markvdb

Especially as a solo entrepreneur, your llc would have to have substance in the Netherlands. Otherwise, it risks getting requalified as a country-where-you-reside llc.

Why would you otherwise voluntarily subject yourself to the extreme complexity of countries like Belgium or Germany if you could just set up a simple Bulgarian or Estonian llc?

That could work _if_ your company has actual substance in the US. Otherwise you just expose yourself to much bigger problems.

The following one-liner works for (exactly) 8 pages:

pdfjam in.pdf '1,8,7,6' --angle 180 --outfile /dev/stdout | pdfjam /dev/stdin '1-4' test.pdf '2,3,4,5' --nup 4x2 --landscape --frame false --outfile out.pdf

> I guess we should stop having large, complicated projects. Potable water mains, road and rail networks, the power grid, the internet, bridges, medicine, etc, are all too complicated for humans to manage.

I'd rather see this simplified and improved than stopped.

> I mean, nuclear is only the safest form of energy generation that humanity has ever produced, but you're absolutely right.

Ground mounted solar is clearly superior in terms of safety.

Compact, mass produced nuclear energy projects with no nuclear proliferation risk and radioactive waste management time limited to less than one human generation's professional career span. That seems like a decent baseline to me.

Not sure if fission will ever be able to reach that. Fusion perhaps? I'd certainly like to see that researched with high priority.

In the short to medium term at the very least, I see more economic potential in simple, modular tech. Cheap generation using solar, wind and water. Matching supply and demand better through storage and interconnects.

I'd also be very interested in actual research on how to actually lower demand, in beating the Jevons paradox.

Not convinced. The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects.

Nuclear could become less unsafe once humanity has found ways not to go commity horrble violence every other generation.

Hetzner is actually somewhat reliable, and OVH is not.

About ten years ago, Ryanaiar suffered a booking system malfunction. My ticket was wrongly booked to "John Smith" and apparently sent to an email address "joxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx" due to a flaw in their booking system. I noticed when trying to check in online far in advance.

After many hours spent fruitlessly fighting the Ryanair customer disservice desk, I decided to enlist the help of my local ECC [0]. I paid Ryanair a 120€ name change fee and had the ECC claim it back for me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Consumer_Centres_Netw...

Hint for dumbphone users. The app works in waydroid. Screenshot your ticket. Print it or dump it to your e-reader.

> It's a serious problem in this industry

s/in this industry//

It's part of the package now. The same thing with the euro for example. New member states are supposed to adopt the euro at one point.

Any electric gear with the battery as its main wear part. Ebikes. Sit-on mowers. Cars.

This is about so much more than cost. Agency, autonomy, environment, efficiency, geopolitics even.

I refuse to buy drm'ed gear. The exception is second hand where I can reliably avoid the drm with little effort. At its simplest, that means never using specific drm'ed functionality. At its most complicated, that means mitm'ing an encrypted can bus.

I don't know about the US. The EU limit on cash transactions differs by country, with a legal maximum of 10k€. Belgium and the Netherlands for example are at 3k€.

Patent trolls are nasty. How long will it take for one to get the full support of those shaking the independence of the US judiciary for their own gain? Let's hope the rot stops before that.

Of course every country throws hurdles onto the student entrepreneur's path. Belgium, unlike the Baltics, the US (for now) or many others, just happens to be a world championship contender in this discipline.

I'm very much pro EU, and I don't want to deviate from the OP's excellent original article too much, but here are few Belgium specific examples. Not too many of them hold for all EU member states, but those would still make for significant hurdles:

- You need to formally set up as a company. Where are you going to do so?

  - Not allowed from student housing.

  - If your parents rent their home, their rental contract usually forbids this.  It would cause the landlord significant taxation issues, so almost all rental contracts forbid this.

- Establishing the simplest allowable entity able to send invoices. Just establishing would cost ~115€, or ~134€. The article student author mentions $100 being a lot of money to them.

- Provincial tax. Most Belgian provinces have a yearly tax on the existence of any company, no matter how small or inactive. My native province's rate for example is 140€. That's ~$163 at today's rate.

- Local tax. Many local governments tax business activity separately.

- Social security.

  - Registration and exemption documents. No cost, but an added significant administrative burden to prove you are in the exempt bracket for your first ~2000€ earned.

  - Work too many hours or earn too much. Your parents risk losing your child benefits. Note that this is separate from dependent deductions. What if money is tight for them?

- Peppol electronic invoicing. If you buy or sell anything b2b, you're required to use the peppol electronic invoicing network. No self made pdf's allowed. Set up software. Pay for a subscription.

- Banking. Better get a separate bank account for your business, or you give fiscal authorities the right to start looking into your private accounts.

- Fiscal uncanny valley. Combine any regular tech job with a sole proprietorship side gig. You pay ~53.5% in income taxes and ~21% in social security contributions on the net side income, keeping about 1/3 of your net taxable income.

- VAT and administration. Have you seriously tried to sell across intra-EU borders as a student and stay compliant?

  - Hope you didn't use Amazon FBA or any 3PL partner in a different EU country.

  - I just imported a single camera module from China. It cost $49 including shipping. 21% EU import VAT and administrative handling by the national post monopoly combined cost me 35.17€, or $40.93 on top.

  - Forget about doing your first year accounts yourself. You'll make costly mistakes. The tax administration doesn't bark. It bites. Do you have the cash to outsource trimonthly VAT declarations and income tax accounting? Good luck finding someone competent under 1k€/~$1163.

- Earn over a relatively low token amount. If you're from a family with 3+ kids, your parents risk losing a 3k€+ net tax advantage. This can in some cases make for a significantly >100% taxation rate between parents and student children. What if your parents can't afford the tax increase?

- Student status. Drop below 27 ECTS points of course load and you're not a student entrepreneur anymore. You're suddenly a full-time entrepreneur, with the full load of responsibilities. Example: 3.6k€/year in social security contributions, even on zero or negative income. Where are you going to get the money?

- Physical product.

  - Belgium has some of the highest outgoing shipping rates across any courier or postal services. Good luck competing against similar initiatives, including from other EU member states.

  - Electronics specific. CE compliance is expensive. It also requires your product to have accompanying notes in the language of the EU country where you sell.

Congratulations and hat tip to you sir! You must have executed incredibly well.

I have to admit I'm a little bit jealous of an environment so conductive to starting a small business. I can see many hurdles in this small EU country to something like this succeeding. The burdens of administration and regulation and the fractured market would make this tricky to pull off. The high taxation also makes one question the wisdom of taking this kind of risk. That's not just a direct brake. All of this also creates a very different attitude, a culture less tuned to entrepreneurship.

> Renting is good advice, but in 5-10 years, we won't be able to afford rent here, let alone buy.

You don't know if you will get priced out. You don't know how housing prices will evolve in your area. They could as well go flat or fall. That uncertainty about local affordability can suffice as an argument for buying. Just don't confuse it with certainty about your future ability to afford the local area.

As per the Dutch language saying: "Trust comes on foot, but leaves on horseback."

Trust breakdowns are costly, except to the vultures "winning" the negative-sum game. Might want to read about the fall of the Warsaw pact.

Observing the fact of individual geo-arbitrage is easy.

I'm not superbly well-placed to answer your follow-up question.

From a science and engineering point of view, I root for this.

From an environmental point of view, I hope this won't materialise for some time.

> Even in my small Eastern European home town I hear more and more french speakers in the city center every year, and when I talk to them I understand they're all here to study medicine or get junior tech jobs, which is insane to me and speaks volumes on how bad the French jobs market must be for the youth when Eastern Europe is now an immigration hotspot for the french when 20 years ago it was the opposite.

It's often mere fiscal arbitrage. Look at the Belgians in Sofia for example. Euro zone, simpler and more stable administration, much cheaper, better climate, good food. Ridiculously lower taxes. Work remotely for Belgian customers. Pay 10% tax instead of 53.5% + 25+% employer social security contributions + 13.07% employee side. Even in a junior position, working for a Belgian client, you are so much cheaper to them while your net income is so much higher.

One could reasonably have expected much worse than "just" automotive and energy intensive sectors in crisis in Germany.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Trump administration actively shrinking the economic cake worldwide. Its active economic and cultural warfare against Europe. Nothing to sneeze at.

Germany and by extension the EU have shown remarkable resilience for now. The question what will happen next should an actual crisis follow. Don't be surprised should Europe further integrate its capital markets and defense to some extent.

> Grandma's heirloom Tiffany engagement ring will have meaning in the way that a lab grown no name ring ordered online will not, even if they are completely indistinguishable.

Not sure how to parse that. Perhaps it's a cultural thing? This seems to be conflating value, meaning and worth in a confusing-to-me way.

- "Grandma's heirloom" would have sentimental value, regardless of brand name, production process or monetary value. Grandma's candy box or her modest music box would have similar sentimental value. Depending on what this grandmother meant to you as a person, this could be positive or negative sentimental value.

-"Tiffany's" versus "no name, ordered online" might for equal quality jewelry make for a slight higher resale value. All other things being equal, that is.

- Lab grown versus mined could make a slight difference in resale value. This is very often very much overestimated because of how the diamond retail market works.

- Lab grown versus mined really depends when it comes to emotional value.

  - For example, if someone were to offer my wife or me a mined diamond with no history, we'd assign it negative emotional value because of the suffering attached. Unless it were to have come from a historical source with no money having changed hands, not even in the second hand trade. In which case no extra harm would have been done even by trading in the secondary market.

  - Others might attach positive emotional value to the rarity of the mined diamond.

  - Some sociopaths, psychopaths or sadists no doubt attach positive emotional value to the knowledge people had to suffer for the ring on their finger.

Multiplier times price of necessary care denied? One can dream.

How do you get accountable people in charge of healthcare policy?

Pro guitar teacher here with over twenty years of experience teaching the guitar, and close to fourty years of experience playing the guitar. I still struggle with properly tuning my instrument by ear. Nothing wrong with my ears. It's just not easy to do this right.

Regulating US companies operating in the EU still leaves a kill switch in untrusted hands. It doesn't solve issues like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Guillou problem.

EPA [0] and EPI [1] are doing that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Alliance

In this subject area, I recommend Jacob Lund Fisker[0]'s Early Retirement Extreme book [1]. Don't let the title fool you. The man has a surprisingly level-headed and refreshing approach to spending.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Lund_Fisker [1] https://archive.org/details/earlyretiremente0000fisk

Looks like busy times ahead for Cycling Mikey [0]!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyclingMikey