[flagged]
Weird concept, but that's how it works.
Oh. It was Boeing saying that while bribery is generally VERY BAD, there are geopolitical situations where not only is it acceptable but we need to report it through proper channels so we can get a tax write off as a cost of doing business.
wat.
I don't like the "battle against big tech" framing, but I think that's just what the publisher went with to make it sound dramatic.
My point is more that it's not "justice" in the criminal-justice sense (eg: consequences for murder/robbery). It's economic policy, largely orthogonal to "justice".
Your argument holds very little water.
All EU countries are democracies (at least supposedly, we have Hungary after all).
The heads of state/government on democracies are not conjured up from thin air buddy, those are elected.
You might be thinking of the European Commission, those are appointment by members of the council (that are elected) and confirmed by the European Parliament (also elected). The European Commissioners are more like ministers in a regular country. So saying they are unelected is as silly as saying that the minister of defense or minister of internal affairs in a country was unelected.
You may be thinking of the EU Parliament, which is directly elected, but who did not pass these antitrust regulations.
In some countries that may be a president (which is directly elected), in others a prime minister (which you may argue is indirectly elected by a elected parliament).
We may argue if presidentialism is somehow more democratic than parliamentarism, but prime ministers are undeniably elected (they are in the parliament after all).
Also, whatever regulations proposed by the EU council or commission, they have to be approved by the parliament. That's their whole job.
You are, honestly, just speaking bullshit about something you clearly don't understand, probably regurgitating bad takes you read online somewhere.
It just reads like you want to argue with someone online.
Heads of state/government are elected.
However, if Google (or any major US tech company) believe they are being wrongfully targeted, they can always stop operating in EU.
Or you know, they can continue operating there, but follow the rules instead. Again, a very weird concept. Not sure you will understand it.
There are 4 replies to my comment and 3 of them are uncharacteristically hostile.
In return I've gotten mostly insulting responses (though some thoughtful ones have now filtered in). I'm not even complaining about any of these, mostly just curious why this topic riles so many people up.
We can refer back to your original post:
> The law here isn't some neutral concept of justice, but rather a regulation tailor-made by unelected officials to target large US companies.
1 - It ignores that antitrust law is a concept of justice, created to protect society against economic abuse that would otherwise harm it.
2 - It uses an old, boring, and plain wrong rhetoric about "unelected EU officials". Sorry, this is plain bullshit.
3 - It has a subtext of "poor US big tech company being unfairly targeted by mean EU government". Again, another boring and plain wrong rhetoric. Companies like Google are horribly abusive both to users and to the societies where they operate. I wouldn't be surprised if Google willingly ignored untitrust law in a cold calculation where they figured they make more in revenue then they lose in fines.
There is no overlap with prior antitrust except for the name and "big = bad". Even your point 3 exposes the real problem. People don't like google (neither do I, actually), impute ill intent to them, and want them punished.
I am just calling a spade a spade.
Doing some light googling, the basis of these antitrust laws is from "Regulation No 17: First Regulation implementing Articles 85 and 86 of the Treaty" [1]
Article 86 of the Treaty begins, "In order to combat crimes affecting the financial interests of the Union"[2]...
This is where it gets complex, buddy, but hang with me..."financial interests" is another way of saying "economic interests", so the EU itself explicitly calls this an economic policy.
And why wouldn't they? They can and should protect their interests. So why are ou are all over the place trying to shut down conversations about them doing so?
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A...
[2] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eut/teec/part/THREE/title/V/c...
Its not like it has anything to do with them consistently violating people's rights and having the biggest monopoly in the history of the world. Get it twisted, you must defend them tooth and nail because one day, it could be you. /s
Not to mention Google already lost a previous similar (identical?) case back in 2018 or something, but didn't do enough changes so they had to be fined yet another time.
Not sure why Google are unable to get lawyers good enough to explain laws and regulations to them, or if executive team just ignores the lawyers they have.
You know that scene from Fight Club when on the plane, Edward Norton's character explains to his seat mate that he works for a very large car company where they have mechanical issues that kill people all the time, and his job is to do the math and only issue a recall if the cost of the lawsuits is greater than the cost of the recall. Google, Apple, et-al have the same thought process for following the law.
Some companies have surely done this. But most haven’t, and given how poorly Google is run, I doubt they did.
I think you were trying to say:
> Not every country has a legitimate lobbying scheme as part of its political system.
this is what harvest looks like in modernity
what we are witnessing, is the system moving energy (as money) from USA corporations onto Europe.
winter is coming, and heat will be needed; happens every year.