The business I mentioned depend on American infra which depends on Chinese components that run, often, open source code written by Americans, Europeans, Russian

The business I mentioned depend on American infra which depends on Chinese components that run, often, open source code written by Americans, Europeans, Russians, and many others. It’s a globalised world. But your claim was that EU has an environment that can’t sustain or cultivate new successful businesses. Evidence suggests that is not the case. Countries with a strong social safety net are not experiencing the stagnation in quality of life you describe. Once again, look at the evidence. There are various quality of life indices. Sorry but chasing money at every opportunity does not lead to better outcomes. This is very evident in capitalist western countries now with record inequality, private capital dictating politics, CEO and other shootings in the streets, healthcare poverty and so on. I’m not against capitalism as many EU welfare states are still fundamentally capitalist, but I’m just saying the quality of life claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Yeah, you need an accountant and a lawyer to do business across the single market if you don’t want to learn the local laws. I don’t think you wouldn’t in the US though. Compare and contrast CA consumer and corporate laws to TX laws. They are quite different. You would benefit from a lawyer. They aren’t that expensive in the EU compared to running a business though — I currently retain a lawyer for €2.5k per year. So about €200 per month. This is from a private corporate law firm in Eastern Europe. They prepare 4-5 documents every year for statutory needs for that price and do an excellent job. If your business has at least 5 employees or meaningful investment (VC, angel, etc), this becomes a negligible cost. You are totally right that dealing with bureaucracy in the EU is a total headache, as I believe it is in Cali and so on. But I claim that this headache can be removed with a minor expense and therefore it is not a meaningful obstacle.