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As a European exchange student, I took a sociology class as a senior in a US high school. Our teacher ran an experiment with "money", where those with lots of "

by elygre 8y ago

As a European exchange student, I took a sociology class as a senior in a US high school. Our teacher ran an experiment with "money", where those with lots of "money" were allowed to change the rules for each round, creating an unfair playing ground favoring the rich. I objected to the game and the rules, and did not want to play. After the game, in class, he commented that "Exchange students always object that the rules are unfair, while local students always accept that the rich get to set them." Without even knowing where people are from, I sense a similar trend in this discussion: Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the "greater good". (Your mileage will vary. Not exact science. Not science at all. Just a feeling.) (Edit: Spelling)

aianus 8y ago
Surely the Netherlands has private schools? I don't think the rich are sacrificing anything by this lottery. Some middle-class kids might have to go to a worse school to allow some poor kids to go to a better school but the rich are unaffected.
- elygre 8y ago
  No idea about the Dutch school system, and my comment is not about the rich vs the poor. My reflection is more about the general discussion: Is it OK that the court prioritizes "the greater good" over these two individual students? I think I sense different priorities between Europeans and Americans.
  - mcv 8y ago
    It's not so much "the greater good" that's prioritised, but fairness. They don't want rich or savvy kids to have an advantage that other kids don't get. But I think it's possible to improve over these systems in a way that increases efficiency without harming fairness.
  - aianus 8y ago
    I see, I thought you were commenting on the implementation of the lottery in the first place vs. our North American system of rationing good schools using money (either directly through tuition or expensive nearby real estate).
- lumberjack 8y ago
  No. The rich and everyone else send their kids to the same public schools. In the Netherlands people value the idea of living in a classless society. It would not be acceptable for certain people to have their own "special" schools where their kids get "special" education. The way the rich try to get around that is by congregating in the same rich neighbourhoods and sending their kids to the same school. That is why the lottery exists, to distribute the kids evenly in a fair manner.
  - vostok 8y ago
    > No. The rich and everyone else send their kids to the same public schools. They don't send their kids to boarding schools in the UK/US/Switzerland?
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      Sure, but is such a school giving their child any actual advantage? They'll be in a foreign country taught by likely a lower quality teacher (esp. in US private schools, there is a reason our private teachers make $10k less a year).
      - ghaff 8y ago
        If they want to work in the US/UK/Switzerland? Or perhaps internationally more broadly? Probably. And I wouldn’t assume those private schools and their environment are giving a lower quality education.
        StudentStuff 8y ago
        I'd not give private schools much credit, they have a rocky track record of sexual abuse and 2nd rate teachers here in the US.
        Tijdreiziger 8y ago
        There are a lot of schools with bilingual programs (English+Dutch) and the programs are of high quality. Seems simpler to go for such a program, no need to send your kid abroad.
- mcv 8y ago
  There are private schools of a sort. They're called "bijzonder onderwijs" (special education), and include religious (protestant, catholic and muslim) schools, Montessori, Dalton and Jena-plan schools, and a bunch of others. But they all follow the exact same rules as public schools, need to meet the same criteria, and are funded in the same way, which means they're equally accessible to rich and poor.
- joelhaasnoot 8y ago
  It depends on private in which sense. The Netherlands has "freedom of education" and equal funding for public and private schools. As long as you can get enough interest and meet quality criteria, you can start a private school and get public funding for it. Additionally, there are some (but very few) private schools which don't take government funding and emphasize small class rooms, etc. Typically only the truly rich kids go to private schools, and only when they have difficulty achieving the standards parents want :)
- Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
  Like in most countries, it is probably linked to social class. I studied at a private school in Amsterdam when I lived in the Netherlands in the 70's. Most of my parents professional colleagues sent their children to private schools too. The reasons included quality of education, availability of certain subjects and the relative lack of troubled and disruptive students. A relative recently married a Dutch man from near Rotterdam. He and his siblings went to private schools. I recall nearby state run schools were pretty dismal. Perhaps things have changed.
IncRnd 8y ago
> Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the "greater good". That may be the general case, but in this specific case a school system and court intentionally chose not to allow two students to voluntarily better their individual positions in a way that wouldn't affect the positions of others. That is some sort of perversion of personal greed into a form that instead limits what others may have.
- elygre 8y ago
  Well, maybe. From the article, the judge argued that allowing the swap would enable strategizing: > So to allow trading would be to enable strategic behavior in future years. This would make the workings of the lottery system less clear. But it could also give an unfair advantage to students that are better at strategizing — and to students that have more resources to make good strategic decisions. I would argue that there is a "greater good" at play, and that while this particular instance would not change anything, allowing it would open the door for future problems. I then believe that Europeans are more willing to accept that consequence than Americans are. (YMMV, not science, just a feeling, etc) (edit: formatting the quote)
  - lobotryas 8y ago
    I just don't see the judge's argument. By that logic we should only allow people who pass a rigorous certification to invest on the stock market. Casual investors should be banned because they will just lose money and that's (somehow) unfair.
    - Tijdreiziger 8y ago
      The point of the stock market is to speculate. The point of the educational system is not.
      - IncRnd 8y ago
        Exactly! So why not let more students go to the schools that are their choices (and their parents)? From the article, "...not all schools are the same. Some schools offer music and dance classes, others offer more sports classes." How could forcing students to speculate at non-core subjects that don't interest them (and lie beyond their talents) be better for them or for the common good?
dnautics 8y ago
I think it's that Americans distrust elites who purport to make decisions on their behalf. American are not objectivist hyperindividualists, they are social creatures that thrive on the narrative of the greater good (the superhero movie is a rather American genre). But American history is littered with questionable judgements of the elites - tuskeegee syphilis experiments, internment of Japanese Americans, various middle East interventions, bailouts post 2008 crash, Vietnam war... Etc. The American "way" traditionally is that social justice is an individual responsibility. You can see this residually in traditional volunteer fire departments and social clubs like knights and rotary which used to be mutual benefit clubs, providing for members in the event of sickness etc.
- jorams 8y ago
  I don't understand your argument. When GP says "local students always accept that the rich get to set them.", they are saying US students accepted the fact that the rich got to set the rules. That seems, to me, the opposite of "distrusting elites". It also seemed to be used in favor of Trump: "he's a successful businessman, so he must be fit to lead the country." Maybe our definition of "elites" is different? To me Americans seem to distrust the government, while trusting rich people much more.
  - majormajor 8y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding his usage of "on their behalf." I think the poster means a distrust of claims that a decision is for the third-party's good. The rich setting the rules is transparently favor of the rich. And you're expected to also optimize for yourself. This might be accepted by some more easily than rules set "for the greater good" if one is particularly cynical about such claims.
  - fallingfrog 8y ago
    A lot of that might be down to an extremely well funded marketing/persuasion campaign.. there is an aspect of genuine belief too though, no denying it.
- ardit33 8y ago
geoalchimista 8y ago
> "Without even knowing where people are from, I sense a similar trend in this discussion: Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the 'greater good'." I would speculate (without exact justification) that this is because Europeans are nowadays heavily indoctrinated in socialism. What you call "greater good" may not be a market-efficient solution or effective altruism.
- oracle2025 8y ago
  I would speculate (without exact justification) that this is because Americans are nowadays heavily indoctrinated in neoliberalism. Though Europeans are catching up there too.
- noobermin 8y ago
  Or what you call "market-efficient solution" or "effective altruism" hurts the greater good.
  - geoalchimista 8y ago
    Well, I am not against the greater good. But who is in charge to define and enforce it? Does surrendering individual liberty (in this case, school choice) to the bureaucracy help achieve the greater good?
    - noobermin 8y ago
      So first of all, I didn't downvote you, so I hope you're not replying thinking I did. It's the crux of the article that more "personal freedom" in that regard doesn't help. Also, comparative studies between US educational outcomes and Nordic countries tends to find better averages and less disparity than here. The choice between which is "better" is a moral argument. My comment re: greater good vs. market-efficient is yes, it isn't market-efficient for some values of the words "market efficient," but for the values that these people hold, it is "better" for their definition of "greater good." Btw, I did invoke my own definition of "greater good" above, one which you may disagree with.
fallingfrog 8y ago
Here in the states we use the word "freedom" to mean "the person with the most money gets whatever they want".
drstewart 8y ago
That's a nice way of implicitly slandering Americans while hiding behind "just a feeling", yet it doesn't change the fact that it was a group of Europeans, not Americans, that brought this lawsuit forward.
- pdpi 8y ago
  There's nothing about this particular lawsuit that suggests the people involved are of the "rich get to set the rules" mentality — rather, it's a perfect example of something that superficially seems completely fair for everybody involved but, in reality, actually isn't.
noobermin 8y ago
A flipside of this is that Americans are also socialized to individualize everything, by focusing on their specific circumstance, behaviors, choices, and believe that one's results are a function of that while thinking second about collective effects.
- abritinthebay 8y ago
  Second is generous. “Last, if ever” seems to be more accurate, generally.
eloisant 8y ago
I think it's in part because so many Americans see themselves as potential millionaires. Even for those where the deck is stack against them from birth, they still seem to have hopes of becoming one of the elite one day so they accept a system that's unbalanced in favor of the elite.
bigleagueposter 8y ago
> I objected to the game and the rules, and did not want to play. After the game, in class, he commented that "Exchange students always object that the rules are unfair, while local students always accept that the rich get to set them." Isn't objecting to unfair games super silly as life is inherently unfair.
BarnabyCajones 8y ago
Would you suggest that the iterated interactions between Germany and Greece after the 2008 financial crisis, with Germany's various terms for Greece's financial bailout, were an example of Europeans being more willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Or how about the current resistance of Eastern Europeans, regarding refugees, after Germany and Merkel volunteered them to sacrifice for certain visions of the greater good? Or how about Turkey and ... etc etc etc. America isn't really analogous to individual nations like Finland and Denmark. It's huge - up around 320 or 330 million residents, IIRC. And a lot of those residents, despite how American mass media tries to frame things, come from very distinct, very fractious subcultures with long histories. See the book Albion's Seed for one version of this argument. And fundamentally, a lot of those groups don't entirely have shared values, nor shared respect for shared experts. This is kind of my point in highlighting Germany's problems relating to other European countries - the same issue of different local cultures, and different values, comes up. In America, one of the main ways people dance around these tensions is by letting people express their values via money. If something is important to you, then you'll likely put your resources together to support it. And if you have a lot of other like minded people, you'll maybe find a bunch of other like minded people to support it to, and pool your resources. But won't rise to anything like national technocratic support for whatever it is. It's one basic way of dealing with actual, serious, difficult pluralism. And that does mean, in practice, people have a default sense that other people ought to mostly be able to do what they want with their money, which scales up naturally to the wealthy or rich as well. It's not optimal, but it's not really clear there is any kind of optimal - again, looking at various between-nation destabilizations in Europe when it comes to simply relying on technocratic assumptions about the greater good is probably useful here.

by elygre 8y ago

aianus 8y ago

Surely the Netherlands has private schools? I don't think the rich are sacrificing anything by this lottery. Some middle-class kids might have to go to a worse school to allow some poor kids to go to a better school but the rich are unaffected.

elygre 8y ago
No idea about the Dutch school system, and my comment is not about the rich vs the poor. My reflection is more about the general discussion: Is it OK that the court prioritizes "the greater good" over these two individual students? I think I sense different priorities between Europeans and Americans.
- mcv 8y ago
  It's not so much "the greater good" that's prioritised, but fairness. They don't want rich or savvy kids to have an advantage that other kids don't get. But I think it's possible to improve over these systems in a way that increases efficiency without harming fairness.
- aianus 8y ago
  I see, I thought you were commenting on the implementation of the lottery in the first place vs. our North American system of rationing good schools using money (either directly through tuition or expensive nearby real estate).
lumberjack 8y ago
No. The rich and everyone else send their kids to the same public schools. In the Netherlands people value the idea of living in a classless society. It would not be acceptable for certain people to have their own "special" schools where their kids get "special" education. The way the rich try to get around that is by congregating in the same rich neighbourhoods and sending their kids to the same school. That is why the lottery exists, to distribute the kids evenly in a fair manner.
- vostok 8y ago
  > No. The rich and everyone else send their kids to the same public schools. They don't send their kids to boarding schools in the UK/US/Switzerland?
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Sure, but is such a school giving their child any actual advantage? They'll be in a foreign country taught by likely a lower quality teacher (esp. in US private schools, there is a reason our private teachers make $10k less a year).
    - ghaff 8y ago
      If they want to work in the US/UK/Switzerland? Or perhaps internationally more broadly? Probably. And I wouldn’t assume those private schools and their environment are giving a lower quality education.
      - StudentStuff 8y ago
        I'd not give private schools much credit, they have a rocky track record of sexual abuse and 2nd rate teachers here in the US.
      - Tijdreiziger 8y ago
        There are a lot of schools with bilingual programs (English+Dutch) and the programs are of high quality. Seems simpler to go for such a program, no need to send your kid abroad.
mcv 8y ago
There are private schools of a sort. They're called "bijzonder onderwijs" (special education), and include religious (protestant, catholic and muslim) schools, Montessori, Dalton and Jena-plan schools, and a bunch of others. But they all follow the exact same rules as public schools, need to meet the same criteria, and are funded in the same way, which means they're equally accessible to rich and poor.
joelhaasnoot 8y ago
It depends on private in which sense. The Netherlands has "freedom of education" and equal funding for public and private schools. As long as you can get enough interest and meet quality criteria, you can start a private school and get public funding for it. Additionally, there are some (but very few) private schools which don't take government funding and emphasize small class rooms, etc. Typically only the truly rich kids go to private schools, and only when they have difficulty achieving the standards parents want :)
Ice_cream_suit 8y ago
Like in most countries, it is probably linked to social class. I studied at a private school in Amsterdam when I lived in the Netherlands in the 70's. Most of my parents professional colleagues sent their children to private schools too. The reasons included quality of education, availability of certain subjects and the relative lack of troubled and disruptive students. A relative recently married a Dutch man from near Rotterdam. He and his siblings went to private schools. I recall nearby state run schools were pretty dismal. Perhaps things have changed.

IncRnd 8y ago

> Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the "greater good". That may be the general case, but in this specific case a school system and court intentionally chose not to allow two students to voluntarily better their individual positions in a way that wouldn't affect the positions of others. That is some sort of perversion of personal greed into a form that instead limits what others may have.

elygre 8y ago
Well, maybe. From the article, the judge argued that allowing the swap would enable strategizing: > So to allow trading would be to enable strategic behavior in future years. This would make the workings of the lottery system less clear. But it could also give an unfair advantage to students that are better at strategizing — and to students that have more resources to make good strategic decisions. I would argue that there is a "greater good" at play, and that while this particular instance would not change anything, allowing it would open the door for future problems. I then believe that Europeans are more willing to accept that consequence than Americans are. (YMMV, not science, just a feeling, etc) (edit: formatting the quote)
- lobotryas 8y ago
  I just don't see the judge's argument. By that logic we should only allow people who pass a rigorous certification to invest on the stock market. Casual investors should be banned because they will just lose money and that's (somehow) unfair.
  - Tijdreiziger 8y ago
    The point of the stock market is to speculate. The point of the educational system is not.
    - IncRnd 8y ago
      Exactly! So why not let more students go to the schools that are their choices (and their parents)? From the article, "...not all schools are the same. Some schools offer music and dance classes, others offer more sports classes." How could forcing students to speculate at non-core subjects that don't interest them (and lie beyond their talents) be better for them or for the common good?

dnautics 8y ago

I think it's that Americans distrust elites who purport to make decisions on their behalf. American are not objectivist hyperindividualists, they are social creatures that thrive on the narrative of the greater good (the superhero movie is a rather American genre). But American history is littered with questionable judgements of the elites - tuskeegee syphilis experiments, internment of Japanese Americans, various middle East interventions, bailouts post 2008 crash, Vietnam war... Etc. The American "way" traditionally is that social justice is an individual responsibility. You can see this residually in traditional volunteer fire departments and social clubs like knights and rotary which used to be mutual benefit clubs, providing for members in the event of sickness etc.

jorams 8y ago
I don't understand your argument. When GP says "local students always accept that the rich get to set them.", they are saying US students accepted the fact that the rich got to set the rules. That seems, to me, the opposite of "distrusting elites". It also seemed to be used in favor of Trump: "he's a successful businessman, so he must be fit to lead the country." Maybe our definition of "elites" is different? To me Americans seem to distrust the government, while trusting rich people much more.
- majormajor 8y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding his usage of "on their behalf." I think the poster means a distrust of claims that a decision is for the third-party's good. The rich setting the rules is transparently favor of the rich. And you're expected to also optimize for yourself. This might be accepted by some more easily than rules set "for the greater good" if one is particularly cynical about such claims.
- fallingfrog 8y ago
  A lot of that might be down to an extremely well funded marketing/persuasion campaign.. there is an aspect of genuine belief too though, no denying it.
ardit33 8y ago

geoalchimista 8y ago

> "Without even knowing where people are from, I sense a similar trend in this discussion: Europeans are more willing (trained and socialized) to sacrifice individual preferences in favor of the 'greater good'." I would speculate (without exact justification) that this is because Europeans are nowadays heavily indoctrinated in socialism. What you call "greater good" may not be a market-efficient solution or effective altruism.

oracle2025 8y ago
I would speculate (without exact justification) that this is because Americans are nowadays heavily indoctrinated in neoliberalism. Though Europeans are catching up there too.
noobermin 8y ago
Or what you call "market-efficient solution" or "effective altruism" hurts the greater good.
- geoalchimista 8y ago
  Well, I am not against the greater good. But who is in charge to define and enforce it? Does surrendering individual liberty (in this case, school choice) to the bureaucracy help achieve the greater good?
  - noobermin 8y ago
    So first of all, I didn't downvote you, so I hope you're not replying thinking I did. It's the crux of the article that more "personal freedom" in that regard doesn't help. Also, comparative studies between US educational outcomes and Nordic countries tends to find better averages and less disparity than here. The choice between which is "better" is a moral argument. My comment re: greater good vs. market-efficient is yes, it isn't market-efficient for some values of the words "market efficient," but for the values that these people hold, it is "better" for their definition of "greater good." Btw, I did invoke my own definition of "greater good" above, one which you may disagree with.

fallingfrog 8y ago

Here in the states we use the word "freedom" to mean "the person with the most money gets whatever they want".

drstewart 8y ago

That's a nice way of implicitly slandering Americans while hiding behind "just a feeling", yet it doesn't change the fact that it was a group of Europeans, not Americans, that brought this lawsuit forward.

pdpi 8y ago
There's nothing about this particular lawsuit that suggests the people involved are of the "rich get to set the rules" mentality — rather, it's a perfect example of something that superficially seems completely fair for everybody involved but, in reality, actually isn't.

noobermin 8y ago

A flipside of this is that Americans are also socialized to individualize everything, by focusing on their specific circumstance, behaviors, choices, and believe that one's results are a function of that while thinking second about collective effects.

abritinthebay 8y ago
Second is generous. “Last, if ever” seems to be more accurate, generally.

eloisant 8y ago

I think it's in part because so many Americans see themselves as potential millionaires. Even for those where the deck is stack against them from birth, they still seem to have hopes of becoming one of the elite one day so they accept a system that's unbalanced in favor of the elite.

bigleagueposter 8y ago

> I objected to the game and the rules, and did not want to play. After the game, in class, he commented that "Exchange students always object that the rules are unfair, while local students always accept that the rich get to set them." Isn't objecting to unfair games super silly as life is inherently unfair.

BarnabyCajones 8y ago

Would you suggest that the iterated interactions between Germany and Greece after the 2008 financial crisis, with Germany's various terms for Greece's financial bailout, were an example of Europeans being more willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Or how about the current resistance of Eastern Europeans, regarding refugees, after Germany and Merkel volunteered them to sacrifice for certain visions of the greater good? Or how about Turkey and ... etc etc etc. America isn't really analogous to individual nations like Finland and Denmark. It's huge - up around 320 or 330 million residents, IIRC. And a lot of those residents, despite how American mass media tries to frame things, come from very distinct, very fractious subcultures with long histories. See the book Albion's Seed for one version of this argument. And fundamentally, a lot of those groups don't entirely have shared values, nor shared respect for shared experts. This is kind of my point in highlighting Germany's problems relating to other European countries - the same issue of different local cultures, and different values, comes up. In America, one of the main ways people dance around these tensions is by letting people express their values via money. If something is important to you, then you'll likely put your resources together to support it. And if you have a lot of other like minded people, you'll maybe find a bunch of other like minded people to support it to, and pool your resources. But won't rise to anything like national technocratic support for whatever it is. It's one basic way of dealing with actual, serious, difficult pluralism. And that does mean, in practice, people have a default sense that other people ought to mostly be able to do what they want with their money, which scales up naturally to the wealthy or rich as well. It's not optimal, but it's not really clear there is any kind of optimal - again, looking at various between-nation destabilizations in Europe when it comes to simply relying on technocratic assumptions about the greater good is probably useful here.