EU–INC – A new pan-European legal entity

I was about to say... give dedollarization spurred by the current administration a couple more years and then compare GDP.

Being the world reserve and trade currency artificially props up the value of that currency (beyond what it would otherwise be), which has the result of artificially boosting GDP to GDP comparisons.

> That sounds like a significant problem ... for either the Germans or the French to resolve.

If you do the math on the number of pairs of EU countries that need to find bilateral solutions ... it becomes clear why the EU government exists. It's just not efficient otherwise. (Answer: 351)

> When people talk about larger regulatory frameworks they see the problem as the more permissive side is giving people options and want that shut down immediately.

Who are you talking to? People on HN and in US business, and the most popular theme in US government, is anti-regulation. I think both sides are misguided, sort of like being against or for laws - we need the right laws; sometimes we need more, less, or changes.

> US citizens who seem to be the lepers of international finance

> If the US started talking about global regulation to ease investment, for example, that means they don't intend to make it any easier but they do want everyone to adhere to US compliance ideas whether or not they do business in the US ...

Doesn't Wall Street dominate international finance? They don't seem like lepers. Also, when international financial regulation has been discussed, I think it's the US that usually undermines it. But maybe you mean something else than what I understood?

> And sure, you can form an Estonian company. But then you have to try and fly under the radar with regards to the 'permanent establishment' rules.

It depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you want to do some tax optimization shenanigans, then yeah, don’t think it’ll work for you (if you’re in the EU, at least). But if you just want to set up a small to mid-sized company without dealing with German bureaucracy, I think Estonia is your best bet right now. I don’t think (IANAL) you would get into trouble for having a permanent establishment – you’ll just have to still deal with the DE tax office. But if EU-INC really can unify the processes for all countries, I’m all for it!

> The whole process is so clearly setup to discourage people from actually forming companies.

By the way, it’s really backwards in Estonia. I’ve seen zero sole proprietors when I was living there – everybody just opens an LLC.

> If you do the math on the number of pairs of EU countries that need to find bilateral solutions ... it becomes clear why the EU government exists. It's just not efficient otherwise. (Answer: 351)

That logic doesn't hold. If it made sense supermarkets wouldn't work because they have to hold bilateral negotiations with hundreds of thousands of customers. In practice, they just offer a take-it-or-leave-it deal and people either accept it or they don't.

Similarly, countries offer a take-it-or-leave-it set of requirements to foreign investors. If investors aren't taking the deal, countries have the power to unilaterally renegotiate what they offer.

> Doesn't Wall Street dominate international finance? They don't seem like lepers. Also, when international financial regulation has been discussed, I think it's the US that usually undermines it. But maybe you mean something else than what I understood?

I dunno, maybe they operate out of the Caymans or something legally complicated. I'd estimate maybe 20-30% of the stock offers I see have a lot of front matter materials saying something to the effect of "if you come from the US you aren't even allowed to read this, go away". Very US-specific exclusions. Maybe the offers I get are too small time? I dunno, I just report what I see. I always chuckle at it though.

Syngenta got sued over paraquat and has already agreed to pay more than $100M to one set of defendants while still being actively sued by others. Corteva is paying in excess of a billion dollars over PFAS. Bayer/Monsanto is paying in excess of ten billion over glyphosate. That's only what they've already agreed to pay; others can still sue them for more.

A lot of stuff is e.g. you have an old study showing that glyphosate causes cancer in mice in amounts orders of magnitude higher than typical human exposure. Plaintiffs are going to claim that means they knew it was dangerous, and maybe that's even enough to win their lawsuit. But lots of things cause cancer in mice in excessive amounts. Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they knew it would cause cancer in humans in ordinary amounts? If not then you don't have enough to put them in prison. Also, which "them" is it? If you want a person, the actually guilty party is typically not the CEO, it's a middle manager who made the decision three decades ago and is now a retired non-billionaire. If you collected enough evidence then you could potentially put a middle class grandpa in prison for it. The actual reason this doesn't often happen isn't that corporations are rich.

But also, what does this have to do with the bureaucracy involved in entity formation? Is your theory that making it harder to start a small business would somehow have made it more likely for Monsanto to be prosecuted for whatever they did? How?