only thing it's maintained since is being no worse than the competitors, while being the default. In order to become and remain the default they use the profit they make from their old purchase of doubleclick, since ads are what make Google money, in order to bribe and buy competitors.
There's no part of this that is good. Other than as a huge monopoly, they can afford to be huge on R&D, just like Bell. They still fail to make money on anything but ads, though, so it's not turning out as well as Bell.
There's all sorts of anecdotal evidence that google searches have gotten steadily worse, and google has stopped supporting parts of its search "API" that mitigated this. So they've been the market leader but haven't continued to improve search in any noticeable way.
Sure, other search engines can theoretically compete, but it is an enormous mountain to get enough data to be competitive... and just being "as good" is not enough to get people to switch. So without regulation, google is going to exploit a captive market.
There are network effects and other feedback loops that make competition not possible. For example, by simply having fewer users, you get less information to train your algorithms. But in Google‘s case, they also have the network effect of running an advertising platform. This platform is hard to compete against in itself. And it provides funding that would otherwise potentially go to other players so that they can invest in search quality. Just a thought. I have not thought deeply about this so I would welcome other opinions.
The best result for the consumer would obviously be the best maps integrated into the best search. That may end up apple maps or here wego with google search.
It'd be perfectly fine for Google to allow choosing your own maps provider, or just using geo:// URIs so whichever maps app you've got installed handles location links.
Through laws and treaties we've given the EU the duty to enforce this.
Yes anybody could use Bing, but they won't. That leads to big revenues for Google. Question now is, what Google does with those revenues. Do they invest in other markets where they otherwise can't compete to drive competitors out of the market? - Then they abuse the power they got.
That is clearly not an abuse of power, unless we have to adopt the ideology that anything a big company does with their profit is an abuse of power. Would you be happier if all profit went to shareholders and none to investing?
