Tuesday, June 23, 2009

US, EU on Nationalization

According to this article in the Wall Street Journal Europe, the US is actually more open about governmental involvement in its economy than the European Union. They use Microsoft Windows as an example of EU regulations functioning in the same vein as the government-led bankruptcies of Chrysler and GM in America.

"Governments historically have proven singularly inept at making design decisions, as any number of jokes and real-life stories about Soviet-style economies make clear." Absolutely dripping with Masonomics, one of the things I have missed most while in Italy.

"Once an agency like the EU's competition directorate asserts authority over the features included in a dominant firm's products, there is no easy stopping point short of complete control of all significant business decisions. Once government opens this door, rival businesses (which don't want the leading firm's bundle competing with their products) learn that complaining to government can be a less costly way to gain market share than investing in better products, packaging or marketing."

Sounds like the EU needs to watch Cartoon Wars.

No comments:

Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. ~Fredrich Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty