You are saying it like there's something good in extorting money from foreign companies because we own the territory, so damn it if you're going to do business here without paying us protection money. Likes of Microsoft, Intel and Google created the Internet as we know it today. Surely, they are not ideal and have their faults, but they has also been a huge force of improvement and technological advancement. EU has been nothing but sand in the gears in the meantime. When IE seemed to be monopoly, EU did very little to deal with it. When Firefox and Chrome came, IE is no more. See for yourself who is effective here and who is money-sucking, foot-dragging, obtuse and overweight bureaucracy.

> That the USA does not have an effective government does not mean the rest of the world is the same.

USA has way over-active, busybody, annoying and wasteful government. But compared to euro-bureaucrats which obsessively regulate everything from size of holes in cheese to search engines, they are indeed much better. Thanks for reminding about it.

This is how the world works.

If your country has the oil, you get to reap the benefits.

For Facebook, the resource is the population. If Facebook grows rich off the backs of your population, you have every right to tax that.

> USA has way over-active, busybody, annoying and wasteful government.

Take a look at the cellular and cable markets in the USA for how 'we don't need no gubmint telling us what to do' is working out for you. Or the fact that much of your people are drinking water laden with heavy metals. Or the fact that you are having ten to twenty mass shootings a year. Your lovely Equifax breach that will probably go largely unpunished. Non-existant privacy protection.

So yeah, considering the EU actually and actively fights for its citizens whereas the USA has largely become a toy of corporations, you and I both know once we cross over from ideology (yours is obviously libertarian) to reality your comment and stance become absurd. If I had to distill it - you're the individual version of the Tea Party: libertarian ideals co-opted by corporate brainwashing.

You obviously have no idea how regulated cell and cable markets in US are.

> Or the fact that much of your people are drinking water laden with heavy metals.

I have zero idea what you are talking about, some sources?

> Or the fact that you are having ten to twenty mass shootings a year.

How shootings have anything to do with anything discussed? Do you just copypaste it from somewhere or what?

> Your lovely Equifax breach that will probably go largely unpunished.

And Equifax. Way to go offtopic. Surely, in EU there are no hacks. Come on, you are beclowning yourself.

> If I had to distill it - you're the individual version of the Tea Party: libertarian ideals co-opted by corporate brainwashing.

Surely, I call attention to burdensome, useless and expensive regulation that prevents technological advancement and helps no one but inflated bureaucracies because "corporations" corrupted my brain. No reasonable person with uncorrupted brain would ever protest such thing. Self-beclowining, as I said.

Not enough seeing as they effectively have carved out monopolies by 'accidentally' staying out of each others territory

> I have zero idea what you are talking about, some sources?

You have not heard about Flint...?[0]

> How shootings have anything to do with anything discussed? Do you just copypaste it from somewhere or what?

You say the USA (and more so the EU) are weighted down by regulations and a stuffy government. Pretty much all EU countries have _very_ stringent regulations on guns

> And Equifax. Way to go offtopic. Surely, in EU there are no hacks. Come on, you are beclowning yourself.

I'm not saying no hacks happen in the EU. I'm saying tha in the EU the government deals out very harsh punishments for such things (thus also making companies more careful), whereas in the USA companies usually get a slap on the wrist due to a combination of lobbying and settlements.

> Surely, I call attention to burdensome, useless and expensive regulation that prevents technological advancement and helps no one but inflated bureaucracies because "corporations" corrupted my brain. No reasonable person with uncorrupted brain would ever protest such thing. Self-beclowining, as I said.

I just summed up a smattering of different areas in which regulation has made life unequivocally better in the EU than the USA. Regulation when done right helps citizens and not, as you say, 'inflated bureaucracies'.

[0] http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2017/10/71_michiga...