Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

lectronz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#351

Post by amarcheschi »

mpweiher wrote: post #199

A couple of things to note: 1. The EU commission wanted a single central registry 2. It was the member states, via the Council of Ministers, that torpedoed this. 3. The EU now advises its member states to not implement/enforce this 4. Until the correction, which is on its way, can be fully enacted. So the same old same old: member states do shitty stuff and blame the EU.

I haven't followed the legislative process, where can I find that the eu wanted a single registry but the country pushed for national ones? Because i have never read it.

I'm not saying it's not true, it's just that it's so hard to follow these things when one is supposed to have a life as well

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#352

Post by zuzululu »

Kudos wrote: post #239

Anti-EU regulation sentiment really seems to have an uptick in line with widespread availability of LLMs. The EU isn't perfect, but the catastrophising I read feels mostly like astro-turfing attempts at destabilisation. It's probably more easily noticed from inside the EU.

No, there was already a steady complaints against Anti-EU regulation from within Europe around the time Eurozone debt crisis introduced sweeping changes that ultimately centralized regulatory enforcement over sovereign interests of EU member states. I think anybody from Europe would know this is the focal point when anti-EU sentiments really ticked up.

There really isn't much of astro-turfing in non-EU parts of the world that would make little sense, your narrative might make more sense if there were any actual evidence or credibility behind the claims that non-EU states are engaged in anti-EU discourse that doesn't apply to them.

The complaints against EU is a lagging effect and what you see today is cumulative, one that all federated organization eventually face. LLMs have little to do with it and its just more visible as it is quite literally in global discourse

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#353

Post by merek »

varispeed wrote: post #246
armcat wrote: post #68

This is a great read and I can extend this argument really to any small business. Tax filing, VAT, bookkeeping, privacy, consumer, workplace and sectoral requirements frequently impose a disproportionately large cost on microbusinesses. EU is more and more split along the enterprise and VC backed line, and everyone in between has disproportionate costs. My barber in Stockholm often complains about this - the amount o…

General view of EU politicians is that working class should be working for big corporations. Running own business is a sin. The big corporations also don't want people to run small business, because they remove themselves from the job market and cannot be hired / exploited. So they lobby EU FOR regulations that ensure people cannot run business.

> Running own business is a sin

Shouldn't any wealth creation viewed positively due to tax, not to mention value to consumers/society?

Or is the view that people on average produce more value when employed by a large corporation?

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#354

Post by mrtksn »

antiloper wrote: post #344
mrtksn wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always like this, EU is in urgent need of becoming a country in some form and local government deal with local stuff only. It shows up in the stats, citizens almost always trust EU more than their governments and want EU to have more power but all this means those local governments becoming less important and therefore no one is really pushing for it. Fingers crossed Trump invades Greenland so things can start m…

> It's always like this, EU is in urgent need of becoming a country in some form and local government deal with local stuff only. The lesson is the opposite: The EU needs LESS power, not more. If the member states didn't have a cartel to tyrannize their collective population, this regulation could never have happened. Any single country that would try to enforce this would be on its own.

Nope, less power means the current situation will be the default as each country by default will have their own body and rules to govern instead of one rule and one body that handles the whole continent.

Unlike what you appear to believe Europeans are not some libertarian captured by the EU socialist, most europeans do want less wasteful and less harmful packaging.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#355

Post by teiferer »

marky1991 wrote: post #313
akie wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yeah, obviously we wouldn't try to do that. Our laws, cultures, and priorities are wildly different. By this lens, the main problem seems to be that the eu expanded too much and grew too large to actually have a coherent purpose.

> eu expanded too much and grew too large to actually have a coherent purpose.

Anybody seriously thinking that seems completely oblivious to how central EU is to the economies and every day lives of member states. There is a lot to criticise about EU but without it, the Europeans lives would be much worse and their economies would be nothing to speak of. It is very sad that populists managed to popularize the image of the bloated unnecessary monster. Even otherwise intellectually capable folks.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#356

Post by contravariant »

philipallstar wrote: post #284
radicalbyte wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on the inside: this is by design. You know for 100% that Pepsico and Coca Cola unleashed an army of lobbyists to make sure the laws were written in a way where the single market only worked for large business.

Lobbyists don't do this. Regulators/lawmakers need to be corrupt and/or incompetent for lobbying to do this.

So lobbyists did do it then?

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#357

Post by teiferer »

ihateolives wrote: post #307
radicalbyte wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm I've been talking about this for 4 years now. So I'm not sure how it can "come out of nowhere" unless you're paying 0 attention to really important regulation in your field. There will be a post in 9 months from software companies crying about the PLD and CRA because their leaders were asleep at the wheel for the last half decade.

"in your field"? All small businesses and solo enterpreneurs that I know who are hit by this are not "in this field". Their field is making jewelry or knitted toys or something similar. Now many are just not planning to ship EU wide just because it's too high risk for them.

> All small businesses and solo enterpreneurs that I know who are hit by this are not "in this field". Their field is making jewelry or knitted toys or something similar.

Are they shipping within EU? Then they literally are in the field of shipping within the EU.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#358

Post by voakbasda »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #310
akie wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

America does it with 50 states

In theory, true. In practice, state independence has been dead for the better part of a century.

The 10th amendment has been eviscerated by the courts. By a strict reading of its relatively simple language, most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional.

Today, USA is unabbreviated as the “United States of America”, but the country was founded as the “United States for Anerica”.

As such, I am strongly in favor of returning to our former glory by stripping the federal government of most of its power and transferring it to the states.

I am also wise enough to know that will never happen without a long and bloody revolution, and I am okay with that given the lived reality that has defined my life.

We live in tyranny. You may not feel the rolling boil of the water that surrounds you, my fellow Americans, but make no mistake: your goose is cooked.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#359

Post by KellyCriterion »

uxhacker wrote: post #17

What is amazing is that this goes so much against the concept of the EU. The EU was founded on the principles of four freedoms, Free movement of goods, Free movement of persons, Freedom to provide services, and Free movement of capital. The EU even have a SME Test to maker sure small business are not overburdened by regulations. Also there are thousands of lobbyists fighting for small businesses. Yes, this law will p…

Not quite exactly:

-- The EU was founded on the principles of four freedoms, Free movement of goods, Free movement of persons, Freedom to provide services, and Free movement of capital. --

If you take a look at first paragraphs of the EU contracts, they sate above all these:

-----------

Article 3

(ex Article 2 TEU)

1. The Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.

2. The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.

3. The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. It shall promote scientific and technological advance.

It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child.

It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States.

It shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.

4. The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro. ... ----

So its only about free movement of people in the beginning, goods and services are much later in the docs

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#360

Post by makapuf »

philipallstar wrote: post #284
radicalbyte wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked on the inside: this is by design. You know for 100% that Pepsico and Coca Cola unleashed an army of lobbyists to make sure the laws were written in a way where the single market only worked for large business.

Lobbyists don't do this. Regulators/lawmakers need to be corrupt and/or incompetent for lobbying to do this.

You need both, and both are responsible for the current state.

To stop this, you need to try to stop both until one doesn't exists.

Post reply on HN