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One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

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Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#81

- Are there any good (easy to use) payment processors available in Estonia (like Stripe) ? - Is your startup governed by specific laws for data privacy etc. - What about legal disputes, arbitration. How does that work for startups based out of Estonia ?

No Stripe unfortunately..

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#82
post #70

I incorporated in Estonia few years ago because of what their promo materials say. It’s a total shitshow unfortunately and while it’s true that you can do everything online, it’s not what you think. All user interfaces are straight from the 90s, only the most basic forms are in english and they want to know everything about your business while setting ridiculous limits. For example, you need to have half of your capi…

I just got an email from the embassy that the eResidency documents are ready to pick up. I wanted to set up a company right after, but this sounds like a really bad news.

But I'm wondering, do you use any of the government certificated services who should help you to do all of this? Like LeapIn and similar? Or do you manage everything by yourself?

Also, anyone else has a similar experience?

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#83
post #60

I'm still unclear of the benefits. Could anyone shed some light: What can we do with it that we can't do now? Let's say that I'm a solo entrepreneur or small SaaS owner from a developing country (e.g from Asia, Africa or LatAm) -- basically, typical HNer who's not from Europe/US.

From the article, the author is able to be on the board for an Estonian company and take payment in Euro as a consultant. He can also e-sign documents.

> take payment in Euro as a consultant

Isn't it relatively easy to open a Euro denominated account in most countries?

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#84
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a meritocratic world, what happens to the dumb and/or lazy? They don't get to run things? Put another way: assuming you're going to have some sort of hierarchy, and you will, how would you want to organize that hierarchy? Merit seems like the least bad way to do so.

Let's take a small municipality and play. I'll take town board/administrator form of government, you take "meritocracy." In my form of government the board members run for office periodically. The ones who get the most votes win. Then they hire a professional bureaucrat to handle the day to day business of keeping a municipality up and running. Here's what I've got: * a discrete (and anonymous!) method to determine w…

> What's the way you measure and get consensus on community leaders' merit?

I find the model of liquid democracy enticing: Every decision is voted on by the people of the community and because that would be overwhelming you can delegate your vote (in general, for a certain topic or just for a single vote) to someone you trust, like an expert in that area. Maybe people might get a little money for voting so experts who vote with many votes can do this professionally in full time.

So now you have people competing for the expert status for certain topics (like health care or foreign affairs) and everyone in the community can have direct influence on the outcome of every decision. Every bit of power is earned and most decisions are effectively made by trusted experts.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#85

- Are there any good (easy to use) payment processors available in Estonia (like Stripe) ? - Is your startup governed by specific laws for data privacy etc. - What about legal disputes, arbitration. How does that work for startups based out of Estonia ?

1. There is EveryPay https://every-pay.com/ . You need to open an account in the LHV bank first before receiving payments. (disclaimer: me and our dev team built their tech platform)

2. All the EU data laws apply.

3. I guess it depends on how you specify it in your contracts, you could do the disputes/arbitration wherever you want. There is an overview of dispute options here: https://www.eesti.ee/en/entrepreneur/legal-aid/resolution-of... . For example, if you have a customer not paying their invoices that are below 6400 euro you could file an a request in E-toimik/E-file (a paperless court system) and the collection is automatic. You could also sue people "online" there. (disclaimer again, I lead the software architecture/development work on the E-file project.)

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#86
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept your argument that few are starving like a national geographic picture. Instead we have merely undernourished schoolchildren in the richest country in world history. As for the adults, maybe we can write sleep outside until you freeze, get shot/stabbed, or jailed where you're threatened with sexual assault and are in general treated like a disease until you acquire enough money to escape the poverty trap and…

The root cause of childhood hunger is more often than not either criminal neglect or parental/financial incompetence than actual cost. I personally grew up in a single minimum wage income household, which supported 2 adults and 3 children. I'm very familiar with dubious food. That said, it is quite reasonable to meet the caloric needs of a grade school-age child in the United States with little regard for taste or va…

> canned fish and canned string beans

Careful your sodium intake, rinsing the beans can reduce it by 40%, outta luck for the fish.

(good comment btw)

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#87
post #70

I incorporated in Estonia few years ago because of what their promo materials say. It’s a total shitshow unfortunately and while it’s true that you can do everything online, it’s not what you think. All user interfaces are straight from the 90s, only the most basic forms are in english and they want to know everything about your business while setting ridiculous limits. For example, you need to have half of your capi…

I had a similar experience. The ID card in particular was the biggest hurdle. I gave up on it.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#88
post #17
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in a meritocratic world, what happens to the dumb and/or lazy? They don't get to run things? Put another way: assuming you're going to have some sort of hierarchy, and you will, how would you want to organize that hierarchy? Merit seems like the least bad way to do so.

"Merit" is not a quantifiable characteristic. All your plan would do is give the power to the people who define "merit." It's like you're advocating for correctpersonocracy. Put another way, literally every government that has ever existed would call itself a meritocracy. The actual word 'meritocracy' comes from a book that warned about the dangers of creating easily-gamed draconian systems that needlessly exclude pe…

Do you really want dumb people in the process of governing? I think we had enough already.

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#89
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, the author is able to be on the board for an Estonian company and take payment in Euro as a consultant. He can also e-sign documents.

> take payment in Euro as a consultant Isn't it relatively easy to open a Euro denominated account in most countries?

For an individual it is, not so much for a company

Re: One of Estonia's first "e-residents" explains what it means

#90
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I like a new phrase/idea I heard from Jordan Peterson recently. "Hierarchies of competency". This seems to me like a better idea of how society can arrange itself. Society needs to be able to have different people have different amounts of power in different domains, but those hierarchies don't have to be built on violence and raw power. Maybe "hierarchies of competency" could be a stable, positive way to org…

Competency in what? The best person to make decisions may not be the best person to talk about those decisions in front of a camera, or the best person to inspire confidence in those decisions in a nation of (by definition) less-competent people who (again by definition) would have made the decision differently.

Yep, any way you have of measuring competency is going to be inadequate and subject to gaming.

And it may be exactly the fact that you can't measure it accurately that makes it not "harden into a new social class without room in it for others."

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