[schaefer]

From TFA:

> In this last Bikeshed in acmqueue, I will ponder the far future of free and open source software (FOSS), hoping to upset so many readers that...

> During the past couple of decades, rampant neoliberalism and “globalism” allowed...

And I’m out. I guess congratulations to the author. Mission accomplished.

But I’m disappointed that the article took a turn towards partisan politics.

[failuser]

I don’t even know which party he champions. There is no pro-privacy party in America. That quote can come from either side of the establishment. Both increased surveillance.

[busterarm]

None of the ones you're thinking of. PHK is Danish. Danish politics and society at large leans pretty left. Even what you might call the rightwing party there consider themselves as bourgeois-liberal, or "not-socialist". The farthest they'd generally position themselves is center-right.

Except for shit like Stram Kurs, which nobody really supports or tolerates.

[ToucanLoucan]

You should've kept reading:

> During the past couple of decades, rampant neoliberalism and “globalism” allowed the U.S. tech industry to capture almost the entire European IT market, including all “social media.” This has recently proved to be a ghastly mistake, and now the EU, along with its member states and companies, are scrambling to claw back their digital sovereignty.

This is not a partisan political statement, it's a factual one. It is simply a statement of fact that neoliberal world markets have permitted hyperscalers to cross national boundaries and provide the same services at scale to governments worldwide, and like, without even going into any U.S. politics at the moment, isn't that... really weird? Like many EU governments had essentially put their ability to function as states in the hands of a foreign actor. That's WILD.

[gordian-mind]

The term neoliberalism has no meaning, it's purely used in a pejorative way by leftists. If you want to talk about world markets, just say world markets. Or "free market", but it has free in it so it makes the effect less powerful.

Also, the reason the EU does not have that many tech companies is not global competition; it's that it takes 6 months to hire someone, you cannot fire them ever, and nations tax you based on your unrealized valuation because they don't really believe you should be running things on your own.

[ToucanLoucan]

I'll fully grant that the vast majority of the time when I use the word neoliberal, it is indeed derisively. Doesn't change that this is, again, simply an observation that names the thing. Markets, localized or world, free or not, do not function in vacuums. They are shaped by ideologies, including that of the neoliberal school of thought.

It's frankly far more derisive of me and any reader really to say that because "free market" has the word "free" in it that the majority of people will cosign it happily with no further thought. Do you also think the DPRK is a democracy because it says so?

The EU has a large menagerie of businesses, successful and otherwise. If hiring friction and tax policy were the whole story, you'd expect the EU to lag in all capital-intensive industries, not just have a specific gap in hyperscale tech, which is the one sector most directly shaped by network effects and first-mover advantage from a market that let a handful of US firms scale first.

Additionally I'd push back on the premise that "doesn't produce hyperscalers" is even a mark against a system in the first place. They're what you get after competition has mostly finished collapsing into a handful of winners who then run the supposedly free market. Funny how the same people who'll lecture you for an hour about the sacred competitive forces of the free market go quiet the second vertical integration and monopoly-adjacent scale start choking those forces out.

[worik]

> The term neoliberalism has no meaning, it's purely used in a pejorative way by leftists.

Wrong

It is used pejorativly but that does not make it devoid of meaning

It refers to the social policies instituted in the 1980s that (attempted to) inserted competition into every facet of human relationships

It was instituted by liberals

It was new (and a dreadful policy that has lead to the discrediting of liberalism generally)

Hence "neo-liberal

You are welcome