711–720 of 1001 posts
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The lawmakers are: in the EU you have a block of right-wing parties. The large part are funded by large companies and make laws which favour them. Same thing as in the US. There are other right-wing (and left-wing) blocks who are funded by the Kremlin and Kremlin-supporters who just try to break things. At the EC they're not corrupt, they try their best, but they're often given bad advice and are themselves not exper…
> a block of right-wing parties. The large part are funded by large companies and make laws which favour them. Same thing as in the US. You need to be mad to think it's the right wing parties in the US who get the most funding. E.g. [0] > The Biden—now Harris—campaign committee raised $997.2 million and Trump’s campaign committee raised $388 million in total between Jan. 2023 and Oct. 16, 2024, the most recent date f…
The DSA is the closest to a left wing party you have in the US. They would be center left in northern european countries.
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…
The cost of bookkeeping for a very small business is essentially zero. Everywhere that I know of exempts small business from double entry bookkeeping. VAT exemptions exist if revenue is low enough, too.
Privacy requirements are even easier: don't ask for, store, or process any personal information you don't absolutely need.
Your barber is being dramatic.
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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.
Reichelt and Conrad in Germany. Digikey has logistics in Netherlands
Thanks to tomis who posted the EU FAQ on the topic below: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ad1... None of this applies to companies that are micro-enterprises or use generic rather than branded packaging. There's a helpful diagram on page 13. The author of this article seems to have imagined a worst-case scenario based on either a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the EU rules; the disc…
I don’t know who is right or who is wrong. The mere fact that people seem to be highly confused (I saw many posts about that the last week) speaks volumes. Why introduce legislation that is so complex and hard to understand that people seem to be confused wether or not they’re affected. It’s highly irresponsible and arrogant thing to do.
You must be new to Europe :)
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There is a big difference between being unable to grow and being uninterested in it. I sincerely doubt most people open a small coffee shop dreaming of expansion. Small coffee shop owners don’t want to be Starbucks. Being small and wanting to stay small is not a failure.
Desire is irrelevant. Small European coffee shops can’t become starbucks.
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> 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.
Which means taxing the rich can make the rich poorer than they currently are and bring more equality. Which is a goal in itself. But it cannot fund EU governments. It cannot fund pensions. Not even a little bit.
Everyone knows what the big problem is: right now close to 35% of working people in the EU work, one way or another (usually in bureaucracies, granted), to take care of children, sick, unemployed or elderly non-working people. Of those groups, the elderly group is going up by about 3% every year, and that will keep going until 2050 or later. In the group of working people there is extreme resistance to actually work with the elderly (meaning physically helping elderly people, those jobs are low-status, low-paid, and generally hated with a passion), even against teaching jobs there is quite a bit of resistance (dropout rates are double digit percentages). So how do we take care of the elderly? Hell: how do we take care of kids?
This problem alone makes me say "we don't just want AI to take our jobs, we NEED AI to take our jobs". Because "we" are sure as hell not going to take them. That doesn't preclude that this needs to be regulated, but obviously just saying no to AI is not what we want. And that's putting it politely.
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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.
> CRA Well, how small business can report anything during 24 hours through weekends, long weekends, 1-week Christmas, 3-4-weeks summer vacations?
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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 mor…
Clothing, famously less important on Maslow's hierarchy of needs than semiconductors.
Lack of clothing is not really that big of problem if we look from needs perspective.