Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "Why the Dutch Voted for Radical Change" video.

  1. As an not so old angry man, I don't care it's still better than anywhere else, that's not an excuse to make it worse. I do care about your insights, don't get me wrong, but it's not a relevant benchmark.
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  2.  @hoogyoutube  It's not a free choice. In a representative democracy the treshold is what it is. There is a number of votes for each seat in parliament, otherwise it wouldn't be representative as in one man, one vote. An artificial treshold is undemocratic in it's nature, it's up to the voters whether they want smaller parties. And smaller parties can grow big, but not if they are artificially blocked out. The obvious reason big parties want tresholds is pointed out well above, but they use their own incompetence to work with the representation the voters put in and the ungovernability their own big party systems, which are not the product of the legal/constitutional system and even conflict with it, as an excuse.
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  3. The angry old man is a recent invention of the modern priests, those who preach the original sin, guilt and repent about nature, climate and somehow even the past. It's just to discredit those who complain the preacher and the merchant are messing up in their cynical cooperation.
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  4. No, people in shithole countries are in shithole countries because they don't understand the difference between building wealth and taking wealth. The Dutch didn't plunder anyway, but they did take wealth unfairly. But they got wealthy from building it, they were filthy rich before their colonial exploitation produced any ROI, and even the infamous VOC at it's peak was an insignificant contribution to the economy. The Dutch invented modern capitalism, they were the free country among the absolute theocratic monarchies, and they did more than half of all European trade with 1.5 million inhabitants. Only around 1800 the British Empire took over as the biggest trader in the world. That's what made them filthy rich, and hard well organized work. At no point in history the Dutch East India company brought in more money than the good old herring trade.
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  5. It's policy. Typically neoliberal policy, make money off what everybody needs and is mostly already put there by previous generations and businesses. Innovation, new products that people desire rather than need is a far too difficult way to get rich, especially when you're educated in finances and tax evasion. There are thousands of free euro's printed per Eurozone citizen each year and given to the financial sector, this goes partly into real estate raising the prices because that's a rather solid, secure investment to counter for the effect of all that free money. This solidity is there as long as demand for housing keeps increasing, so the mass immigration is supporting the mass scale free money printing and preventing the financial sector from falling over.
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  6.  @EJavierPaniaguaLaconich  It's simply not true. The Dutch East India company only started paying dividend in 1633 and the Dutch West-Indies company didn't give up on it's objection to slavery in 1637. The Dutch Republic was already filthy rich by then, so wealth was build on industry and fair trade. Plundering was something they typically didn't do, also not later on when they did some pretty unfair trade and unfair labour practices in the colonies. Plundering doesn't build wealth, you can only do it once, when you extort you have continuous ROI, which does help build wealth allthough it was just a tiny fraction. The Spanish did plunder, because they were zero sum thinkers, and that's why they soon lagged behind in wealth build. The West-Coast Africans did plunder too, but that didn't build them wealth. They sold their slaves or used them as consumers, that didn't build wealth, the Europeans used them for production, now that did build wealth, allthough relatively little. So it can hardly be a surprise that the biggest increases in Dutch wealth came from both the precolonial and the postcolonial era.
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  7.  @EJavierPaniaguaLaconich  Not with plunder, with but not through corruption, extortion, slavery and the odd mass killing, but that's about it and that was a tiny contribution to the wealth that has been lost, taken actually, again. The wealth was build with fair trade and hard work first, and rebuild without colonies.
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  8.  @EJavierPaniaguaLaconich  The Dutch Republic actually went to the far East and the America's to take their war for independence against the Spanish Empire, including Portugal, to them and to the seas. But you can't wage war that far away without a network of harbours and refreshment so you need a trade network to support that presence. That's what they did the first decades, simply trade and rob the enemy ships (and free the slaves that were on it). The Portuguese went to Asia themselves because the Turks were their enemy and blocked the silk road in the Levant. So their whole chain of trade in Asian goodies would collapse if they didn't, just like the Dutch Northern European trade in Asian goodies would collapsed when Portugal joined the Spanish Empire and closed off it's harbours to Dutch ships. So if it wasn't for war, the trade would simply have been trade like it used to be with no one colonized and the Europeans also getting filthy rich. Most colonization happened because European kingdoms and a republic were at war with eachother or feared war with eachother. Settlements were needed for the trade anyway, they had to make sure ships could get water and food, but also served to monopolize the trade against their European enemies. Of course this monopolization did not make the locals get the best price. It wasn't really that profitable, the Dutch West Indies company went bankrupt several times, but got government financed again because of geopolitical interests. The VOC (East Indies) was more successful but they actually used today's Indonesia for the trade with Japan, China an India which they had no power over at all. They had to bow, bring presents and leave the gunship escort on the open sea to get a chance to trade. So if it's the colonial oppression that was profitable, why did they only take such a tiny part of Indonesia and didn't they leave Japan and China alone? Exotic goods were rare, and they were profitable because they were taken halfway round the world to people with money. The profit comes from getting it to the right place, the shipping, not from the production. Most of the VOC's trade was within Asia, they simply were better at trading and traded between India, China, Japan and Persia and earned a profit with that.
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  9.  @EJavierPaniaguaLaconich  I did, people from shithole countries keep coming up with zero sum thinking, and zero sum thinking keeps countries poor. That's also why the Dutch Republic got filthy rich in the 17th century while the zero summers (mercantilists) lagged behind. Since then the whole West has adopted the tactics and the values of the Dutch Republic. The Spanish colonial power plundered, they took gold and brought it home, the "Americans" had less gold, zero sum, and that didn't make Spain wealthy. If we look at the Dutch unfair practices, which were despite being a tiny part of the economy, they had raw tobacco from plantation colonies. They shipped it, processed it and made fine cigars to ship and sell to rich. That makes for 99% of the value coming from their own work and 1% of the value from the oppressive colonial part. So 1% is taken unfairly but 99% is build wealth. And now the 'victims' (they weren't, their ancestors were) claim the 100% being taken from them, because they don't understand how wealth works.
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  10. Ik ben dus zo'n oude zeikerd, erg rijp voor mijn leeftijd zullen we maar zeggen, maar dat is omdat ik denk in termen van vooruitgang. Er is geen reden waarom het land niet elk jaar of elke 4 jaar een stukje beter gemaakt zou worden. Maar het wordt slechter gemaakt, en dan komt weer iemand met een verhaaltje hoe goed we het hier hebben in verhouding tot een of andere shithole. Doet er niet toe, het was je taak het land te verbeteren en je hebt gefaald door het slecher te maken, punt.
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  11. The food is better than in Britain. The problem is that tourists don't come for Dutch food but for uniquely Dutcht traditional food like it is some desolate mountain area with local produce and recipes for ages. Then the options are limited. The Netherlands is traditionally a country of traders, the most international country and so is the cuisine. Traditional Dutch food is international food except a few exceptions. It's still mediocre though, compared to France or Southern Europe there is less attention paid to it, less sophistication, often simpler. Most Dutch are happy with a low standard, their palet is not refined enough for excellence. Just good will do.
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