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Apple vs the Law

(formularsumo.co.uk)
377 points tempodox | 2 comments | 11 Jul 25 06:49 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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simonask ◴[11 Jul 25 08:22 UTC] No.44529604[source]▶
As a European, I have to say I am generally impressed with the EU in these cases. I'm from a country that's rich and capable, but with a GDP a fraction of Apple's market cap. There is no chance that national laws and entities would be sufficient to protect my consumer rights from corporations this size.

The EU is fundamentally a centre-right, liberalist, pro-business coalition, but what that means is that it is pro-competition. What's really impressive is that it seems to mostly refrain from devolving into protectionist policies, giving no preferential treatment to European businesses against international (intercontinental?) competitors, despite strong populist tendencies in certain member states.

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giingyui ◴[11 Jul 25 10:58 UTC] No.44530729[source]▶
Europe is centre right? That is an interesting claim. I guess someone’s right is someone else’s left.
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xandrius ◴[11 Jul 25 11:09 UTC] No.44530794[source]▶
Where would you place it? I'm curious because centre-right is quite spot on.
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giingyui ◴[11 Jul 25 11:50 UTC] No.44531072[source]▶
Socially and economically left wing. Progressive socially and interventionist economically.
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cess11 ◴[11 Jul 25 12:44 UTC] No.44531482[source]▶
Is this a joke? The EU is the product of large industrialists institutionalising their liberalist, capitalist values as an international bureaucracy.

It hardly cares about unions beyond what the ECHR and ILO treaties demands, i.e. it's obviously not left wing. If it was inherently left wing it wouldn't have the kind of parliament it has, but rather something like Yugoslavia or the DDR did.

It's also not conservative, hence why that movement has had to bolt on militarisation and stuff like Frontex.

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disgruntledphd2 ◴[11 Jul 25 13:17 UTC] No.44531787[source]▶
It's funny, as the EU is normally bashed by left people for being too right, and right people for being too left.

Like, lots of the Treaties are pretty neo-liberal (private services, competition is always good, privatise stuff) but lots more are more left wring (the anti-monoploy stuff, the social charter etc).

Really though the EU is 27 governments in a trenchcoat, so it tends to reflect those governments (which change over time).

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1. cess11 ◴[11 Jul 25 13:41 UTC] No.44532039[source]▶
Anti-monopoly is left wing and doesn't fit the neo-liberalist compartment?

The social charter is firmly liberalist, though not distinctly of the neo- flavour.

Due to the institutional structures and processes EU rule making tends to be quite resistant to immediate political fashion. For one the power of framing from interest and lobby groups is quite strong, hence the influence from expert groups and lawyer like people. It's why conservatives are pushing towards a kind of United States of Europe direction, they'd prefer a centralisation of power in areas currently governed by the founding agreements.

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2. disgruntledphd2 ◴[11 Jul 25 16:32 UTC] No.44534151[source]▶
> Anti-monopoly is left wing and doesn't fit the neo-liberalist compartment?

Yeah, look it could go either way.

> Due to the institutional structures and processes EU rule making tends to be quite resistant to immediate political fashion.

I don't really agree with this. For an example of why not, the AI act is a good one. This was a great Act that got a lot of LLM nonsense pumped into it following ChatGPT. While I get why that happened, I would have preferred that they wait, as the original stuff made lots of sense, and the less well thought through AI/LLM stuff significantly weakens the act.

> It's why conservatives are pushing towards a kind of United States of Europe direction, they'd prefer a centralisation of power in areas currently governed by the founding agreements.

Can you give me some examples of people (national governments particularly) pushing for this? I think that lots of governments are pretty happy with inter-governmentalism even though it has lots of problems.