Connect with us

Business

Instead of innovating themselves, Europeans trying to regulate US companies to death

Published

6 minute read

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By

Envy is an ugly thing — one of the seven deadly sins.

The Europeans have long been dripping with jealousy that American firms dominate the tech sector — cell phones, search engines, social media platforms, AI and robotics.

As a consequence, the U.S. economy as measured by net worth is now 50 percent larger than Europe’s  and even the residents of our poorest states like West Virginia have a higher income than the average European.

One reason: The United States innovates while Europe regulates. Instead of fixing their economies in Euroland, the EU bureaucrats want to kneecap America’s tech success stories with fines and lawsuits and regulatory barbed wire fences to keep American firms from competing on a level playing field.

A case in point is the rash of expensive antitrust lawsuits against Google search engines.

Even worse is that a few years ago the European Union enacted “the Digital Markets Act” under the guise of trying to “ensure contestable and fair markets in the digital sector.”

Whenever government officials talk about promoting “fairness,” it means they are looking for expanding their own power.

Under this Act, Europe’s regulators are seeking to rein in successful technology companies like Apple through a new regulatory principle called “interoperability.”

Interoperability calls for third-party developers throughout the world to be given access to Apple’s private operating systems — iOS and iPadOS. In this framework, Apple is treated like a public utility with features that can be leveraged by other companies.

This is a sore-loser concept. Apple is a highly dynamic company that has achieved its market-leading status by developing wildly popular trailblazing products.

The European regulations, could require iPhones to offer competitor products. This makes as much sense as requiring McDonalds to offer Burger King fries with their “happy meals.”

The iPhone amenities and apps are part of a package deal that have made these devices the most popular in the world with billions of customers. This hardly sounds like monopolistic behavior. For people who don’t like Apple’s aps, there are many other cell phone products, such as Galaxy that consumers can turn to made by T-Mobile, Google, or a handful made in China.

For all the talk about Apple’s monopoly, they now control slightly less than 20% of the global cell-phone market.

Yet Europe’s bureaucrats have declared that Apple cannot charge product developers who are given access to the company’s operating systems. It is like getting to ride the train for free.

Interoperability is a dangerous concept — especially when it comes to security and privacy. Apple places a premium on maintaining the integrity of its devices and protecting its users’ data. But there is no guarantee that third parties given unfettered access to the Apple platform will have the same high standards.

That is going to leave Europe’s users of Apple products at greater risk of getting hacked. The results could be “disastrous,” points out Dirk Auer of the International Center for Law and Economics. “Users’ identity could be leaked, their money stolen, and their data could be compromised.”

Social media companies that want access to Apple’s operating systems could also gain access to I-phone users’ data and information. Apple warns that outsiders could “read on a user’s device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more.”

Even Apple doesn’t access this data in order to protect the privacy of their users.

The danger here is that if companies that spend billions of dollars innovating to build a better mousetrap can’t own and control their own products and reap the financial rewards, innovation will be stifled — in which case everyone loses. Sharing patented information with competitors in the name of “fairness” is a socialist idea that has rusted the Eurozone economy.

If Europe wants to get back in the tech game, EU bureaucrats should focus on what made these companies so successful in the first place — and then try to create a public policy environment that will foster innovative companies that can compete and win — rather than run to the courts for protection. Punishing the winners is a good way to keep producing losers.

In the meantime, let’s hope the incoming Trump regulators at the FTC and FCC and the Justice Department defend American companies against aggressive and hostile lawsuits to hobble our made-in-American companies. In other words, put America first and don’t let Europe take a bite out of our Apple.

Stephen Moore is a co-founder of Unleash Prosperity and a co-author of the new book: “The Trump Economic Miracle.”

Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.

Follow Author

Business

Saskatchewan becomes first Canadian province to fully eliminate carbon tax

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Saskatchewan has become the first Canadian province to free itself entirely of the carbon tax.

On March 27, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced the removal of the provincial industrial carbon tax beginning April 1, boosting the province’s industry and making Saskatchewan the first carbon tax free province.

“The immediate effect is the removal of the carbon tax on your Sask Power bills, saving Saskatchewan families and small businesses hundreds of dollars a year. And in the longer term, it will reduce the cost of other consumer products that have the industrial carbon tax built right into their price,” said Moe.

Under Moe’s direction, Saskatchewan has dropped the industrial carbon tax which he says will allow Saskatchewan to thrive under a “tariff environment.”

“I would hope that all of the parties running in the federal election would agree with those objectives and allow the provinces to regulate in this area without imposing the federal backstop,” he continued.

The removal of the tax is estimated to save Saskatchewan residents up to 18 cents a liter in gas prices.

The removal of the tax will take place on April 1, the same day the consumer carbon tax will reduce to 0 percent under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s direction. Notably, Carney did not scrap the carbon tax legislation: he just reduced its current rate to zero. This means it could come back at any time.

Furthermore, while Carney has dropped the consumer carbon tax, he has previously revealed that he wishes to implement a corporation carbon tax, the effects of which many argued would trickle down to all Canadians.

The Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities (SARM) celebrated Moe’s move, noting that the carbon tax was especially difficult on farmers.

“It puts our farming community and our business people in rural municipalities at a competitive disadvantage, having to pay this and compete on the world stage,” he continued.

“We’ve got a carbon tax on power — and that’s going to be gone now — and propane and natural gas and we use them more and more every year, with grain drying and different things in our farming operations,” he explained.

“I know most producers that have grain drying systems have three-phase power. If they haven’t got natural gas, they have propane to fire those dryers. And that cost goes on and on at a high level, and it’s made us more noncompetitive on a world stage,” Huber decalred.

The carbon tax is wildly unpopular and blamed for the rising cost of living throughout Canada. Currently, Canadians living in provinces under the federal carbon pricing scheme pay $80 per tonne.

Continue Reading

Automotive

Electric cars just another poor climate policy

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Bjørn Lomborg

The electric car is widely seen as a symbol of a simple, clean solution to climate change. In reality, it’s inefficient, reliant on massive subsidies, and leaves behind a trail of pollution and death that is seldom acknowledged.

We are constantly reminded by climate activists and politicians that electric cars are cleaner, cheaper, and better. Canada and many other countries have promised to prohibit the sale of new gas and diesel cars within a decade. But if electric cars are really so good, why would we need to ban the alternatives?

And why has Canada needed to subsidize each electric car with a minimum $5,000 from the federal government and more from provincial governments to get them bought? Many people are not sold on the idea of an electric car because they worry about having to plan out where and when to recharge. They don’t want to wait for an uncomfortable amount of time while recharging; they don’t want to pay significantly more for the electric car and then see its used-car value decline much faster. For people not privileged to own their own house, recharging is a real challenge. Surveys show that only 15 per cent of Canadians and 11 per cent of Americans want to buy an electric car.

The main environmental selling point of an electric car is that it doesn’t pollute. It is true that its engine doesn’t produce any CO₂ while driving, but it still emits carbon in other ways. Manufacturing the car generates emissions—especially producing the battery which requires a large amount of energy, mostly achieved with coal in China. So even when an electric car is being recharged with clean power in BC, over its lifetime it will emit about one-third of an equivalent gasoline car. When recharged in Alberta, it will emit almost three-quarters.

In some parts of the world, like India, so much of the power comes from coal that electric cars end up emitting more CO₂ than gasoline cars. Across the world, on average, the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car using the global average mix of power sources over its lifetime will emit nearly half as much CO₂ as a gasoline-driven car, saving about 22 tonnes of CO₂.

But using an electric car to cut emissions is incredibly ineffective. On America’s longest-established carbon trading system, you could buy 22 tonnes of carbon emission cuts for about $660 (US$460). Yet, Ottawa is subsidizing every electric car to the tune of $5,000 or nearly ten times as much, which increases even more if provincial subsidies are included. And since about half of those electrical vehicles would have been bought anyway, it is likely that Canada has spent nearly twenty-times too much cutting CO₂ with electric cars than it could have. To put it differently, Canada could have cut twenty-times more CO₂ for the same amount of money.

Moreover, all these estimates assume that electric cars are driven as far as gasoline cars. They are not. In the US, nine-in-ten households with an electric car actually have one, two or more non-electric cars, with most including an SUV, truck or minivan. Moreover, the electric car is usually driven less than half as much as the other vehicles, which means the CO₂ emission reduction is much smaller. Subsidized electric cars are typically a ‘second’ car for rich people to show off their environmental credentials.

Electric cars are also 320440 kilograms heavier than equivalent gasoline cars because of their enormous batteries. This means they will wear down roads faster, and cost societies more. They will also cause more air pollution by shredding more particulates from tire and road wear along with their brakes. Now, gasoline cars also pollute through combustion, but electric cars in total pollute more, both from tire and road wear and from forcing more power stations online, often the most polluting ones. The latest meta-study shows that overall electric cars are worse on particulate air pollution. Another study found that in two-thirds of US states, electric cars cause more of the most dangerous particulate air pollution than gasoline-powered cars.

These heavy electric cars are also more dangerous when involved in accidents, because heavy cars more often kill the other party. A study in Nature shows that in total, heavier electric cars will cause so many more deaths that the toll could outweigh the total climate benefits from reduced CO₂ emissions.

Many pundits suggest electric car sales will dominate gasoline cars within a few decades, but the reality is starkly different. A 2023-estimate from the Biden Administration shows that even in 2050, more than two-thirds of all cars globally will still be powered by gas or diesel.

Source: US Energy Information Administration, reference scenario, October 2023
Fossil fuel cars, vast majority is gasoline, also some diesel, all light duty vehicles, the remaining % is mostly LPG.

Electric vehicles will only take over when innovation has made them better and cheaper for real. For now, electric cars run not mostly on electricity but on bad policy and subsidies, costing hundreds of billions of dollars, blocking consumers from choosing the cars they want, and achieving virtually nothing for climate change.

Bjørn Lomborg

Continue Reading

Trending

X