[shaism]

I think the time is not necessarily the issue. The issue is that everything is very manual and “analog” in Germany. You have to find a notary, register the “Gewerbe” at the Gewerbeamt, get a tax ID, and so forth. All are different processes with different institutions.

In theory, you can do the notarization online, but when I attempted to do it, the first notary did not even reply, and the second one told me: “The system is currently down. I would need to come to the office.”

In the US, you can just use Stripe Atlas or similar services, and get everything done for $500 in a nice digital interface within 2 or 3 days. But even if it took 2 weeks, it wouldn’t matter much because one doesn’t have to put time and energy into it whereas in Germany you have to contact people, coordinate, etc…

[yau8edq12i]

The friction is precisely the point.

[tverbeure]

These kind of frictions are typically not an exception. When I read this blog post about the steps to just start a business, I immediately assume that there'll be similar frictions during other steps. And indeed, the comments here talk about the difficulty to own a home when the money was already paid in October, how it can take up to 2 years to close down a company, or how there's a 30% exit tax even if you leave the country only for a few years.

The friction that you seem to like has almost certainly cost Germany a good deal of jobs from people who decides that the hassle just wasn't worth it.

[awesomeMilou]

It is and it isn't. The IHK registration is a sham, since they're a government protected cartel that don't even act in the interests of those they're supposed to guard (like Azubis).

[Aerbil313]

Security through friction is not an ideal security model at all.