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Comment by ahmeneeroe-v2 | Hacker News Reader

The law here isn't some neutral concept of justice, but rather a regulation tailor-made by unelected officials to target large US companies.

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No, countries have the right to regulate businesses that operate in their jurisdiction. It's up to the companies to square that with their business model, or choose to do business elsewhere. I'm pretty free market, but this is common sense stuff: it has to work that way, or we've got the much bigger problem of either a techno dystopia with corporate nation-states, or else corporations becoming extensions of a government, waging war by other means on foreign shores.

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.

I 100% agree that the EU has the right to do this. It may even be in their best interest to do so (idk, I'm not European).

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".

It might not be "justice" to you in the narrow definition you are creating, but fair economic and user privacy rules are justice to me and likely to most. I don't find it orthogonal to justice at all.

Yeah, no. If that was the case they would not fine companies based in the EU. Guess what? They are also going after companies based in the EU.

Your argument holds very little water.

The law making body of the EU is directly elected.

The Council of the EU made these antitrust laws and they are not directly elected.

The EU council is composed mainly of the heads of state or heads of government of each member state.

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.

Elected officials appointed to a position, buddy. Not "directly" elected, like the GP claimed.

You may be thinking of the EU Parliament, which is directly elected, but who did not pass these antitrust regulations.

The EU Council is mainly composed by heads of state or government.

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.

You literally just agreed with me in your first few sentences and then ended by saying I'm talking bullshit. Weird hill for you to die on since it's a minor detail and not even the main point in my original argument.

It just reads like you want to argue with someone online.

I didn't agree with anything you said.

Heads of state/government are elected.

it's gonna get much harder to keep on pretending that unelected opereatives based out of the USA have attacked with violence, prejudice, and overall imperialistic intent all kinds of governments all over the world, including purported american "allies"

Not really, antitrust is far from being a new concept. It predates all the major tech companies. In fact, a cursory web search traces it back all the way to the Roman empire. and Google is definitely not the first to be hit by it.

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.

What is it about this topic that makes you and others so hostile? It reads like heavy emotional reactions, but I am curious.

There are 4 replies to my comment and 3 of them are uncharacteristically hostile.

Not justifying the tone of the responses, but you made a classical strawman argument and are now complaining about peoples responses.

My argument is that the law in question is an EU economic policy targeting large US companies, not "justice" in the "law & order" sense of that word. This is a real position, not a straw man.

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.

In my reply I used some light sarcasm to convey my dismay at how wrong your original post was. If you read that as hostility or "heavy emotional reaction", well, that is a you problem.

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.

This is a wholly new concept of "antitrust" law which relies on market competition rather than consumer harm.

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.

Lack of market competition is a direct harm to consumers and society. You are just seeking to undermine it with very weak rhetoric.

My entire point has been that this is an EU economic policy, not traditional "justice" (e.g. punishment for robbery).

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...

Yeah, and anti drunk driving laws are discriminatorily tailor-made to target heavy alcohol enthusiasts.

It's more like a law that targeted only sake drinkers, and punish them for a BAC of 0.01.

Can you provide any evidence or examples to support this point of view?

And Google is your sake drinker?

Yes, those pure, angelic and kind trillion dollar tech companies are being bullied by the big bad evil EU government because they are jealous of their success. They're just haters

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

Okay this is weirdly hostile/sarcastic reply thing is now officially a trend. What is it about this topic that you react so hard to?

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