
Who Strikes Fear into Silicon Valley? Margrethe Vestager - imartin2k
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/world/europe/margrethe-vestager-silicon-valley-data-privacy.html
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montrose
I wonder if there will ever come a time when the biggest danger to SV from
Europe is competitors, rather than regulators.

It may be that competitors can't become more of a threat till regulators
become less of one. It's hard for a society to focus simultaneously on
multiple things, and regulation and startups seem not merely orthogonal, but
opposed.

~~~
money_talks
There's a big difference between regulation that affects all players fairly
and equally (like safety codes requiring buildings be built to certain specs,
requiring insurance, food labeling laws, etc.), and regulation like antitrust
which affects only select companies that are successful and meet unpublished
post-facto and mostly arbitrary criteria.

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money_talks
Antitrust and competition regulation is built entirely on arbitrary
quantitative definitions of competition rather than reasoned and objective
qualitative definitions of competition.

There's a big difference between qualitative and quantitative definitions of
competition. Anyone is free to compete with Google (qualitative), while Google
dominates search with ~90% market share (quantitative). Even if they had 100%
market share, they still exist in a qualitatively competitive market. But
antitrust and competition regulation isn't concerned with that, and we've
heard calls by EU regulators to break up Google based on their market share.
Same with Facebook.

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digi_owl
A few years back i looked into some European tech news to counterbalance all
the hype from the valley.

What i recall finding was that European tech focused more on helping the sick
and elderly (or at least that was what got coverage).

Things like garbage bins that would move to the curb on its own when full.

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wnevets
Is she the one to blame for those silly cookie warnings all over the internet?

~~~
runesoerensen
No, Vestager left danish politics in 2014 to serve as European Commissioner
for Competition. The EU cookie law was adopted in 2011.

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adventured
The EU has the most to fear from Margrethe Vestager. At a time when the US and
China are accelerating rapidly out ahead of the EU in tech, her policy
approach adds up to regressive protectionism that will do nothing but further
cripple the EU's tech industries (which are already 10 to 20 years behind the
US).

Margrethe Vestager is doing the US a favor by breaking the leg of the EU as a
competitor. If the US were more clever, it would poach all of the EU's best
engineers and scientists, paying them 2x what they can ever earn in the EU and
stapling a green card to a welcome note.

For the US, now is the time to take advantage of the EU's policies to drain as
much talent out of Europe as possible. That goes for Russia as well, which is
loaded with talented engineers and scientists that are being entirely wasted
in Putin's authoritarian nightmare featuring zero economic progress.

~~~
eksemplar
An average engineer that I employ in the public sector is paid $86544 a year
with a yearly pension of $12981 added on top of this.

They get 7 weeks paid vacation a year.

Stuff like New Years, January first, Easter and Christmas as well as a range
of other national holidays is considered paid leave.

They get paid sick leave with no questions asked for the first 3 days, then a
follow up on day 3 and 7 and an actual meeting on day 14.

They get paid leave on their child’s first two sick days, per child.

If they have children under 3 they get 2-4 days of paid leave a year per child
to spend quality time with them.

If they are older than 55-60 they get a suited amount of time off each year
ranging from 4 days a year to one day each week. At 4 days it’s paid leave, at
one day a week they are only paid for a 34 hour week (down from 37).

They work 37 hour weeks. Have flexible hours and can to work from home when it
fits their schedule.

They get $4000 worth of paid education a year + paid days to actually take it.
The $4000 doesn’t sound like that much, but it’s enough to cover 2 university
courses of around 20 ECTS.

Good luck attracting them. :)

~~~
olavgg
It's not like that in every region of Europe. Though that is what I would
expect getting in Oslo, Norway.

~~~
candiodari
The region I'm from publishes it's figures. The best engineers (or at least
the ones making the most new science) are assistants at university. Their pay
is published, and public (this is North West Europe)

Starts at 23k5 EUR, goes up to 40k EUR per year, if you keep it up for 20+
years (note: it is only this "high" if you're on a full time scholarship. The
average, even though the universities hide this fact, is 20% or so lower,
mostly because there's more than a few that "aren't full time". In reality not
working full time as an assistant is a stupid piece of fiction: that simply
does not happen, although it is true that you really do have much flexibility
if you do well)

Engineers in public service make around 30% more in theory, but pay more
taxes. In reality they make the same amount of money.

If you get promoted to professor, you start at 40k, tops out at 70k. You can
make more, but not spectacularly more, by becoming a university administrator.

In Silicon valley, pay for someone who knows javascript starts at 95k USD (75k
EUR, 5% more than a university administrator with 20+ years of experience),
and tops out at 5x that. Needless to say, if you can be a university
professor, you are very likely to be a great engineer, you should be able to
quickly make it to 300k pay, but even if you don't, you're still making a lot
more.

Good luck retaining these people. One of the leading AI researchers, Pieter
Abbeel, is one of the people who seems to have made the choice not to be
retained.

I also have lots of anecdotal evidence that seems to indicate this is in fact
what is happening. The brain drain from Europe is once again at or exceeding
what it was in 2000: people are getting whisked away before they even
graduate, and it's once again getting ridiculous : people get whisked away
even before the last year.

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ronilan
_“Vestager has been a professional politician since the age of 21”_

This is kind of sad. A little for Europe, but mostly for her.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager)

~~~
runesoerensen
Vestager is an extremely skilled politician and I'm certain she's not sad
about the situation. Denmark and Europe (and to some degree, the US) have
certainly benefitted from her work.

It's not sad that she has chosen to apply her many skills in something she's
passionate about and good at.

~~~
gaadd33
So her whole career is based off of playing different people against each
other and pandering to whomever holds the most power?

I don't think it's any better than an American politician but still a far cry
from those who felt that politicians should serve their communities for a few
years and then go back to an actual career.

~~~
runesoerensen
_> So her whole career is based off of playing different people against each
other and pandering to whomever holds the most power?_

That's a very loaded and negative way to portray a career politician, but more
importantly it's also completely unsubstantiated -- how is this relevant to
Vestager?

For instance, why do you use the word "pander" to describe her work? Pander
means to _" gratify or indulge (an immoral or distasteful desire, need, or
habit or a person with such a desire, etc.)"_. I think that sort of language
should be used carefully, and at the very least it should be substantiated in
terms of how it relates to the person you're talking about.

I've followed Vestager's career for over 15 years, and I don't think your
characterization of her work is accurate at all. You might be able to clarify
why you describe her that way, and that seems to be necessary for a
substantive discussion on this.

 _> I don't think it's any better than an American politician_

There are great American politicians for sure, but one thing I would note here
is that there are significant differences in public trust and corruption
levels between the US and Denmark (where Vestager has spent the vast majority
of her public life). There's a high level of accountability, public scrutiny
and public interest in how politicians work, and corruption is very low [0].

I think this plays a role in terms of how "good" the politicians are "on
average" in a country, and to what degree they can be trusted.

[0] Corruption is obviously hard to quantify, but one way to
measure/approximate it is the Corruption Perceptions Index [0] where _"
Denmark is the least corrupt country in the world, ranking consistently high
among international financial transparency"_, and the U.S. ranked 18th in
2016.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index)

~~~
ardit33
If you view the "Athenian" version of democracy as the purest form, career
politicians (aka, the political class), should not exist. But in theory, it
did exists in antique Greece and even more so later in the Roman Republic.

Career politicians create the "political class" which eventually over time
becomes a corrupted class.

What the OP meant, is that a country is best served by normal citizens, or
specialist (in their industry), helping out, getting elected, serving their
term, and moving on with their private lifes, then people that pursue politics
for the politics sake. They will/tend to create dramma, even when it is not
there.

"Political class, or political elite is a concept in comparative political
science originally developed by Italian political theorist theory of Gaetano
Mosca (1858–1941). ... Elected legislatures may become dominated by subject-
matter specialists, aided by permanent staffs, who become a political class."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_class)

~~~
runesoerensen
Sure, but the commenters I've responded to have in my opinion failed to
explain how the issues related to political elites etc are relevant
specifically in the context of Vestager's battles with major tech companies.
It reads a lot more like unsubstantiated smearing and hand-waving.

I personally don't think that the battles Vestager/the EC are picking are out
of touch with the competition and antitrust challenges faced by the EU, US and
world as a whole. It'd be interesting if someone could explain how Vestager's
extensive political career disqualifies her. In fact, it's worth considering
that it might be exactly what qualifies her / has made her more effective than
her predecessors (and US counterparts); perhaps this level of political and
regulatory experience is necessary in order play a meaningful role, and
protect the interests of the people she and the EU represents?

By the way, I don't think the Athenian version of democracy is particularly
relevant here (or most discussions about modern democracies for that matter).
Governing a very small 5th century BC city is completely different from
governing regions comprising hundreds of millions of people in societies that
are vastly more developed and complex.

The Athenian model wasn't exactly developed to address the challenges that
we're facing today - although some ideas, such as how long a politician should
serve, can still have value. That does however at best seem like a tangential
discussion with little significance in the context of this article.

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joejerryronnie
Vestager is an extremely skilled politician, but she is also extremely
ambitious. She is leveraging a crusade against American tech companies to try
and vault into the EU President's office. Vestager is very slick and talks a
great game about protecting competition but this is just a thinly veiled
attempt to raise populist support for her own political ambitions and
implement protectionist policies across the EU.

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mtgx
It's too bad the US doesn't have someone like Vestagar at the FTC, too.

The FTC almost never seems to use anti-trust laws anymore, and when it
punishes companies it's more of a symbolical punishment than an actual
deterrence. And that's when it doesn't settle with the wrongdoers, where they
don't even have to admit any wrong or stop what they've been doing in the
future.

~~~
runesoerensen
Not sure why this is currently being downvoted, the U.S. does seem to be
relatively less effective at enforcing anti-trust laws. That's hurting
American companies as well and one example of it is included in the article:

 _“Europe is acting to enforce antitrust laws where the U.S. is not,” said
Jeremy Stoppelman, the chief executive of Yelp, who feels that American
regulators dropped the ball when they decided not to pursue a case against
Google in 2013 (Yelp is a longtime Google antagonist). “Ironically, many of
the complainants in the E.U. antitrust case against Google are U.S. companies,
pursuing justice in Europe precisely because the U.S., has not acted,” he said
in an email._

