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How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

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221–230 of 1001 posts

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#221

I believe the view layed out in the article is wrong. The German Wikipedia has an article about the PPWR. One Paragraph is saying: "The distributor must verify that the manufacturer and, where applicable, the importer have fulfilled their requirements, that all necessary markings are affixed to the packaging, and that the manufacturer is registered in the producer register pursuant to Article 44." That does not sound…

Unfortunately, for direct cross-border sales, the regulation explicitly makes the seller the "producer" in the customer’s Member State, and requires registration there. Buying an envelope from a registered Greek supplier does not register the seller in Germany or France.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part This is by design. It’s the same all over the world. The wealthy are not going to just let you compete

Laws are voted by politicians. Do you mean that most EU politicians are puppets of EU corporations?

Yes and mostly European elite and royal families. Royal families and their friends have strong power across Europe but they are well hidden via media.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#223
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated I would argue it's even worse, because with properly designed federated system you get checks and balances to some extent. There are parts of EU that have almost zero oversight.

Can you elaborate more? When you say "checks and balances" do you mean explicit legal mechanisms or implicit mechanisms like Tiebout-style foot voting? For the latter areas with "almost zero oversight" seem advantages. Also, can you give an example of these low-oversight places and how it manifests? I'm thankful even for some pointers in what to search for.

[deleted]

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#225
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you've described Greece as a bunch of scheming petulant children. "Our plan to be inaccountable didn't work, so we'll try a different scheme instead". And yes, it's a huge problem. That's why I called the situation unwinnable.

No, the Greeks were cool and calculating, turning an inflating fake fiat currency into hard assets like real estate, while not working or producing anything. The introduction of the Euro was the start signal for each country to try to inflate as much as they can for their own benefit - since the first inflator gets the best value out of the currency. Idiots are left holding paper currency worth less and less each day…

The Euro had a much better set of inflation controls than most of the previous European currencies. Especially the lire.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#226

Is it actually a bad thing? From Asia I definitely see so much shady business practices from small businesses. Customer protection is non-existent. Keeping small businesses in drive prices down, but also drive wages down. I don’t think this is a compromise that many people would be happy with.

I am from Europe and I think this complaint is misplaced. Europe is currently speeding towards neo-liberalism at lightspeed and shows no sign of slowing down. The beneficiaries are primarily the CEOs and big corporations. The workers are certainly not the ones benefiting from the status quo, especially if you look at the stripping down of consumer protection which is starting to look like completely absent in the con…

Workers need businesses or their is no work. Favouring smaller enterprenuers get more workers.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#227

PPWR is an EU catastrophe. Firstly for the reasons outlined in the article: it essentially makes being a micro/small business in the EU impossible, if your market is other EU countries. Secondly because it validates insidious populist views that the EU institution is useless and incompetent at a fundamental level. The legislation is so ABSURDIST that the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they ju…

Gosh I hate it when politicians are useless and incompetent, since it just validates the false populist propaganda that politicians can be useless and incompetent, which is clearly not true (even in cases when politicians actually are useless and incompetent, which they of course cannot be, since that is evil propaganda).

Politicians can be quite evil, but in a functioning democracy they need to be at least competent at gathering support and navigating the occasional backstabbing plots to make it to the highest ranks of government. So I'm hesitant to call them totally incompetent.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#228
post #208

I don't know if this EU regulation will work or not (most likely not), but I can share how it is done in China (where package volume is orders of magnitude higher). China identifies "choke points" most packages pass: large platforms and logistics companies. Yes, Chinese e-commerce is more centralized on Alibaba/JD/PDD etc, but there are actually much more logistics companies in China than in EU. They also do not intr…

Per downthread, this whole crisis arises because of Chinese companies shipping to Europe. The EU Directives are definitely visible in advance, none of this is dropped on people.

> this whole crisis arises because of

hmm that is not systems thinking there.. there are more layers than that!

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#229
I'm sorry I don't buy this. A "micro-entrepreneur" should be trusted to design a product complying with the regulations of 27 member states but cannot be bothered by the packaging requirements?

My guess is that most of the products on this website simply do not comply with the norms and regulations they ought to, thus why care if they don't comply to waste management either.

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