Re:468 Capital raises $400M to back European startups
by mschuster91 on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @06:02AM
(#30161007)
> the problem is that all the things US tech companies do to get ahead are illegal in Europe.
FWIW a lot of what US tech companies were doing was actually illegal or at least very dark grey in the US too. Skirting taxi regulations (Uber), hotel regulations (AirBnB) or employment law (all of the "gig economy" startups), everything done under "better ask for forgiveness than for permits"... the problem is twofold:
For one, personal liability of corporate executives has fallen out of favor. Unless you're ordering the outright murder of someone, the "corporate veil" will protect you. That means, as long as you budget in the correct-ish amount of fines, you can do whatever the fuck you want with impunity.
But the main problem is that the political system as a whole isn't very agile to react - it takes years for binding court orders if the opponent has good lawyers, the legislative branch is even slower to react, and both the legislative and the executive branch is often enough either too incompetent or outright bought off. And the "fourth branch" aka media isn't much better either - most media is under the control of big conglomerates or oligarchs.
FWIW a lot of what US tech companies were doing was actually illegal or at least very dark grey in the US too. Skirting taxi regulations (Uber), hotel regulations (AirBnB) or employment law (all of the "gig economy" startups), everything done under "better ask for forgiveness than for permits"... the problem is twofold:
For one, personal liability of corporate executives has fallen out of favor. Unless you're ordering the outright murder of someone, the "corporate veil" will protect you. That means, as long as you budget in the correct-ish amount of fines, you can do whatever the fuck you want with impunity.
But the main problem is that the political system as a whole isn't very agile to react - it takes years for binding court orders if the opponent has good lawyers, the legislative branch is even slower to react, and both the legislative and the executive branch is often enough either too incompetent or outright bought off. And the "fourth branch" aka media isn't much better either - most media is under the control of big conglomerates or oligarchs.