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Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

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Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#41

Post by Maro »

paganel wrote: post #35
moonchrome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. Ironic that they are "worried" about "government control" given how often their governments control huge chunks of the economy, private sector and the general distrust and vilification of capitalism (you think the OWS is bad, wait till you hear the ex-commies and philosophy professors talking about social justice t…

I don't downvote stuff on HN (I think you're just my third or fourth downvote), but I had to do it because you're factually wrong, and spreading misconceptions. I'll just give you my country's example, Romania. Our biggest company, Petrom (it's an oil company) has been privatized just before our entry into the EU. Its new owner? The Austrians from OMV, which has the Austrian Government as its main shareholder. Also,…

The poster wrote "huge chunks", not "all".

I can give an example very close to home about gov't influence here in Hungary, and that is the tech/IT sector. A huge chunk of tech/IT SMBs are directly or indirectly living off government contracts, grants, gov't companies or companies that have been privatized but retain close ties to the gov't (and are dumb). A new thing here in Hungary is EU grants, which is the same, dumb money.

The first question I routinely get as an entrepreneur is "what grant did you win?". When I say "none" and that I'm trying to bootstrap off the market they think I'm crazy or lying. (Not kidding.) Also, most SMBs that I've come in contact with over over the last 3-5 years fit the above description well.

Without going into the details of the problems with money from the gov't or the EU, this effect precludes any kind of real R&D or innovation to take place around here. In fact the word "innovation" has been hijacked here in Hungary to mean "grant money". You have gov't officials saying "there's a lot of innovation in the IT sector" which means "there's a lot of grant money given out in the IT sector". Unfortunately there are no results to show for it, it's a cargo cult culture. The succesfull tech companies we do have (LogMeIn, Prezi, IndexTools, Graphisoft) are all companies that to my knowledge stayed the hell away from gov't money.

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#42

Post by Vivtek »

nodata wrote: post #11
jan_g wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the same is true for majority of governments in European countries.

For the majority of European countries? Can you give some examples?

Could be worse - if something works anywhere, the United States won't do it. Health care? How can we afford to keep everybody healthy when we have to fight bioterrorism?

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#43

Post by m_for_monkey »

nodata wrote: post #11
jan_g wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, the same is true for majority of governments in European countries.

For the majority of European countries? Can you give some examples?

I see many European countries mentioned from East to West, from North to South. So if everyone points to the others, who's the mastermind? Maybe it's just the effect of the EU?

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#44

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

rmc wrote: post #29
nodata wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the majority of European countries? Can you give some examples?

Ireland. With hints of either half baked copies of UK law, or just implementing EU law

To give (an utterly ridiculous) example, the irish government copied a model of university funding from the UK. Now there is one major difference between the two systems. In the UK, the government controls the number of university places, while in Ireland, the universities do. The department of education rammed through this new funding system that divided up money based on the number of students per discipline (arts, science, medicine, business all having different modifiers). Now, this system worked in the UK as the universities couldn't increase their places themselves, but caused a lot of problems in Ireland.

Trinity College had a strategic goal to stay the same size as they were for undergrads, and increase postgraduate intake. When this funding model was introduced, they then had to increase UG numbers or lose loads of money (as the amount allocated was fixed, and other universities were expanding).

I think its a more general problem though, politicians are hesitant to try anything new as they can be blamed, which leads them to copy solutions that appear to be used elsewhere, as they can then blame the other country.

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#45

Post by bobwebb »

m_for_monkey wrote: post #43
nodata wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the majority of European countries? Can you give some examples?

I see many European countries mentioned from East to West, from North to South. So if everyone points to the others, who's the mastermind? Maybe it's just the effect of the EU?

Maybe agreements like ACTA aren't just the result of copyright lobbying, but also groupthink?

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#47

Post by eternalban »

paganel wrote: post #35
moonchrome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. Ironic that they are "worried" about "government control" given how often their governments control huge chunks of the economy, private sector and the general distrust and vilification of capitalism (you think the OWS is bad, wait till you hear the ex-commies and philosophy professors talking about social justice t…

I don't downvote stuff on HN (I think you're just my third or fourth downvote), but I had to do it because you're factually wrong, and spreading misconceptions. I'll just give you my country's example, Romania. Our biggest company, Petrom (it's an oil company) has been privatized just before our entry into the EU. Its new owner? The Austrians from OMV, which has the Austrian Government as its main shareholder. Also,…

> the banking sector is controlled by foreign-owned banks ...

And the PM wonders why his country signed ACTA. It is not practically sovereign, that's why.

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#48

Post by jwr »

paganel wrote: post #33
JanezStupar wrote: post #14

I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. It should still be known, that a lot of bad stuff has crept into EU law. But people are starting to gain awareness on these issues. And East EU people have no enthusiasm about reliving the Iron Curtain days.

> I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. And for good reasons. I'm Romanian myself, but I think I speak for a lot of other East-Europeans when I'm saying that all this censorship non-sense brings back awful things from the past. I was only 9 when the Communist regime fell, but I can still remember about how my parents or any other adults could have gone…

Exactly. I am Polish and I have no desire to go back to a totalitarian regime, media control or censorship.

I think people from the former Soviet group are more attuned to abuses of power and attempts at censorship or rights abuse. As an example, I know my detectors went off full-scale when I saw the media coverage of the last Iraqi war on US television. Tightly cropped shots, showing only soldiers and their equipment -> obvious manipulation. And yet few other people around me noticed this.

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#49

Post by johncoltrane »

JanezStupar wrote: post #14

I am really glad that eastern European people are so vigilant about censorship and government control. It should still be known, that a lot of bad stuff has crept into EU law. But people are starting to gain awareness on these issues. And East EU people have no enthusiasm about reliving the Iron Curtain days.

There is so much irony these days: the country that used to be the most active in fighting against communist dictators' censorship is now pushing new forms of censorship onto "free" eastern european peoples. No wonder they are fighting back.

Re: Romanian Prime Minister Admits He Has No Idea Why Romania Signed ACTA

#50

Post by bad_user »

savramescu wrote: post #2

I'm not surprised at all at Boc. I'm glad he resigned, but I don't think there will be a big improvement any time soon. For the rest of HN: there were mass demonstrations lately requesting his resignation; even the President asked him and he kept refusing. In the end it looks like he left.

1. People still don't realize that the Boc administration was the best thing that could happen to us.

Our national debt is less than 40% of the GDP in a time of a global economic crisis. Of course it grew since 2009 from 25% so the trend is a little worrying, which is why the government implemented austerity measures, because 3 million people (the employees of private companies that pay taxes) cannot pay the bills for the rest without making cuts ... and all the money that came from privatization have been eaten by PSD.

During Boc our economy was stable without drowning us in debt (compare with Greece's debt at 173% of GDP, or with Italy's and Ireland's which are at over 100%). Also take the stability of our national currency which historically has never been so stable.

2. I sympathize with the couple of hundred people that went to the streets. I would have gone myself, but instead of bitching about it I just work my ass off and make my own money, instead of begging for it.

There's a reason why Germany recovered after 2 world wars in which they were bitch-slapped, plus the fall of the Berlin wall which left them in recession. And now they are again amongst the biggest economies (first in Europe, fourth world-wide) ... they aren't beggars, while we are.

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