Incompetent Europe
My regular Friday column this week in Expansión, Spain’s leading financial daily, is called “Incompetent Europe” (pdf in Spanish) and looks at some of the points raised by Barack Obama’s comments in a fantastic interview with Kara Swisher, in which the US president claims that “Europe attacks US technology companies because it’s unable to compete with them.”
Obama, is so, so, right. Europe suffers from chronic incompetence, from a plague of dumb laws that, despite the Maastricht Treaty and two decades of internet, still lacks an environment within which e-trade can flourish, with multiple borders that act as obstacles, along with arbitrary tariffs that are unpredictable and conceptually absurd, mired in legal uncertainties that make life difficult for everybody, ruled by stupid laws such as those relating to cookies that serve absolutely no purpose and just get in the way, and of course not forgetting the supposed “right to be forgotten” which only protects things that it makes no sense to protect.
Meanwhile, the United States has managed to create an entire industry around the internet, meaning that right now, anybody living there can buy what they like from companies that have 50 states at their disposal without any kind of difficulties from the moment they are registered. At the same time, Europe’s contribution to the internet comes from a hundred thousand lobbyists who protect a bunch of incompetent incumbents from “the threats posed by the world wide web” along with the “right to be forgotten”, and of course those useless cookies laws.
The only person with any understanding of the internet within the EU was Neelie Kroes, who has now retired and will be sorely missed. Europe is a disaster area and Europeans with an ounce of sense should burn down the institutions of the EU, preferably with their legislators inside them. For everybody’s wellbeing, somebody needs to keep these incompetent legislators as far away from the web as possible.
Below, the article in full:
Incompetent Europe
The president of the United States, Barack Obama, has accused the European Union of attacking US technology companies because it is unable to compete with them. Sadly, he’s right. European technology is quite simply no match for the US.
This isn’t about genetic predisposition. European entrepreneurs are not an inferior species to those in the United States. They are just as well trained and educated. They aren’t any slower or less competent. On a level playing field they could be just as competitive. So what’s the problem? Quite simply, that they aren’t competing on a level playing field.
When it comes to the internet and innovation, European politicians take the biscuit when it comes to incompetence. In 20 years, they have been unable to create an environment that is even minimally suitable for e-commerce. An infinite number of legal environments have made it impossible to harmonize, and that has resulted in just a handful of companies trying to sell their goods and services throughout the 27-member bloc. A US entrepreneur has at her disposition 50 states, and no legal or logistical problems. Her European counterpart is lucky if he can sell in just one country.
When it comes to stupid laws, Europe leads the way. After years of study, Europe has come up with the dumbest cookies legislation in the civilized world, and that simply produces bothersome, useless messages. Against all common sense it has come up with an absurd “right to be forgotten” that forces search engines to censor information that might bother somebody. It has generated an environment with no legal guarantees, and that puts a brake on free enterprise. Encourage our move toward a digital world? Why bother, when we have lobbyists to defend the incumbents in traditional markets?
Obama’s right. We just can’t cut it. We can’t compete, and so we attack the US out of pure incompetence.
(En español, aquí)
