I'm very suspicious that study after study keeps ranking US, Canada, UK among the best countries for ease of conducting business. I'm not referring to the economy, I'm referring to labor laws, regulatory compliance, forms, wait times, hassles, and anxiety about having your business confiscated or loosing a court case because you forgot to post some obscure poster as required by some federal agency, state agency, county agency, city agency or god only knows who. Does anyone have entrepreneurship experience in one of the above countries plus any other country? I'd love to hear your comments.
Well, keep in mind a good place to be an entrepreneur is not just low regulatory hurdles but also the availability of talented people. Hong Kong is unarguably less regulated than the US or UK when it comes to starting up a business. You can register a completely new limited liability company without a lawyer in less than 5 days for around 100-150 bucks in HK. However, want to find programming talent in the city or people with equal vision and excitement and passion? You will have to search very hard. You will find more like-minded and qualified people in London or certain US cities. So, in the ranking you need to take a host of different variables into account.
I understand. But as I said, for my purposes I am ONLY interested in the regulatory aspect. There used to be countries where the man with the money was god. Now, almost everywhere its the connections and if you are not swapping body fluids with the right people you are gambling. So I am looking for countries where businesses, especially foreign sponsored businesses are VERY HIGHLY APPRECIATED and the authorities go out of their way to stay out of the way. My thought was just to look for countries with depressed / developing economies. But, usually these countries are that way for a reason . . . the people. And its the people who make up the government and screw everything up, which is why the countries are poor. If there were any country that met my description, even if only for the regulatory aspect, my guess is they would be pretty wealthy in short order.
absolutely, you can of course take an experiment to confirm your hunch and try to start a business in the Philippines. Let's see where that gets you.
Do you mean to say you know the Philippines to be such a place, but think I won't be satisfied due to other factors, or are you saying the Philippines is just an all around bad place to do business?
Nothing in particular. I just long for the days of finding someone, paying them, and they do what you tell them to do, without having 15 million government goons climbing up your back side and having to report everything your business does to complete strangers.