One of my 2022 resolutions is to spend my time making money rather than arguing about it, inter alia, on social media (I sold CVX puts this morning, so technically I am making money today as I type this 🤞). But this doozy is too much to ignore.
Benedict Evans is an annoying Brit who never saw a regulation he didn't like. YES, SI, OUI, JA, I WOULD LOVE TO GIVE THE 🖕 TO, AND A 🍍 UP THE BUM OF, THE EUROPEAN SHAKE DOWNERS.
I've argued with Evans about the European regulatory model in a completely unrelated topic to the point where he blocked me on Twitter a long time ago (the most weaselly beta thing ever, but I digress). I just don't understand how Europeans can look at the USA and not see that it has been around a mere ~245 years (we won't count the UK leechy period before), but has a 33% larger GDP than the EU nations, which have been around a magnitude longer, and not get that something is wrong with their system. The EU has relatively ZERO significant startups or innovation compared to the US. Hmm...I wonder why that is?
No offense to our British or European members and readers, but the EU is definitely not a
laissez faire region where tech startups like to go to prosper and innovate. Most of the
top 30 European companies are old world institutions, some of which Kaiser Wilhelm could have shopped at. Of the tech companies (which are actually European in provenance), the youngest is Deutsche Telekom, the parent of T-Mobile, founded in 1995. Its market cap: $85B.
Some might mention Spotify, but it isn't even profitable despite being around since 2006, so it certainly isn't on Europe's top-30 list. And
in the last year its stock looks like one of those nice ski runs the Swedish are known for. And I think you have to take into account that Spotify as we know it was funded by Silicon Valley VC money, and it went public on NYSE the same time as it did in the EU, which accounts for a lot of its startup capital and publicity. Recall that the Swedes apparently have such contempt for intellectual property, they have an actual
Privacy Party! Without US angel investors funding and advising it and propping it up, Spotify would likely be a footnote in history like Napster. So yeah, IMO calling Spotify "Swedish" is like calling herring an American delicacy.
First off, I reject his characterization of Evans as some "industry insider." Evans is a blogger who worked for Andreesen-Horowitz for about 15 minutes. He doesn't even have a Wikipedia bio. I guess they found his hectoring, pro-regulatory, statist positions of little value to a tech venture capital firm. Frankly, if Evans doesn't like it, it's probably a good idea.
I think PED should change his "take" as follows:
Secondly, Evans' claim that Apple is the rent-seeker is horseshit. Let's define Rent Seeking:
I ask all objective, reasonable people: Does the description above sound like Apple - which just decreased said "rent" by 10 percent - or does this sound more like the EU - lobbied by its local developers - shaking down Apple?
This type of "shakedown and dictate from the other side of the oceans" crap must be fought tooth and nail. Once Apple concedes to this shit, it will lose complete control of the company.
All of the important iOS features that differentiate iPhone from Android are at risk: Security, consistency, and uniformity will all splinter into the mess that is Android if these Euroweenies get their way. If Apple opens up to outside paying, obviously security and fraud become a problem. Apple could try to have different software versions for EU phones, but how could that really be enforced? And then you have the forking problem that Android suffers from.
And
as Joe Rogan is learning, once you apologize and admit error, appeasement just makes the alligators more hungry for blood. Apple lowered its cut of developer revenues, but they immediately got feet stompy and demanded mo mo mo! 💸
What comes next? Side loading of apps? Loading of hacked versions of iOS? Or God forbid, an open-source mandate? This will not end here. Recall that Apple dumping its lightning port for USB was also at least partly in response to European regulators shake-downers. There vill be nein innovation in dis camp!
Honestly I am getting to the point where Apple might want to make an example of some country that tries to dictate to it and just say they will not sell phones into that country, and then see how they will stop the gray market flow of iPhones into it. I'd imagine you'd have some iPhone users pissed off at their government. Hard to boycott a market as big as the EU. You know, the EU, which was sold to the public as a boon to free markets and innovation, but which was really meant as a "counterweight" to the USA, as the worm Jacques Chirac put it.
"Nice country you've got there. It would be a shame if something happened to it." - European regulators rent-seekers.