

The town is no longer friendly for business - mikeleeorg
http://swombat.com/2012/2/19/friendly-for-business

======
dav-id
An absolutely massive issue I am having is getting insurance to trade with the
US. As soon as insurers hear I will do 40% of my business with the US they say
sorry you are too risky for us to even quote on.

I am in the retail industry selling home furnishings and although the US are
more friendly (than the UK) with their duty free rate of $200 the legal system
is making me consider whether I can even do business there from the UK.

It is too big of a risk to take selling physical products to the US when one
legal case can take me out of business.

If anyone can recommend me a UK based insurer who will even quote on a product
importer to the US I would be delighted to know.

~~~
jacquesm
Aren't you a product exporter? Your counterpart in the US would be the
importer.

As a bit of a counterweight, yes, the US is 'sue happy' but being abroad
typically takes a good part of the wind out of the 'I'll see you in court'
attitude. It takes a lot more from the litigating party to set up a lawsuit
with an overseas party, on top of that the courts in the UK are much less
likely to award idiotically high damages.

As a first stop, before talking to insurers I think you should talk to a UK
based lawyer that has experience defending a UK party from a US party suing
them to get a good idea of the lay of the land and the likely hood of such a
lawsuit.

As soon as you incorporate in the US your chances of being sued will go up
enormously, and so will the cost of your defense. In the UK it will be
manageable, in the US it will likely put you out of business. As one friend
who runs a consumer electronics company said "The US is a very large market
and we can not ignore it. But the cost of doing business there in terms of
legal hassle is something that we simply pass on to the consumers in the US,
which is our way of dealing with it.".

~~~
dav-id
We ship direct to customers in a way similar to how you might buy from ebay an
item from a seller overseas and they will send the item. We want to make the
process as easy for our customers as possible so we through our couriers will
take care of all customs clearance and duties if they apply.

Our biggest advantage of not setting up in the US apart from the legal aspect
is being able to avoid a lot of the taxes.

When I spoke to the insurers here they told me that should someone in the US
sue us it would be in a US court and not a UK court where as you mention the
damages are potentially extortionately high!

As we are a very young company our exposure to the US is low but it is
something that I cant ignore as a risk. Intuitively I would agree that the
likelihood of being sued is greatly reduced not being registered in the US but
it is a market I would like to grow into.

I think seeking advice from a lawyer with experience with US defense is a good
advice and I will do this, thanks.

~~~
jacquesm
Have a read:

[http://www.wassom.com/personal-jurisdiction-can-my-ar-app-
ge...](http://www.wassom.com/personal-jurisdiction-can-my-ar-app-get-me-sued-
in-a-foreign-state.html)

I think that contains some information that bears on your situation.

My short form advice to you would be: don't worry about lawsuits that you have
not been confronted with. It's fine to look ahead but this is something that
most likely will never come to pass and you have no control over whether and
when it will. Such lawsuits are typically reserved for companies that are
wealthy enough to defend against them, a proverb in my country says that 'you
can't pluck feathers from a frog' so if you're not a very plump target with
assets in the US then you have little to worry about.

Concentrate on your product quality, market it with realistic expectations and
you'll likely be just fine.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"a proverb in my country says that 'you can't pluck feathers from a frog'"_

The US version of this proverb is "you can't squeeze blood from a turnip".

------
powertower
I live in the US.

I don't know a single person that's in prison.

I don't know a single person that's been charged as a terrorist.

I don't know a single person whose business has been adversely affected by the
government (such as the above).

Seriously!

But they keep telling me that it's happening all around me. They tell me it's
a fascist police state.

~~~
mixmax
I take it that you're not a black man living in a rural area, because if you
were statistically 13% of your friends would be in prison.

~~~
GFKjunior
Very true, but more shocking is that more than 1 in a 100 Americans are behind
bars.

It actually costs more to send a person to prison for one year than tuition at
Princeton!

<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html>

[http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/chart-
on...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/11/chart-one-year-of-
prison-costs-more-than-one-year-at-princeton/247629/)

------
a_a_r_o_n
"My servers are in Germany."

The author's granttree is at .co.uk, but woobius is at .com. My understanding
is that the US claims domain over anything serving .com and .org, and that
first world countries (do we say that anymore?) will roll over for the US on
domain issues.

~~~
skrebbel
The .com doesn't make random US agencies able to look what's on the servers.
Worst case scenario, they could block the domain. Quite a difference, I'd say.

This is my reason for never deploying an app on anything that runs on e.g. AWS
(thus incl anything on Heroku). It's like personally, directly, with no
notification and no warranty, selling out your users to the NSA.

~~~
swombat
You can get AWS on european servers, and iirc that falls under digital safe
harbour laws, so the US govt can't get access to it.

~~~
thematt
I don't think that's true, given that Amazon is a US-based company -- so they
can be compelled to turn over data as a result of the Patriot Act, etc.
Microsoft admits this is the case with them and I suspect it's true for other
cloud providers as well.

[http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-
patri...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patriot-act-
can-access-eu-based-cloud-data/11225)

~~~
toyg
This. Having worked for a few multinationals, I know that any US-based
business is subject to the Patriot Act, no matter where their servers are
located. Obviously they could choose to refuse access, if they really want to
experience Guantanamo's tropical weather, but chances are that Interpol
agreements will find a way to get that data anyway. Also, as soon as data
enters your US-based network they can tap it, which makes your hosting
arrangements irrelevant as long as you have US-based clients. The only
practical difference is whether relevant US authorities can just show up at
the facilities and get cracking or not.

Besides, it's all pointless anyway; any mainstream business (a category
including any mainstream cloud provider) wants to be on the good side of the
US government, so they'll bend over backwards at the first occasion.

------
JumpCrisscross
An analogy for the subprime mess may be valid here - if you have 10 000 pies
and I tell you there is a finger (or arsenic) in 3 of them, even though 99.9%
if the pies are clean, you are liable to refuse to eat a random one.

Similarly, stating that JotForm is a one in many occurrence fails to account
for how that type of regulatory uncertainty poisons the well at the margin
(when one is deciding whether to avoid US jurisdiction when setting up web
infrastructure).

------
DanielBMarkham
There are some general trends that are worth noting.

The right seems to generally want to support a new military-industrial complex
focused more on immigration and monitoring the population and less on building
aircraft carriers. The left seems fine with this, although they'd never openly
admit it, aside from a bunch of pundits complaining, as long as they keep and
energize their voter base with their issues.

The left seems to generally want to support a class warfare us-versus-the-
corporations narrative which seeks to make more and more laws about all
companies, 10 employees or a 1000. The right seems fine with this, although
they'd never openly admit it, aside from a bunch of pundits complaining, as
long as they keep and energize their voter base with their issues.

The political debate itself seems to be in a spot where the trick is not to
get holding the bag. Do only as much as it takes for voters not to blame you.
It's much more crisis-driven than it ever has been.

These trends don't look well for conducting international business. I don't
think there's any disaster coming, but I think the complex social and
political systems we've created will actually become less and less stable the
more we try to over-manage them.

Right now my money is on "friendly for business" but the situation is slowly
and inexorably changing for the worse. So if I were a foreigner looking do do
a startup, I'd probably be in the states -- and probably would not plan on
staying there. (insert long discussion about qualifiers that might change that
plan, such as requiring a large, trained workforce or special infrastructure
issues.)

EDIT: This "instability in complex systems" I brought up is exactly
illustrated in the JotForms case. The law over-allocates power to an agency,
registrars bend over backward to comply with whatever the agency wants (lest
they get on the shit list too.), then some pencil-pusher kills several man-
years of work. Not out of malice or evilness -- just by simply not being aware
of the implications of her actions. The most frustrating thing is that there
are no nazis or evil political parties required here. For the most part it's
just good, smart, clever, and responsible people all acting as best they can.
That's the real tragedy. It's not some kind of comic book, good-guy-versus-
bad-guy situation. It's a bad system created by a bad dynamic, and it looks to
get even more bad as that dynamic keeps reinforcing itself.

~~~
nahname
Can I ask why you use "right" and "left", instead of democrats and
republicans?

~~~
nyar
Can I ask why you assume democrats and republicans are the only two possible
choices within left and right ideologies?

~~~
nahname
I do not assume such.

However, if you look at the current US congressional seats, you will see only
those two organizations. Correct me if I am wrong, but that seems fair to say
that despite whatever efforts other political parties are making, they are
largely irrelevant with respect to effective policy being made.

------
draggnar
I wonder if the residents of Easter Island had a similar dialogue before all
of the resources on the island were consumed and they started eating each
other. If the dialogue is creationist vs. destructionist, what happens when
there are no towns left that are friendly for business?

------
arohner
Ok. Assume for a second the author is right. Now what? Where would we go?

I recently moved from Austin, TX, to SF. Austin is a better place to live and
work, in terms of business friendliness and cost, but is a significantly worse
place to start a startup, due to worse investment climate, and lower critical
mass of developers, customers and support group familiar with the startup
culture.

Even though SF is at the leading edge of the the trends the author describes,
it's still a better place to do a startup. I expect that will remain true for
a while, even as things get worse.

------
locusm
This is knee jerk reaction bullshit. How many domains representing commercial
entities are there in the States? How many have been closed down?

~~~
csomar
No, it shouldn't be measured that way.You should measure the damage caused by
taking these domains down, and how many comapnies went oit of business because
of this.

------
wavephorm
The United States is very quickly becoming an ever more scary looking country.
From the outside, it appears to be converting itself into a full-on fascist
regime, hostile to insiders and outsiders alike. The walls are going up, the
spy-cams and wiretapping are springing up. The SOPA/PIPA powered nation-wide
firewall is being constructed. Local authorities are increasingly becoming
subservient to a centralized federal authority (DHS). And it's all being
fueled by propaganda politics, big businesses lobbying, and the rich. The
country appears to be going completely crazy.

~~~
JonnieCache
I particularly enjoyed the all-male congressional panel on the morality of
contraception they had the other day. One woman tried to testify but was
deemed "unqualified." Well played.

Also, who else is looking forward to the war with Iran? I hear it's going to
be in HD this time.

~~~
wyclif
Well, the only Presidential candidate in the US who isn't down with the
Patriot Act and its provisions, and doesn't believe the US should be engaged
in worldwide wars (aka "police actions"), is routinely dismissed as "crazy" by
both major parties. Tells you a lot about the USA.

~~~
mindcrime
_Well, the only Presidential candidate in the US who isn't down with the
Patriot Act and its provisions, and doesn't believe the US should be engaged
in worldwide wars (aka "police actions"), is routinely dismissed as "crazy" by
both major parties. Tells you a lot about the USA._

While I agree with your general sentiment, I want to add that Ron Paul is not
the only such candidate for President in the US. If one expands their
worldview to include "3rd Party" candidates, there are a few guys pursuing,
for example, the Libertarian Party nomination, who hold views very similar to
Ron Paul. Gary Johnson and Thomas Hill come to mind.

Of course it's easy to convince oneself that "3rd party" candidates don't
matter and to exclude them from the conversation, but that just feeds into a
self-fulfilling prophecy, IMO.

~~~
com
Third-part candidates don't matter because of the structural gerrymander.

Including them in the conversation is like including me, a non-citizen in the
conversation - I don't matter because I'm not remotely electable, and neither
are they.

------
maeon3
[http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Ffeature%...](http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_embedded%26v%3DmII9NZ8MMVM&feature=player_embedded&v=mII9NZ8MMVM&gl=US)

