How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

Post by throw-the-towel » Mon, Aug 24, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

khalic wrote: post #33

echelon wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it literally killing the majority of Europeans? How many deaths comes from an Arduino box? Europe's smart people are going to have to move to another country to be entrepreneurs. That's going to kill Europe faster.

> Europe's smart people are going to have to move to another country to be entrepreneurs Watch the stats please, the contrary is happening right now, plenty of American talents coming to Europe.

Post by dragochat » Mon, Aug 24, 2026, 2:09 PM UTC

ranger_danger wrote: post #57

caseysoftware wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very American mindset. I've worked across both the US and EU at a variety of companies with customers, partners, etc and it's a clear pattern: - Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway. - Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you sug…

I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them. That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that…

Post by leros » Mon, Aug 24, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

brohee wrote: post #75

leros wrote: post #41

Laws like this really need to only be enforced for companies of certain sizes.

This has its own issues. Big bad actors can now split their activities between more smaller companies to avoid some regulation. I've seen it happening.

Post by troupo » Mon, Aug 24, 2026, 2:10 PM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #89

troupo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if the EU tried to force countries into single compliance, there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming. It's an unwinnable situation. Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.

> there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming To just call this "screaming" is to completely dismiss a real and huge problem. The EU is the idea that countries should fuse into economic areas, but the countries are also individual still. Of course there's a lot of friction. For example, because Greece was in the Euro, they couldn't inflate their currency to compensate for the fact…

Post by dgellow » Mon, Aug 24, 2026, 2:11 PM UTC

roblh wrote: post #65

Is there room for a company in the EU to spend some time doing the research as to what packaging is able to be used across all the different countries, then selling affordable packaging that meets those standards across the board? And also publish resources for how to effectively package stuff? A genuine question, I’m not from Europe. It just seems like something that would benefit everyone and help make this less of…