7 ms·

have you tried to start a company there?

by SOMA_BOFH 5y ago

Tesl 5y ago
Did you completely fail to parse what he was saying there or something?
- SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
  responding to a question with a question. rhetorical brilliance.
onion2k 5y ago
Why should society optimize for how easy it is to start a business?
- SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
  gee, i wonder... clearly a bunch of social geniuses in here on a slow friday night.
- apatters 5y ago
  Because if you don't you'll end up with fewer businesses, which will concentrate wealth, which has documented negative effects on society.
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    The article, most people here, and the reality disagrees with that. The point is that all the giants are elsewhere. Case in point as mentioned elsewhere: we actually have ISP competition here.
    - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
      and as a result of this, you're more innovative how...?
      - coldtea 5y ago
        In that we have better internet for cheaper prices than the US, for example. Between national and state debts, Trump and the Dems electing a zombie, rampant crime, police brutality 10x that of the EU, no work-life balance, average citizens that are the laughing stock of the West education wise, huge inequality, depression and the opioeid epidemic, crumbling infrastructure, the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world, the western capital of nutty religious people and gun-lovers, how does your innovation work for you?
        refurb 5y ago
        This reads like a rant from someone whose entire view of the US is based on Reddit posts.
        kortilla 5y ago
        > how does your innovation work for you? Well it has produced the top tech companies and (most of the) top research universities in the world. So pretty well.
        SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
        anecdotal
        coldtea 5y ago
        And what exactly does the average citizen of the US gets out of this, given the above? Not even the tax money of those "top tech companies". Heck, some of those come to us (e.g. Ireland). As for their products, we can buy them just fine as well.
        joelbluminator 5y ago
        This. Facebook, Google et al are American but will do everything they can to lock profits in low tax regions outside the U.S and they're also hiring more and more outside the U.S If Facebook stopped being American tomorrow I'm not sure the effect will be noticeable.
    - oytis 5y ago
      In reality there is some lag until effects are seen. Europe's economy has been huge very recently, and it's still significant, but the trend is that it's significance is shrinking as it can't keep up with American and Asian growth
      - imtringued 5y ago
        I agree but this isn't a done deal. The potential is there and there is no reason why it shouldn't be able to compete.
  - onion2k 5y ago
    You'll end up with fewer businesses, but the ones that won't get started are the ones people aren't really willing to put effort in to starting. You'll only really lose the easy "fill in a form and off you go" businesses. I don't imagine that's much of a loss. If someone has an idea, and a real drive to start, then they can start pretty much anywhere, even if it isn't super simple to register a company. So, really, making it easy to start a business just filters out the people who aren't especially passionate. The rest will battle through (and complain about the red tape while they do.) And let's face it - the sort of businesses that HN readers want to start up are rarely that simple. Most people here are dealing with equity, vesting, cliffs, angel investors, VC money, cross-state and international taxation etc. We're not put off by something being a bit harder. Why should other people be? So, while you're right that there might be fewer businesses, the EU doesn't actually stop people starting if they really want to. It's also worth pointing out that if someone is falling at the hurdle of just registering and starting a company then the chance of success is very low. There are going to be much harder challenges ahead even where company formation is complicated. It's also worth noting that some parts of the EU make it a lot easier to start even than the US. Estonia's e-residency programme makes it incredibly easy to register for limited citizenship and start a digital business based there.
    - yoz-y 5y ago
      The major problem in EU is not really starting the companies. Most countries have ways to incorporate by filing a form and sending an email or two. The problem though is financing, French investors for example are really stingy and you won’t get somebody to just throw a few millions at you to see if you succeed. France has decided to build the “French Silicon Valley” multiple times by grouping schools and companies together, providing facilities and so on. But it always fails because there is no VC money pool. If you start a company here, better think about profitability from the get go.
      - tluyben2 5y ago
        This is the core: enough smart folk, enough ideas etc but people here sit on their money. EU investors invest in sure things and sure things are just not FAANGS when they start out. The appetite for risk is close to 0. You can see this when getting into EU incubators who try to mimic HN: they are absolutely waiting for that thing to happen where they are sure they will have ROI at which moment you can just walk to a bank or to a much better investor. This slows things down but mostly kills them entirely.
  - imiric 5y ago
    > concentrate wealth Kind of like AT&T, Alphabet, Comcast and Disney? Not to invoke whataboutism, but wealth concentration is as much of an issue in the US, if not more.
  - developer93 5y ago
    Most millionaires aren't from/based in the US? I feel like European red tape mediates the concentration of wealth somewhat compared to the US
- bennybob 5y ago
  Why wouldn't you? The number of EU professionals I've worked with here in the uk over the years is surprising to me, they all left their home countries because their prospects where limited by their governments with over zealous interference in business. Living in a business friendly country has obvious benefits: jobs and money
- refurb 5y ago
  1. Because new companies create jobs. 2. People with jobs pay taxes. As do the companies themselves. 3. Taxes pay for social safety net?
  - Fargren 5y ago
    You make it sound like having ease to start companies leads to a better social security net. Easier to start companies -> more companies -> more taxes -> safety net. Sounds credible in theory, but the reality is that despite it being harder in the EU than the US to start a company, the safety net is much stronger in the EU. So there must be something wrong in that theory.
    - refurb 5y ago
      I never made that claim at all. What I claimed is without jobs and companies (economic activity) you cant collect taxes which pay for social safety nets. Am I wrong? Or is there magic fairy dust to pay for a social safety net I don’t know about?
      - Fargren 5y ago
        No, you did not claim that. You said that the reason "society optimize for how easy it is to start a business" is that "new companies create jobs" which leads to the safety net. That implies that making it easier top start a business is a requirement for the safety net; after all, you wrote that funding for the safety net is the reason creating companies should be made easy. It follows that wherever there is funding for a safety net, businesses are easy to start. So how come that in Europe businesses are -allegedly- so hard to start, but there is a strong social safety net? TL;DR: Europe is proof that it's possible to have a certain level of regulation to business while still having enough successful businesses to fund a strong social safety net.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  Because societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life and bless the entire world with technological advancement, while their own population benefits from lower prices, more goods, productivity growth, more jobs, more opportunity, and more fairness. It's strange how quick people are to condemn monopolies and yet in the same breath insist that starting businesses is not a social good. Of course it's a social good, how do you think competition happens other than by starting businesses?
  - andruby 5y ago
    > societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life Does the US have a higher quality of life than Germany, France or the Netherlands? I agree that innovation is important and societies should promote it, but -imho- not at the cost of consumer & employee protection.
    - tluyben2 5y ago
      I would like to see US answers to this but in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich and then it degrades fast: in NL it is good to great for all. So I can pick bleeding hard work in a lottery to maybe be someone or I can do whatever I like and have most of those same perks. Where is the choice here?
      - joelbluminator 5y ago
        > in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich I would argue almost everywhere in the world quality of life is fantastic if you are rich. What is the huge difference between living in a gated community in California to doing it in Thailand?
        tluyben2 5y ago
        That in Thailand that would cost almost nothing. And personally, it is much nicer on probably almost everything besides the small issue that the country is completely owned by the military. But yes, you are right: rich is also better in NL. But it is not 1000x better: it is just better. Subjective of course; if you enjoy driving McLarens into trees then rich is a lot better. I have the feeling, and again, I do not live there so I cannot be sure (and can you be even if you live there?) But from books, docus and US friends, the difference is not 1000x even. It is just another world. That is simply not true here. I guess it is a matter of taste if you can stomach that inequality. I walked (yes, strange EU thing where one uses legs instead of wheels) through some part of Fort Lauderdale and it looked like a bloody war zone. I could not live in a country that permits that. Your have poor here but that is exclusively mentally challenged(or what is the current PC term?) People who get help but always fall back, and very few of them. I recognize the vagrants in my home city from decades ago: still the same people: they have a state provided house and get help but it does not help. You cannot fix that. But rows of addicts turned criminals lining the streets in tents and worse. In the richest country on earth. Rich people should be ashamed that happens on their doorstep. They can and should fix it today.
- pembrook 5y ago
  Because 60% of European GDP is government spending, and the place where government gets most of that money is by taxing private businesses (profits & cap gains), their products when sold (VAT and import duties), and their employees when they are paid by said businesses (income tax). No businesses means no wealth to redistribute which means no safety net. They are literally the bedrock of the entire system. So yes, society should place massive importance on making it easy for them to operate.
arthur-st 5y ago
Yeah, took a few hours of work and 1 week for correspondence to clear. Your point?

have you tried to start a company there?

Tesl 5y ago

Did you completely fail to parse what he was saying there or something?

SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
responding to a question with a question. rhetorical brilliance.

onion2k 5y ago

Why should society optimize for how easy it is to start a business?

SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
gee, i wonder... clearly a bunch of social geniuses in here on a slow friday night.
apatters 5y ago
Because if you don't you'll end up with fewer businesses, which will concentrate wealth, which has documented negative effects on society.
- yoz-y 5y ago
  The article, most people here, and the reality disagrees with that. The point is that all the giants are elsewhere. Case in point as mentioned elsewhere: we actually have ISP competition here.
  - SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
    and as a result of this, you're more innovative how...?
    - coldtea 5y ago
      In that we have better internet for cheaper prices than the US, for example. Between national and state debts, Trump and the Dems electing a zombie, rampant crime, police brutality 10x that of the EU, no work-life balance, average citizens that are the laughing stock of the West education wise, huge inequality, depression and the opioeid epidemic, crumbling infrastructure, the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world, the western capital of nutty religious people and gun-lovers, how does your innovation work for you?
      - refurb 5y ago
        This reads like a rant from someone whose entire view of the US is based on Reddit posts.
      - kortilla 5y ago
        > how does your innovation work for you? Well it has produced the top tech companies and (most of the) top research universities in the world. So pretty well.
        SOMA_BOFH 5y ago
        anecdotal
        coldtea 5y ago
        And what exactly does the average citizen of the US gets out of this, given the above? Not even the tax money of those "top tech companies". Heck, some of those come to us (e.g. Ireland). As for their products, we can buy them just fine as well.
        joelbluminator 5y ago
        This. Facebook, Google et al are American but will do everything they can to lock profits in low tax regions outside the U.S and they're also hiring more and more outside the U.S If Facebook stopped being American tomorrow I'm not sure the effect will be noticeable.
  - oytis 5y ago
    In reality there is some lag until effects are seen. Europe's economy has been huge very recently, and it's still significant, but the trend is that it's significance is shrinking as it can't keep up with American and Asian growth
    - imtringued 5y ago
      I agree but this isn't a done deal. The potential is there and there is no reason why it shouldn't be able to compete.
- onion2k 5y ago
  You'll end up with fewer businesses, but the ones that won't get started are the ones people aren't really willing to put effort in to starting. You'll only really lose the easy "fill in a form and off you go" businesses. I don't imagine that's much of a loss. If someone has an idea, and a real drive to start, then they can start pretty much anywhere, even if it isn't super simple to register a company. So, really, making it easy to start a business just filters out the people who aren't especially passionate. The rest will battle through (and complain about the red tape while they do.) And let's face it - the sort of businesses that HN readers want to start up are rarely that simple. Most people here are dealing with equity, vesting, cliffs, angel investors, VC money, cross-state and international taxation etc. We're not put off by something being a bit harder. Why should other people be? So, while you're right that there might be fewer businesses, the EU doesn't actually stop people starting if they really want to. It's also worth pointing out that if someone is falling at the hurdle of just registering and starting a company then the chance of success is very low. There are going to be much harder challenges ahead even where company formation is complicated. It's also worth noting that some parts of the EU make it a lot easier to start even than the US. Estonia's e-residency programme makes it incredibly easy to register for limited citizenship and start a digital business based there.
  - yoz-y 5y ago
    The major problem in EU is not really starting the companies. Most countries have ways to incorporate by filing a form and sending an email or two. The problem though is financing, French investors for example are really stingy and you won’t get somebody to just throw a few millions at you to see if you succeed. France has decided to build the “French Silicon Valley” multiple times by grouping schools and companies together, providing facilities and so on. But it always fails because there is no VC money pool. If you start a company here, better think about profitability from the get go.
    - tluyben2 5y ago
      This is the core: enough smart folk, enough ideas etc but people here sit on their money. EU investors invest in sure things and sure things are just not FAANGS when they start out. The appetite for risk is close to 0. You can see this when getting into EU incubators who try to mimic HN: they are absolutely waiting for that thing to happen where they are sure they will have ROI at which moment you can just walk to a bank or to a much better investor. This slows things down but mostly kills them entirely.
- imiric 5y ago
  > concentrate wealth Kind of like AT&T, Alphabet, Comcast and Disney? Not to invoke whataboutism, but wealth concentration is as much of an issue in the US, if not more.
- developer93 5y ago
  Most millionaires aren't from/based in the US? I feel like European red tape mediates the concentration of wealth somewhat compared to the US
bennybob 5y ago
Why wouldn't you? The number of EU professionals I've worked with here in the uk over the years is surprising to me, they all left their home countries because their prospects where limited by their governments with over zealous interference in business. Living in a business friendly country has obvious benefits: jobs and money
refurb 5y ago
1. Because new companies create jobs. 2. People with jobs pay taxes. As do the companies themselves. 3. Taxes pay for social safety net?
- Fargren 5y ago
  You make it sound like having ease to start companies leads to a better social security net. Easier to start companies -> more companies -> more taxes -> safety net. Sounds credible in theory, but the reality is that despite it being harder in the EU than the US to start a company, the safety net is much stronger in the EU. So there must be something wrong in that theory.
  - refurb 5y ago
    I never made that claim at all. What I claimed is without jobs and companies (economic activity) you cant collect taxes which pay for social safety nets. Am I wrong? Or is there magic fairy dust to pay for a social safety net I don’t know about?
    - Fargren 5y ago
      No, you did not claim that. You said that the reason "society optimize for how easy it is to start a business" is that "new companies create jobs" which leads to the safety net. That implies that making it easier top start a business is a requirement for the safety net; after all, you wrote that funding for the safety net is the reason creating companies should be made easy. It follows that wherever there is funding for a safety net, businesses are easy to start. So how come that in Europe businesses are -allegedly- so hard to start, but there is a strong social safety net? TL;DR: Europe is proof that it's possible to have a certain level of regulation to business while still having enough successful businesses to fund a strong social safety net.
rsj_hn 5y ago
Because societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life and bless the entire world with technological advancement, while their own population benefits from lower prices, more goods, productivity growth, more jobs, more opportunity, and more fairness. It's strange how quick people are to condemn monopolies and yet in the same breath insist that starting businesses is not a social good. Of course it's a social good, how do you think competition happens other than by starting businesses?
- andruby 5y ago
  > societies that promote innovation have higher quality of life Does the US have a higher quality of life than Germany, France or the Netherlands? I agree that innovation is important and societies should promote it, but -imho- not at the cost of consumer & employee protection.
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    I would like to see US answers to this but in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich and then it degrades fast: in NL it is good to great for all. So I can pick bleeding hard work in a lottery to maybe be someone or I can do whatever I like and have most of those same perks. Where is the choice here?
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
      > in the US your quality of life is fantastic if you are rich I would argue almost everywhere in the world quality of life is fantastic if you are rich. What is the huge difference between living in a gated community in California to doing it in Thailand?
      - tluyben2 5y ago
        That in Thailand that would cost almost nothing. And personally, it is much nicer on probably almost everything besides the small issue that the country is completely owned by the military. But yes, you are right: rich is also better in NL. But it is not 1000x better: it is just better. Subjective of course; if you enjoy driving McLarens into trees then rich is a lot better. I have the feeling, and again, I do not live there so I cannot be sure (and can you be even if you live there?) But from books, docus and US friends, the difference is not 1000x even. It is just another world. That is simply not true here. I guess it is a matter of taste if you can stomach that inequality. I walked (yes, strange EU thing where one uses legs instead of wheels) through some part of Fort Lauderdale and it looked like a bloody war zone. I could not live in a country that permits that. Your have poor here but that is exclusively mentally challenged(or what is the current PC term?) People who get help but always fall back, and very few of them. I recognize the vagrants in my home city from decades ago: still the same people: they have a state provided house and get help but it does not help. You cannot fix that. But rows of addicts turned criminals lining the streets in tents and worse. In the richest country on earth. Rich people should be ashamed that happens on their doorstep. They can and should fix it today.
pembrook 5y ago
Because 60% of European GDP is government spending, and the place where government gets most of that money is by taxing private businesses (profits & cap gains), their products when sold (VAT and import duties), and their employees when they are paid by said businesses (income tax). No businesses means no wealth to redistribute which means no safety net. They are literally the bedrock of the entire system. So yes, society should place massive importance on making it easy for them to operate.

arthur-st 5y ago

Yeah, took a few hours of work and 1 week for correspondence to clear. Your point?