John French
Author and Musician
Regulations
14/11/24 22:51
ARS TECHNICA: EU fines Meta €800 million for breaking law with Marketplace
The commentariat's reaction to articles about EU-issed corporate fines on Ars Technica is interesting. Usually these articles elicit an extremely vocal response from people who struggle with the premise of lives being of greater importance than livelihoods. This is always a little bit surprising to me. To my way of thinking, civilization exists to attain higher levels of capability, as to better indulge in culture, comforts, pursuits of passion and family. Making money is a vehicle to those goals, not an end-goal by itself.
To this way of thinking, businesses are self-interested distractions from anything that really matters. This does not make them useless; having a self-interested collection of motivated people working together can be extremely useful. The question, however, is useful to whom; to a business, its people are useful for making money, and any wider good or bad that comes of that is a byproduct. A business would happily be left to its own money-making devices. Some governments view the money-making as a carrot, their regulatory tools as a stick, and the good that comes from business' products and services as the desired goal. By and large this sentiment has taken root in the last hundred years as American-style capitalism. European-style capitalism bears a resemblance, but has just enough of a different flavor to baffle those not used to seeing it.
The fallacy of unchecked capitalistic drive is that corporations will constantly attempt to grow at the expense of all competitors. In the 'mid game' stage this can definitely be desirable as it encourages innovative progress from a field of direct competitors; when previously-luxurious standards become the new table stakes in a given domain, the status quo is better for everyone. The problem comes in during the late-game stage, where competitors have either merged or been killed off leaving a few fat players (or just one) with a stable dynamic that rarely grows forward. Occasionally you get a late-game stage where the fat players are so fat that a successful and lucky upstart can upset the whole table - see SpaceX. More often the fat players just remain fat indefinitely - see every major ISP in the US.
Good regulation seeks to prevent any one market from staying in the late-game too long before being pushed back into the mid-game. This can be done by prioritizing either the small competitor (equitable support of smaller business' selfish priorities) or by prioritizing the consumer (equal support of no business' selfish priorities). The EU seems content to use both methods. It would do the US some good to take notes.
The commentariat's reaction to articles about EU-issed corporate fines on Ars Technica is interesting. Usually these articles elicit an extremely vocal response from people who struggle with the premise of lives being of greater importance than livelihoods. This is always a little bit surprising to me. To my way of thinking, civilization exists to attain higher levels of capability, as to better indulge in culture, comforts, pursuits of passion and family. Making money is a vehicle to those goals, not an end-goal by itself.
To this way of thinking, businesses are self-interested distractions from anything that really matters. This does not make them useless; having a self-interested collection of motivated people working together can be extremely useful. The question, however, is useful to whom; to a business, its people are useful for making money, and any wider good or bad that comes of that is a byproduct. A business would happily be left to its own money-making devices. Some governments view the money-making as a carrot, their regulatory tools as a stick, and the good that comes from business' products and services as the desired goal. By and large this sentiment has taken root in the last hundred years as American-style capitalism. European-style capitalism bears a resemblance, but has just enough of a different flavor to baffle those not used to seeing it.
The fallacy of unchecked capitalistic drive is that corporations will constantly attempt to grow at the expense of all competitors. In the 'mid game' stage this can definitely be desirable as it encourages innovative progress from a field of direct competitors; when previously-luxurious standards become the new table stakes in a given domain, the status quo is better for everyone. The problem comes in during the late-game stage, where competitors have either merged or been killed off leaving a few fat players (or just one) with a stable dynamic that rarely grows forward. Occasionally you get a late-game stage where the fat players are so fat that a successful and lucky upstart can upset the whole table - see SpaceX. More often the fat players just remain fat indefinitely - see every major ISP in the US.
Good regulation seeks to prevent any one market from staying in the late-game too long before being pushed back into the mid-game. This can be done by prioritizing either the small competitor (equitable support of smaller business' selfish priorities) or by prioritizing the consumer (equal support of no business' selfish priorities). The EU seems content to use both methods. It would do the US some good to take notes.
