dkb

Some find that being a part of a much larger thing, at the expense of sovereignty, is funny.

I find it funny that the top comment in regards to the question "Is Europe Disintegrating?", is all about immigration.

I know you don't mean anything bad about it, as you have mentioned. I am simply pointing the fact that this comment, that is strictly related to immigration, is the one that is the most up voted.

To me, it shows that people see immigration as the biggest problem of Europe, or at least the most discussed.

That's a little bit easy.

> The countries that had been members before were getting so close economically and culturally

How did the countries that had been members before got close culturally? What do you mean by that?

It depends from who. A big one, in my opinion, is the loss of power/sovereignty, in the sense that countries of the EU have to follow the European Directives that are made in Bruxelles, and that if they don't, they have to pay huge penalty fees.

Another one is that, on a lot of different matters and areas, different countries just cannot obey to the same laws, and their history, language, and way of thinking are just fundamentally different.

Yes, the entire point of the EU is to allow people/companies to move everywhere. To that point, I think this explains why richer countries from the West of Europe have seen so many company relocations to Eastern countries, for many years now, as the labor is less expensive over there...

There is more than 22% of unemployment in Spain. Furthermore, more than 43% of people under 25 are unemployed.

Of course it exists for matters that concern everybody. Who said it's not?

The problem is that those laws are not modifiable because you need the unanimity of all the countries in the EU. Which is extremely difficult because, again, all the 28 countries have different interests in all areas of the treaty. It's basically stuck.

As far as you saying that every member state can have its own set of rules, no. We had this issue multiple times and found ourselves having to pay insane amount of penalties because we were not, for example, accepting to grow GMO in France. If the EU says "You guys should do this and that in that matter", we can't have a rule that goes against that. That is the real problem, I think that the people of each individual country do not decide anymore, and the people in charge have no power, since they cannot take their own decisions.

powertower, If I recall properly, I think that the nature/idea of the EU was from the nazis originally, is that right? Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum-...

USSR had one as well, the Soviet Ruble. You are right about the Latin Monetary Union, it is one of them. There was also the Scandinavian Monetary Union (SMU), and many more.

OK. I could start debating about HOAs and skyscrapers but I won't. I think people who read that metaphor understood what lays under it... Which is, the idea that you cannot take 28 countries who have a different History, different values, different interests, different language, different way of thinking, and ask them to all obey to the same rules and put them under the same constraints.

You are not sure that anyone every attempted that? How about the Soviet Ruble with the USSR? I think that is the last one to date...before the Euro.

Thank you.

Interesting article. I do believe that the EU will collapse, and that it is only a matter of time. First of all, there is not a single instance in History where a common currency, such as the Euro, succeeded. It always has collapsed. Different people in France have developed about this exact subject.

I believe that more and more people are in favor of existing the EU. In the case of France, the first thing that people need to understand, is that a referendum was held in 2005 in France, and that the people have been asked if they wanted to integrate the EU. The No won by over 55%. Even though, Sarkozy signed the treaty and put France into the EU.

EDIT: People also realize that people who run for presidency, only present a program that is actually the program of the EU... In the case of France, there are some specific laws and orientations that the EU is trying to push on the country, on different areas, such a Work law, or GMO. Those laws goes against what generations and generations of people fought for. Other people who run for president also put in their program stuff that would go against the EU program, and that is NOT APPLICABLE. If those were applied, the country would be fined heavily by the EU. Which I think, makes those politics either liers, or incompetents.

The second thing is that more and more people realize that the way it works isn't sustainable, and this for a simple reason; having 28 countries together, who have to obey to the same set of rules (EU treaties), in different area such as Education, Immigration, Finance, Farming, etc... is not possible. Why? Because the interest of Estonia in Immigration are totally different than France's interests in that same area. Italy interests in finance are different than UK, etc... You cannot apply the same rules to everybody.

A simple metaphor to understand the problem is this: - If you own your own house, you can do whatever you want and paint your outside walls as you like. - If you own an apartment in a 6 stories building, you probably wont have the freedom to put whatever window you want on it, and there will be a few rules that every story of the building will have to follow. - Now take a building with 28 stories, is it now harder to make everyone happy? or easier?

If there is a leak under the roof, the owner of the last story will be mad and will want to do something about it. However, it won't be the others owners' priority to fix that. If the first floor has an issue of recurrent flooding, the people for the above stories won't have that as a priority either...

Now, if you want to modify the European treaty, you must have the unanimity of all its members. How is that possible, knowing that each country does not have the same interests/concerns, in any area? It's not. And this is probably why UK tried to negotiate with the EU on a different set of topics, before actually holding the referendum.

Not to mention that countries who are not in the EU, but are in Europe, are doing way better on a lot of aspects, than countries who are part of the EU. A lot of novel prices of economy also stood up and explained that the EU will collapse, and one of them even resigned from the BCE (Banque Centrale Europeenne), and joined a French political party who wants France to get out of the EU, using the Article 50 of the treaty.

What do I need to do if I just want to "test" my idea and offer an online service for free then? Do I need to incorporate to protect my assets, even if I don't charge users for the service?

So no need to incorporate? Is it pretty much like having a blog?

Philfreo > I think that the girl did share something with you that Justin doesn't know, such as something that she did accomplish in that school, like winning some kind of award, winning a competition or something similar. Then, you used that information along with the name of the school in Google.

I would add the lack of legal knowledge to the list. In my case I have an idea as well as the energy to implement it, but then questions arise: What about the legal part?

What do I have to take care of legally in order to implement this?

What about the responsibility in the case of an online service? (If you take for example the case of craiglist, you find something you want to buy and buy it, then you realize it doesn't work, how do you avoid the person who bought the object to not take legal action against you since you are not responsible for this?).

If someone else is already doing it in a different way, does this bring more legal problems?

If I have no fund at the beginning, can I implement my idea and give away the services I developed for free for a while in order to bring users and then make them pay?

Where to get the answers to those questions?

If I find some answers to those questions, are they the same in every States?

I do not have any fund and have a job, but I was thinking about starting something aside of my job and try to make it known. The biggest problem for me now is not technical, I could write an app to develop my idea and put it online. The problem is that I don't know what I am allowed to do or not allowed to do as an owner of a website/webapp that I put for free online. If you take for example the case of Craiglist, someone will put an ad to sell something, and potential buyers will contact this person. How does the website discharge itself from being responsible from any failure in the process? Every law related question are pretty hard to find an answer to.

I agree that code is not the only thing that should be worked on. Loving customers, treating them with respect and listening to them is also essential to me. I am currently working on an idea and have a lot of questions on different aspects and don't even know where to look for answers. Is there some online resources related to the different aspects of an online business? (understanding a service that you pay for and use online, such as BaseCamp from 37signals). For example, should you start to give a service for free at the beginning and then monetize it when you have a lot of users, if you do so, is there some legal issues following this way? Another example, the disclaimer: how do you manage this, does it really protect the entrepreneur? I feel like there is a lot to considered out of the code itself and the marketing.