Comment by shevy-java
7 hours ago
Ursula is basically a lobbyist without much expertise in anything.
So she just parrots about how great xyz is, then she dishes out taxpayer's money to this or that group - typically corporations.
I think the whole EU should be reformed. We don't need lobbyists really.
I'm not a fan of her either, but what do you actually expect?
Politicians are not generally domain specialists anywhere, their purpose is to make decisions and serve as a pretty face for some more or less coherent policy.
Lobbyism is very easy to complain about and can easily devolve into corruption, but it has a very clear purpose: To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain. This is especially necessary at the EU level, because the main purpose of that whole organisation is to lower trade barriers and regulatory friction-- lobbyists are somewhat helpful and necessary in that.
> I think the whole EU should be reformed
What would you suggest?
> What would you suggest?
Lenin once said that "Every cook should learn to govern the state."
And that's how we should do it. Random lottery, pretty much the same way we choose election assessors or jury members.
To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain
But where are the lobbyists that prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected citizens? Are they not entitled to adequate representation?
> where are the lobbyists that prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected citizens
Voting is there to keep incentives aligned with the population at large.
On specific issues, lobbying is also feasible for non-corporate entities; consider right-to-repair initiatives or pro-climate NGOs.
Unions and NGOs.
Could start by not having an unelected president who thinks she’s the queen of the continent.
> To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain.
Industries that cant comply to modern standards should be harmed. We dont need industries willing to pay lobbyists to keep fossil fuels alive for example.
> Industries that cant comply to modern standards should be harmed.
Those "modern standards" need to be codified into law, and feedback from established companies is valuable for doing that.
> We dont need industries willing to pay lobbyists to keep fossil fuels alive for example.
Those lobbyists represent the interests of a good portion of the economy. If you disregard their feedback, your risk damaging/destabilizing your economy for unclear gain, and the resulting backlash is going to more than undo any progress you made anyway.
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> Lobbyism is very easy to complain about and can easily devolve into corruption, but it has a very clear purpose: To prevent policymakers from writing regulations that harm the affected industries without gain.
Industries are not the only thing affected by policy, citizens are affected too.
Not harming industries often means harming normal people, and industries have a much stronger lobbying power than normal people,
Lobbying could be ok if every interaction with politicians were recorded and public, and if the money you have wouldn't matter on how easily you can reach the lawmakers.
If lobbying were illegal, lawmakers could inform their decisions by turning to independent experts, who provide some slightly more impartial information
The case of the EU Commissioner is particularly grating because she leads 500 million people without ever being subjected to an election.
Lobbyists are how companies talk to governments. If you believe that companies create value, then you should believe that companies should communicate with governments. It can help prevent low quality regulations from being pushed through.
Of course what they say should be validated and taken with appropriate weight. Companies are usually blinkered; they know a lot about their specialist area but aren't incentivized to consider collective action problems or externalities. Something similar can be said for every political interest group. Governing effectively means balancing everyone's interests.
> If you believe that companies create value, then you should believe that companies should communicate with governments
Sorry, you're going to have to prove that.
Companies are made up of people, and it's completely reasonable to assume that if people were allowed to have a voice within government, then they could also speak on behalf of their own interests, which will often coincide with that of the companies that they're involved with.
There's no reason to consider companies a separate entity that has its own power to communicate and many reasons not to do that.
> Ursula is basically a lobbyist without much expertise in anything.
She doesn't need to have any expertise, nobody can have deep expertise on everything. It's basically a politician job to have no clue and find reliable sources for an educated decision. And this usually fails hard on bleeding edge topics, because not many have an educated opinion at that point.
But as a side note, she did study something medical, so she does have some deeper expertise outside the political area.
> I think the whole EU should be reformed.
No reform can fix this problem. And always calling for reforms because of some detail not working how you want it is harmful.
"I think the whole EU should be reformed" reads exactly like a junior dev demanding a full rewrite from scratch.
Sometimes you have to rewrite from scratch when the original is broken beyond repair and institutional knowledge is lost.
A young dev may have an easier time seeing this.
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> She doesn't need to have any expertise
By living in a bubble, she became less knowledgeable on common matters than an average citizen, and this even extends to her cabinet.
The proof at hand is the story of her "GPS-jammed" landing in Plovdiv.
She lied, her press secretary lied and there was none around to tell them about ADS-B, FlightRadar24 and how these lies can be trivially verified.
> By living in a bubble, she became less knowledgeable on common matters that an average citizen
I would trust an average citizen in those matters even less. We are not talking here about the daily egg-prices or which is the hottest celebrity at the moment. That woman is the leader of the executive branch of a Pan-National Organization. This is by definition a job with problems, which are very far away from the daily dread of the average citizen.
> The proof at hand is the story of her landing in Plovdiv.
What are you talking about? Pretty sure she is not flying here own plane, nor making the technical decision when it lands. Whatever happened there, has no relation to whichever abilities she might have or is lacking.
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The EU comes with a whole range of flaws, that's true, but as far as I'm concerned it's still the best place to live in the world as far as personal freedom, quality of life, etc, go. Fixing the bad bits is important, yes, but you gotta be careful not to break too many of the good bits while you're doing it.
Couldn't agree more. As a European: Yes, there's a lot (and I mean A LOT!) of things that could be improved but for all that is bad, it could be much worse. Especially when you look around. There are only few countries I would permanently move to. Nearly all of them are European.
She's also 67 by now, which is the regular retirement age in Germany. Can we just get rid of all the old people in positions of power... ?
It's happening over and over again that old people decide on things that mess up the younger generations.