[zbshqoa]

While I'm not necessarily against GDPR and regulations, is undeniable that the regulatory landscape in Europe has been preventing innovation.

In fact it's tech market is predominantly dominated by US tech companies (and probably soon Chinese ones as well)

[frabert]

I'll try and spin it a different way -- What if the US and China had been unfairly taking advantage of their lax rules to bring innovation to the damage of their (and other countries') citizens, much like China has been unfairly exploiting its own lower standards of living and personal freedom to gain advantage in terms of manufacturing power against the US and Europe?

[zbshqoa]

Ya cool, does this change the result? No.

Europe has no competitors to the US/Chinese tech giants and their citizens want to use technology like anybody else without a layer of bureaucracy preventing them from doing basic stuff.

I don't think European citizens have been forced to use Uber, Airbnb, Apple, Android, Facebook , WhatsApp and so on.

[immibis]

The main food deliverers (Uber Eats clones) here are Dutch and Swedish. The place you can find someone's apartment to stay in temporarily is German. The Fediverse was invented here, in Germany. Ride-sharing companies are Estonian, German, and some others I don't remember.

There are no companies that rise meteorically, capture billions of users and then collapse if they can't monetize. There are just companies that quietly provide products and services users want. If that's considered a failure to you, then... okay? Signal is American, but Telegram is Russian. And you can just, you know, send a text message, without involving any third party (but both your phone companies can see it).

Oh and the b2b companies... like ASML and SWIFT.

[zbshqoa]

You conveniently left our everything else I mention and those companies aren't really leading. Bolt for example has an edge because everywhere in Europe they're been killing Uber or limiting it hardly, and in some countries it's still the case.

In most cases those companies are knockoffs of American companies and you've yet to mention cases were Europe is actually leading the way (aside from some unique cases it doesn't happen regularly)

P.s. Russia is not part of Europe, you can safely leave it out (and yes they've plenty of competitors to american companies telegram, Yandex, VK etc. we can't say the same for Europe)

[immibis]

If you're arguing that Europe killed Uber by making it follow common-sense regulations, you could just ask well argue that the USA killed Bolt by not.

Europeans simply do not see why they should try to "innovate" the American way: creating products that no one actually needs, and trying to get people to buy them anyway, often by killing the alternatives, which often results in more work, lower wages and higher prices for everyone. Europeans (other than AfD voters) would rather have a good enough society that stays good enough and doesn't decay.

[zbshqoa]

It's not common sense regulation. It's anticompetitive regulations. You're happy to ride a taxi that often times takes a longer route to steal you a few extra euro? Are you happy that a taxi driver earn 500-600-700 euro a day when the avg salary in some EU countries is 1.5k a month? Are you happy that they don't take credit card payments and accept (often time) only cash? Are you happy that they evade taxes? Are you happy to go inside a car and don't know how long and how much your ride is going to cost? Are you happy that often times in touristic cities they refuse to use the meter?

You seem to know well what Europeans want but I bet you never got scammed by a taxi driver. Europeans like everybody want to simply pay less by having an open market that allows the best players to offer services without artificially inflating the price because that specific category some privilege.

If you claiming that Europe is not decaying probably you're living in the wrong Europe.

Europe is decaying faster than you think.

[EGreg]

Unfairly?

That’s sort of a weird way of putting it! Look at these immigrants to USA “unfairly” exploiting their own relative poverty and lower standards of living and entertainment to outcompete regular Americans! The tiger moms also “unfairly” use their higher standards of achievement for their kids to send them to get piano lessons and KUMON centers instead of hanging out with their friends in the park. It’s so unfair! We have to restrict their opportunities. Maybe have quotas at the universities…

It sounds a bit like that but on an international scale. I mean, one could argue it is far more unfair that they are behind in standards of living in the first place, what with all the Western imperialism and opium wars and British Raj. In India it is more unfair that Britain helped the East India company and engineered famines in the 1700s through 1940s through requisitioning grain, than the “unfairness” of Indian H1B visa workers “taking our jobs” now in a boomerang.

======

The only sense of “fairness” that makes any coherent sense here is that advanced countries should all cooperate to have minimum standards of living and human rights for everyone in them. Well, if we are going to cooperate on that, we may as well cooperate on non-proliferation of dangerous AI, as we successfully did with nuclear weapons, chemical weapons and CFCs. But the upsides of AI are “too sweet” (to quote nuclear researchers) to actually do cooperation, so we do competition instead.

What is “unfair” about competition by exploiting lower standards of living or different culture, if you rule out cooperation?

[frabert]

I was talking "fairness" from the point of view of the EU in this case, and it is the exact sense that you are delineating in your addendum at the end of the comment.

It is "unfair" that a country gets to run circles around me because it completely ignores things that I consider important rights that my citizens fought for -- sane working hours, right to have my data kept to myself, right to express discontent against the government

[EGreg]

Ironic. The "right to express discontent against the government" seems to be being curtailed in the UK, and all of London is under CCTV surveillance, so maybe the EU should label its exports "unfair" as well?

https://x.com/thelouperez/status/1852126581872881711?s=46&t=...

And in any case, if your citizens fought for rights for themselves, and won those rights in their own country from their own government, why does that mean it is "unfair" that others in other countries leverage their lack of such rights or privileges for an advantage? Perhaps it is much MORE "unfair" that you are trying to impose your own framework and guarantees on others, who may not have the same per-capita wealth, or the same cultural values!

For example, the "third world" is complaining that you "first world people" cut down all your trees over centuries, used a lot of fossil fuels and built up your economies, and now you've put in place standards that you expect them to follow, so they can't build up their own economies. You want Brazil to preserve its rainforest, but you didn't preserve your own forests. This concept of "unfair" that you're espousing is quite dubious and hypocritical!

[frabert]

If you don't think it's a good thing to recognize your own mistakes and try to warn others about them, then I don't think I have anything else to discuss.

[EGreg]

Okay, you cut down all the forests in your country, and you "recognized your mistake", and try to warn others about them.

But you don't just try to warn, you try to impose rules on them which pull up the ladder behind you. It's like the big cartels of corporations that lobby the government for licenses and regulations, because they "recognized the mistakes" that can happen in an unregulated environment which allowed them to grow so quickly, and lo and behold, it becomes far more costly for anyone to disrupt them.

How convenient. Something might be a "good thing" but not an "unmitigated good". You can wax poetic cherrypicking only your good motives, but it turns out that your rhetoric also hides ulterior motives. Well, if we don't have anything to discuss, I guess you won't answer me on that point.

===

Or somewhat similar: When the USA bombed Laos, we were doing them and Vietnam a favor of course, because we recognized the mistakes of Communism and didn't want them to become Communist. Because the "Domino Theory" stated that allowing communism to spread would make mankind more miserable. So we had to nip it in the bud, even if it meant killing a lot of people. Same in South America etc. In this case, we hadn't even "realized the mistakes", but we were so sure we didn't want others to have a different economic system, that we were willing to kill them to prevent it.

Btw, they resisted, we withdrew, and to this day Vietnam has a Communist government, and is relatively prosperous. But in Cuba and North Korea we still keep crippling sanctions on them, to "prove" that their system is harming their people. Even if Cuba presents zero threat to us, we will continue total sanctions on the entire country. And we will welcome Cuban refugees with open arms, while refugees from Colombia etc are turned back, because the former can spread the word about what a terrible system they have in Cuba.

We can export the costs of our war on drugs, our industrial waste, etc. to Mexico and other countries, and "fairness" somehow is not mentioned. Anglophone countries can occupy India for centuries, cause famines and repress opportunities, but then say it's "unfair" that Indians with H1B visas are taking our jobs for lower wages. European empires could establish protectorates and extract resources, and then lament about the "immigrants" from those territories polluting their culture. There is no "fairness" in geopolitics, is my point. At bottom it's all self-interest and hypocrisy, dressed up in crude attempts at some kind of moralizing language that any decently-informed person would have massive cognitive dissonance swallowing.

Many people who blame Putin for annexing Crimea would then applaud Trump for annexing Canada or Greenland. They'd look past USA's invasions and occupations halfway around the world as "mistakes were made", but hyperfocus on another country's invasions of a neighbor or putting pressure on their neighbor. All I can say is, don't have a double standard. Every superpower pressures their neighbors, but since the 50s, only one country goes halfway around the world to bomb, invade and occupy faraway countries that present zero threat to it. And the government of that country is also the one moralizing to everyone else to stop doing what they're doing. So yeah, I take the moral arguments with a massive grain of salt.

[nickpp]

> sane working hours

So it's "unfair" when others work harder than us?!

> right to express discontent against the government

Last time I checked, the USA had "freer" speech than the EU.

[immibis]

It's unfair that in your country you decide nobody should have to work more than a certain amount, and then you make other people work more than that amount in a different country instead, yes.

[nickpp]

Fascinating mindset!

So if a pupil in class decides to do more homework than the teacher required, they are being unfair towards the students that decided to do the bare minimum?

Very interesting way of thinking. I lived under communism and not even The Party was so radical: they encouraged performance, but then you still got paid the same as the lazy bums. :)

[cbg0]

While companies will always follow the path of least resistance and prefer as little regulation as possible to make money without a lot of headaches, most people will prefer their privacy be respected and their data not sold-off without their approval or used in undocumented ways, even if it leads to less innovation in the corporate landscape.

[tokai]

A bit like a helmet prevents the pavement innovating your skull.

[nickpp]

There are countries that decided against compulsory helmet laws for bikers on the basis that biking health benefits outweigh the risks.

When you raise barriers to an activity, even if for a good cause, you may end up losing more than you gain.

[tokai]

The analogy was about motorcycle helmets, so no.

[tmnvdb]

The country with by far the highest number of people riding a bike (The Netherlands) does not have any helmet rules.

[sandermvanvliet]

But the number of incidents with head injuries is increasing because more (elderly) people are riding e-bikes for longer than they would have a normal bike. As reaction times slow with age this is not a great combo with a faster bike which is a cause to more incidents.

There is a big push currently for getting helmet rules adopted similar to how Denmark did this

[immibis]

What do you consider innovation? Was a certain regulation the reason DeepSeek-R1 didn't happen in Europe?

[tmnvdb]

Regulation is only a small part of the story. Keep in mind that GDPR was implemented in 2018, long after Europe lost the tech battle.

The lack of a unified (financial) service sector and hence a very weak and fragmented private capital market (-> VC ecosystem) is a bigger problem. Most funding is from risk-averse banks and slow-moving governments.

Many EU based startups move to silicon valley for access to financing.

[nickpp]

There are other regulations making entrepreneurship quasi-impossible in the EU, not just GDPR.

For example employment laws are thought for big, ossified companies, not lean and agile startups.

[tmnvdb]

That is partly true, though not equally so in every country (Denmark is a positive example - as usual). Note that this kind of regulation is done on the national level and isn't strictly related to EU membership.

On the other hand, salaries in the EU are significantly lower and it is a lot easier to find engineers.

Even as a person who dislikes the overregulation it is not totally clear to me that the net status of the labour market is what makes entrepeneurship as impossible as you claim, despite the obvious negative effect of overregulation.

If that was the main problem I would expect a "Silicon Valley" of Europe to form in Denmark or one of the other smaller states that have relatively flexible labour markets, but we are not really seeing that, as they are still hampered by a lack of funding.

Instead we see that the biggest startup hubs are in Berlin and Paris, probably more related to network effects and national (financial) market size then to particularly attractive regulation, for which those places are not known.