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For the record, there was a speculative bubble around tulips that crashed suddenly and sharply. From the article: merchants really did engage in a frantic tuli

For the record, there was a speculative bubble around tulips that crashed suddenly and sharply. From the article: merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, and they paid incredibly high prices for some bulbs. And when a number of buyers announced they couldn’t pay the high price previously agreed upon, the market did fall apart and cause a small crisis The article is more about how many of the anecdotal and narrative myths around it that weren't true.

azernik 9y ago
And also that the popular retelling exaggerates its actual significance to the Dutch economy.
- Theodores 9y ago
  Much like the dot com bubble. I never met anyone that invested in incubation funds or high profile dot coms. I was working in the middle of the craziness at the time so it wasn't due to small sample size. With bitcoin I know quite a few bitcoin bores, so fun times ahead.
  - withdavidli 9y ago
    My middle school teachers on the east coast spoke about the dot coms and how they lost most of their investments in it. Maybe people don’t talk about it much these days. People in the company I’m with spoke about their experiences working during them. Some got lucky when their financial advisor told them to at least sell their first vesting (their stock would have dropped 80-90% by next sell window), others weren’t so lucky.
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    The dot-com bubble did cause a recession for the US economy, from Mar 2001–Nov 2001. That affected a lot more people than dot-com investors or employees.
  - krrrh 9y ago
    There are no shortage of baby boomers in Canada that over-extended themselves into Nortel, and anyone who worked in tech felt the effects of the layoffs from that single company across the economy. Even people who believed in the future of technology and the long term impact of the internet and just invested a portion of their retirement savings in NASDAQ composite index funds watched them take 15 years to recover their value. After a few years people stop talking about their bad decisions.
  - jcoffland 9y ago
    And then there's all the anti-bitcoin bores.
  - twblalock 9y ago
    Ordinary people were taking out home equity loans to buy tech stock during the dot-com bubble. Online trading was fairly new (at least for ordinary people) and was taking off at the same time, which made things worse. When the bubble burst, it caused a national recession, which affected people who didn't invest in tech stocks. That's quite a lot bigger than some merchants in the Netherlands losing their shirts in the tulip crash. It's also a lot bigger than the impact of a bitcoin crash would be if it happened today.
nerflad 9y ago
Then I hope the mods change the title to something like "Much of what you hear about Tulip Fever is exaggerated".
- dang 9y ago
  Sure, done.

azernik 9y ago

And also that the popular retelling exaggerates its actual significance to the Dutch economy.

Theodores 9y ago
Much like the dot com bubble. I never met anyone that invested in incubation funds or high profile dot coms. I was working in the middle of the craziness at the time so it wasn't due to small sample size. With bitcoin I know quite a few bitcoin bores, so fun times ahead.
- withdavidli 9y ago
  My middle school teachers on the east coast spoke about the dot coms and how they lost most of their investments in it. Maybe people don’t talk about it much these days. People in the company I’m with spoke about their experiences working during them. Some got lucky when their financial advisor told them to at least sell their first vesting (their stock would have dropped 80-90% by next sell window), others weren’t so lucky.
- greglindahl 9y ago
  The dot-com bubble did cause a recession for the US economy, from Mar 2001–Nov 2001. That affected a lot more people than dot-com investors or employees.
- krrrh 9y ago
  There are no shortage of baby boomers in Canada that over-extended themselves into Nortel, and anyone who worked in tech felt the effects of the layoffs from that single company across the economy. Even people who believed in the future of technology and the long term impact of the internet and just invested a portion of their retirement savings in NASDAQ composite index funds watched them take 15 years to recover their value. After a few years people stop talking about their bad decisions.
- jcoffland 9y ago
  And then there's all the anti-bitcoin bores.
- twblalock 9y ago
  Ordinary people were taking out home equity loans to buy tech stock during the dot-com bubble. Online trading was fairly new (at least for ordinary people) and was taking off at the same time, which made things worse. When the bubble burst, it caused a national recession, which affected people who didn't invest in tech stocks. That's quite a lot bigger than some merchants in the Netherlands losing their shirts in the tulip crash. It's also a lot bigger than the impact of a bitcoin crash would be if it happened today.

nerflad 9y ago

Then I hope the mods change the title to something like "Much of what you hear about Tulip Fever is exaggerated".

dang 9y ago
Sure, done.