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How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

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Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#361

Post by teiferer »

bambax wrote: post #219
yardie wrote: post #29

One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated. EU will pass laws, countries will adopt those laws, but you end up with 20-24 different versions of those laws. With some countries being strict or lenient about the law that everyone agreed to. And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed…

Yes. I used to sell objects on Amazon in Europe. You can sell from just one country, but then each sale outside of that country is an "export" that triggers high fees. For sales to be "local", products need to be stored in warehouses in each country. But that in turn means the owner of said products (the seller) has to be registered for VAT in that country, and submitting annual reports in each country's language. I…

Indeed, and that's why we need more EU, not less of it.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#362

Post by arjie »

barrenko wrote: post #110
Helmut10001 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in Europe, I find that with LLMs, it is possible to navigate the federal & law jungle. However, LLMs don't protect you from institutional envy or the resistance of people trying to block progress simply because it is perceived as 'too modern' or disruptive. I find this the hardest challenge. And I have the feeling during times of general decline, like these, it gets worse.

And it's like there's a uno card that's "increase taxes for freelancers". And they sure like to use it.

That makes sense given the structure of the society, no? If you were to build an organization whose purpose was a predictable amount paid out to the senior most members committed ahead of time for an indefinite period, you would prioritize predictable income. In the ideal, your contracts would all be long-term contracts that don’t fluctuate very much.

Any entity that seeks to take risks to earn outsize income increases the income variance and makes it hard to organize your committed payouts. So you are forced (by your priorities) to discourage the entrepreneur and freelancer and encourage the 18-60 salaried employee. Fixed fungible production unit can be used as an input to a machine that produces committed output.

Then you import guest-workers etc. to improve throughput. You are forced by your priorities. Probably the expansion of the US welfare state will meet similar constraints soon enough.

It’s a bit just-so so I think there’s an over-claim in there but I think the seed is there.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#363

Post by alerighi »

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…

My barber in Italy just doesn't make me a receipt in exchange for a discount if I pay him cash so he doesn't have to pay taxes. Come on... the cost to operating a small business are usually low/there are tax exceptions, and they most of the time are even not payed at all.

Of course if you are a person that ships 20 packages you don't register a company to do so, nobody will, you just sell them privately (and the exception to sell things privately is quite high, in my country you can do it up to 5000 euros AT YEAR, after that you need to declare the income in your tax declaration but still you don't need to register a company if it's not your main income).

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#364

Post by contravariant »

dgellow wrote: post #97
Robin_f wrote: post #13

This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries.

Really sorry you’re experiencing this, that whole regulation rollout is a complete mess. The leadership should be sacked for such an incompetent regulation, it’s insane how much troubles they are creating for small businesses. Another small business owner reported their experience in this Reddit thread, looks really bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1vrz88a/comment/p4i... I’m as pro-EU as one can get but…

The main reason I'm not particularly pro EU is the following.

How would we even sack the leadership?

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#366

Post by teiferer »

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 lobbyists to pull on one side and the general population to be too uninformed or too non-caring to not pull enough in the other direction.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#367

Post by psychoslave »

argentinian wrote: post #162
greenraven wrote: post #82

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?

Nothing specific to EU here except the specific point is about EU this time. Otherwise just copy paste "most EU politicians are puppets of EU corporations" in some search engine and enjoy, here are the top result of such a search:

https://rednetwork.net/articles/2026/06/how-corporations-set...

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/eu-leaders-puppets-of-financia...

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_reasons_behin...

https://edwardshepherd.substack.com/p/the-puppets-and-their-...

https://www.lobbycontrol.de/wp-content/uploads/EU-Lobbyrepor...

Now looking up for "EU politicians are prised for their probity and strong attachment to defend their people" here are the top results:

https://www.transparency.org/en/news/political-corruption-in...

https://www.ftm.eu/articles/european-parliamentarians-involv...

https://www.eupublicintegrity.com/what-is-public-integrity-i...

https://www.politico.eu/article/european-union-corruption-pf...

https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/04/29/europes-unpopula...

So even searching specifically for praising information, one will have to dig deep apparently, or maybe go straight to the official propaganda of what the politicians say about themselves (but probably less so about others).

Everyone is free to go as deep as they want (and can afford) and draw their own conclusions.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#368

Post by raverbashing »

ericmay wrote: post #328
akie wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Imagine trying to create a single set of laws to apply to all of the countries in North and South America at the same time. I actually think it would be quite a bit easier than it is to create the EU. There's a lot more broad cultural homogeneity between the countries in the Americas than there is within Europe. Even on the topic of language you've got the vast majority of all peoples speaking some combination of S…

> There's a lot more broad cultural homogeneity between the countries in the Americas than there is within Europe

No, not really. Unless you believe the Hollywood view that everything south of the US border has a Sepia filter

Intra-Canada commerce is a PITA in itself

Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries? (Mexico being North America, yes I know)

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#369

Post by ajmurmann »

asdfadsfgfdda wrote: post #203
ajmurmann wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One example is the effective prohibition on spraying pesticides by air, including drone. Drones allow lower pesticide use than current, legal practices

Oh, so "parts of the EU" wasn't about geographic areas but policy areas? But this sounds like more regulation, not checks and balances either. Are you replying to the right comment?

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#370

Post by teiferer »

labcomputer wrote: post #340
yardie wrote: post #29

One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated. EU will pass laws, countries will adopt those laws, but you end up with 20-24 different versions of those laws. With some countries being strict or lenient about the law that everyone agreed to. And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed…

> And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part. I'm not convinced that's an accident. I think politicians in Europe are just better than those in the US at hiding who they really work for. There are numerous examples of regulations in many European countries that crea…

It's a success of the upper class to pit the middle class against the lower class and the immigrants. As long as people on one "side" complain that there is too much foreign culture and they'll all be replaced and/raped and the other "side" sees the racists as their main enemy, the rich have an easy time.
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