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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

#521

Post by Aeolun »

akie wrote: post #400
r3trohack3r wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America does it with 50 states

I know that this is a popular point-of-view in the US, but your states and legislative processes are all very homogeneous in comparison. You guys mostly speak the same language, you have the same cultural touch points, you have a shared history, shared media, and mostly centralized power. Your country looks more like Germany (and if you know your history, that's no coincidence) than it looks like the EU.

I think, at this point, most people in Europe broadly have the same language as their second language.

> Overall proficiency: According to data from the European Union, over 43% of the total EU population speaks English as a second language, making it the most widely spoken non-native tongue across all 24 non-Anglophone countries in the bloc.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#522

Post by danielovichdk »

trinix912 wrote: post #498
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.

Right, so tell me where in Europe can I buy replacement parts for random electronics when I need them? Often very specific ICs, last time it was a cassette deck pinch roller, etc. Preferably somewhere where it’s cheaper than the value of the thing being repaired.

Yes, and that's a whole different problem, which in itself does not equal stupid shit.

The reason the price for parcels from China is going up in Europe is not shipping chips or component, it's from shipping stupid fucking shit people do not need, from e.g Temu and copied goods such as clothing, shoes and what not.

The toll offices in the airports are being drowned in cheap crap. Shut it down by making people pay more for the shit they buy. That will of course hurt everyone else, but that is how it works.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#523

Post by r_lee »

Aeolun wrote: post #518
akie wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

They manage to do it for 50 states in the US just fine. It isn’t exactly rocket science. It’s just that individual countries in Europe all feel like unique little snowflakes.

I mean you're just looking at this from the wrong lens.

nobody in an EU member state thinks of themselves as a "state" in the EU, they're a country but in the EU

nobody would want the US kind of federalism. not to mention there isn't a single majority language aside from English for those that know it well enough

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#524

Post by planb »

EU regulation is basically broken beyond repair. And I used to be the biggest proponent of it. When everyone was being angry that they are taking away light bulbs this was a kick starter for LED lighting and I guess Signify (formerly Philips lighting) and Osram wouldn’t exist today if they hadn’t been forced to invest into that field of technology.

Unfortunately the EU does not at all understand how the internet works, maybe even how the global economy works today. Their goals are very reasonable and I fully support them, but the legislation around it (DMA, AI Act, GDPR, this new packaging stuff, don’t get me started with whatever everyone calls the cookie law) is just out of touch with how the modern world works. Again, I don’t think this is out of bad intention (not even to give an advantage to EU companies, but that is up to discussion) but mostly just out of a complete lack of understanding of what would really benefit the common EU citizen. The just seem to listen to activist groups and lobbyists aiming for regulatory capture and when trying to find a compromise in between they chose the worst of both worlds.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#525

Post by drnick1 »

akie wrote: post #441
veeti wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't asking for a "single set of laws". "Single market" however is a pre-existing concept recognized as "one of the EU's greatest achievements" [1], and lacking regulations in providing said market is what their critique was about. [1] https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market_en

> "one of the EU's greatest achievements" And it is! People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one. It's a long road, we're not sure if we're going to make it all the way to the finish line (but I suspect we will), and we're going to have some happy little (and big) mistakes along the way. But for now it's imperfect, and it migh…

> People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one.

I think that attempts at making the E.U. a state are doomed to fail. There are too many differences between countries, including customs, language, legal systems, etc. The United States of America works because all states largely inherited or adopted the British social contract. You can't replicate this in Europe. The E.U. should have never been more than a free trade agreement. The currency union was a big, fat mistake that amplified the Great Recession in many of the poorer E.U. states.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#526

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

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.

> Any single country that would try to enforce this would be on its own.

Actually they'd have no retroactive way to enforce it at all, and the most they'd be able to do would be to charge an import duty on a per-parcel basis, which would ultimately be borne by the importer.

This would be a huge improvement over the utter nonsense they're implementing!

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#527

Post by lokar »

mstaoru wrote: post #190

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…

Or have the sellers of the packaging pay the fee. So the maker can buy pre-paid packaging.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#528

Post by germandiago »

My first decision when building my company was to leave Spain.

They smash you very quickly. They do not care if they ruin you via prosecurion or you have to shut down. The tax agency is extremely agressive. The laws favor the agents to extents that are illegal and weven criminal (check the bonus of inspectors).

Check Robert Amsterdam work on this, something we all spanish know for a long time.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#529

Post by bryanrasmussen »

it seems weird to me, because normally legislation of this sort has a minimum amount of revenue required, or company size requirements, but not this one? I mean reading the article it seems not, but if it was just some guy telling me this on the street I would naturally expect they were misinformed and there was a requirement for the law to apply that they had missed in their review of the matter.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#530

Post by cute_boi »

mrtksn wrote: post #266
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.

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…

Trump couldn't invade Iran, forget Greenland.

EU will be in mess forever because it is problem of power and greed.

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