How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs • Hacker News Board

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#961

Post by sam_lowry_ » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 8:13 PM UTC

ahartmetz wrote: post #209

tietjens wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very interesting! Also, I would trade Aldi for Carrefour in less than a second.

They aren't in the same category of supermarket though. Anyway, your name sounds Dutch. Please bring Albert Heijn to Germany. I'm not even sure why, but it's my favorite supermarket I've been to so far.

Heh... Albert Heijn can not even cross the border between Flanders and Brussels. There are literally two Albert Heijns across the street from Brussels, but if they open shop in Brussels or Wallonia, they will have to provide packaging in French next to Dutch.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#962

Post by mike_hearn » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 8:17 PM UTC

Cpoll wrote: post #916

mike_hearn wrote: post #787

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…

I don't have a horse in this race, but sources I found claim Brexit was economically detrimental to this day, including but not limited to the wiki page and its citations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit

It's a bad idea to trust Wikipedia for anything that might have a political or ideological slant that would upset the left, which the non-impact of Brexit definitely did. For instance, there are biographical pages on Wikipedia for people who died years ago but Wiki claims they're still alive, because the only websites that reported the death are anti-woke and thus considered not "reliable sources". So they just ... revert any edits stating the person died.

To understand the true state of things you need to look elsewhere these days. Sad, but that's what seems to happen when you rely on volunteer moderators.

That page specifically is citing a lot of "studies" that are just wishcasting by academics, e.g.

> A 2018 analysis by Stanford University and Nottingham University economists estimated that uncertainty around Brexit reduced investment by businesses by approximately 6 percentage points and caused an employment reduction by 1.5 percentage points.

Unemployment continuously fell after the vote in 2016 until it reached record lows. But if you believe Wikipedia you'd think unemployment rose. This is the kind of thing they define as reliable sources.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-rat...

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#963

Post by mike_hearn » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 8:18 PM UTC

jamiejquinn wrote: post #914

mike_hearn wrote: post #787

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…

When economists struggle disentangling the effects of brexit from the pandemic, an actual disaster, and so can't really determine if brexit was a disaster, I feel like you can't honestly say it wasn't . But still, while it's hard to gauge how bad the effect was, few experts seems to think it was good.

The most honest reading of the data is that it was neither bad nor good; that it had no impact on anything whatsoever. Whether you read this as a win for the Leave or Remain factions is in the eye of the beholder.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#964

Post by mike_hearn » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

rdm_blackhole wrote: post #957

brookst wrote: post #886

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s the incoherence of the EU support that’s so weird. Apple ships USB-C phones (a year before required): look at the EU standing up to big tech and forcing consumer-friendly products. Crazy policies cripple small business and domestic AI? Oh, it’s not the EU’s fault, it’s that evil big tech. There’s a recurring theme where the EU can do no wrong, despite repeated negative outcomes that only make sense to read a…

> There’s a recurring theme where the EU can do no wrong, despite repeated negative outcomes that only make sense to read as well-meaning but misguided regulatory overzealousness. Forget it. It's like talking to a wall. Go to /r/Europe and criticize anything regarding the EU and you'll be called a nazi or a far-right extremist. Something good happens in Europe and you get the constant refrain that without the EU it w…

The EU is a collectivist ideology first and foremost, a set of institutions second.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#965

Post by corford » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #918

corford wrote: post #898

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree. I find the Delaware & IRS forms and systems archaic/byzantine compared to e.g. the UK system.

Why do you deal with any of it? As a small business use Stripe Atlas or whatever.

Doesn't that kind of prove my point?

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#966

Post by zvr » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

stymaar wrote: post #823

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…

> They also do not introduce these regulations "from tomorrow" (well, sometimes they do, but it's a different topic). E.g. the non-degradable plastic regulation was issued in 2020 to come in effect in 2025. This gives time to prepare and implement (unlike EU border controls mess...) The EU does that most of the time, and you have to add the duration of the European legislative process (~2 years in average) so it's ha…

Case in point, the "new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR)" of the article entered into force on 11 February 2025 -- and it had been in discussion and consultation processes for years before.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#967

Post by ddrdrck_ » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #500

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…

The legislation doesnt apply to small joes..... stop disseminating total hogwash, especially if you don't have any idea what you are talking about.

Sorry to contradict you, but you are the one that does not know what you're talking about. This legislation, in theory, totally impacts any business, small or large, when sending a package from any EU country to another EU country.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#968

Post by lofaszvanitt » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 9:26 PM UTC

ddrdrck_ wrote: post #967

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legislation doesnt apply to small joes..... stop disseminating total hogwash, especially if you don't have any idea what you are talking about.

Sorry to contradict you, but you are the one that does not know what you're talking about. This legislation, in theory, totally impacts any business, small or large, when sending a package from any EU country to another EU country.

Nope, read the legislation paper... its like a few hundred pages :D.

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#969

Post by DoctorOetker » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

Imagine a driver on the highway observing a prominent vehicle (perhaps a big truck, or a fancy sports car) systematically veering too much to the left say, at least according to the observing driver.

Now imagine the phenomenon where the observing driver irrationally steers to the right in protest, as if it controls the car in the distance.

In Western Europe, Big Tech is basically synonymous in the eye of the beholder to US Big Tech.

Is there a name for the phenomenon where perhaps voters, perhaps politicians enact rules that would have screwed over Big Tech Big Shots as if they were enacting US laws?

Effectively preemptively punishing local entrepreneurs for the perceived injustices committed by their colleagues across the ocean? This then feeds back into a vicious cycle of stifling local entrepreneurship, increasing transoceanic jealousy / anger towards entrepreneurs and more such laws?

Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

#970

Post by tzs » Tue, Aug 25, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

The obvious questions are (1) why didn't they create something like VAT MOSS (or whatever they call the current version), and (2) why no de minimus?

I did some searching on Google, and its LLM gave what seemed to be a good summary of the reasons they did not do that. If anyone wants to see that here's the prompt [1].

It also said that they are scrambling to fix this up. Industry coalitions are pushing for something like VAT MOSS for this to be included the upcoming "Circular Economy Act" due later this year.

I followed up asking about using an intermediary, similar to how it is often done for dealing with sales tax in the US. Here's the prompt [2] if anyone wants to see that.

It gave a seemingly reasonable explanation of why that is much more difficult to do that it is for taxes.

[1...] Why didn't they create something similar for this to the VAT MOSS system (that is the old name...I think it is called something else now) they use for VAT which lets you register for VAT in just one country and remit you VAT collected for sales in all countries to that one country and that county's tax authorities deal with giving each country their share?

[1...] I'm seeing a lot of small businesses with low sales outside their home country getting really harmed by having to register in each country someone orders from.

[1] (Also, why no de minimus rule like I believe they have for VAT)?

[2...] With cross border tax issues (not so much in Europe because VAT is simple, but in the US for example where sales tax for online sales is a nightmare due to several thousand different taxing jurisdictions) a common solution is to have an intermediary that is the seller of record.

[2...] The transaction is structures so the intermediary buys from the vendor, and the customer buys from the intermediary. The first part is a B2B sale for resale which is usually sales tax exempt making it easy for the vendor. It is the intermediary that sells to the remote customer and deals with the tax nightmare.

2] Could something like that work with the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation? If the intermediary was in the same jurisdiction as the vendor, the vendor would only be shipping in country, so would only have to register with their own country. The intermediary would be the one that registers in every country.