[oblio]

> And lastly, how about you open up your very own market to everyone by lifting protectionist taxes

LOL, like China is doing by forcing everyone into 51-49 joint ventures China owns?

Or like the US is subsidizing EV and battery production for stuff made in the US?

Don't be naive, everyone's doing it.

[pembrook]

Whataboutism does not defeat OP's core point.

You either have a set of values, or you do not. The EU claims outwardly to have the values of being pro-privacy and pro-competition for healthy consumer markets.

However, these 2 supposed "values" only seem to come into play when it comes to regulating foreign tech companies that it cannot produce domestic competitors for.

The EU has loads of anti-competitive protectionist legislation, and re: privacy, the EU is in fact strongly considering legislation to ban encryption domestically as we speak. You can bet GDPR would not exist if Silicon Valley was located in the Rhine Valley.

Clearly these are not values. They are simply the amoral moves of opportunistic market participants (politicians), just like the companies being regulated.

This is not bad, this is just reality. But any claims of moral high-ground should be rightly shot down for what they are (BS).

[oblio]

The EU claims to be pro-privacy and pro-competition internally :-)

I don't even know where you got that angle wrong, the EU CAP is renowned as a protectionist measure, and it's a core EU component. It's just an example.

> You can bet GDPR would not exist if Silicon Valley was located in the Rhine Valley.

That's your assumption.