Thread

EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

693 points · 905 comments · hackernj

noir_lord · 1789555669 · focus · HN ↗
Good, if the middle power democracies don't align/work together they are going to get torn apart in the struggle between the US and China.
1. 0xpgm · 1789556090 · focus · HN ↗
  One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture, while both the US and China embrace entreprenuership wholeheartedly.
  If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves.
  1. _heimdall · 1789556285 · focus · HN ↗
    The CCP retains too much power over businesses and business leaders for me to consider them to "embrace entrepreneurship wholeheartedly."
    gmerc · 1789556667 · focus · HN ↗
    Because the US isn't exactly on the same path, right?
    _heimdall · 1789559120 · focus · HN ↗
    On the same path and on the same point of the path are two very different things.
  2. ohyoutravel · 1789556436 · focus · HN ↗
    Didn’t China force Meta to unwind Manus? In no way is China embracing entrepreneurs wholeheartedly.
    monideas · 1789556546 · focus · HN ↗
    The US has something called CFIUS. This is normal statecraft
    ohyoutravel · 1789556670 · focus · HN ↗
    I believe Manus was a Chinese company.
    monideas · 1789557099 · focus · HN ↗
    But Meta isn’t
    bogdan · 1789557127 · focus · HN ↗
    They are saying this is normal and that the US has a similar framework by posting to it.
  3. petesergeant · 1789556521 · focus · HN ↗
    The US _also_ embraces rent-seeking, regulatory capture, and the externalization of social and environmental costs as entrepreneurship.
  4. pyrale · 1789556652 · focus · HN ↗
    > One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture
    No, that's just the 2010s propaganda fed to you by people who assert that not letting them do whatever they want is "bureaucratic". These very same people are completely fine lobbying legislature for more moat when they benefit from it.
    The difference between "middle democracies" or whatever that means and the US is just that politics aren't corrupted enough yet that they can buy whatever they want.
    mmrezaie · 1789557495 · focus · HN ↗
    I did some admin work for the startup around 5 years ago and I have to say EU countries specially mine Sweden is far more clear. In USA you are basically hopeless without a lawyer. but I did a search and for clarity of rule I searched and this came up using AI:
    World Bank’s broad “Regulatory Quality” measure supports that direction: Sweden scored 95.28/100 and the US 90.57/100 in its latest comparable 2023 data. I couldn't find EU wide score.
    I wanted to help someone to get work visa and I thought it is like Sweden and you just fill a small form, oh boy! We hired a lawyer for just filling the US side application.
    enaaem · 1789647800 · focus · HN ↗
    When it comes to innovation Sweden punches far above its weight.
    petesergeant · 1789559652 · focus · HN ↗
    Heavily country-dependent, in practice. The UK lets you set up a company online cheaply, quickly, and filing is easy. Insurance is plentiful and sensible, as are business bank accounts. The law is mostly straight-forward. Setting up a German limited-liability company OTOH involves putting down some ghastly large sum as a guarantee.
    But yes, Americans are told they have the freest speech and the freest markets, and don't seem to question either.
    mitxela · 1789562060 · focus · HN ↗
    I live in one, it's definitely true. It doesn't mean entrepreneurship doesn't exist, but there is a lot of bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is iron law. They will go to any extreme to make reality align with the bureaucracy. For example if you build a building without permission, the police will come by with a bulldozer, demolish your building, dispose of the remains, and then bill you for it. Even if the building is hosting the world's first AGI, or whatever extremely important thing you can think of - there is no excuse for not complying with the bureaucracy. Whereas the US would allow you to keep it and maybe pay a fine.
    pyrale · 1789567208 · focus · HN ↗
    > but there is a lot of bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is iron law.
    Yeah, an organized and powerful administration is the basis of rule-of-law system. The opposite isn't entrepreneurship, it's a state of widespread corruption where laws are toothless.
    It doesn't benefit upstarts who want a fair environment to start a business, it benefits megacorps with their own militia of lawyers to bend the rules, and pockets deep enough to lobby for the removal of rules that can't be bent.
    mitxela · 1789567551 · focus · HN ↗
    The optimal amount of crime is not zero. If someone does an illegal thing but it turns out to be good for society, it should be permitted, then legalized.
    pasc1878 · 1789727177 · focus · HN ↗
    And I prefer to live iun a place that does that.
    Do you want your house blocked of by someone elses' wall. Do you want to be kept up all night by load industrial noises next to you?
    AlexandrB · 1789566481 · focus · HN ↗
    You clearly don't pay attention to Canadian politics. Canada basically let McKinsey run their immigration policy[1][2] for 10 years and has now appointed the former CEO of McKinsey[3] to a business development role in government. I wouldn't say that Canada is just a satellite office of McKinsey, but it's getting closer.
    Canada is corrupt as hell, just no one cares so it doesn't make international news.
    Edit:
    Oh yeah, forgot about the SNC-Lavalin debacle, where the ruling government tried to make the legal problems of their corporate buddies go away[4] by sneaking a new "slap on the wrist" law into an annual budget bill and then pressuring the prosecutor to apply it.
    [1] <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mckinsey-immigration-consulting-contracts-trudeau-1.6703626" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mckinsey-immigration-consul...
    [2] <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/shadow-government/" rel="nofollow">https://thewalrus.ca/shadow-government/
    [3] <a href="https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/08/31/prime-minister-carney-announces-appointments-new-chair-board-and-ceo" rel="nofollow">https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/08/31/prime-...
    [4] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair
    pyrale · 1789567346 · focus · HN ↗
    > Canada is corrupt as hell, just no one cares so it doesn't make international news.
    So is Europe. It's just not at the point the US reached, yet.
    llm_nerd · 1789568289 · focus · HN ↗
    It's pretty clear the echo chamber you emerge from (protip - move to the US. I am 100% serious), but this is comical.
    When your examples of Canada being "corrupt as hell" is such chickenshit nonsense, it betrays that you're just a partisan zealot that has literally zero sense of scale or reason.
    McKinsey, a massive consulting firm, had a whole $32M contract? Holy shit, basically the deep state!
    The SNC thing was embarrassing, but it was over its behaviour overseas (Libya, to be precise), and the government was concerned about a massive, major Canadian firm being crippled by domestic hand wringing.
    When that is what you have to offer up for Canada being "corrupt as hell", in comparison to criminal shitholes like the US (which you think is much better, and again you should move there), wow. Back to shitty subreddits where your tiny group of laughable farces have your discussions about how dire things are.
  5. InsideOutSanta · 1789556794 · focus · HN ↗
    It's interesting to me that people generally see Europe's regulations as interfering with entrepreneurship, while they see American decisions that give more power to multinational corporations at the expense of smaller companies as a normal part of a free market.
    hilbert42 · 1789558518 · focus · HN ↗
    "…as a normal part of a free market."
    That's unfettered capitalism at work—"free" implies no bounds. Multinational corporations have never been more powerful now than at anytime in history.
    mcv · 1789559764 · focus · HN ↗
    And that hurts the free market. A free market should be transparent, have low barriers to entry, and not be dominated by monopolies or cartels. There's nothing free about American capitalism.
    InsideOutSanta · 1789566001 · focus · HN ↗
    > "free" implies no bounds
    No bounds for whom?
    Your implied premise is that private companies cannot impede others' freedom, which isn't true. In unfettered capitalism, only the largest corporations have the power and money to be free.
    anhner · 1789558528 · focus · HN ↗
    well you see, maybe one day they'll be the CEO of that multi-trillion dollar company, so it's better to err on the side of capitalism. /s
    roncesvalles · 1789560032 · focus · HN ↗
    Don't you see that the same bureaucracy that adds friction to entrepreneurship also serves the purpose of protecting the incumbents?
    It is odious to start a company in the EU. There are many accounts of this on HN itself.
    mitxela · 1789562160 · focus · HN ↗
    Starting a company is not the hard part of staring a company in any country. Many many companies do exist in the EU. It might be annoying but it's obviously hardly insurmountable.
    InsideOutSanta · 1789566091 · focus · HN ↗
    > It is odious to start a company in the EU.
    This is false.
    > There are many accounts of this on HN itself.
    Yes, I saw one just recently where the poster made obviously false statements about starting a company in Germany.
    jgwil2 · 1789569131 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  6. NuclearPM · 1789557294 · focus · HN ↗
    This is just wrong. The US prioritizes billionaires over entrepreneurs.
  7. [deleted] · 1789557575 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  8. [deleted] · 1789557767 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  9. hilbert42 · 1789557952 · focus · HN ↗
    "If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves."
    If they were to change some within the citizenry would stand to gain at the expense of others. Inequality would increase.
    Seems—for now—middle democracies aren't prepared to pay the high price of social upheaval such a policy would create.
    noir_lord · 1789578400 · focus · HN ↗
    Some of us are citizens of what where previously world powers, even then it wasn't great for the average person living there (understating it wildly).
    When people go on about a Golden Age, I'm the awkward one who asks "Golden for who exactly?"
  10. throwaway283737 · 1789564450 · focus · HN ↗
    You're getting downvoted now, but it's the Europeans who are running out of money for healthcare and public services (and voting for neo-fascist parties promising fixes that will never come).
    European sentiment is totally out of touch with European reality. They'll post gleefully online about how much better their life is and then go back to their sardine flat where they can't afford to pay for heating, and it never ever occurs to them to reconsider any priors. They'll huff copium on Reddit about how bad American healthcare is, while waiting for years for desperately needed surgeries, paying far more for healthcare by way of taxes than any American does.
    Are their ideas out of touch? No, it's reality that's wrong.
    bryanlarsen · 1789564859 · focus · HN ↗
    American government deficits are far larger than European or Canadian deficits. It's not the Europeans who are running out of money.
    jgwil2 · 1789569320 · focus · HN ↗
    > paying far more for healthcare by way of taxes than any American does
    This is blatantly false. Americans spend 18% of GDP on healthcare, while most European countries are around 10%.

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