I have worked in Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France.
Belgium took 3 years to process the form for national insurance which caused me to draw down about 20,000 Euros. I couldn't drive my European vehicle in Belgium because I didn't have Belgium license plate which was required for insurance. Rather than working for the first 3months, I had to visit the gemeentehuis every alternate day to push some piece of paperwork to some government authority. I couldn't park my car in Belgium outside my property because I didn't have permission to do so because it wasn't a Belgian vehicle. In order to rent a property I needed a Belgian bank account, which I could only get if I was a Belgian resident, forcing me to live in a hotel temporarily and using that as my address. I required my accounts to be signed off by a Belgian notary, of which there is a government enforced limit, so to speak to one for a microsecond cost 1000 Euros minimum. At the time, operating a British company in Belgium cost 17,000 Euros fee. I still receive paperwork from the Belgian government more than 10 years after leaving.
The other countries aren't much better, and the only country that was easy to start working in was the UK.
Sounds like you had a bad experience. I moved to Lithuania nearly a decade ago, and my experience was just like moving to another city in my country. Opening a bank account took around an hour, they just needed my passport.
After a year I realised I should have applied for a temporary residence permit (if you have FoM you are allowed to live as a resisent for 6 months without it), which took a few weeks to get.
This year I finally changed my drivers license over, as I couldn't get a parking permit without a local license. I've owned 2 vehicles with local plates before that. Took a few days to do that.
I did the same to Ireland a decade before, and my experience there was pretty much the same.
I worked in those countries and more; never had those issues, but then again, I don't worry as much about details as you seem to do. Who reports that they are running a business in another country? The Belgians, like many others in the eu, are on paper a stickler for the rules, but in reality, not many people care or do that. Especially in Belgium where I heard locals at the chess club call them guidelines as a sort of joke.
That you need to be a resident to open a bank account is silly, I admit, but KYC and AML are a problem banks have to work with. Even in the EU, you can disappear a bit over borders: my birth country tax office lost me only after one jump and I moved 6 times since then. I always have to call them and explain things as they still don't have a clue that I am not in in my home country anymore; it's been 20+ years...
Your experience sounds a while ago; things did get somewhat easier; my gripes are opening bank accounts (but we have neobanks now; not sure if that works with rent) which should be eu wide, nummerplates (you have to import your car if you move somewhere which I do find nonsense; it's a tax thing) and renting. The rest is pretty smooth. If these things, and preferably tax, can be done eu wide, it's good. I just do the stuff I agree with and ignore the rest; it is what the locals in every country I have been to do too: hell, I am the only one (that I know of) paying (significant) taxes in my town; people laugh at me at parties.
I've lived snd worked in four different EU countries. Yes, each has some paperwork to do, but none came with the problems you describe. For the most part it was pretty easy, and anything that remained could be solved by paying someone a few hundred euros to assist with the relocation.
> In order to rent a property I needed a Belgian bank account,
This part is proper weird and (very) likely not complaint with the EU directives. All Eurozone banks must be treated the same. Since you appear to be British, that would preclude the Eurozone. Still all banks in the UK were allowed to transact in Euro although there was a spat where the guys in Brussels wanted to exclude London from the juice EU clearance.
Many years back (not in Belgium) I did get a bank account prior to obtaining the local residency. Moving to work within the EU has been absolutely hassle free for me. Again, I have not worked in Belgium.
as long as non-western countries keep polluting - even if we achieve net-zero nothing will change other than us feeling better and patting ourselves in the back.
a) The transition to clean energy, transportation etc by Western countries funds the development and investment in new technologies. These then filter down to developing countries when the economies of scale kick in e.g. solar panels, electric cars.
b) There are also other benefits to cleaner solutions than just trying to achieve net-zero. Reductions in pollution reduce morbidity, improve productivity, improve happiness, secure food supply etc.
I think you overestimate the importance of what the West does. The West no longer dominates the world economically. Things no longer filter down the rest of the world as simply as you think. China is a bigger economy than any Western economy than the US, and is growing. India is about as big as any European economy. Both, and many other countries are doing more and more of their own R & D and have their own agendas.
The West still leads in overall R&D. Even TSMC advanced nodes ultimately rely on western equipment and technology. New advancements in AI and vaccines were western as well.
China has made impressive bounds in R&D but still lags in many fields of scientific research. Much of their research output is derivative in my experience of reading a fair bit of research articles in several fields.
However China does lead in many fields of manufacturing. The western countries are far behind in there. That is important in terms of global leadership in renewable energy.
So you have to count the EU as a single country to push China into third place. This is something people argue about. During Brexit I many people assured me the EU was not a country.
If you use PPP rather than nominal GDP China is actually the biggest and the EU the third biggest.
Also worth noting that, despite expansion, the EU was a smaller proportion of the worth economy before the UK left, than the EEC was after Britain joined. The trend is very much away from the West.
Their population is stagnating and there's some good signs that the numbers they gave were not accurate in the first place, China's real population is likely lower than India.
Knocking the western 30% of pollution down to zero is still meaningful, even if the remaining 70% isn't affected (which it will be). China, one is the most polluting non-western countries, is going to renewables and electric vehicles at a faster rate than some of the western countries.
> China, one is the most polluting non-western countries, is going to renewables and electric vehicles at a faster rate than some of the western countries.
Its not "going to renewables". It's building the fastest amount of renewable generation, but that's new capacity, not replacement. It's also building the most coal plants and nuclear plants and anything else. It's all new capacity.
Same with cars. Most EVs and most ICes.
China is growing, and is doing so in all directions.
Mainly because it's asinine to think that the entire green economy only exists for virtue signalling and not because there are significant amounts of money to be made.
I think it is Michelle Obama.
That's what the "market" thinks. You are welcome to "arbitrage" it with some $!
Biden has a non zero probability of dying before the election (of natural causes). Plus DNC nomination is a super pac driven process. Math might just compute.
> Biden has a non zero probability of dying before the election (of natural causes). Plus DNC nomination is a super pac driven process. Math might just compute.
So the odds of Biden dying, times the odds of Michelle Obama wanting to run, times the odds of the DNC not picking Kamala Harris—the current VP, times the odds of Michelle Obama actually winning, might work out to 4%?
...uh... I don't even know what to say about that.
Hmm, yes, getting into financial contracts with people who live in cloud cuckoo land, for a few percentage points that get eaten up by the site itself seems like a good idea.
If Elon was more diligent and spent less time philandering with the far-right he could have anticipated this and provided an appropriate solution or alternative.
This meme of hating someone for having different politics is getting very old. Why didn’t you save the world with all the clear headedness that comes from having the correct politics?
Starlink wasn't developed primarily for the military. Ukraine is literally using a commercial product. That commercial product has prevented electronic warfare better then anybody expect and better then all other competing products.
But its the CEO personal politics that is responsible for a nation states being able to sometimes block a consumer product after multiple years of warfare.
He's probably hesitant to do something that would be likely to bring his company's satellites closer to being seen as combatants in a proxy war between major powers, seeing as they were being used as an important part of Ukraine's drone warfare in this case, and actively countering Russia's countermeasures would be likely to move the status of him and his business interests from "relatively neutral" to "Axis of Evil".
Why bother starting anything in the uk, the taxman will just take any proceeds. The moment I get an opportunity to move to the USA I’m heading over there to continue my business.
