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How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

lectronz.com

841–850 of 1001 posts

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two countries in South East Asia (one is Singapore) to operate. The business is meant to be b2b SaaS which is quite global. But if I lived in Spain... omg I do not want even to imagine how they would try to prosecute me. So I do not live there and problem solved.

Why are you unwilling to say the other country?

Bc it is not definitive and bc it is my right to keep it for me :D

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#842
This is par for the course when it comes to EU regulation unfortunately. The EU should really make a choice here: either there can be EU-wide regulation but Member States can't impose their own implementations or overlapping/competing national laws, or regulation should be left to Member States. You can't have both and pretend to be a single market.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#843

I initially learned about this from a luthier and plectrum designer, Hufschmidt Guitars, a one man shop in Switzerland. Some quotes from the update he sent to his customers: """ For a one-person workshop, the result has been pretty brutal. [...] The numbers simply do not work for a micro-business like mine. Even in France and Germany, I send only around 1 to 2 kg of cardboard per year. In some other EU countries, I m…

I'm not sure the "anti-geo-fencing" rules will not collide with this in the near future.

The EU constantly pushes that either you sell to all EU-member-states at the same price or nothing at all.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both passive corruption (accepting a bribe) and active corruption (giving a bribe) are a problem. “But the officials accepted it” is not a valid way to discount Amazon from their nefarious practices.

Please cite ANY evidence that Amazon, Epstein, Aliens, etc. had anything to do with this particular EU packaging nightmare...and that it wasn't wholly due to the bike shedding nature of a massive incomprehensible bureaucracy.

> Please cite ANY evidence that Amazon had anything to do with this particular EU packaging nightmare

Easy. Amazon spends several million every year to have their representatives discussing issues that affect them like that. We know for certain that they were indeed involved in the discussions, because that's what they are being paid to do (and it's not entirely objectionable for legislators to listen to industrial interests in the first place).

> to the bike shedding nature of a massive incomprehensible bureaucracy.

It may be incomprehensible to you, but like it or not these bureaucracy are what shape the modern world. Countries without an extensive bureaucracies are all failed state (and the first thing any emerging state actors, like the Taliban or HTS in Syria, do when they come to power is to set up a bureaucracy).

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#847
post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't care about guys like Lectronz, they're far too small, and the EU Commission really doesn't care about Amazon. They're openly antagonistic to US tech firms. Occam's Razor applies here. These regulations exist because the EU is 10,000+ civil servants writing whatever laws they want with no meaningful democratic accountability (this sort of thing is nobody's priority). They love creating new laws, they lo…

> that Brexit was an unrepeatable disaster (which it wasn't, check the data for yourself). OK thanks I'll go find and check the data to back up your claim

I'm not agreeing with everything that this user wrote but for sure the Brexit did not destroy UK's economy. GDP-wise the UK and France always developed very similarly before Brexit and also after Brexit, so it's hard to call it a "desaster".

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#848
post #747

I've been following the PPWR in news and social media. Everybody is lamenting about the micro-enterprises that see their business squashed, but mostly because they are involved in one. I do empathize with them and really want to see these small business surviving and thriving. But then, in the context of discussion, nobody asks what matters: Cui bono? To me, this looks like a direct handout to Amazon and similar (big…

What stops a person from starting a packaging/shipping business, paying the fees to ship and handle waste in all 27 euro countries and then charging customers a couple of cents for this service?

Overhead means it's gonna cost more than a few cents each.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#849
post #699
post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simply not true. The helpful diagram you refer to does not consider the case where company A manufactures the packaging, company B buys the packaging, and then does a B2C delivery to another member state. In that case company B is the producer, even if B is a "micro-enterprise". > the discussion here seems to have a lot of people who are in a big rush to demonize their perceived political opponents on ideological gro…

This whole discussion is the reason innovation it's dead in Europe. The regulations are so complex that you need a team dedicated to navigating the bureaucracy nonsense. Small companies and startups can't do that.

My mom sometimes buys wool from online wool sellers which often are other 60 year old ladies who really don't know much about the internet or business.

These are affected, too, and will probably all stop selling to other EU countries because how could they ever fully grasp that regulation in all its details.

It's a shame, life and doing business is difficult enough already, and then millions of people get those regulations thrown at them.

They already had a big wave of newsletter closures when the EU's GDPR came around and everyone was scared to handle customer data. Now here's the next round.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#850
post #827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon doesn't care about guys like Lectronz, they're far too small, and the EU Commission really doesn't care about Amazon. They're openly antagonistic to US tech firms. Occam's Razor applies here. These regulations exist because the EU is 10,000+ civil servants writing whatever laws they want with no meaningful democratic accountability (this sort of thing is nobody's priority). They love creating new laws, they lo…

> that Brexit was an unrepeatable disaster (which it wasn't, check the data for yourself). OK thanks I'll go find and check the data to back up your claim

I still remember the articles saying that Britons will have no food on shelves after Brexit.
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