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Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

baldurbjarnason.com

141–150 of 526 posts

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#141

This honestly just sounds like a lot of whining from the author. As someone who’s set in rooms with loads of regulators (1) you can pretty much always compromise with them. (2) they want to ensure criteria is met & typically not penalties nor want you to leave a market It’s more accurate to think of regulators as customers. They just have different requirements they need to solve their problem. Rarely are they protec…

In your meetings with regulators how often have you seen the "we'll exit the market" bluff actually work? I can't see many companies wilfully exiting the third largest market in the world.

This is basically just an American fantasy.

It's a way to make the point that "since these foreigners are so ungrateful, we will stop blessing them with our wonderful products if they don't please us, and then they will have to live in the mud and the cold like they used to do before, without an iPhone or a Twitter account".

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#142
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better". Since we have so many consumer protections, much of how we end up engaging with the law around business practices is to our benefit . We're always aware we can raise bad business practices with an ombudsman (etc.). So our lived experience of government regulation is, in large part, positive…

>It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better". The notion of regulation as being on a sliding scale where "more is worse" was a manufactured American meme created by the Kochs in the 1980s. It emerged from some of their epic fights with the environmental protection agency and their subsequent lobbying and public relations outreach effo…

Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, I'm pretty sure people opposed excessive government regulation before the 1980s.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#143
This is a very good article. Overall, I believe that the American lifestyle, media, and politics are so pervasive and have such a global reach that many American managers (as well as academics) find themselves unable to work internationally.

They truly believe that everything operates just like it does at home, and, on the surface, it appears to: everyone speaks English and has watched Friends.

However, institutions are complex and multi-layered entities. Americans often struggle to deeply understand the institutional specificities of other countries, resulting in behavior that can be perceived as lacking humility or even as arrogant—worse yet, as superficial. A case in point is Apple.

It's paradoxical: the more global your home culture becomes, the less able you are to perceive nuance and depth.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#144
post #117

The discussion about Apple is kind-of meh, as apple is not such a big deal in europe, as most phones are not iphones. But the nostalgic view of the EU as some kind of free market pioneer is stuck in the 90s. Today's world and EU are very different. Nobody rememebrs WW2 and europe is too weak to start another war. The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyw…

>The protection from external threat (russia) is coming from the USA, and russia won't last very long anyway.

Eu is giving much more aid than US https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/news/ukraine-support-tr...

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#146
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It does seem they've mistaken the general sentiment towards government regulation in europe, which is typically, "more, better". The notion of regulation as being on a sliding scale where "more is worse" was a manufactured American meme created by the Kochs in the 1980s. It emerged from some of their epic fights with the environmental protection agency and their subsequent lobbying and public relations outreach effo…

The idea that anyone who's opposed to narrow government regulations is somehow brainwashed by the Kochs is just an unsufferably smug attitude towards people you disagree with. It's like the "funded by George Soros therefore bad" you sometimes see on the right. I'm sure they've spent money on promoting this, but there's many reasons you'd come to this conclusion other than having it "manufactured" for you by billionai…

It is worthwhile contemplating who is benefiting from “my opponents are brain dead retards”.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#147
post #31

Finally more people are figuring out that the EU is a net positive and not a net negative. Love my Europe.

[flagged]

I thought all the big banks and big companies were fleeing to the US for the same reason?

The whole EU banking sector is worth as much as one big US bank.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#148
post #82

What amazes and perplexes me is that Apple thinks it can effectively play politics against the EU and that somehow their customers will back them in the face of the "consequences" Apple applies, which are pretty transparent and really quite amateurish (eg no more web apps for you!). As the article states, the first mistake Apple makes is thinking the EU is somehow like the US, but I can't see how any large proportion…

I think there needs to be a word like "Paris syndrome" for when Americans meet actual Europeans and find out their politics. I've not met anyone who doesn't work in Brussels who thinks the EU isn't a dysfunctional pile of shit. The most spirited defense I've heard of it is "Well at least it keeps the Germans from invading again.". > The EU, it's better than genocide, by a bit - probably. -- Enthusiastic EU supporter,…

Most people who aren't working in Brussels have zero idea about how the EU functions at all.

Brexit voting towns that were shocked to find various programs shuttered once they got what they'd voted for are a great example of this.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#149
post #83
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in the law requires those cookie banners. If you don't agree, you can quote to me the exact passage in the GDPR where it talks about cookies, banners, or browsers. Or you can read what Github has to say about this: https://github.blog/2020-12-17-no-cookie-for-you/

This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU. The more of this they layer on the more ordinary people get irritated by the EU. This is how Brexit happened, remain tried to explain this stuff over and over again and no one wants to hear it. They want the cookie banners gone, or t…

> This is the exact problem though, noone really cares what the law says, they care that now they have annoying cookie banners. They don't blame the businesses for this; they blame the EU.

European here. I squarely blame the business, and often turn back when hit by a particularly obnoxious banner.

> This is how Brexit happened, remain tried to explain this stuff over and over again and no one wants to hear it. They want the cookie banners gone, or the bendy banana rules gone. The EU makes itself an easy target everytime they add more.

Nah, that's stupid. The bendy banana thing isn't a law, it's a class descriptor. It just says that if you want to sell bananas labelled as "class A" they can't be bent into a pretzel. Because go figure, when a restaurant buys what is advertised as high quality produce, they don't want to get a shipment full of ugly stuff that doesn't look good on the plate.

But you absolutely can sell weird, ugly but still edible bananas. They just have to be described properly.

That's again, what the article is speaking about here.

> If nothing else was learned from Brexit that should have been the thing. There actually isn't a point where you can spend enough money to convince people of this stuff when they don't want to hear it.

Haven't changed my mind in the slightest on that. Brexit was a stupid idea and as far as I can see, the UK failed to profit from it.

Re: Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Most people work for big companies or smaller companies supplying big companies. A tiny percentage of the economy is the typical start up model. Start ups !== the economy.

It’s almost as if large investments are a sign of a good economic outlook.
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