I am from Poland and to be honest I always wondered why US startup outsource their "R&D" to central europe instead of latin america. The time zone difference ju

I am from Poland and to be honest I always wondered why US startup outsource their "R&D" to central europe instead of latin america. The time zone difference just makes this unpleasant to both sides. I come to the conclusion that it must be the EU membership that provides some guarantees around intellectual property and private property rights, while at the same time the EU countries are safe to stay and offer at least a second world life for higher ups that need to bootstrap the local subsidiary. In India we have a lot of cheap labor, but the air pollution (Bangalore anyone?) and often poor service quality (hotels? credit card scams?) makes it difficult for managers to feel at home. I haven't been in Latin America yet so I cannot say how it compares to poorer EU countries but I can see that it has a lot of potential. Probably the biggest problems are political instability (populism; money printism and occasional bankruptcy) and crime. I think that Latin America could create something similar to EU, it would even more suite them as the language barrier would not be that big (2 major languages only). With shared laws and maybe a currency they could become a significant player on the world stage, but I am not sure if they have politicians that would pursue that vision. Anyway, I wasn't there so it is only a prediction from antipodes...