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

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

#431

Post by carlosjobim »

Sharlin wrote: post #426
carlosjobim wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That does not mean the large majority of EU citizens seriously thinks the EU should be replaced with something else. Who are you quoting when you write "large majority"? I wrote "maybe half", and that's my assessment from talking to people. As for the UK, that's still to be seen. The last time they decided to stand on the side of European unification, it turned out they made the right choice – while still paying a v…

And how biased is your sample? Also, of course we have to have a baseline of being even reasonably informed of the cost/benefit landscape. People who are actively being lied to don’t and cannot count.

People who have a different opinion than you do, do not and cannot count, got it. Because clearly they've been lied to. Your attitude is exactly why I recommend hackers here to go talk to people in real life about these things.

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

#432

Post by tiptup300 »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #6
tiptup300 wrote: post #2

[flagged]

The EU being discussed is, in fact, the European Union.

The article as of now on HN is showing "Facing reality about the EU is a core requirement for good management" while the actual article title is "Facing reality, whether it’s about Apple or the EU, is a core requirement for good management".

Very obviously I was not talking about what a "EU" is. But instead what the article is talking about, whatever big thing is going on with the EU, if you click in and miss the actual title, they are burying the lead quite heavily.

In some form this seems to be how EU is putting tighter push on Apple in some way, but the headline as shown on HN doesn't give you any information. Just telling you that you are bad at your job if you don't think correctly about this big thing going on with EU, and if you don't even know what big thing is going on with the EU, while you're already out of the game.

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

#433

Post by Yujf »

graemep wrote: post #402
Yujf wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that EU laws are far from perfect, but I 100% would rather have the GDPR than not have it. With AI what I saw in the news mostly made sense and did not hinder development too much. But again I would rather they regulate the use because it will have real negative consequences for many people if they don't

The GDPR and DMA are mostly good. GDPR should have exemptions for organisations with smaller amounts of data who do not trade in it. A lot of EU laws have also been bad. VATMOSS (especially with the very low initial limit to register) was initially a disaster. It actually deterred people from trading within the EU! The commission's attempt at chat surveillance was thrown out by the parliament, but they will try again…

I don't know the details about VATMOSS but will look into it. I agree that chat control and the initial thing about software security not having a FOSS exemption were problematic. As far as I know, an exemption for FOSS authors was added.

I think it is important to acknowledge that many regulations are not perfect and I would push for more revisions on the details (although changes in the law also have a real cost associated) that don't hit their target.

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

#434

Post by pydry »

kbolino wrote: post #410
pydry wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody likes to be sneered at but the story illustrates the corrosive impact of oligarchic domestic propaganda pretty well, which is pretty relevant to the topic at hand.

Practical politics is more visceral than intellectual. A lot of people have first-hand experience with government-provided healthcare through the military and VA, and for many of them, it's not a positive experience. A lot of effort could be expended by the government to improve the quality of its own workforce and the incentive structure under which they operate, but that is boring and unsexy work, which always gets…

>Practical politics is more visceral than intellectual. A lot of people have first-hand experience with government-provided healthcare through the military and VA, and for many of them, it's not a positive experience.

I mean, a majority of Republicans want single payer. A majority of the people where I live (in a country with single payer)... also want single payer.

It's objectively a very popular policy. The majority of people on medicare and VA benefits would probably try to fight you if you tried to take them away.

Nonetheless, socialized medical care is objectively not an oligarchy friendly policy. Some of them make EPIC mind bending profits from private healthcare.

And, they have a lot of control and influence over the media, which results in rather a lot of anti-single payer propaganda.

The mix of these two forces can sometimes have interesting results. Like this: https://otb.cachefly.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/dont-ste...

Which is definitely more visceral than intellectual.

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

#435

Post by welshwelsh »

ryandrake wrote: post #408
rkangel wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's working for the people that live in the EU. This is another point that I think Americans miss sometimes - "good for the businesses" is seen as the end goal, and it is assumed that people will benefit in some trickle-down way from that. The goal for all of this is for people to have good lives. Supporting businesses may or may not be the right way of doing that, but we shouldn't lose sight of the end goal.

Simping for big business is a favorite American pastime. Somehow, so many Americans have been convinced that they're actually business owners, just having a set-back and temporarily working for $20/hr stocking shelves or selling cars. But in their hearts they are actually tycoons, and anything that hurts business surely hurts themselves!

I'm skeptical of this interpretation.

There is a middle ground between people making $20 an hour and business tycoons. Policies that help big business might not trickle down to people stocking shelves, but they often advantage middle class people.

For example, the US is an excellent place for software engineers. There are far more of them and they make far higher salaries than their European counterparts. Is it unreasonable to believe that American policies that empower big tech companies also benefit a developer making $250k at Google, even though he does not own the company?

What if policies that benefit the top 1% did, in fact, trickle down to the top 30% of Americans, at the expense of the bottom 70%? What if this bloc of people was organized enough to win elections and control politics without relying on people delusionally voting against their own interests?

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

#436

Post by yohannparis »

eadmund wrote: post #168
ragebol wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cookie warnings are a result of companies not taking a pretty obvious hint: don't do tracking.

The cookie warnings are dumb, because if an individual wishes not to use cookies, he is free to configure his browser to refuse to use cookies . It is entirely and 100% under the user’s control. Heck, the way the cookie protocol works the server already says ‘hey, may I store this cookie?’ by sending the Set-Cookie header. The user’s browser doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want it to!

Wanting to limit what kind of cookie is the purpose of the law. I want some cookies (like user preferences, session tokens) but not the one from advertisers to follow me across domain names.

Not every one is tech-savvy and that is why we have regulations.

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

#437

Post by dale_glass »

bengale wrote: post #418
dale_glass wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> European here. I squarely blame the business, and often turn back when hit by a particularly obnoxious banner. You're in the minority. Most people will not think every business is responsible for that, they'll assume they're being forced into it. > The bendy banana thing isn't a law, it's a class descriptor. Missing the point. Even with millions of pounds you can't convince a majority of people that is true. > Have…

> You're in the minority. Most people will not think every business is responsible for that, they'll assume they're being forced into it.

They've gotten far less annoying as of late, in good part because the EU made it clear annoying the user into acceptance isn't going to fly.

But early on, when websites had the great idea to make me opt out of 78 "partners" one by one, my annoyance was not at the EU, but at the website forcing me to click 78 checkboxes, and a reaction of "WTF? Why are 78 companies being informed I'm reading an article?"

> Missing the point. Even with millions of pounds you can't convince a majority of people that is true.

Did you know the US also has equivalent banana regulations?

> Continue to miss the point here. It doesn't have to be a good idea, years of meddling made it so people were willing to vote for a bad idea. That's my point.

Yeah, to their detriment to the point that it killed pretty much every other eurosceptic movement, and apparently they're not that happy with Brexit anymore themselves either.

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

#438

Post by epistasis »

RandomLensman wrote: post #421
epistasis wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is the continuation of the efforts at integration started in the 1950s. It took the loss of the colonies to really cement the future economic integration. The idea that economic integration prevents war has been fairly well shattered by Russia's warmongering. There are often reasons cited that sound good to the public, but these are not necessarily the same as the true reasons that really motivate the actions…

What is your evidence for the point around colonies? Are there any primary sources from people like Schuman, for example? WWI also showed that economic integration doesn't always prevent wars, Russia recently isn't a great example, because the integration was pretty limited.

My main source of the idea comes from Timothy Snyder, who argues primarily based on timing. European countries continued wars after WW2, just their imperial wars, against the people that they didn't think deserved having national self determination.

And as the big maritime empires lost an imperial war, that's when they joined the EU. The Dutch and French lose their colonies, time to join up. UK lost their empire later, then joined in the 1970s.

(BTW, I appreciate the questioning of sources, and wish that I had said more at the start of my comments.)

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

#439

Post by seszett »

seydor wrote: post #428
seszett wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone is self interested and when we see the Europeans talk about human rights on the one hand but then do big wine and dine trips in China to sell their luxury goods on the other hand you see clear evidence of that fact. I think you're falling into another typical mistake, which is to think "Europeans" are one person. In fact, it's very likely that the Europeans who talk about human rights don't travel to China…

Given how the Brussels controls trade with China for all the member-states, the statement is accurate.The same Commission who waves human rights flags will do all kinds of energy deals with saudi& Azerbaijan for example

The European Commission isn't one person either, actually.

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

#440

Post by troupo »

input_sh wrote: post #202
troupo wrote: 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/

I don't agree, but I can't quote GDPR because it's much older than GDPR. It's from a 2002 ePrivacy Directive, which is still in force, but on its way out and therefore less heavily enforced. ePrivacy Regulation is supposed to eventually deprecate it. The initial idea was for both GDPR and ePR to be enforced from the same date, but that obviously hasn't happened.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39603540
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