This morning I received the two excellent books “Object Oriented Perl” and “Perl Best Practices” by the eminently competent and entertaining Dr. Damian Conway that I had ordered on Amazon's US site. Imagine my consternation when the postman grinned at me as though I had illegally ordered cigarettes on the Internet again and told me: “Alright then, that would be €11.79 for custom duties.” Since my postman is more than 2 meters tall, I did not dare to object and went to get my wallet. But then I had to ask: “I am just curious, but between you and me, 12 bloody euros in tariffs? I mean, it's two books that are barely worth 35€!” As it turned out, it was only a 5-euro duty, along with a 7-euro processing fee, but still a 15% (!) duty on educational books? Are you kidding me? I mean it's not like I ordered the Great Anthology of American Porn by Hugh Hefner or How To Build A Dirty Bomb by Osama Bin Laden, but an educational book on computer programming! Isn't that at odds with the EU's purported aim to “become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world”?
Protectionism, bureaucracy, stupidity
I am wondering: did the French invoke some “exception informatique” to justify unreasonable tariffs on books on computer programming? EU enthusiasts keep pointing out to free-marketeers such as me how the European Union allows to implement the ideal of free trade at least within its own boundaries. However, the protectionism demonstrated to the outside world by the EU bureaucrats in Brussels belies that purported motivation. I am not a staunch EU sceptic, but I keep getting the impression that the entire concept of the Union is fundamentally flawed in that it just takes the mistakes of the nation state to a higher level and this is a typical example. What government in the world should have the outrageous right to charge duties on books on Perl programming? What in heaven's name are they trying to achieve?
Conflicting goals
As an advocate for free trade, I am never in favour of trade barriers, but in this case it seems particularly absurd to me. Most of my friends who work in computer science are on projects that are partially funded by the EU. This means the EU would like to promote scientific progress in a way. At the same time, they seem to think it's a bad thing to import educational products on computer science. What's the rationale behind this absurdity? Is it just about justifying the need to employ another bunch of useless bureaucrats?
Why, why, why?
I really don't see how that's supposed to make sense. It may be nothing more than 12 euros to me, but it's also just another example of that brain-dead protectionism that slows down progress, discriminates against developping countries and proves those wrong who still associate the EU with “openness”. Whom am I harming by reading Object Oriented Perl so that I require an incentive not to do so? Please, Brussels, tell me!
Back to the top of this pageCategories: Free Thought, Free Markets Web Development and Programming
Keywords/tags: perl eu trade free trade science computer science protectionism programming computer programming damian conway conway object-oriented perl best practices oo perl oo
Permalink | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Trackbacks
Trackback URL for this entry:
http://christianflury.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/21
