The importance of “digital sovereignty” (by P. Becchi and G. Palma on Libero)

2 December 20203 years ago babelfish

Article by Paolo Becchi and Giuseppe Palma in Libero of 2 December 2020:

The pandemic has brought two categories to their knees above all: the so-called "VAT numbers" and small and medium-sized enterprises. In other words, the engine of the Italian miracle, the productive and artisanal fabric on which Italy has based its economic development for decades. You may like it or not but that's it.

The crisis of the PMI did not occur only due to the absence of structural economic measures in favor of artisans and shopkeepers, but also through unfair competition and fiscal injustice – which the government continues to allow – of the giants of online commerce. One above all is Amazon, the American multinational of the magnate Jeffrey Bezos. By forcing millions of people to stay at home or work in smart-working, the government has effectively bankrupted Italian small and medium-sized enterprises for the benefit of the American giant, which, coincidentally, earned an additional 96 billion during the first lockdown. compared to the previous year. Amazon Web Services' balance sheet is also growing, reaching $ 10.8 billion in revenue in Q2 2020, a 29% jump from the previous year.

Think now of the book market and the entire IT sector. With bookshops and shops closed from early March to mid-May, on-line commerce took over and the problem reappeared also in the autumn, with some shops and bookstores that were able to remain open but with Italians closed in home, so get incentives to buy online. This is causing traditional commerce to be dismantled for the benefit of foreign platform digital commerce.

And it's not just about trade, think about justice, school and university. Remote hearings and distance learning take place mainly through Teams, which is an application from Microsoft, a Washington multinational created by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, or using, especially in schools, Google's G Suites for Education.

Italy is the country that seems to suffer most from the tsunami of this new digital economy, while neighboring Switzerland has reacted differently. Already in 2018, the Swiss, in order to help local traders, have provided for a tax for all foreign companies that deal with mail order sales and that generate more than 100 thousand francs a year in shipments. This has meant that since 2019 Amazon, finding trade in Switzerland inconvenient, has advised its customers to place orders at European branches, shipments on which Bern still applies a tax. In this way Switzerland successfully protected internal trade. Not even France sends them to say, where several mayors are teaming up to launch a petition against Amazon, and other initiatives that go in the same direction involve booksellers, publishers, men of culture, politicians and traders.

Italy, on the other hand, suffers without reacting. Salvini attempted, perhaps in our opinion a little naively, a first direct confrontation with Amazon, but in substance he did not achieve much, beyond a general willingness to enhance the made in Italy products on the platform and aroused the irritation of the allies who saw there a lack of firmness towards the American multinational which, among other things, disqualifies the worker, actually increases precarious work by exploiting the temporary work with mainly immigrant labor and presents working conditions with high rhythms and surveillance of workers hardly compatible with the provisions of our Constitution. For the government, on the other hand, the problem does not exist, the "missing points" of the shopkeepers and the "patrimonial" that certainly does not concern Amazon are sufficient. Yet at least a nice "patrimonial" in this case would not taste. An immediate solution, especially on the occasion of the Christmas trade, could in fact be that adopted by neighboring Switzerland: to impose an important tax on online shipments for all those foreign companies that invoice over a certain amount. In this way, Italians would be better off buying Christmas gifts in neighborhood shops, thus helping the domestic economy. They do it in Switzerland, you can't see why it can't be done in Italy.

This is a short-term measure, while as a structural intervention it would be necessary to invest in the digital economy. On-line platforms of Italian companies – with Italian workers – for both commerce and public administration, justice, school, university. It is in this area that the government should invest public money, not in Chinese scooters or wheelbases. If Ibs, a limited liability company from Assago, already exists in the Milan area for books, we are completely dependent on abroad for everything else.

We let bankers fool us on money, at least on digital we try not to stand by and carve out at least a slice of sovereignty.

by Paolo Becchi and Giuseppe Palma in Libero of 2 December 2020

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Literary Tips :

by Paolo Becchi and Giuseppe Palma, “ DEMOCRACY IN THE QUARANTINE. How a virus has swept the country ", Historica edizioni, April 2020.

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The article The importance of “digital sovereignty” (by P. Becchi and G. Palma on Libero) comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/limportanza-della-sovranita-digitale-di-p-becchi-e-g-palma-su-libero/ on Wed, 02 Dec 2020 19:32:10 +0000.