Category Archives: EU

EU Government Is A Monopoly, Not Google

Business, Capitalism, Economy, EU, Europe

The economic sluggards of Europe don’t much like competition; it’s too much like hard work. Competition means that a business has to please the only real boss: a picky customer with many options. Google has raised the ire of the European competition and its proxy, the European Parliament, which “overwhelmingly backed a motion urging antitrust regulators to break up Google.”

“Google’s dominance,” writes Jörg Brunsmann for DW, “didn’t arise from the company employing unfair measures to push its competitors out of the market. It’s become a market leader because of its innovation.”

Put more precisely: Google has arrived at its market share by pleasing search-engine users.

I was part of a worthy group of Austrian economists who published “The Microsoft Corporation In Collision With Antitrust Law,” in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies (Winter 2001, Vol. 26, No. 1.). In section (4) for which I was responsible (“Economic Freedom, Monopoly and the Government,”), I wrote:

Antitrust legislation considers a large market share or a concentration in the market to signify both monopoly and predatory practices on the part of a company. As such, the antitrust chimera is based on discredited theories about competition. Relying as it does on a model of ideal or perfect rather than rivalrous competition, the legislation aims at a market neatly carved among competitors (32).

The principle applies to Google.

In Austrian economics, moreover, a large market share does not a monopoly make. “The only true monopolies are government monopolies. A company is a monopoly only when it can forcibly prohibit competitors from entering the market, a feat only ever made possible by state edict. In a truly free market, competition makes monopoly impossible.” (From “Media Concentration Is Not A Threat to Free Expression, Government Is.”)

British Libertarian Vows To Unite Behind UKIP

Britain, Classical Liberalism, Elections, EU, Europe, libertarianism, Nationalism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Correctness

In an interview with the German weekly Junge Freiheit, I ventured that,”Step one in reclaiming [European] national and individual sovereignty (the ultimate goal) is secession from the European union. Judging from their voting patterns, Europeans seem to grasp that adding an overarching tier of tyrants—the EU—to their national governments has benefited them as a second hangman enhances the health of a condemned man.”

Of course, there is something fundamentally perverse about the idea of the British partaking in “European elections.” Come to think of it, the notion that each ostensibly sovereign European country belongs to this overarching suprastate and must obey it is equally abhorrent.

My comment about “voting patterns” has, nevertheless, been borne out.

“The overall result,” writes Sean Gabb of The Libertarian Alliance, “is a big increase in numbers for parties which are hostile to the EU goal of ‘ever closer union,’ and even to the existence of the EU in its present form or in any form at all. In Holland, the Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, came second. In France, the National Front, led by Marine le Pen, came first. The Danish People’s Party also came first, as did the Flemish separatist party in Belgium. In Hungary, the conservative party, Fidesz, came first, followed by Jobbik, which is describes as a national socialist party. In Greece, the leftists party Syriza (Euro-sceptic) came first, and the nationalist party Golden Dawn came third. In Finland and in Austria, Euro-sceptic parties did well, as they also did in Germany.”

Commentators and politicians are suspended between a rock and a hard-place, to use that cliche of in-betweeness. Do they diss the voter or do they revise their rejected positions? Some have just settled for the well-worn battle cry of “racism, homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry.”

Back to Gabb: “The big winner of the [British] elections was the UK Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage.”

UKIP topped the poll, winning 27.5 per cent of the vote. The Conservatives, who are currently in a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, came third—though this is largely because of a strong Labour performance in London, where native British are now a minority.[ Labour doubles its MEPs in London, BBC, May 28, 2014]. Significantly, the Liberal Democrats, the most pro-European of the main parties, were almost wiped out, losing all but one of their seats in the European Parliament.

UKIP must now be regarded as one of Britain’s major parties. This a huge achievement—and a useful reminder to depressed American patriots that new parties can succeed.

UKIP’s key policies: to leave the European Union, to end mass immigration, and to strip Political Correctness out of law and administration. … Whatever some people may think of UKIP, it is our best hope for pulling down the current order of things. I with enthusiasm, others with reluctance, have a duty to unite behind it. …

MORE.

Statists Collude In Sundering Honourable Swiss Tradition

Business, Economy, English, EU, Europe, Law, Taxation, The State

If the law applied equally to the state and not only to its subjects, the colluding governments—a cartel, really—participating in the concerted action against Switzerland would be prosecuted under anti-trust laws, for the creation of a global tax monopoly.

In 2010, it was reported that the US was putting pressure on Switzerland to end that country’s venerated tradition of “helping private property owners shield their assets against legalized theft (taxation).” Uncle Sam was meddling in the financial sector of an ostensibly sovereign state, siccing its legal footsoldiers on UBS AG, a Zurich and Basel-based financial establishment (and its American clients), because of tax evasion.

When they are not bailing out failed financial institutions, our statists are bankrupting viable ones.

Fast forward to 2014, and it transpires that the statists have succeeded—and not only semantically: banking privacy is now referred to as “tax secrecy.”

No secrets should be kept from The State.

At a ministerial meeting in Paris on Tuesday, Switzerland agreed to sign up to a new global standard on automatic information exchange, representing a decisive break with its centuries-old commitment to protecting the privacy of banking clients.
The move is a big step forward for governments that have mounted a concerted attack on evasion in the wake of the global financial crisis and a series of tax scandals.
Swiss co-operation is pivotal to the struggle to prise open taxpayers’ hidden accounts because of its long tradition of bank secrecy and its dominant wealth management sector, which has $2.2tn of offshore assets.
The declaration, which was signed at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris, requires countries to collect and exchange information on bank accounts and the beneficial ownership of companies and other legal structures such as trusts. …

“European governments expect billions of euros to be repatriated as a result of the evasion crackdown.” “Repatriate” is yet another bit of semantic casuistry intended to whitewash these governments’ global property grab.

MORE Via FT.

Back to the post’s opening salvo: Sadly, even if a fair adjudicator were able to prosecute the colluding cartel on the grounds stated—the taxpayers would end up paying for the crimes.

Not Every European Yearns For Fascists To Breathe Free

EU, Foreign Policy, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, Russia, The West

The American claim on diversity–does it extend to diverse opinion? Or, on Ukraine, must everyone march in lockstep with John McMussolini and our media mavens?

A Barely A Blog Jewish reader, who resides in Europe and has seen her share of European violence, holds strong opinions about the Ukraine.

She informs me that the missive below was meant to be hyperbolic and a little satirical. Nevertheless, I hope that diversity lovers will apprecaite her fear as they do the pain of the fascists frolicking across the Ukraine. (The opinions published are not my own.)

Writes anon from Europe:

The best thing for Ukraine and Putin is that Putin should order his troops to take over the Crimea and the eastern part of the Ukraine. Why should the west have the burden of financing the Ukraine whose people have not the faintest idea of democracy?

They think that killing each other in Kiev and causing a bloody revolution will solve their financial and economic ills. No, it is only the Russian, Putin, who can bring order back into this unpleasant country, peopled with most radical racist population whose record of murder of millions of Jews and homosexuals has been well documented throughout their recent history.

Putin is the only one who is thinking straight. His Russians in both the Crimea and the Eastern part of the Ukraine do have to be protected, his border borders on that of Ukraine, and the smartest move would be for Putin to go in and take over this failed country.

Then the people of this failed country will again have some sort of economic stability, receive oil through the pipeline from the Russian oil wells, and the illusion that the European Union will save the catastrophic financial debacle that is the economy of Ukraine will be put to rest.