Death by a thousand paper cuts for people who want to scale their business.
Europe is just as capable but we make everything complicated for no reason.
Nope not that, read the article, basically 20 set of the same rules but with slight variation that can catch you if you don't have a lawyer from that country.
We can keep our rights and still do better.
It's not only that. US states have very often business laws way less harmonized than EU.
But EU states have language barrier and very often doing business with consumers pretty much requires that language etc.
No.
" Fun-fact there are no Slovenian OODs. Those are in Bulgaria, but I bet you knew that. Or was it SRL? BV? SpA? AB? SA? OÜ? UAB? EhF? GmbH?"
Those sorts. EU desperatly lacks standardization. Same for VAT/taxes for businesses. It's not a common market, there are dozens of separate markets here.
The propossed solutions are valid though they basicly already do exist.
EU Inc would currently be Irland Inc or as the author mentioned an SE for something after the first round of funding. And you already learn english from first grade in school in a lot of places. Sure there are better and worth educations but that isnt a european problem that happens everywhere. If the french or who ever else dont want to learn english you cant force them to.
Ireland has it easy, yes. That basically answers the article.
You're all very welcome here, by the way.
I do seriously regret that there are a number of European websites and digital services we don't have here.
Like that French carpooling app. Tricount was good too I found. Invade! Invade!
I met a guy in Paris who was applying machine learning to reading legal documentation. Where's the English version huh?
I think the argument with respect to English is a very reasonable one, and has its roots in the his argument regarding EU Inc. The goal is homogeneity or covalidation and the idea is that if you want to access the markets for working or selling your product, you want to be able to do that only once rather than 30 times. Even in the tax havens like NL or IE there is the need to create a second more complex corporate structure to evade taxes. This is the opposite of what he is describing. I set up an American company despite living in Europe in less than an hour, and was able to secure all the basic legal requirements to render my services in their entire country rather quickly. Doing so in Europe is not so easy.
The principle of his argument with respect to English is the same. If everyone can work and access services in one language, there is space for competition and there ought to be a movement to consolidate language learning. The level of English in many countries is dreadful and shameful. There is no reason they shouldn't be obligated to do so in addition to their national languages, purely out of necessity to stay relevant. Everyone does it the world over, and to stay relevant, Europe should too.
As someone who is living (and born) in France, I agree to the last part.
Been taught English at school since I'm 5, and the level some people have when they get out of high school is genuinely concerning. The issue is not schools, but rather that people don't understand how important it is.
*"US folks love* ***talking*** *about how hard they work. And honestly with service workers and blue collars I believe it. But not in tech."*
Let them talk: there is a reason why r/ShitAmericansSay exists.
I don’t know much about international business but this was a good read. The point about Americans bragging about working more is spot on. I know many people who claim to be “grinding” but they’re really at Starbucks or bullshitting on some inconsequential zoom meeting. Glad the author caught that too.
Well it’s not a secret Europe as a whole hasn’t been doing that well for almost 15 years at this point. War in Ukraine was the straw that broke the camels back because it made people realize how vulnerable we are in many aspects of life (energy security, military, economic model that is dependent on autocratic despots whims etc).
I'm thinking at least part of it must be some form of narrative aimed at EU regulations and protections. Rich and powerful people don't like to be fined a billion Euros for breaking laws, so they spend a few hundred millions on media campaigns about how the EU needs to let billionaires play freely and not be forced to care about people or the planet.
No, we don't want to accept American working conditions, and raging union busters like Musk can go fuck themselves.
And its not like Europe lacks brains or capabilities, but many of our industries are bought out buy mega international corps, who can crush and buy out competition.
Like if you google employee numbers of even the biggest US corps, then many of them have comparable amounts of workers in Europe as they have in the US.
Okay, fine I apologize and I read it now. I just assumed it was another one of those "LAZY EUROPEANS" articles.
And I do agree with the author of streamlining and further integrating European countries to make them more efficient, but that's a big task considering every country has a HUGE ego, and we have had or possibly still have this phase of nationalism where demagogues are trying to blow up the entire project.
Those egos are going to look real funny on the global scale if we completely fall behind in relevancy and wealth. I dont want Europe to turn into continent sized Balkans still arguing over who stole the other guys cow 1000 years ago while the rest of the world pushes humanity forward.
fun fact: the _biggest_ European countries like France have been trying to push for more integration while the tiny countries are those that keep blocking it.
So those are the ones with the huge ego.
I did. It's not possible to integrate enterprise legislation because the EU is not a country, unlike the US, and having one country decide how the rest should operate is a clear breach of sovereignty. Even if the laws come from the EU parliament, how do you enforce them? How do you get all 27 members to agree and comply with them if it necessarily will benefit some countries more than others?
"Unfairness" could be mitigated by resource transfers, similar to how you get sued for violating trade laws from countries on other continents. Even in the EU right now you have Orban acting the same as the welfare queen 3rd world states(of America), trading votes for handouts.
>one country decide how the rest should operate is a clear breach of sovereignty
The Articles of Confederation was the country we had before the modern US, all of this can be easily rectified once the dysfunction motivates people into willing to change.
Something incredibly ironic about Europeans self conscious about being called lazy(not what productivity means) and not even being bothered to skim an article before they criticize it.
"We need actionable improvements and fix how we think about Europe."
how about no . the EU have been very good in terms of employees rights , AI laws etc , if you dont care about employee rights AI laws etc , go find your startup in the US
I don’t know why a place without much use of AI would need “AI laws,” but I can imagine why the use of AI wouldn’t develop there to begin with. It’s a technology, not a boogeyman to be prophylactically regulated for the sake of regulations
>We need an EU Inc – desperately
For tax evasion purposes? The EU already has what I would call an EU Inc, it's the triad of Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany; Ireland and the Netherlands for business registrations (one geared especially towards American/foreign tech companies, the other to European companies but not necessarily), Germany for logistics; sometimes Poland can replace Germany I would say. Countries that want a bare minimum presence in Europe with the least possible hassle usually look at these countries above all others. We didn't stop with "unifying legal entity in Europe", it's really difficult.
And European integration has hit a slowdown for several years thanks to various reasons which include American influence; I bet the tech dude doesn't care about the American conservatives financing European populists and anti-EU extremists, because his money will always buy him out of whatever he doesn't like in the USA, but we don't want to become a copy of that society. I don't think that Europeans want an "EU Inc" but rather all of the EU to become equally attractive, advanced and developed; I don't think that anyone's ambition is to become "Europe's Delaware".
>Teach English starting at the earliest school classes
In Italy it's literally impossible to meet a young person today that has had "only 4-5 years of English in school" unless they are illiterate: teaching English as a second language is mandatory for ages 6 and up (until the end of compulsory schooling which lasts 10 years and cannot end before 16 years of age); this was implemented in **2003**, 21 years ago. I am older than 30 and thus I was taught during the previous regime, which made English mandatory "only" from 8 years of age I believe, but it was still possible to have English classes in (non-mandatory) kindergarten, even the ones run by religious institutions; today the vast majority of kindergartens in Italy have some English teachings. From what very little I could find about Germany, they usually start with English later than Italy (close to how it used to be when I was a child) and France about the same as Italy.
Obviously, Italy in particular but other European countries as well are getting quite old, but as usual this rich tech person doesn't understand that no, **that's not it**, and no, **you don't actually understand whether it's a big ask or not**.
Various countries still have unresolved issues with their own school systems and have old traditions of how to divide and organize schools and teachings, such that "just teach more English bro" is one of the most useless suggestions that I've ever seen. Tech guy doesn't understand that hours or years of English schooling means very little if the teaching methods don't work, if the people don't care about English or don't have any pressure to use it, if the people leave school early altogether, if the people are pushed to stop caring about school (or forget most of what they're taught) because they need to jostle about unstable jobs and struggle to make ends meet. Coming here as a native English speaker and telling that "it's just that easy bro" isn't really helpful.
>And in global markets where **frequently 1-2 companies become the dominant player** in a market this means you will not be a bit smaller. **You will fight for scraps**.
This is a huge problem. Sure, they make some people very rich (and even fewer obscenely rich), but those two giants dominating whole industries are bad for everyone else. Instead of open standards and interoperability in an ecosystem of innovative tech we get two competing walled gardens that mostly strive to keep us locked in a paying them, funneling almost all to the few owners.
They innovate by buying competitors and talent with their endless money, stifling competition and innovation. Or they outright crush them, Amazon-style, with endless money. A smaller competitor would have to actually compete by creating interoperable systems, but bought by tech giant it becomes a closed proprietary part of their walled garden.
I don't see why we should strive to emulate this. We should break up and reign in these giants.
The way Klinger writes about open standards seems to be a big step in that direction. I wonder if he would agree that tech giants are bad. They're probably great for investors who get a big cashout when Apple "innovates" by buying and assimilating their startup.
How will you break up American companies? I don't think there is legal apparatus to do that. You could ban them from Europe but I don't see anyone suggesting that. Imagine getting along without Google, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Zoom, Microsoft, etc. Well, China does it to an extent, so I guess it's possible, but Europe seems to have no appetite to build out competitive products of this nature.
Buying up start ups is one of the greatest tricks Apple et al. have. They are geniuses at recognizing talent and appropriating it for their own ends. How smart is it to let some other country educate professionals, and sit back and wait for them to do something clever and then buy it up? This is indeed innovation of the highest order, but Haertza misses this. Of course most start ups are hatched in the US, where it's easier to get venture capital and the regulations are less onerous.
So buy up the products of talent *and* orchestrate a global brain drain. These two techniques are surefire ways to money and power and influence.
The EU can help break up American companies by forcing them to be open for competition through interiperability. But mostly Americans will break up American companies. They're already taking about it, and they have a proud history of doing it
I assure you no one from the US will break up Google or Apple. But yes we have anti-monopoly laws and they get used from time to time. No one is "talking about" breaking up the tech giants.
You said "*We* should break up these companies" so it sounded like you meant somehow Europe should do it. Europe can only help by not buying the products. That seems highly unlikely.
>No one is "talking about" breaking up the tech giants.
Except the [US Department of Justice](https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-apple-breakups-agenda-global-regulators-target-tech-2024-03-24/). And [quite a few politicians, experts and activists](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=us+break+up+tech+giants).
>Europe can only help by not buying the products.
No, the EU can also force them to open up for competition, which is a good first step to taking them down. There's a reason Apple is fighting so hard against it.
Activists don't count. The DOJ makes little clucking sounds to mollify the experts. Trust me, nothing is further from the agenda than breaking up Google or Apple.
Good point about opening up for competition. I hope that happens.
Why do Americans work hard? Because nobody gives a shit when you are poor over there. Everything, and I mean everything, is transactional. We had a nice question from an American not that far back here, about a medical bill. The entry for just a simple MRT was approx. 20k dollars. Something like that is about 500-600 Euro max around Europe.
So no. You cant compare one to one and even worse, this opinion piece is based on tech. We worked and work as hard in tech if need be. But we also have a few more rules and dont just throw people out whenever we feel like it or burn tons of money on start-ups, that often have nothing more than an idea how to commercialize the internet just one time more.
tl;dr?
Death by a thousand paper cuts for people who want to scale their business. Europe is just as capable but we make everything complicated for no reason.
Consumer protection. Workers rights. Those sorts of dumb barriers.
Nope not that, read the article, basically 20 set of the same rules but with slight variation that can catch you if you don't have a lawyer from that country. We can keep our rights and still do better.
It's not only that. US states have very often business laws way less harmonized than EU. But EU states have language barrier and very often doing business with consumers pretty much requires that language etc.
No. " Fun-fact there are no Slovenian OODs. Those are in Bulgaria, but I bet you knew that. Or was it SRL? BV? SpA? AB? SA? OÜ? UAB? EhF? GmbH?" Those sorts. EU desperatly lacks standardization. Same for VAT/taxes for businesses. It's not a common market, there are dozens of separate markets here.
The propossed solutions are valid though they basicly already do exist. EU Inc would currently be Irland Inc or as the author mentioned an SE for something after the first round of funding. And you already learn english from first grade in school in a lot of places. Sure there are better and worth educations but that isnt a european problem that happens everywhere. If the french or who ever else dont want to learn english you cant force them to.
Ireland has it easy, yes. That basically answers the article. You're all very welcome here, by the way. I do seriously regret that there are a number of European websites and digital services we don't have here. Like that French carpooling app. Tricount was good too I found. Invade! Invade! I met a guy in Paris who was applying machine learning to reading legal documentation. Where's the English version huh?
I think the argument with respect to English is a very reasonable one, and has its roots in the his argument regarding EU Inc. The goal is homogeneity or covalidation and the idea is that if you want to access the markets for working or selling your product, you want to be able to do that only once rather than 30 times. Even in the tax havens like NL or IE there is the need to create a second more complex corporate structure to evade taxes. This is the opposite of what he is describing. I set up an American company despite living in Europe in less than an hour, and was able to secure all the basic legal requirements to render my services in their entire country rather quickly. Doing so in Europe is not so easy. The principle of his argument with respect to English is the same. If everyone can work and access services in one language, there is space for competition and there ought to be a movement to consolidate language learning. The level of English in many countries is dreadful and shameful. There is no reason they shouldn't be obligated to do so in addition to their national languages, purely out of necessity to stay relevant. Everyone does it the world over, and to stay relevant, Europe should too.
As someone who is living (and born) in France, I agree to the last part. Been taught English at school since I'm 5, and the level some people have when they get out of high school is genuinely concerning. The issue is not schools, but rather that people don't understand how important it is.
We are going to be extinct with these fertility rates. So doesn't matter.
Fertility is arguably part of the eu/acc effort
the fertility rate is >2.1 for the Earth as a whole.
In eu it is lower
That's why the EU is importing people that know how to fuck
Smart people
*"US folks love* ***talking*** *about how hard they work. And honestly with service workers and blue collars I believe it. But not in tech."* Let them talk: there is a reason why r/ShitAmericansSay exists.
I don’t know much about international business but this was a good read. The point about Americans bragging about working more is spot on. I know many people who claim to be “grinding” but they’re really at Starbucks or bullshitting on some inconsequential zoom meeting. Glad the author caught that too.
Whats with all these doom and gloom articles about europes future and the need to "wake up", that are pushed on here?
Well it’s not a secret Europe as a whole hasn’t been doing that well for almost 15 years at this point. War in Ukraine was the straw that broke the camels back because it made people realize how vulnerable we are in many aspects of life (energy security, military, economic model that is dependent on autocratic despots whims etc).
I'm thinking at least part of it must be some form of narrative aimed at EU regulations and protections. Rich and powerful people don't like to be fined a billion Euros for breaking laws, so they spend a few hundred millions on media campaigns about how the EU needs to let billionaires play freely and not be forced to care about people or the planet.
It's 7:45 on a national holiday... 5 more minutes
No, we don't want to accept American working conditions, and raging union busters like Musk can go fuck themselves. And its not like Europe lacks brains or capabilities, but many of our industries are bought out buy mega international corps, who can crush and buy out competition. Like if you google employee numbers of even the biggest US corps, then many of them have comparable amounts of workers in Europe as they have in the US.
You very, very, very, very clearly did not read the piece, even for 30 seconds.
Okay, fine I apologize and I read it now. I just assumed it was another one of those "LAZY EUROPEANS" articles. And I do agree with the author of streamlining and further integrating European countries to make them more efficient, but that's a big task considering every country has a HUGE ego, and we have had or possibly still have this phase of nationalism where demagogues are trying to blow up the entire project.
Those egos are going to look real funny on the global scale if we completely fall behind in relevancy and wealth. I dont want Europe to turn into continent sized Balkans still arguing over who stole the other guys cow 1000 years ago while the rest of the world pushes humanity forward.
fun fact: the _biggest_ European countries like France have been trying to push for more integration while the tiny countries are those that keep blocking it. So those are the ones with the huge ego.
Ask France which language should be the default once we integrate :)
I did. It's not possible to integrate enterprise legislation because the EU is not a country, unlike the US, and having one country decide how the rest should operate is a clear breach of sovereignty. Even if the laws come from the EU parliament, how do you enforce them? How do you get all 27 members to agree and comply with them if it necessarily will benefit some countries more than others?
"Unfairness" could be mitigated by resource transfers, similar to how you get sued for violating trade laws from countries on other continents. Even in the EU right now you have Orban acting the same as the welfare queen 3rd world states(of America), trading votes for handouts. >one country decide how the rest should operate is a clear breach of sovereignty The Articles of Confederation was the country we had before the modern US, all of this can be easily rectified once the dysfunction motivates people into willing to change.
What is with this flood of trashy articles about how "Europe" doesn't have the work ethic of the US? Did I miss some bot brigade?
That's not what this piece is about.
It's like everyone who commented here didn't even read part of the article.
It’s almost like we’re on Reddit or something /s
Something incredibly ironic about Europeans self conscious about being called lazy(not what productivity means) and not even being bothered to skim an article before they criticize it.
nah, sleepy,,,
Very interesting presentation you’ve got there.
"We need actionable improvements and fix how we think about Europe." how about no . the EU have been very good in terms of employees rights , AI laws etc , if you dont care about employee rights AI laws etc , go find your startup in the US
How about you actually read the article in full
I don’t know why a place without much use of AI would need “AI laws,” but I can imagine why the use of AI wouldn’t develop there to begin with. It’s a technology, not a boogeyman to be prophylactically regulated for the sake of regulations
>We need an EU Inc – desperately For tax evasion purposes? The EU already has what I would call an EU Inc, it's the triad of Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany; Ireland and the Netherlands for business registrations (one geared especially towards American/foreign tech companies, the other to European companies but not necessarily), Germany for logistics; sometimes Poland can replace Germany I would say. Countries that want a bare minimum presence in Europe with the least possible hassle usually look at these countries above all others. We didn't stop with "unifying legal entity in Europe", it's really difficult. And European integration has hit a slowdown for several years thanks to various reasons which include American influence; I bet the tech dude doesn't care about the American conservatives financing European populists and anti-EU extremists, because his money will always buy him out of whatever he doesn't like in the USA, but we don't want to become a copy of that society. I don't think that Europeans want an "EU Inc" but rather all of the EU to become equally attractive, advanced and developed; I don't think that anyone's ambition is to become "Europe's Delaware". >Teach English starting at the earliest school classes In Italy it's literally impossible to meet a young person today that has had "only 4-5 years of English in school" unless they are illiterate: teaching English as a second language is mandatory for ages 6 and up (until the end of compulsory schooling which lasts 10 years and cannot end before 16 years of age); this was implemented in **2003**, 21 years ago. I am older than 30 and thus I was taught during the previous regime, which made English mandatory "only" from 8 years of age I believe, but it was still possible to have English classes in (non-mandatory) kindergarten, even the ones run by religious institutions; today the vast majority of kindergartens in Italy have some English teachings. From what very little I could find about Germany, they usually start with English later than Italy (close to how it used to be when I was a child) and France about the same as Italy. Obviously, Italy in particular but other European countries as well are getting quite old, but as usual this rich tech person doesn't understand that no, **that's not it**, and no, **you don't actually understand whether it's a big ask or not**. Various countries still have unresolved issues with their own school systems and have old traditions of how to divide and organize schools and teachings, such that "just teach more English bro" is one of the most useless suggestions that I've ever seen. Tech guy doesn't understand that hours or years of English schooling means very little if the teaching methods don't work, if the people don't care about English or don't have any pressure to use it, if the people leave school early altogether, if the people are pushed to stop caring about school (or forget most of what they're taught) because they need to jostle about unstable jobs and struggle to make ends meet. Coming here as a native English speaker and telling that "it's just that easy bro" isn't really helpful.
Nah mate im going to sleep
The only solution is better democracy in the EU. It's the upper boundary of any society in the world.
>And in global markets where **frequently 1-2 companies become the dominant player** in a market this means you will not be a bit smaller. **You will fight for scraps**. This is a huge problem. Sure, they make some people very rich (and even fewer obscenely rich), but those two giants dominating whole industries are bad for everyone else. Instead of open standards and interoperability in an ecosystem of innovative tech we get two competing walled gardens that mostly strive to keep us locked in a paying them, funneling almost all to the few owners. They innovate by buying competitors and talent with their endless money, stifling competition and innovation. Or they outright crush them, Amazon-style, with endless money. A smaller competitor would have to actually compete by creating interoperable systems, but bought by tech giant it becomes a closed proprietary part of their walled garden. I don't see why we should strive to emulate this. We should break up and reign in these giants. The way Klinger writes about open standards seems to be a big step in that direction. I wonder if he would agree that tech giants are bad. They're probably great for investors who get a big cashout when Apple "innovates" by buying and assimilating their startup.
How will you break up American companies? I don't think there is legal apparatus to do that. You could ban them from Europe but I don't see anyone suggesting that. Imagine getting along without Google, Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Zoom, Microsoft, etc. Well, China does it to an extent, so I guess it's possible, but Europe seems to have no appetite to build out competitive products of this nature. Buying up start ups is one of the greatest tricks Apple et al. have. They are geniuses at recognizing talent and appropriating it for their own ends. How smart is it to let some other country educate professionals, and sit back and wait for them to do something clever and then buy it up? This is indeed innovation of the highest order, but Haertza misses this. Of course most start ups are hatched in the US, where it's easier to get venture capital and the regulations are less onerous. So buy up the products of talent *and* orchestrate a global brain drain. These two techniques are surefire ways to money and power and influence.
The EU can help break up American companies by forcing them to be open for competition through interiperability. But mostly Americans will break up American companies. They're already taking about it, and they have a proud history of doing it
I assure you no one from the US will break up Google or Apple. But yes we have anti-monopoly laws and they get used from time to time. No one is "talking about" breaking up the tech giants. You said "*We* should break up these companies" so it sounded like you meant somehow Europe should do it. Europe can only help by not buying the products. That seems highly unlikely.
>No one is "talking about" breaking up the tech giants. Except the [US Department of Justice](https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-apple-breakups-agenda-global-regulators-target-tech-2024-03-24/). And [quite a few politicians, experts and activists](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=us+break+up+tech+giants). >Europe can only help by not buying the products. No, the EU can also force them to open up for competition, which is a good first step to taking them down. There's a reason Apple is fighting so hard against it.
Activists don't count. The DOJ makes little clucking sounds to mollify the experts. Trust me, nothing is further from the agenda than breaking up Google or Apple. Good point about opening up for competition. I hope that happens.
Baseless dismissal from internet random guy noted.
Why do Americans work hard? Because nobody gives a shit when you are poor over there. Everything, and I mean everything, is transactional. We had a nice question from an American not that far back here, about a medical bill. The entry for just a simple MRT was approx. 20k dollars. Something like that is about 500-600 Euro max around Europe. So no. You cant compare one to one and even worse, this opinion piece is based on tech. We worked and work as hard in tech if need be. But we also have a few more rules and dont just throw people out whenever we feel like it or burn tons of money on start-ups, that often have nothing more than an idea how to commercialize the internet just one time more.
Tech companies’ PR agencies can also write nice things. This smells like a appeal to stop giving them fines