I wonder if there will ever come a time when the biggest danger to SV from Europe is competitors, rather than regulators.
It may be that competitors can't become more of a threat till regulators become less of one. It's hard for a society to focus simultaneously on multiple things, and regulation and startups seem not merely orthogonal, but opposed.
There's a big difference between regulation that affects all players fairly and equally (like safety codes requiring buildings be built to certain specs, requiring insurance, food labeling laws, etc.), and regulation like antitrust which affects only select companies that are successful and meet unpublished post-facto and mostly arbitrary criteria.
Antitrust and competition regulation is built entirely on arbitrary quantitative definitions of competition rather than reasoned and objective qualitative definitions of competition.
There's a big difference between qualitative and quantitative definitions of competition. Anyone is free to compete with Google (qualitative), while Google dominates search with ~90% market share (quantitative). Even if they had 100% market share, they still exist in a qualitatively competitive market. But antitrust and competition regulation isn't concerned with that, and we've heard calls by EU regulators to break up Google based on their market share. Same with Facebook.
The EU has the most to fear from Margrethe Vestager. At a time when the US and China are accelerating rapidly out ahead of the EU in tech, her policy approach adds up to regressive protectionism that will do nothing but further cripple the EU's tech industries (which are already 10 to 20 years behind the US).
Margrethe Vestager is doing the US a favor by breaking the leg of the EU as a competitor. If the US were more clever, it would poach all of the EU's best engineers and scientists, paying them 2x what they can ever earn in the EU and stapling a green card to a welcome note.
For the US, now is the time to take advantage of the EU's policies to drain as much talent out of Europe as possible. That goes for Russia as well, which is loaded with talented engineers and scientists that are being entirely wasted in Putin's authoritarian nightmare featuring zero economic progress.
An average engineer that I employ in the public sector is paid $86544 a year with a yearly pension of $12981 added on top of this.
They get 7 weeks paid vacation a year.
Stuff like New Years, January first, Easter and Christmas as well as a range of other national holidays is considered paid leave.
They get paid sick leave with no questions asked for the first 3 days, then a follow up on day 3 and 7 and an actual meeting on day 14.
They get paid leave on their child’s first two sick days, per child.
If they have children under 3 they get 2-4 days of paid leave a year per child to spend quality time with them.
If they are older than 55-60 they get a suited amount of time off each year ranging from 4 days a year to one day each week. At 4 days it’s paid leave, at one day a week they are only paid for a 34 hour week (down from 37).
They work 37 hour weeks. Have flexible hours and can to work from home when it fits their schedule.
They get $4000 worth of paid education a year + paid days to actually take it. The $4000 doesn’t sound like that much, but it’s enough to cover 2 university courses of around 20 ECTS.
Most our top politicians (I’m Danish) are career politicians. They typically get a candidate in law or political science at the university and then get into national politics where they do little else until they are done with politics if ever.
It’s much more of a trade or a career in Scandinavia than it is in America. If you’re building a space program, you hire engineers. If you’re leading a country you hire people who know law, economics and political science.
Aside from that the road to the top in Europe is a little different than it is to the top of America. You need to be actually great at the political craft because you can’t just buy your way up.
Vestager is so great at the craft that even though she’s in the opposition to the three parties that currently lead our country, they still appointed her. Possible because they fear her return to national politics, but more likely because she’s actually that good.
Vestager is an extremely skilled politician and I'm certain she's not sad about the situation. Denmark and Europe (and to some degree, the US) have certainly benefitted from her work.
It's not sad that she has chosen to apply her many skills in something she's passionate about and good at.
Vestager is an extremely skilled politician, but she is also extremely ambitious. She is leveraging a crusade against American tech companies to try and vault into the EU President's office. Vestager is very slick and talks a great game about protecting competition but this is just a thinly veiled attempt to raise populist support for her own political ambitions and implement protectionist policies across the EU.
It's too bad the US doesn't have someone like Vestagar at the FTC, too.
The FTC almost never seems to use anti-trust laws anymore, and when it punishes companies it's more of a symbolical punishment than an actual deterrence. And that's when it doesn't settle with the wrongdoers, where they don't even have to admit any wrong or stop what they've been doing in the future.
Not sure why this is currently being downvoted, the U.S. does seem to be relatively less effective at enforcing anti-trust laws. That's hurting American companies as well and one example of it is included in the article:
“Europe is acting to enforce antitrust laws where the U.S. is not,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, who feels that American regulators dropped the ball when they decided not to pursue a case against Google in 2013 (Yelp is a longtime Google antagonist). “Ironically, many of the complainants in the E.U. antitrust case against Google are U.S. companies, pursuing justice in Europe precisely because the U.S., has not acted,” he said in an email.
[+] [-] montrose|7 years ago|reply
It may be that competitors can't become more of a threat till regulators become less of one. It's hard for a society to focus simultaneously on multiple things, and regulation and startups seem not merely orthogonal, but opposed.
[+] [-] money_talks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] money_talks|7 years ago|reply
There's a big difference between qualitative and quantitative definitions of competition. Anyone is free to compete with Google (qualitative), while Google dominates search with ~90% market share (quantitative). Even if they had 100% market share, they still exist in a qualitatively competitive market. But antitrust and competition regulation isn't concerned with that, and we've heard calls by EU regulators to break up Google based on their market share. Same with Facebook.
[+] [-] digi_owl|7 years ago|reply
What i recall finding was that European tech focused more on helping the sick and elderly (or at least that was what got coverage).
Things like garbage bins that would move to the curb on its own when full.
[+] [-] wnevets|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runesoerensen|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|7 years ago|reply
Margrethe Vestager is doing the US a favor by breaking the leg of the EU as a competitor. If the US were more clever, it would poach all of the EU's best engineers and scientists, paying them 2x what they can ever earn in the EU and stapling a green card to a welcome note.
For the US, now is the time to take advantage of the EU's policies to drain as much talent out of Europe as possible. That goes for Russia as well, which is loaded with talented engineers and scientists that are being entirely wasted in Putin's authoritarian nightmare featuring zero economic progress.
[+] [-] eksemplar|7 years ago|reply
They get 7 weeks paid vacation a year.
Stuff like New Years, January first, Easter and Christmas as well as a range of other national holidays is considered paid leave.
They get paid sick leave with no questions asked for the first 3 days, then a follow up on day 3 and 7 and an actual meeting on day 14.
They get paid leave on their child’s first two sick days, per child.
If they have children under 3 they get 2-4 days of paid leave a year per child to spend quality time with them.
If they are older than 55-60 they get a suited amount of time off each year ranging from 4 days a year to one day each week. At 4 days it’s paid leave, at one day a week they are only paid for a 34 hour week (down from 37).
They work 37 hour weeks. Have flexible hours and can to work from home when it fits their schedule.
They get $4000 worth of paid education a year + paid days to actually take it. The $4000 doesn’t sound like that much, but it’s enough to cover 2 university courses of around 20 ECTS.
Good luck attracting them. :)
[+] [-] ronilan|7 years ago|reply
This is kind of sad. A little for Europe, but mostly for her.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager
[+] [-] eksemplar|7 years ago|reply
It’s much more of a trade or a career in Scandinavia than it is in America. If you’re building a space program, you hire engineers. If you’re leading a country you hire people who know law, economics and political science.
Aside from that the road to the top in Europe is a little different than it is to the top of America. You need to be actually great at the political craft because you can’t just buy your way up.
Vestager is so great at the craft that even though she’s in the opposition to the three parties that currently lead our country, they still appointed her. Possible because they fear her return to national politics, but more likely because she’s actually that good.
[+] [-] runesoerensen|7 years ago|reply
It's not sad that she has chosen to apply her many skills in something she's passionate about and good at.
[+] [-] wingerlang|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sjg007|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitwize|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joejerryronnie|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|7 years ago|reply
The FTC almost never seems to use anti-trust laws anymore, and when it punishes companies it's more of a symbolical punishment than an actual deterrence. And that's when it doesn't settle with the wrongdoers, where they don't even have to admit any wrong or stop what they've been doing in the future.
[+] [-] runesoerensen|7 years ago|reply
“Europe is acting to enforce antitrust laws where the U.S. is not,” said Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, who feels that American regulators dropped the ball when they decided not to pursue a case against Google in 2013 (Yelp is a longtime Google antagonist). “Ironically, many of the complainants in the E.U. antitrust case against Google are U.S. companies, pursuing justice in Europe precisely because the U.S., has not acted,” he said in an email.