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Europe Archive

Friday

9

March 2012

0

COMMENTS

Google Fined for Being Too Useful

Written by , Posted in Free Markets

In the world of big government, providing something of use to consumers is to be frowned upon:

Google has been ordered to pay a fine and damages to a French mapping company after a court ruled that the search giant was guilty of unfair competition and “undercutting competitors” by making its Google Maps program free.

According to Agence France Presse (AFP), Bottin Cartographes, a French mapping company that provides essentially the same service as Google Maps for a fee – brought a suit claiming that Google was “abusing” its dominant position by making its service free.

Google’s strategy is, apparently, to undercut competitors by “temporarily swallowing the full cost until it gains control of the market,” AFP reported.

A Paris-based commercial court agreed with Bottin Cartographes and ordered Google to pay 500,000 euro (£415,000) damages to Bottin Cartographes, as well as a fine of 15,000 euro (£12,500).

“We proved the illegality of Google’s strategy to remove its competitors,” said Jean-David Scemmama, Bottin Cartographes’ lawyer. “The court recognised the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed.”

This sort of thing is hardly unique to France. The US as very similar, and similarly stupid, laws on the books. But this case really puts the lie to advocates of protectionist policies who claim they are for the consumer. They are not. They are for shafting the consumer.

Look at the language they use and how deceptive is. They mask their protectionist, anti-consumer agenda under the rhetoric of competition. But this has nothing to do with competition. If you assume their logic to be true (which is unwarranted, as there as been zero indication that Google ever intends to charge for Google Maps), there will still always be competitive pressure. So long as another firm can enter the market at any time to offer a competing service, Google will have to offer market competitive prices. The only way to perpetually keep out competition is either to use the force of government, or to perpetually price below market – in other words, by keeping it free. How in the world is the latter possibly a bad thing for consumers, the economy or society?

Sunday

20

November 2011

3

COMMENTS

Overgovernment: Yes, Europe, Water Does Hydrate

Written by , Posted in Big Government, The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

The overgoverned laughingstock that is Europe continues to deliver:

EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration

EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact.

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

Last night, critics claimed the EU was at odds with both science and common sense. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.

“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.

“If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.”

Three years of study by serious “scientists” no doubt – you know, the same folk warning that the planet is about to blow up – and they’ve determined it’s not accurate to claim that water (hydration) does not help prevent dehydration. In essence, water does not help prevent the absence of water.

Oh sure, they have at least a weak justification for their conclusions:

Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water.

He said: “The EU is saying that this does not reduce the risk of dehydration and that is correct.

“This claim is trying to imply that there is something special about bottled water which is not a reasonable claim.”

But the esteemed ivory tower egghead is wrong, water does reduce the risk of dehydration. Mr. Egghead has confused “reduce” for “eliminate”. Yes, you can become dehydrated even if you drink adequate amounts of water, as there are some causes for which that is insufficient. You can also hydrate without drinking pure water because water is an ingredient in so many things. But the claim is not that drinking water guarantees no dehydration, merely that it makes it less likely to happen.

One wonders, as Europe teeters over the edge of a fiscal precipice, just how much money European taxpayers wasted on this pseudo-science.

Thursday

20

October 2011

1

COMMENTS

European Commission Would Ban Reality If They Could

Written by , Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy

Dear Europe,

Banning the messenger won’t make your fiscal policies any less destructive.

Sincerely,

Sane people everywhere

EU mulls rating agency ban

The European Commission is considering a ban on rating agencies publishing their assessments of EU countries in difficulty, the Financial Times Deutschland reports.

The European Union’s commissioner for internal markets and services Michel Barnier has drawn up a draft proposal empowering the new European Securities and Markets Authority to “temporarily prohibit” agencies from publishing their analyses on a country’s solvency, the newspaper said on Thursday.

FT Deutschland said it obtained a copy of the confidential draft.

Barnier is concerned that the publication of a rating at an “inopportune moment” for a country when it is negotiating financial aid from the EU’s bailout fund or the International Monetary Fund could have “negative effects for that country’s financial stability and possible destabilising effects for the global economy.”

Bad policies and runaway government spending have negative effects for a country’s financial stability, not those who report it.

Monday

27

September 2010

0

COMMENTS

Thursday

17

June 2010

0

COMMENTS

Daniel Hannan Sees America Europeanizing

Written by , Posted in Free Markets, Government Meddling, Liberty & Limited Government

Britain’s Conservative MP Daniel Hannan, made famous in America for the viral YouTube video of his fiscal takedown of Gordon Brown, recently wrote of his regret for supporting Barack Obama in the general election of the 2008 presidential campaign.  A European politician’s opinion of America’s president really isn’t of any importance, but his chillingly accurate description of our path toward Europeanization ought to be of concern for all who believe in promoting freedom, limited government, and economic prosperity:

None of these advantages, however, can make up for the single most important fact of Obama’s presidency, namely that the federal government is 30 per cent larger than it was two years ago

This is not entirely Obama’s fault, of course. The credit crunch occurred during the dying days of the Bush administration, and it was the 43rd president who began the baleful policy of bail-outs and pork-barrel stimulus packages. But it was Obama who massively extended that policy against united Republican opposition. It was he who chose, in defiance of public opinion, to establish a state-run healthcare system. It was he who presumed to tell private sector employees what they could earn, he who adopted the asinine cap-and-trade rules, and he who re-federalised social security, thereby reversing the single most beneficial reform of the Clinton years.

These errors are not random. They amount to a comprehensive strategy of Europeanisation: Euro-carbon taxes, Euro-disarmament, Euro-healthcare, Euro-welfare, Euro-spending levels, Euro-tax levels and, inevitably, Euro-unemployment levels. Any American reader who wants to know where Obamification will lead should spend a week with me in the European Parliament. I’m working in your future and, believe me, you won’t like it.

Monday

16

March 2009

0

COMMENTS

Euroweenies Ban 'Miss' And 'Mrs'

Written by , Posted in The Nanny State & A Regulated Society

A once glorious continent continues its headlong rush into the abyss:

The politically correct rules also mean a ban on Continental titles, such as Madame and Mademoiselle, Frau and Fraulein and Senora and Senorita.

Guidance issued in a new ‘Gender-Neutral Language’ pamphlet instead orders politicians to address female members by their full name only.

Officials have also ordered that ‘sportsmen’ be called ‘athletes’, ‘statesmen’ be referred to as ‘political leaders’ and even that ‘synthetic’ or ‘artificial’ be used instead of ‘man-made’.

So, it’s ‘artificial global warming?’  Now you’re speaking my language.

Hat tip: Moonbattery

Friday

13

March 2009

0

COMMENTS

Geithner Takes Moral Hazard International

Written by , Posted in Economics & the Economy, Foreign Affairs & Policy

Not content with spending the US economy into oblivion, Secretary Geithner is imploring the rest of the world to also destroy themselves in the name of “stimulus.”

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner yesterday unveiled a sweeping plan that calls on the United States and other nations to offer billions more to bail out economies in crisis and prods a reluctant Europe to prop up the reeling world economy with more aggressive government spending.

But the campaign is triggering controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, some officials doubt the wisdom of falling deeply into debt to create jobs and halt the plunge in consumer demand, as the United States is doing. On Capitol Hill, members of Congress have grown wary of approving still more money.

Geithner said the administration will ask Congress to make $100 billion more available — nearly doubling the current U.S. commitment — to the International Monetary Fund to aid struggling nations. U.S. lawmakers said yesterday that they are already bracing for the administration to request hundreds of billions of dollars in more rescue funds for U.S. financial firms, and possibly a second massive economic stimulus package as well.

The IMF is pushing for more aid to Africa.  The problem is, aid to Africa has never worked.  But Geithener wasn’t done.

Geithner said he plans to press his counterparts from major economies to boost their fiscal stimulus and to sustain that spending for as long as the downturn lasts. “Forceful” actions by the world’s leading economies are needed because “the global recession is deepening,” Geithner said.

What was it Albert Einstein said about insanity? Oh, right:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

If “the global recession is deepening” despite all the “forceful” big government plans so far put into action, it may be time to start committing those who call for ever more.

Einstein also had another saying relevant to our current mess:

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

Tell that to the big government interventionists.

Thursday

29

January 2009

0

COMMENTS

A Last Minute Attack On Free Trade

Written by , Posted in Free Markets

The Washington Post reports on some regulatory parting shots the Bush administration took on free trade.

In its final days, the Bush administration imposed a 300 percent duty on Roquefort, in effect closing off the U.S. market. Americans, it declared, will no longer get to taste the creamy concoction that, in its authentic, most glorious form, comes with an odor of wet sheep and veins of blue mold that go perfectly with rye bread and coarse red wine.

The measure, announced Jan. 13 by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab as she headed out the door, was designed as retaliation for a European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Tit for tat, and all perfectly legal under World Trade Organization rules, U.S. officials explained.
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Besides, they said, Roquefort is only one of dozens of European luxury products that were attacked with high tariffs. The list includes, among other things, French truffles, Irish oatmeal, Italian sparkling water and “fatty livers of ducks and geese,” which apparently is how Washington trade bureaucrats say foie gras.

While none of these particular barriers are going to have significant economic impact in America, this is simply bad policy.

Playing tit for tat with trade barriers may have emotional appeal, but it makes little sense practically, as we’re hurting ourselves almost as much as them when we do it.  Moreover, we’re just encouraging others when they play these games.  There’s little chance these tarrifs will get Europe to rethink their beef policy, and cutting off our nose to spite our face does not constitute good policy.

Wednesday

3

September 2008

0

COMMENTS

Who Are They Protecting?

Written by , Posted in Free Markets, Health Care, Welfare & Entitlements, Liberty & Limited Government

From Britain, but the same basic story could just as well be told from America:

The head of the NHS rationing watchdog has said he is ‘genuinely sorry’ for a delay in approving a new treatment for blindness.

But campaigners said Andrew Dillon’s comments would be of little consolation to the thousands of Britons who have lost their sight in the two years it took NICE to make its final decision.

The watchdog has now approved Lucentis, which is used to treat wet age-related macular degeneration, a condition which affects 26,000 new sufferers every year.

NICE’s original recommendation was that patients had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they would be given treatment to save the sight in the other.

The proposal caused a huge public outcry from doctors and campaigners, prompting a U-turn in December last year before further consultation resulted in the final decision today.

NHS thought it was their responsibility to decide what level of risk warranted use of this drug. The public vehemently disagreed with the determination that the drug was only worth taking after eye-sight was lost in one eye.

Why is the individual’s own judgment not sufficient? Let people decide when they want to take a drug and risk the side-effects, not government. If they want to wait until they are blind in one eye, then they can. But no one knows better than the individual how to properly weigh the consequences of their choices.

Proponents of government interventionism always promote these watchdog groups as protecting consumers, but what they really do is needlessly delay the operation of the market. The real beneficiaries are the drug manufacturers, whose already approved products need not face the level of competition they otherwise would without government meddling.

Freedom is a wonderful thing. Let it happen.

Hat tip: OpenMarket.org

Saturday

31

March 2007

0

COMMENTS

Europe Wishes Away Reality

Written by , Posted in Foreign Affairs & Policy

The European Union has solved the problem of Islamic terrorism! How did they accomplish this amazing feat? Quite literally by wishing it out of existence.

The European Union has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to refrain from linking Islam and terrorism in their statements.

Brussels officials have confirmed the existence of a classified handbook which offers “non-offensive” phrases to use when announcing anti-terrorist operations or dealing with terrorist attacks.

Banned terms are said to include “jihad”, “Islamic” or “fundamentalist”.

The word “jihad” is to be avoided altogether, according to some sources, because for Muslims the word can mean a personal struggle to live a moral life.

One alternative, suggested publicly last year, is for the term “Islamic terrorism” to be replaced by “terrorists who abusively invoke Islam”.

I know what you’re thinking. No, this is not satire.

It is amazing how arrogant these people are in assuming that non-Muslims have any say whatsoever in deciding which interpretation of Islam is “abusive” and which is the true Islam. That is only for Muslims to decide.

Why do we assume the Jihadist’s interpretation is wrong? The people who need to make that argument are the Muslims who disagree with it, and we need to pressure them to do so. But this accomplishes exactly the opposite because it sends a signal that we believe the “moderate” Muslims have won by defaut, relieving them of any pressure to actually attempt to do so.

Don’t want jihad associated with terrorists? There are only two ways to do that. 1) Defeat those who invoke jihad for the sake of terrorism. 2) Convince them not to do so. And there’s every reason to believe option 2 is impractical, leaving only victory. What is not an option (listen up EU) is attempting an Orwellian redefinition of verbiage with some odd hope that what you call a thing will have an impact on the reality of the thing.

Hat tip: Hot Air

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About Me

profileI serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.

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