Hacker News Reader

Comment by egorfine | Hacker News Reader

> You know that EU bureaucrats do what each country want them to do right?

I'n not entirely sure about that.

The vast majority of entrepreneurs are complaining about unrealistic requirements and inconceivable burdens in Germany. Certainly no one wants any of this. Yet somehow the rules pile up.

View on HN

You said

> In Germany

And then

> Yet somehow the rules pile up.

Which is just German culture as much as food is Italian. If you want rules for everything I'm hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than Germany. And the populace, in general, might scoff at how long things take but absolutely want to understand what the process is... So yeah, you can't have it both ways

> hard pressed to think of a more regulated country than Germany.

Unfortunately the influence of Germany over other EU countries is quite strong in terms of regulations.

Absolutely no one wants more regulations, yet they slowly pile up in the whole EU. I live in Poland, where regulations are incomparably more sane than those of Germany, but even here it slowly grows.

>Which is just German culture as much as food is Italian.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250227-is-there-no-such...

> Certainly no one wants any of this. Yet somehow the rules pile up.

Haha. May I introduce you to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Reform_Movement

German precision was not only about engineering, it has always also been about having a precisely defined bureaucratic process for everything.

Also, people never explicitly say they do want more bureaucracy. More often, the bureaucracy is more often a result of what people don't want to. They may want more roads, but they don't want them near *their* home, thus they fight for something to prevent construction there. They may want this subsidy, but they most certainly do not want person X to get it as well.

> precisely defined bureaucratic process for everything

Which is extremely similar to communism. As in: perfect in theory, impossible in real life.

Bureaucracy is a beast with its own life, it doesn't care what regular people want. In fact most folks' requirements go directly against objectives of this beast, since people want it as small and as weak as possible, while beast need to be fed and feels internally it needs to be strong. Anything not related to gaining or maintaining strength is antagonist.

And even if that's not the case, the group of "entrepreneurs" is so small compared to the voting population at large, that they won't even notice if they crush it entirely into paste.

Exactly this. Common folks like "tough on crime" postures of politicians and never consider nuance, which is everything. Yeah, crush them, those white-collared fraudsters.

It's the same in Belgium where it takes weeks to start a business, but as a French said to me some time ago, it's better than in France.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com