1) From reading this article, one could asume commercial and financial regulations change by the hour, while in fact is the opposite.
We have a gargantuan commercial code of byzantine
complexity that has not really been modified in the
last 50 years.
We also have a terribly regressive and unfair tax
system that includes 21% VAT even for food products
and wealth tax even for salaried employees with
more than 1400 dollars of monthly income.
Regardless of the recurrent crises, starting up a
successful tech company here is possible, as proven
by Globant, OfficeNet, MercadoLibre, et al.I grew up in post-communist Romania, and I've also seen this movie before. Immediately after 1990 (the fall of communism) money started losing their value. At the beginning money were losing their value by "only" 40-50% per year, to a maximum of ~150% inflation rate in the late '90s. It was only in the mid 2000s' that the inflation rate first dropped to single digits.
I can still remember reading Malthus in high-school, and about how he was saying that the middle-class people are always the worst affected by the economic crisis. What can I say? My parents went from a secure, middle-class position (apartment, car, country-house) to relying on subsistence-agriculture in the space of maximum 10 years. And they weren't the only ones.
I moved to Cluj (Transylvania) this spring.
I am thinking about looking for another job, but would like to stay here. I am scared that telecommuting will make me unhappy.
Good food, wonderful nature, good weather (ok, most anywhere has better weather than Scandinavia), nice people, a hot girlfriend, etc.
Argentina is completely corrupt. You can bribe a policeman in the street, you can bribe the customs personnel while everyone is there. Justice?
US has bad economic signals, unjustice, etc but nothing compares to a simulated and passive state.
> "...I wasn't going to put all of my risk in Latin America again in my life." At the end of 2002, he left the company and moved his family to Miami.
I think Miami is a lot more Latin American than Buenos Aires.
In terms of economic stability, Miami is still part of the US so it's less risky for running a business. Not the greatest place for a startup, but a good compromise for someone who wants to travel to South America frequently.
I haven't tried to do business in Miami, so you might be right about that.
Inflation is also pretty bad, but I don't think it falls completely on the shoulder of the Government. Some items are simply overpriced. I'm not talking between a big store and a simple corner store, I mean between two big chains you can see price differences of 50% or more sometimes. Again, taking advantage of the lack of regulation.
And we don't all see the U.S. as THE economic model, far from it.
Speaking from the entrepreneurship perspective, there is a big issue having employees, if you fire them you need to pay a salary for each worked year. So a employee with 10 years of work receives 10 salaries if he's fired.
The problem is that these regulations change like the direction of the wind, and are unevenly enforced, and easily dodged via bribery.
Hint: The people who run the government make their living by taking bribes and other acts of corruption that are a result of their regulations.
In the US, corruption on the transactional level (ie. lobbying congress, etc is out of scope here) is an exception that ultimately results in a government official going to jail. In a place like Argentina, corruption is a hidden tax that is reflected on nearly every transaction.
The problem, if I had to sum it up in a soundbite, is that you can't trust anybody. And so nobody trusts you. Unless you're family. You can imagine the effect that has on the competence of officials and executives.
The crazy laws are a big problem, but not as big as the endemic non-government corruption. Bank financing? We had to get a personal recommendation from our accountant to open a corporate bank account.
Bitcoin isn't going to help with that. If anything, it will make it worse.
The funny thing is, living here is pretty good, if you can afford the bare minimum needed to survive.
Also, those salaried workers have rights. If you can't pay them, the government shuts you down.
But some how in this case it seems the order is all jumbled up..
At higher levels of inflation everything breaks because of the lack of predictability.
Also, the unions push hard for yearly increases in salaries.
But EU is going to go down first.