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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

#481

Post by herbst »

I ran an online shop from Switzerland. Some years ago packages suddenly returned with the info I need to register with a packaging something company now. I had no idea what's going on, I didn't understand the concept and what they wanted. Apparently there were several companies I could register at pay a fee and it somehow became legal again, none of them looked real it looked like a lot of weird broken fake websites.

Germany was just a small market for us so we stopped shipping there.

I assume it's better and more clear these days and this probably makes it kinda easier in the long run. However it's a perfect example on how such things don't work if not done properly.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#482

Post by WarmWash »

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.

>General view of EU politicians is that working class should be working for big corporations

The politicians are protecting the working class from corporations destroying society for profit. Lets not kid ourselves that the EU isn't endlessly praised for "having a backbone". Universal chargers, removable batteries, open app stores, AI data protections...

The thing is that people generally don't understand that everything in the world is tradeoffs rather than the media/internet portrayal of the world being good vs evil.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#483

Post by Aerroon »

deno wrote: post #338
r3trohack3r wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America does it with 50 states

And EU does it with VAT-OSS scheme which was also separate in each country before. There's just no will to do this with EPR because there's too much money and lobbying power in the recycling cartel.

The funny thing is that when the EU introduced these new VAT rules then it screwed over small and microbusinesses as well. It took them years to implement a minimum threshold for VAT (which every reasonable country has, but somehow EU rules did not).

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#484

Post by bryanlarsen »

FpUser wrote: post #456
danielovichdk wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be much higher. The amount of shit that gets shipped from China to Europe (world) is fucking ludicrous, and people should be taxed heavily for the stupid shit they often don't need.

[flagged]

You're replying to a comment that proposes a market-based solution. Shipping has externalities. Those externalities should be included in the cost of shipping. Then the market will make the right decision.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#485

Post by Freak_NL »

No idea if this applies to the whole of the EU, but the government designated critters responsible for this in the Netherlands mention that business that ship less than 50 tons of packaging material, and don't use single-use plastics are exempt.

https://www.verpact.nl/nl/nieuw-bij-verpakkings-epr-zo-regel...

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#486

Post by Aerroon »

luke5441 wrote: post #259
bambax wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is that with the One-Stop-Shop regulation or was that before that? If it was before than, then the EU recognized the problem and implemented a fix for it.

Yeah, it only took 4 years for them to fix an obvious screw up. Only 4 years. Surely every business can survive that.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#487

Post by ryukoposting »

chermi wrote: post #461
ryukoposting wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's 350M fairly wealthy people under mostly the same tech restrictions and, on a case-by-case basis, those people are generally happy to adopt other states' standards in the name of convenience and efficiency (California notwithstanding). Look at E-ZPass/I-Pass as a great example of harmonization across states. It's funny. Ask any Illinoisan how they feel about adopting Ohio's policies and they'd bristle. But say…

Your example of adoption is interesting. I think California has actually influenced other states on efficiency. I wanted to say disproportionately, but perhaps in exact accordance with their economic and political power. I don't know the details well enough, but I do know that there is an effective anti-fedaralist force in the US wherever federal funding is concerned, as it comes with rules conditions (rules) attache…

> I think California has actually influenced other states on efficiency.

California has a frustrating tendency invent its own systems that are neither better nor worse, but nonetheless incompatible with more widely accepted standards. The highway transponder example actually applies again - Fastrak.

CA has some great ideas too, don't get me wrong (ubiquitous painted curbs: great!) but a lot of the time it's just different for the sake of being different.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#488

Post by petra »

cloudie78 wrote: post #198
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…

Ah yes, let’s give the EU and its undemocratic system in which policy formation is heavily filtered through a relatively narrow professional political class, ordinary voters have weak or almost no direct control over major policy choices, dissent encounters administrative/economic punishment, and central institutions possess and use powerful financial means to discipline peripheral governments should have even more c…

But it seems relative immune to the current rise of populism.

Not a bad tradeoff, all included.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#490

Post by [deleted] »

Jskewel wrote: post #111

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…

[deleted]
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