"...notaries, historically the highest-paid freelancers in the country. On average, they earn €356,000 per year. Or, put another way: the equivalent of 37.4 years' salary for a childcare worker."
A German notary handling a €1 million residential purchase typically earns 3 to 6 times as much in fees as a Dutch notary handling an equivalent transaction and assuming the same legal responsibility.
Running a business in Germany is for a closed inner circle. The apparatus is not meant for broke college students turning their weekend project into a company.
I've run a tech business on three continents, and nothing comes close to the Kafkaesque labyrinth of the German world.
Everything is unbelievably complicated and over-engineered, and every layer is immune to change. Every rule was rational when it was added, and now everyone has a financial stake in continued complexity. The German notary is the highest-paid notary in the world, and the highest-earning professional in the country.
That said, I think a lot of the frustration comes from a mismatch of expectations. Germany wasn't designed for randos to start companies and thrust change on society. All the bureaucracy is a filter, and what it filters out is change itself.
You were never supposed to incorporate a company. You were supposed to get a job at Volkswagen.
I am in the process of moving my startup from Canada to Germany. I started in India, so I have experience running a bootstrapped business on three continents. I am not looking for funding, and in fact use the business profits to invest in other companies.
Dealing with German bureaucracy is the hardest thing I have done in my life, perhaps second only to bootstrapping my business. Bureaucracy isn't a side effect of poor planning; it's tool to control individual liberties and capital, without going full communist.
For the first time, I am considering selling my business. I want Europe to succeed, but I see no way how. Any little faith I have in EU actually resides in a handful of underdogs like Estonia and Poland.
Most of that €70B is going in the pockets of bureaucrats and consultants, assuming any startup sees a dime within 3 years.
This is the cycle of JavaScript frameworks. You create something deceivingly simple that tramples upon idiomatic usage but looks great for a todo app. Beginners realize the hard way that this doesn't scale because deep reactivity shouldn't be a default, they no longer know what a vanilla JS variable should behave like, and code is un-readable.
Let the bundler minify your JavaScript. Less characters !== simple.
Salaries for what? Marketing? Obscene bonuses? Downtown office buildings? It is a manufactured need.
I am simplifying things but if we had a public owned payments system that wasn't a profit centre the costs would be far less.
Even within the developed world the costs are very different between Europe and the US. Your fees are paying for someone's hefty bonus and lobbying expenses.
When you pay a merchant $100 with your card they get about $97. When this $100 has exchanged hands 50 times only $15 remains. The bank owns the other $85.
Cash is a hassle but it cuts out the middlemen. We need a unified payment system in western countries, but it's almost impossible given how much of a chokehold big banks have over our economy.
There are some rare individuals whose diet needs ingredients found only in animal products. I have come across exactly 2 in my lifetime. That said, these people would still be vegan if they ate animal products. Veganism, by definition, seeks to exclude animal products "as far as is possible and practicable".
I don't know enough about your father's case but this might be more co-relation than causation, based on your facts. If going vegan was causing heart issues in people, we'd really know by now.
Trading on the stock market (by and large) doesn't create value. If someone makes a killing, it's because someone lost it. You hear about those who make money - because it's the story you 'want' to hear.
People don't understand how money comes from value created, in the long run. People think they can game the system. Everyone feels they are not a part of the average.
People want to believe in get-rick-quick schemes, and will go by the flimsiest evidence they can find.
I think the trick is to realize those glamorous selfies are mostly a mirage. If you were having the best day of your life on the beach, maybe, just maybe, you wouldn't be on your phone trying to get the perfect selfie.
I have done little to no marketing, and spent less than $100 in the last 7 years.
Initially, I relied on integration listings with our partners (Stripe, MailChimp, Zendesk). Overtime customers started talking about us. People would post an odd review. We also rely on 'powered by' links under forms on free accounts.
Oddly, having residency in one of the more developed countries does little to mitigate the ill-fated effects of a weak passport.
I am a Canadian resident with an Indian passport.
A 10-day trip to Iceland involved me having to submit 6 - 12 types of personal and financial documents, and showing hotel bookings for everyday of my visit.
I need to wait for 2 weeks to submit my application (in-person of course). The processing takes 2 - 6 weeks, not including the time they take to actually parcel your application to the embassy.
I am 16 days into waiting and my application tracking status is stuck on the message it showed on the first day. I contacted their support, and their response was, "Oh year we didn't update that. I don't know what stage your application is at, and this is the most information I can give you." I paid more than $100 in visa and courier fees.
I have travelled to over 15 countries and the above experience is, by far, one of the easiest processes I have been through.
https://www.wiwo.de/erfolg/beruf/grosse-einkommensunterschie...
A German notary handling a €1 million residential purchase typically earns 3 to 6 times as much in fees as a Dutch notary handling an equivalent transaction and assuming the same legal responsibility.