Submitted by smurfyjenkins t3_1027s43 in science
What's wild is I got into an argument recently with someone who said collusion was fine as long as the company makes a profit. They couldn't understand why I would be against that and called me an anticapitalist as some big insult for being against collusion.
I can't understand why people would be so against antitrust regulations.
Yeah. Free markets are not free when bias and special treatment is allowed.
I am still mourning the loss of net neutrality for consumers in the U.S.
> is allowed
This is the irony. "Free" markets don't work without sufficient regulation.
Correct. Private enterprises will always look for, and find, ways to establish protected markets.
One of the specific cases I point to is when Hollywood clawed back the fair use rights that consumers won during the VHS era.
Content is content, and yet somehow, the courts allowed digital content (and digital markets) to be treated differently.
Free "markets" do, but what we have is a little bigger than a market nowadays. Social relations and reputation tended to follow you around back in the day, nowadays you can defraud millions of people before you get a reputation that might catch up to you for some people.
So yeah, we need regulation. but mostly because the concept of a market doesn't scale up perfectly from tens of millions of people to billions of people (due to the market now being more global than ever).
That was exactly what I was referring to though?
The fact that monopolists and unfair trade practices have always required regulation? That certainly doesn't sound like what you said. I mean this was from a time when the whole developed world was only a few tens of millions. But if you want to go back even further, check out Leviticus or Hammurabi's Code. There's a remarkable amount of ancient writing about trade disputes and the laws to deal with them. The very advent of writing was motivated by a need to better control commerce. The utopian ideal of a free market has never existed at any time in history. Belief in it is a religious faith and nothing more.
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When capitalism had to "compete" against communism as an economic system, there was more pressure to emphasize why capitalism works and is better than the alternative. Without a competing economic system, people assume that capitalism is inherently good without considering which criteria are relevant for such an assessment (other than "capitalism allows me to become rich).
Capitalism is no longer the appropriate term for what we have in the US. People need to stop blaming an economic system and look to the root of the problem, poor legislation and regulations. As an economic system capitalism is not inherently bad; it is our abuse of the legislative process for the financial gain of the few that is to blame for our disparities.
Many here think any capitalist economy will have it's legislation compromised by capital. Europe is only doing better than the US by contrast, I'm sure they still have their problems.
Most economies will be compromised since they are not properly insulated from market forces. I fully agree with your observation regarding Europe in contrast. They have many of the same problems, just different magnitudes.
Poor legislation & regulation is the outcome of neoliberal economic planning which sees the state have devolved interests in industry, which have become monopolies and duopolies with regulatory capture.
This is like saying that death by organ failure caused by cancer is not death by cancer. Regulatory capture is a feature of capitalism, not a bug.
Nope, it's a feature of republican democracy. And it is not at all like saying anything about death by organ failure blah blah blah. Quit it with the fallacies.
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How is it not a feature of capitalism? Republican democracy itself is compromised by capital...
Look mate, a system that says "greed is good" and yet expects that Lawmakers and Law-enforcers will work only for the good of the system (i.e. not be greedy) is about as utopian as bloody Communism.
The so called Crony Capitalism is the natural end state of Capitalism as those entrusted with the powers of the State just subvert it to get de facto immunity whilst they pillage it because, guess what, they're as greedy as everybody else and power attracts mainly those who don't feel the burden of responsability towards others when holding it.
The "solution" of less State (i.e Neoliberalism) is even worse as it makes Money the only Power in the land - reducing the power that citizens in democracies indirectly have through their vote - and that way lies either Anarchy or Feudalism (the latter if we're "lucky").
Personally I do believe we need some Capitalism, though heavilly overseen by something else so as to block it from subverting Democracy or destroying our societies through its main actors' natural tendency to cause Tragedy Of The Commons situations at pretty much all levels.
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>I can't understand why people would be so against antitrust regulations.
Because they think government regulation of any kind stifles innovation and is bad for markets, even government regulation that is specifically designed to encourage innovation and promote healthy markets.
It is a warped vision unless you like getting screwed by monopolies.
Capitalist propaganda over the last 50-60 years.
It is possible in the US. We have all kinds of environmental legislation drafted in the 70s and 80s based on politicians listening to scientists.
Politicians make the decision on who to listen to. People also make similar decisions. We’ve been listening to the wrong people since the 90s.
We don’t have much time left as a country to act in the interests of consumer safety, fairness, and ethics.
Agreed.
Here’s to lifting up the voices and actions of those that do champion consumer protections, equity and ethics.
I voted for Elizabeth Warren, yet here we are...
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The US legalized political bribery (through a number of braindead SC decisions like Citizens United). As a result Congress has been bought. Legally. The bribe just has to be called a campaign contribution and a lobbyist delivers pre-written laws - how convenient.
What Americans want, if you go by polls (e.g. universal healthcare) and what they get from their politicians (laws that favor the biggest corporations) has been disconnected for many years.
Glass-Stegal Act gets cancelled - hello 2008 crash. Now there's more Too-Big-To-Fail banks playing casino games than ever.
Anti-trust laws are almost defunct, because there's hardly any enforcement. MS was found guilty of criminal anti-competitive activities - the verdict got watered down into irrelevance.
I dunno I think the supreme court is a wild card these days.
Absolutely.
I've in several decades gotten like less than 10 scam calls. And no robot calls or spam.
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And Citizens United. When the USA made corporations into people, and gave them ridiculous rights. That was a bad move.
Not so much the US but a small cabal of special interest groups made up of private corporate owners, bribed judges, and corrupt politicians.
Also known as the US.
But but "wokeness"...
It's funny how the "People in this group (to which I just happen to belong by chance of birth) need some form of compensation for past injustices done to some (others) that just happen to be in this group" is incredibly popular amongst those brought up in a "greed is good" society...
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Yeah they don't have special interests in Europe. Its an EU law written somewhere, probably.
^(/s)
Of course there are special interests in the EU. They just haven't been as successful dismantling regulations to regulate them - yet.
Also, political bribery is still illegal in European countries and campaign contributions are often publicly funded - thus not coming from particular people/corporations who expect the quid-pro-quo that came with the "contribution" (aka bribe).
It's not like we don't have greedy bastards in the EU (often the very same as the US), nor is the EU free of corruption.
Corporate personhood is actually a European concept in origin
And AFAIK is the standard almost everywhere. Without it contracts would be very difficult between companies.
The citizens united decision is not the decision that gave corporations personhood.
But it is the decision that muddle the difference between legal personhood and individual personhood.
I mean not really. My understanding is that it was about whether a corporation has the same free speech rights as an individual specifically around political speech and by extension donations.
I'm not American though so unless there were other cases built on this one that had that effect im keen to learn.
There really isn't a muddying of the waters either. People get upset that the controlling parties of corporations aren't charged with crimes a corporation commits but don't really understand what it would take to find an individual liable. Where does the buck stop? For what kind of crimes? Is it reasonable for a CEO to know what's every employee is doing and if its criminal? And to be clear you can pierce the corporate veil and go after individuals if you can prove they did in fact commit a crime too.
Its a complex issue but its one that has been going on since people began forming groups to undertake business activities. And I dont think any country has it perfect but citizens united didnt suddenly change the concept of corporate personhood. Just my 2 cents.
And I think you don't understand that you openly support corporations getting most of the benefits of personhood while not getting the responsibilities that usually go along with them.
And there certainly were other decisions that built on it. Effectively, it gave the "speech" of corporate interests a reach no individual can hope to reach. And yet, an individual, by its very nature, has an individual opinion. What, pray tell, is the "opinion" of a corporation? And what's the purpose of forming one outside matters directly related to its operations?
I'm not sure why you got so snarky in your response. I would love American corporations to be further regulated to level the playing field. In Australia political advertising is highly controlled so we don't have the issue citizens united brought with it.
What I am saying is its important not to conflate the two. Its highly complicated. If a corp is privately owned then the opinions are whatever the controlling parties say they are. its very much more murky with publicly traded companies where there isn't a single 50%+1 share holder but that is the role of the board of directors and CEO. its then open to those who own shares to continue to own them or sell their ownership stake if they disagree.
What I'm trying to convey is that corporate personhood isn't the issue. The issue is your regulations around what corporations can and cannot do.
If you have links to cases that have been built on CU then I would love to read them and learn more.
But European legislation distinguishes between a legal personhood and an individual personhood. A company, a chartered society, an NGO etc. are a legal person, because they have to be able to engage into contracts etc. as a "person", as a singular entity, especially inasmuch as they are not owner-led where the owner stands for the company and makes decisions for it.
But that doesn't mean that a legal person has the same rights as an individual person.
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In America when you have completion, you just get some mega bucks company to buy them out . You get “two” practical choices for most things if your lucky. Want a Pepsi or a coke? Apple or android? Nvidia or and? Intel or and? Windows or Mac? Electric or gas? Purdue or Tyson? Etc. it’s quite crazy to think about sometimes.
Democrat or Republican is another binary choice too. Crazy how it boils down
It’s the minimum required for there to seem like you have a choice.
It must be asked why Europe doesn't produce alternatives to most of thoes choices.
The last time the EU was larger the US in GDP was 2011, most of the past 40 years US has been bigger. The EU has many smaller firms by comparison, although some monsters like Airbus and BASF SE.
Fun fact, the US used to be around 40% of world GDP in the 60s. Now it is 20% or so. That is one of the largest and fastest declines in relative GDP in history. You know when people say california is the Xth largest economy in the World? Well, you had many more states in the 60s with that claim....
Apple was started in a garadge.
BASF was founded by a guy who helped install gas lights in a small town.
It's actually a very interesting and complex topic, but usually the reasons are the local markets are still divided by cultural lines (most EU states have their own language and marketing is harder for smaller companies), the EU has more regulations (which means they have to be more careful while growing, which would work in a vacuum but then they're killed by the American and Chinese competitors) and many more
Edit: and obviously this is only for mega-corporations. Europeans get plenty of local versions
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Socialism disguised ass capitalism
Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest.
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Capitalism NEEDS competition to function correctly. Our current ecosystem of megacorps creating functional monopolies via vertical integration has to die.
Capitalism needs a magical frictionless universe of perfect actors to function correctly.
First seven semesters of an Econ BA: Here’s how things work given the following assumptions.
Final semester of an Econ BA: You can never make those assumption in real life.
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This includes politicians who legislate in favor of megacorps and create more friction for small businesses which makes it harder for them to compete
You mean communism?
Because the capitalist country of Norway is functioning correctly…
Most of the competition that they’re talking about is a result of US companies operating in their countries.
So.. are people commenting here actually able to access and read the journal article? I'm kind of confused as to how any sort of informed conversation/comment can occur without it. Or are people just reading the post title and abstract and going with whatever prior knowledge/biases they have to agree (or disagree) with this? If so, seems kind of suspect for subreddit called science.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24700/w24700.pdf
Almost certainly the latter. But in case you wanted to read the article I googled the title of the article and got this working paper from 2018. Same abstract. This works like half the time for me, when it doesn’t work it’s usually some article posted by an actual university laboratory posted to Nature or something. Economic/social articles and ones made by think tank-ish orgs usually leak out through other channels.
Have fun!
I appreciate the article link and will try to read it. It's pretty dense and long but does have some data and models it uses to make its claims. The difference between the level of discourse in the paper vs what is being discussed in these comments is stark.
The main point is political economics.
EU did not decide to create competitive and well regulated market regulators. There was no political desire to do so. Local companies and workers lobbied their governments against competition as always. But when only way to protect companies in your own country was to create fair game for everyone, it had to be done. Distrust and self interest forced EU to it.
Philippon (one of the authors) have written a great book: "The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets" Belknap Press, 2019. that looks the other side of the pond.
From what I've read in the paper and your comment I can see how the incentives and game theory involved would result in a stronger intra-country regulator (EU) that promotes competition and antitrust regulation better than individual national regulators. (Although it's not clear to me how such a regulator would naturally emerge since it would require the voluntary relinquishing of power from the prior political/economic actors. I haven't followed recent European development so there could be some reasonable logic/history for it, though.)
That said, I'm not sure there is much in terms of normative recommendations for the US. It's not like the US will be forming some economic pact with North American or Western nations and creating some ultra EU-like entity. For the US, regulations come with the ebb and flow of political parties or as a response to big market disruptions/crashes.
Nearly no one in this sub will actively read any article, mostly because most people do not have access to paywalled journals (and even if they do, they don't remember how to use their university's access) and also because that is just how people are in this website. Making assumptions based on headlines is the redditor special.
My family would be better off and a lot safer living in certain parts of the EU. My son would have a better chance in life.
I like the EU philosphy. It's also true that the US economy has signifcantly out-performed the EU economy, and not just in so-called mega-corporations (of which the EU has a few, too). But as a whole, measured by metrics of employment, growth, inflation, etc. I would be interested in thoughts on this.
The US wildly outperforms the EU in homelessness, incarceration, poverty and bankruptcy also.
IThe US poverty rate at present is 12.8% source: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2022/10/poverty-rate-varies-by-age-groups.html
At present only 4 of 27 EU countries are lower than the US average. Even Germany, the financial powerhouse of Europe has a poverty rate of 15.8%. Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.NAHC?end=2020&locations=EU&start=2019
You will see America is higher than most European countries:
I would say the world bank has good data.
I think you missed that the World Bank explicitly states that they are using national, country-specific poverty lines. What it means to be below the poverty line in the US is something substantially different than what it means to be below the poverty line in Germany.
Exactly. Poor in NY is a different income than North Dakota. Same between countries. That's what makes the World Bank's data more meaningful, not less.
OECD has more up to date information and you can compare more easily.
These two might be correlated. Maybe if your metrics aren't only share holder profits, and you actually care about the health of your society, your outcomes will look different to those who only care about and measure profits. Maybe comparing these two on the metrics of only one of them isn't a genuine comparison. Just thoughts.
>The US wildly outperforms the EU in homelessness, incarceration, poverty and bankruptcy also.
Thats because the EU uses taxpayer money just giving people homes and money (and healthcare) whether they deserve it or not. They basically buy stat points. If people had to truly earn things maybe it would be more similar to the US
These systems have better outcomes, overall, though.
The best way to defeat homelessness? Give people housing. It may seem simple, but the impact is massive. Without a house/fixed residence, you can barely function in society. Among other things, you'll find it supremely difficult to... you know... find permanent residence.
Incarceration rates? The EU has lower recividism rates, lower incarceration rates overall, and spends less on average per prisoner. The system works better.
Who cares if they "deserve it", if you're getting better results for similar or lower costs?
Healthcare is the best example of this, whereby overall health outcomes are better in most places in the EU, for a far lower cost per capita. You spend less, to get more. Who cares if someone reaches some arbitrary definition of "deserve it", if the system works better for less cash.
You, the taxpayer, could get more for what you're putting in.
So the ends justify the means? Force decent hardworking people to pay more in taxes so others can get a handout? Just to check a box of lower homelessness?
Give people healthcare they don't deserve at the expense of taxpayers just to check a box? We can also spend less by reducing regulation...stop programs like medicare/medicaid and stop forcing ER to treat people who admit they have no intention of paying their bills.
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Giving bad actors handouts isnt a better result. It rewards greed, selfishness and failure.
Talking to you is useless, you can't read. The dude just said taxpayers spend less for more effective welfare that helps them as well, and you're talking about forcing taxpayers to spend more
Or you can spend even less and have no welfare. They are ways to spend less witnout the negatives of welfare programs existing. He made the argument "we waste money still just more efficiently " people use that argument but wont look at..."what if we eliminate welfare all together"
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Ah yes, "buying stat points."
Also known as ensuring their people have places to live and lives worth living.
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Everyone deserves shelter, healthcare, and personal safety; the lack of any of those three is more a failure on the wider society than on that particular individual.
Do you have any evidence everybody deserves those things? Based on what do you make that statement? Seems pretty selfish and arrogant. How is it societies job to make people responsible for themselves. People are responsible for themselves...not others.
The mouth-breathing hypocrisy of saying it's selfish that everyone deserves shelter and healthcare is beyond me.
Prisoners, even the ones in American for-profit prisons, get shelter and healthcare even if it is of a poor/negligent quality. Zoo animals get shelter and healthcare. Why do you think people who do not have as much resources as others due to where they were born or life circumstances deserve homelessness or suffering.
Do you prefer tax cuts for billionaires so they can sit on mountains of digital equity they could never possible spend; rather than using the potential tax revenue to reduce child poverty, or homelessness or incidence of drug addiction. Would you vote against reducing price gouging by medical companies so people can afford medication without fear of bankruptcy.
Americas's rugged individualism may have created an economic superpower but it's one where robber-barons, tech-entrepreneurs and big-pharma siphon all of the wealth; and in exchange the American individual can own a pet tiger, an AK47, and hundreds of thousands in crippling student/medical debt.
I didnt say they deserve homelessness but that doesnt mean they deserve homes. And natural consequence is why they are homeless. Prisoners getting those things (at a far higher quality than they should given they are criminals is a neccesary evil to keep them deperated from polite society) zoo animals are a wierd comparison considering its not exactly a better deal for them to be locked up compared to being in their natural habitat. If rather tax cuts for everybody so they can keep more of their money. Its not a rich v poor thing. Anybody should keep their money. If people choose drugs or make choices that end in homeless they can face natural consequences. Parents who refuse to care foe thwir children should be charged with abuse and neglect accordingly.Im perfectly fine with reducing regulation that would increase competition for medical needs but the govt already interferes too much in cost regulation. People choose to take on student debt.
I can only tell you in all honesty, that your vision for a society would be considered a dystopian nightmare by the majority of European cultures. There's too big a gulf between what you see as the value of unchained capitalism to promote competition and a darwinian survival of the fittest society, to ever reconcile with European efforts to create a bottom up social structure which puts the moral onus on the strongest/wealthiest actors to lift up the weakest/most vulnerable.
There are a lot of historical and inherent reasons EU is playing catchup to US in pure economic indicators. Language barriers are a significant problem in EU. Schengen was actually established only in 95, borders were closed before that. Not all of EU has managed to join a single currency. Half the EU regained independence from soviets economically quite recently, the rest also dealt with all sorts of dictatorships foreign and domestic during WW2 and ever since then. These sorts of things are all completely independent of modern policy decisions. A change in policy doesn't undo decades of history.
> There are a lot of historical and inherent reasons EU is playing catchup to US in pure economic indicators.
Not when it comes to digital services or computer hardware though. Why are all the CPUs designed by American companies and manufactured abroad?
How come there is no Microsoft or Google or Amazon or Apple or... equivalent in Europe? I don't mean that it has to be a big corporation, but rather that they offer some service that is globally the leader. All we seem to have is SAP and... Spotify?
>How come there is no Microsoft or Google or Amazon or Apple or... equivalent in Europe?
You're asking why there is a lack of monopolization of digital services in Europe under a post about more successful European antitrust laws.
Jokes aside, the EU currently has no (or a very underdeveloped) digital single market. Imagine living in Utah and ordering something from Amazon only for transaction not to go through because the item can only be sent to Arizona. That stuff still happens in the EU all the time. That's why a European Amazon is wishful thinking until the digital single market is complete or at least mature and comparable to the US service market.
Apple: Europe had Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson,... who were some of the most successful phone companies on the planet, but they were bought by foreign competitors or pulled out of the phone industry altogether in large part because of the missing infrastructure and most of all accumulated capital in the EU to keep the expertise here. The EU made it much easier for other tech to either stay in Europe or re-shore back to Europe, e.g. battery technology, electric vehicles, space and aviation industries, renewable energy..
Microsoft and Google: First mover advantage of the US. Just a 2-3 year lead in the software sector will result in the monopolization of parts of it. Microsoft and Google are great examples of that. One massive achievement was EU legislation that forces these companies to stop exclusive in-house development of all the technology they use and stop them from buying every small competitor or provider of a service they use. Imagine a car company that buys every single adjacent company that even remotely touches their supply chains until nothing is left to challenge them. That's what Microsoft and Google did. The study points out the lack of US oversight in this regard.
>You're asking why there is a lack of monopolization of digital services in Europe under a post about more successful European antitrust laws.
But these companies didn't initially become successful because of monopolies. They became successful by offering a very good product.
>That's why a European Amazon is wishful thinking until the digital single market is complete or at least mature and comparable to the US service market.
The irony, of course, is that Amazon itself does work in Europe. The delivery times are long, but you can order in almost any corner of the EU.
>Microsoft and Google: First mover advantage of the US. Just a 2-3 year lead in the software sector will result in the monopolization of parts of it.
But when it comes to an OS the first mover advantage was so long ago. At this point somebody in Europe could've started building and heavily pushing a Linux-based OS as an alternative. Hell, this is something that could even work when done by the government, because they could start by using it in government services.
Google also wasn't the first search engine. Nor are they the last - there are already other alternatives. Even some European ones, but they aren't as good.
No offense, but you don't seem to understand how monopolization works. A company can offer a great product and slowly buy up the other competitors or make deals with other parts of the supply chain in order to achieve a monopoly. How many people choose a Microsoft OS when they buy their Intel processor? This choice is rarely, if ever, made by the end consumer.
>The irony, of course, is that Amazon itself does work in Europe. The delivery times are long, but you can order in almost any corner of the EU.
That's exactly the problem, Amazon now has a monopoly here as well and kills competition. Delivery times aren't long at all, that's never been the problem. But it's much easier to conquer the entire US market and then have the necessary ressources and know-how to set up offices in every European country and deal with several different customs regimes than the other way around. Single market and customs union improved this since the 90s, but it's still a work in progress (like I tried to explain).
Logically, logistically, statistically.. it just makes zero sense to expect a mega-corporation like Amazon to come out of the fractured European market which additionally does a better job at preventing monopolization than the DoJ in the US. I don't know if we've established this yet, but something like Amazon isn't necessarily good for our economy to begin with.
>But when it comes to an OS the first mover advantage was so long ago.
And therefore they had more than enough time to create an almost unbreakable monopoly. Right?
>Google also wasn't the first search engine. Nor are they the last - there are already other alternatives. Even some European ones, but they aren't as good.
I would argue that Google survives purely on name recognition and brand familiarity. And of course through monopolization. How many average users consciously type in google.com even a single time in their life? They just enter the searched phrase in their URL line and their browser defaults to Google. In most important ways (privacy, data protection etc) Google is much worse than many alternatives - European and American.
Arguing that Google somehow offers a better user experience for the average person sounds.. not well thought through at best, but actually quite disingenuous.
> How many people choose a Microsoft OS when they buy their Intel processor? This choice is rarely, if ever, made by the end consumer.
Every single consumer makes this choice, because THE ALTERNATIVE IS COMPLETELY FREE. It is so free and good that most of the internet - actual commercial operations - run on it. Sure, if you're into video games or video editing, then Linux has some problems, but almost anything aside from that works pretty well.
>Delivery times aren't long at all, that's never been the problem.
Spoken as somebody that lives in a major country. Ordering something from Amazon takes 1-2 weeks for it to arrive. And that's good, because the alternative websites, of which there are many, often don't arrive at all! They sell something and say it's "in stock", but it really isn't.
A couple of years ago I wanted to buy a HDD. I went to a local online seller of PC parts, it said the HDD was "in stock", I bought it. A few days later I get an email saying that the HDD would arrive in 10 days time, but that the price from the warehouse they're ordering from has increased. I can either pay more or they will refund me the money.
Amazon has a "monopoly" because many of its competitors suck.
But all of this is beyond what I'm talking about. Amazon got so big because they offered a great service, as did Google, Microsoft, Apple etc. We have some of these in Europe too, but for some reason this hasn't happened nearly as much in the past few decades compared to before - where's the modern equivalent of Nokia?
>Arguing that Google somehow offers a better user experience for the average person sounds.. not well thought through at best, but actually quite disingenuous.
If it doesn't, then why don't you use one of the many alternatives?! It's literally like 5 clicks to make the alternatives work! I default to a different search engine than Google, but frequently have to go back to Google because the one I'm using simply can't find the relevant answers I want. Sure, Google isn't perfect - nowadays the search results feel like they're getting worse, but it's still a very good service.
So?
Digital services come in many shapes or forms, not just things you find on the internet or on your office computer.
Siemens is one of the world's leaders in automation, Bosch is one of the world's leaders in car parts, including automotive software. Etc.
This is a wildly misinformed comment that echos deeply but wrongly held beliefs about Europe in North America - both among laymen but also journalists. Let's look at the metrics you mentioned in which the US supposedly significantly outperformed the EU economy.
> measured by metrics of employment
Ignoring all the statistical cosmetics with technical definitions of who constitutes an "unemployed" person, we can simply look at the labour participation rate in both markets (figure 2). Not only is the EU trend positive, while the US trend is negative, the EU even caught up a massive discrepancy of ~10% in the last two decades which is also the time frame focused on in this study (80s and 90s -> setting up of regulators, 00s and 10s -> regulators making the EU single market more competitive).
> growth
This will inevitably re-ignite the also painfully misinformed debate about measuring GDP nominally vs purchasing power adjustments, but going with the latter reveals that the EU despite more direct disruptions (fall of the USSR, euro crisis, Brexit, recently the energy crisis/Russia's 2nd invasion of Ukraine) grew more or less at the same pace as the US economy. Since we're talking about growth here specifically, I'm sure we can all agree it makes sense to filter out noise from conversion rates and internal devaluation in the PIGS economies following the euro debt crisis. All of this despite the fact that the US population grew faster, meaning that GDP/capita in the EU has consistently grown faster for almost two decades. This is not just true for the new memberstates in CEE either, but a broad pattern across most EU countries (albeit much less pronounced in traditionally rich countries like Germany or Denmark).
>inflation
Ever since the introduction of the single currency, the eurozone and the US followed a very similar monetary strategy and therefore experienced similar inflation until very recently. Were it not for the war in eastern Europe, the eurozone actually proved to be more resiliant initially in the direct aftermath of Covid-19.
Those are my thoughts. I've been trying to argue these points for years, but to little avail to the overall perception. The narrative that Europe is an economic slump compared to the US isn't supported by the data, let alone that the difference is significant. Europe has slightly outperformed the US in every metric you have picked. We can even look at other indicators like fiscal responsibility. Government debt to GDP ratio or the annual goverment fiscal deficit - both of which are strongly believed to be European problems because of Italy and Greece - clearly show that the EU outperformed the US for quite some time.
EDIT: Typos.
You present the metrics as something purely positive, but that's not what they actually are.
"Employment" in the US translates to some people working three jobs to make ends meet. In the EU, it's perfectly fine if someone works part-time and tops up with taxpayer money to take care of their family. Growth, likewise, doesn't follow the "the higher the better" notion - there's a potential growth that's optimal for an economy, going beyond that is actually not beneficial.
With inflation, the EU juggles a whole lot of different economies, some of which would benefit from higher inflation, some from lower - as such, the ECB has an inflation target that they try to keep inflation of the Euro close to. Too low an inflation can also have negative consequences, and that's something many here in Germany haven't quite realized yet.
Also, inflation can have different causes - intrinsic structural ones or exogenic ones - the latter are often transitory. Inflation in the US and inflation in Europe are currently driven by fundamentally different problems.
The US outperforms everyone in the printing of money.
A British politician complaining about how european banks print money. There's a lot of romanticizing of Europe, but the banking system is global. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/102ifuh/our_banking_systems/
As for the more competitive markets they're right. There's a competition going on and you're barred from competing against those that are already in.
Proof that you can't expect people to do the right thing.
I can hear the Repubs now, "damn commies".
>European economies have developed stronger anti-trust regulations, more competitive markets, and more robust consumer protection than the US in the last 20 years. The reason for this is the EU. EU member states are incentivized to empower a strongly independent pro-competition regulator.
US citizens who feel things have been going south in this country, read this! You'll get a good idea of the cause.
By contrast, the US system essentially only responds to completely legalized bribery by campaign financiers. Thus the Bankers Association writes the bankruptcy and student loan laws, and no laws needed by non-wealthy citizens are even possible for the most part. It is why the US never had a sane or rational student loan system or much else that makes sense for hardly any voters.
But at the same time I think we've completely sucked at the commercial Internet, be it social media, search, Internet advertising, cloud hosting, e-commerce etc. We have nothing that's even close to the by now monopolies in USA (in order: Meta, Google, Google/Meta, Amazon/Microsoft etc, Amazon (maybe Wish too)). One factor is that we don't have the "wild west" financing industry USA has. A second is that regulations likely would have stopped phenomena like privacy surveillance (as performed by primarily Meta). Then we have Chinese companies that have been extremely successful also outside China, e.g. Alibaba and TikTok.
A multi-language issue causing too small "pools" for social media? I don't think so. We simply had too few companies even attempting to compete from day one.
So are we stronger than USA in new areas like AI/ML, robotics and space travel then? I rather see that China is stronger than or as strong as USA, and EU is definitely behind USA too.
So what is it that we are "pro-competition" about then? Transport? Music?
There's a few pretty important European (and EU) companies on the internet.
On my phone I have:
the Ecosia search engine (based in Germany, it plants trees every x times I search something), Bolt (in Estonia, basically a cooler Uber with scooters), TooGoodToGo (Denmark, it lets me find good deals for food that would otherwise be thrown away), Spotify (Sweden) and Deezer (France, but American majority stake), I have a few travelling apps like Booking.com (from the Netherlands), Trivago (German but American-majority stake) and Skyscanner (from Ireland but the majority stake is Chinese) and my antivirus is from a pretty big European company while my banking app is a European start-up (but I'm not gonna share them online for security concerns!). There's also the Reuters and Ryanair app, but they did not start as digital companies.
And those are the apps I currently have on my phone, there's a lot more that I don't have - this is the first time I check my apps' countries of origin. I know Supercell is Finnish, Vinted is Lithuanian. There's also certain notable apps from the UK when it was an EU member like (funnily enough) Onlyfans - and Cyprus is the preferred legal residence of many adult-content companies. Opera is also from Norway (not in the EU but in the EEA, with the same regulations).
Overall, I think we as Europeans missed the social media boom during the 2000s but we are catching up now in other areas with less established leaders since the late 2010s and early 2020s.
As for new areas, I know the Dutch ASML holds the de-facto monopoly on microchip-making, Denmark and Spain have the biggest renewable energy companies (4 out of the 5 biggest companies), and France has the two most important recycling companies. You should also check all of those things because it might have changed with the pandemic (and there must be other areas that I missed)
Good points.
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Exploring the socioeconomic conditions of the post-WWII world and its trajectory is the differentiation. If the conditions of the past were changed such that any other country effectively won WWII via no loss to their industrial production most would've likely followed a similar path as America did as far as a proclivity towards neoliberal regulation is concerned. America is only different because it was not in Europe. Instead Europe was all destroyed and they all had to come together for better means rather than perpetually endorse their own destruction. The United Kingdom certainly did adopt more neoliberal regulation than most relative to the EU and I believe there exists a similar logic that explains this difference.
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Don't forget encouraged to cut corporate taxes to near zero.
This is simple. Europeans' form of capitalism has had more than a 200-year head start in the learning curve of proper development. They have learned that the person, the worker, the consumer, the individual man and woman, and the child - the individual MATTERS! If the worker/individual isn't taken care of, the corporation begins to rot. It's why unions are strong in Europe.
Yup - their regulations are so amazing that the GDP of the wealthiest EU member, is less than that of . . . California. The 2nd wealthiest member, UK, has a GDP smaller than Texas.
Their economies are so amazing that the wealth per capita in most US states outperforms EU countries.
>The 2nd wealthiest member [of the EU], UK, has a GDP smaller than Texas.
I love this sentence.
By the way, California has a smaller GDP than Germany and the UK is not a member of the EU (and the Texan GDP is less than two thirds of the UK's, it's similar to Italy's). But either way comparisons in nominal terms are pretty much useless, PPP would show the actual living standards
EU has always seen decades of growth stagnation and are trying to figure out how to boost their flaccid economy, but thanks for trying to make yet another title attempt to act like the EU does something better than the US.
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If this was true, why are investors uninterested in investing in the Eurozone?
Not sure if it's a serious question, but linguistic divides, investment culture and the lack of the digital single market are a few of the causes
It is a serious question.
I mean the entire European stock market is smaller than just the USA tech sector (might have changed recently, unsure).
Reason being is USA protection in nato eu been n fake economy since ww2 let’s be honest here
And none of that matters here in EU. See alternatives to Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Intel, AMD ect in EU? Hell no!
US wild and predatory laws allow to breed monsters that will just consume everything of worth in markets they have access to.
Best those pesky laws can do against such entities is to fine them barely on sum that is barely significant for them, that is if violation is found and prosecuted, most of the time investigations go on for year, sometimes decades and then case could be appealed and dragged for even longer, meanwhile violations go on.
EU should adopt Chinese methods to US companies - otherwise we will never have our own industries in EU.
Proposing a race to the bottom is a great way to show people you haven't thought this through very much.
Riversntallbuildings t1_j2rv83w wrote
I love thé standards and regulations that the EU has been passing.
I advocate whenever possible for the US to do the same. Especially when it comes to Antitrust, IP and digital marketplace regulations.
The economic disparity will not decrease without strong corporate regulations.