alt Hacker Newsas the whole world crushes small entities one has to wonder whether the EU would be the saviour or not. Apparently not. With its rules, they merely help crush small business as per usual.
I heard in the 50s an american could just startup a business installing septic tanks. But now the same person would need a myriad of regulations to be met, heavy equipment use mandated, all of which raise overhead to a level where its impossible to get off the ground.
I always felt the EU were the "good guys", IE not allowing corps to steam roll everyone, what with their rules fining poor behvaiour such as privacy violations, chargers being non standard etc.
However the same problem exists in weird ways you wouldnt even imagine.
For example if someone walks into a small "mom and pops" coffee shop and accuse the owner of "ejecting them due to harrasment reasons", that results in a court case, which can bankrupt the whole margin thin enterprise.
You might say, wait how on earth would a random troublemaker get funding to take a cafe to court, and for what benefit? For one its easier for a settlement to be reached regardless of fault that benefits the claimant than a long court process.
Now how could claimants have the resources? Unbelievably it turns out there are free national non profit corporations that will take any claim for free to court for situation mentioned above.
So what happens in the end? The small coffee shops cant survive but the larger corps who can afford the random payouts are fine, the competition seems to go away on its own and the claimants are happy with what amounts to random payouts for little work.
Please look it up it, and correct me if im wrong, I only know this from some little research into the forays of why small coffee shops find it hard to survive in western landscapes and risks, as I wanted to open my own coffee shop!
In summary, as always the road to ruin is paved with good intentions. So the EU trying to help a little guy in a specific context, ends up creating a situation that makes all small coffee shops non profitable.
I have no solutions.
Replies
>as the whole world crushes small entities one has to wonder whether the EU would be the saviour or not.
Who was wondering this? The EU has been hostile to small businesses and entrepreneurs from the beginning.
> Please look it up
You’re the one making the claim, so please provide sources for your fantastical scenario. By your logic there should be no small coffee shops across the EU, yet this is verifiably and patently untrue.
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> I heard in the 50s an american could just startup a business installing septic tanks. But now the same person would need a myriad of regulations to be met, heavy equipment use mandated, all of which raise overhead to a level where its impossible to get off the ground.
You can still do such businesses, but the red tape and other requirements are enourmous: health department and construction applications, soil tests, inspections, manufacturing requirements, and so on. The additional costs and delays are passed on to customers.
It's not just septic tanks, it's all areas of construction and one of the reasons why in many states (like New York and California) it's impossible to make low-cost housing anymore, or (like in Florida) new regulations governing old construction are leading to sky-high reserve requirements and condo fees.
There's also the phenomenon of people just ignoring the laws or bypassing them. For your septic tank example, in Alabama out in the countryside people with low cost prefab houses ("double wides") don't want to pay $10,000 to dig a trench for a septic tank, so they just run sewer hoses deep into the woods or ditches. https://www.epa.gov/septic/surface-discharge-raw-wastewater-...