The EU keeps trying to manifest the missing european data infrastructure via data regulation instead of outright bans and limits on american companies, the way China did it.
Alternately, it should roll out the red carpet for American entrepreneurs, scientists, and talent who want to try moving here and having a go of things in Europe. The Dutch American Friendship Treaty accidentally enables this and has become quite popular, but is only for one country.
I am not too sure about that. Every US expat is a sleeper agent waiting for the CIA to call. Their loyalty will always be to America and unquestionable loyalty to the White House.
And then what's gonna happen to the (already fucked)Dutch housing market?
> it should roll out the red carpet for American entrepreneurs, scientists, and talent who want to try moving here and having a go of things in Europe
Only if it's bidirectional. If Americans can gentrify me out of the EU housing market with their higher purchasing power, then I should also have access to their labor market for those six figure wages to compensate. Tit for tat, as freedom of movement works in the EU. Otherwise it's just monetary colonialism. Imagine if Swedes were allowed to move to Spain but spaniards would not allowed to go work in Sweden.
Maybe build more? I know folks who already own properties hate this little trick, but its pretty effective in solving this. Maybe you've not heard but there is more people than 50-100 years ago when many buildings were built, and disproportionally more in bigger cities where most well paid work is.
There are other factors like zoning and other laws, mentality of given population etc but gist is above.
Not up to me. I'm not a politician. And like you said, property owners hate it and they are majority.
But it's just as easy to oppose gentrification from wealthy Americans without equal terms in exchange. It has the same effect on supply/demand.
Otherwise, I'll be forced to vote for the most radical and vindictive politicians out of spite to see the world burn if I see my government prioritizes wealthy foreigners and throws me under the bus.
Yes! Please yes! I’d love to see more homes built in my town near Utrecht and have supported plans to do so. It’s idyllic and we should try to help more people who want to live like this be able to do so.
Ironically my childhood home in California has a Dutch family living in it. Small world.
No, we shouldn't act like (stupid) children. We should enact a transition based on what we can do and when. I know that nuanced and complex solutions to complex problems don't fire up voters anywhere, but that's the only way to not shoot our own feet.
Seems to me they’re waiting it out. Everything could change in a presidential election and the European economy wins either way. It is an economic bloc after all.
What you describe would be what’s called “cutting off your nose to spite your face”
The problem with "everything could change in a presidential election" is that offers no stability. No one wants to plan around "maybe the United States goes rabid again in four years".
> Everything could change in a presidential election
Not really, not immediately, IMO. And if they could, that would be a problem in itself.
It will take some time to undo what has been done and will still be done in the current term. To change things back quickly would take both someone despotic on “the other side” willing to force things through with executive orders, and have the general support needed to weather the negative PR associated with that, and (perhaps more importantly) insufficient kick-back getting those orders quickly reverted or watered down. Even if they elect someone, and a team around them, who is willing and able to work that way, the changes made recently include changes that will make them harder to roll back on. And even if things do get magically fixed in the next term, that would just prove how quickly they could be unfixed again four years later.
The current arrangement has been torpedoed a long time ago already, with the Patriot Act (2001) (though it took many years to understand the extent of it).
> Everything could change in a presidential election
No. It's the US who's a bully, as a country. The Trump administration is the worst so far, sure, but the US has always behaved as if they owned the world.
There is only one way to deal with bullies, and it's not to be nice and hope they forget about you. It's to stand your ground, not give an inch, and reciprocate.
> Everything could change in a presidential election
A lot can change, but not everything. Trump won twice and republican elites are fully behind him. Even if he looses, the same ideologies will continue. It happened twice, it is not a fluke but a permanent property of American politics.
Moreover, constitutional changes supreme court created are structural change. They will be super hard to undone - first they would need to change supreme court composition. The influence of money in American politics will just grow, the structural advantages of conservatives have in voting system will just grow and next conservative president will have even more space for maneuvering. (Non conservative one will likely be stopped by supreme court on some excuse.)
So, basically, outside of change actual constitution which is impossible, it will stay the same at best in the long term.
They should, but the entire EU economy runs on US clouds. It's hard enough to get new hardware as it is (US hardware btw), so how should the EU, especially today, move to sovereign clouds within the next few years?
I'd argue every single EU business with more than five employees would be impacted by such a decision. Just pulling the plug would be economic suicide.
Yes, just pulling the plug overnight is impossible. But preparing to pull the plug so that it becomes possible is not just sound, it is indispensable, because some day, the plug could be pulled by someone and if we're not prepared, we will be in dire straits indeed.
Why? You talk as if you've been victimized by America. I completely understand the desire for privacy and digital sovereignty, but you're talking about escalating into a full out economic war with the US. Meanwhile you personally patron American websites (such as this one) and services.
The main blocker for this was that Trump extended this to the military domain. I.e., tax US hyperscalers and Ukraine does not get US weapons/information anymore.
Becoming independent from the US in the military domain will take some work.
Outright bans would destroy European companies that rely on American companies. First they need to build their own infrastructure (which China has done).
Legislation for a ban will take years anyway, and will have sunrise/sundown provisions. This will provide ample time to build the infrastructure. But infra won't happen without mandating the transition, since market incentives will always pull against it.
Right, that’s another choice though. Everything points towards Europe embracing US tech intentionally while sidelining their own homegrown companies. And of course while making noise about it the whole time. Why?
I agree. Beyond scale and inertia against moving (and frontier AI models) it’s not obvious to me what would be hard to replicate in Europe given regulation that mandated non-US hosting.
Most companies using hyper scalers are doing weird superstitious things at the behest of overpaid consultants. And the huge margins they take make it easier to adapt to things like higher electricity costs.
It’s technically possible, but would face
too much resistance. People don’t want to leave familiar and cheaper services, and care less about the non-immediate issue of European sovereignty.
China was really only able to build out their own infrastructure because of blocking American companies starting early on, though. Europe may just be fucked...
The headline is that the US Supreme Court broke the deal that made this work, the EU was perfectly fine with an independent organization managing the problem. Blaming the EU for asking for some basic sanity is ???
Privacy laws are actually one of the very useful things that came out. It is difficult to do the same in the US because of the business lobby. It is crazy that US citizens data can be purchased in the “black” market and the used by the agencies. Leaving tech companies to self regulate is just not viable and it is proven time and time again they cannot do it.
bans and limits just hurt consumers and freedom of speech. data regulation is useless as you said. what china actually did is a lot better.
they ignored decades worth of friedman inspired economic "theory" and started directly investing in their own industry. most successful chinese tech companies are a joint venture between state owned, municipal and private capital. you can get loans way under market rate if you have a good business plan in a industry the government is treating as a priority.
in america every time someone like obama or biden tried they got shut down by big money interests. any investment is bad because its "picking winners and losers". subsidies are bad because the only way to pay for them is increasing taxes and thats bad for profits. europe should never go down that path.
The only answer isn't to sink to the lowest common denominator.
Ban or tax things from the "globalised" world that are just worker/societal/environmental protection arbitrage so they're competing for the EU market on a level playing field, then we'll see who can compete.
The EU is plenty big enough to be self-sufficient if it has to and shouldn't be afraid of risking this if abusive and exploitative companies from other places don't way to pay their way.
Tbf it could reduce hiring friction and make it easier to take a chance on a riskier hire. Also makes it easier for workers to change jobs, notice periods here can be outright insane (3 months in some cases) and even as an employee I hated them.
Longest I’ve seen in NL is 2 months, and it’s usually one. It’s common to string multiple “temporary” contracts together though.
It still increases switching cost. As a worker with a permanent contract I have to weigh new opportunities against losing that. And it has real impacts! Getting a mortgage is harder on a temp contract (doable in NL, basically impossible in Ireland)
Six months is the default probationary period in Germany, I can't remember ever seeing a job without that.
Temporary contracts are also a thing here, but if there's no objective reason for the contract to be temporary it will end after max. two years. According to Verdi ~1/13 contracts are temporary - not great, but could be much worse.
It's more simple than that; lack of investment due to various factors among which some are due to regulations, but also because the lower ROI you get in the USA due to corporate culture, higher cost in general (wages, energy, resources, manufacturing, etc.), slower economic growth and so on.
The EU isn’t a country, which is exactly why things are lacking vision and feel confusing. The EU is actually too decentralized and fragmented for its own good, contrary to what people whine about.
We need more federalism, and an actual single market
Check Swiss worker protections compared to France or Germany and then check their economy and tech companies there. Biggest Google office outside the US is in Switzerland.
It's not better worker output, it's faster movement and pivoting to rapid changing market conditions as a company, if you can get rid of slackers that abuse unions and worker protections to coast and do nothing.
It won't do any of this because it has no balls and no vision.
We're doomed and it's our fault.