18 ms·

Reading Hayek in Holland

72 points by de_keyboard 5y ago

blippage 5y ago
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." -- Friedrich Hayek But who wants to listen to that, right?
- da_big_ghey 5y ago
  Indeed, here are reasons why Keynesianism and Neo-Keynesianism seem to dominate "political economics": it satisfys the Politician's Syllogism of "we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this". Telling of government that interference, recapture, bad monetary policy is probably a large reason for a crash and that it must reduce interference is no good when all voters are running saying "do something".
  - Iamadog19782364 5y ago
    Dissolve the state.
    - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      You can't "dissolve the state". Someone always has power. You either have a say in who that is and what they can do to you, or you don't.
      - Iamadog19782364 5y ago
        You had ought to read Graeber before making such assertions.
    - tlear 5y ago
      Problem is that you can dissolve the current state, but new one will always arise after a period of epic blood letting. It is like a business cycle it seems. From chaos to some sort of order and freedom from daily threat of brutal death, to crystallization into a monstrosity, to fall and repeat. There are few example of states that lasted for some time without a regular civil war and mountains of corpses. US is one of them having only had one mountain of dead civil war in 2 hundred plus years. However it seems to approach crystallization state. Try opening a business in place like SF and NYC to see the final form of the monster. Nothing can be abolished and state just grows till the what was a necessity becomes a parasite.
      - Iamadog19782364 5y ago
        There is quite a number of extant peoples who evince me otherwise. Mondragon corporation and Linux Foundation both serve as evidence against your position as well. You most probably don't have an example of a functioning society because you've misconstrued your definition of society to be exclusive to the design of states. But the stateless form of man is that of small networks of aligned people, and therein lies the check and balance. And I'd postulate given the wide proliferation of knowledge, the high literacy rate, the level of interdependence and so on of the modern era, that people are more able than ever to self-organize in a positive and stateless life to produce a far more egalitarian landscape and one with a greater deal of optionality to the participants therein. And if I'm being frank, what I see peering over the modern landscape is that the state is little more than a puppet for corporate interests, protecting malefactors from retribution while allowing them in turn to exploit the trust of people that the system isn't stacked. More or less it's a dissolution of the rule of law that consolidates power into the state through that means, and producing what is more or less a completely unruly class which is allowed at length to exploit everyone. I suppose you're arguing the Hegelian perspective, but I assert the apex of man or the geist, is precisely that which is described in anarchist utopian literature. It's also corroborated inexplicitly by Popper in "The Open Society and Its Enemies" towards the end. Failing to assert position that leads us to continued systems of oppression and a constancy of ennui within the zeitgeist, and a zeitgeist itself which is quite probably unhealthy as it inherits inertia and in being resistant to change it is constantly misdirected which we see everywhere constantly.
        akie 5y ago
        If you dislike the state so much I might suggest you spend some time in Somalia and let me know how you like that.
        Iamadog19782364 5y ago
        If you like the state so much why don't you renounce your citizenship in whichever developed nation you currently reside eschew your money, and ride out life in China? Maybe India? Vietnam?
  - dalbasal 5y ago
    Keynesianism and Neo-Keynesianism (assuming this includes Friedman/Monetarism) dominate because their theories/proposals are, usually, based in the world and institutions that exist. Austrian economics is mostly the economics of utopia, masked by an inexplicably pessimistic tone. The newest keynesian variant, modern monetary theory, isn't a "modern" theory of money... it's a theory of modern money systems. These aren't based on gold coinage. Austrian macro is centred around the idea that interest rates are prices. Some people have a desire to consume now. Others have a desire to consume later, interest rates are the price they negotiate. No second order effects. No money supply. No interest in where money comes from. No money, in fact. Money is just a trade good. There were two must-do-somethings" that "killed" Austrian economics, outside of dissident goldbug circles: the great depression & WW2. Their answer to "how do we win the war?" was "we can't, not enough money." The same applied to "how do we rebuild europe & japan?" Meanwhile, post war economists were aware of these theories. Yet, they often observed "non clearing markets" in the form of unemployment in places where Austrian economics reckons there shouldn't exist.
- dalbasal 5y ago
  Listen... a lot of people. Hayek still has a following. Well regarded. Nobel Laureate. Implement... different story. Actual skepticism is a conundrum... notoriously difficult to adhere to. The tables turn when you need to defend your price theory of business cycles... you need to claim to know things. This pamphlet is as good an example as any. It claims knowledge of what lies down which path... in a way that sounds quite naive to a modern reader, no different than the peers he was chastising. Austrians were as loud and involved as anyone in building institutions.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
  It's easier to pretend economics is a science with real natural laws than admit it's all voodoo invented by humans. Personally I think all economists should study history and psychology, but they prefer their fancy numbers.
derriz 5y ago
An issue I have with this essay is that it assumes that it's the absence of central planning which gives rise to unlivable and automobile dominated cities. But if you look at old photos of European or American cities before the rise of the internal combustion engine, you typically see a completely unplanned street usage: bicycles, pedestrians, horse drawn vehicles, kids running amok, etc. all sharing the space in seeming anarchy. It required massive central planning to replace this shared space with segregated streets with 90% of the space dedicated solely to motorised traffic. Entire neighbourhoods were razed to allow central planners to run huge new traffic arteries through the centers of cities. Land was "opened up" for suburban development through central planning and massive centrally planned road and motorway building. I guess my point is that associating "central planning" with liveable patterns of development does not seem reasonable to me. Central planning can and has been used for good and for bad - it was used to destroy urban environments in favour of motorised vehicles in some places, just as it's been used to promote much more liveable development patterns in places like the Netherlands.
- nickff 5y ago
  "Zoned in the USA" describes the history of zoning in Canada and the USA, which accords with your view. James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" includes the example of razing neighborhoods (in Paris) as you describe.
  - walshemj 5y ago
    That was to make it less likely the mob could raise the barricades and also to provide a nice field of fire for cannons.
    - nickff 5y ago
      The traffic arteries had multiple uses, which also included movement of soldiers (as was the case for the Eisenhower interstate system as well).
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  You're confusing design, planning, and central planning. Traffic arteries are not the result of central economic planning. They are the result of the free market dumping the externalities of cars. At that point you have two choices. Either you ban the car, and interfere in the free market and "pick winners and losers", something Hayek wouldn't like, or you adapt the infrastructure to what people are asking for in order to reduce traffic fatalities and other externalities of car ownership. Central planning would be saying - no, cars aren't working at scale, we will limit the production of cars. In this case the government didn't do central planning. It didn't pick winners and losers. It went with what the free market decided.
Iamadog19782364 5y ago
The author immediately contrasts the US, which itself is planned. Pretty silly if you ask me. I don't think there's a nation in the world that actually applies the liberal capitalist mode as Hayek wishes it to be applied. I would say because of the perception that America is the laissez-faire model, the culture of the US allows it to be further perverted while still maintaining the sheen of its laurels as a liberal state.
JackFr 5y ago
This post off-base in all dimensions. The Heritage Foundation economic freedom index ranks the Netherlands ahead of the the United States. Zoning and regional transportation planning are not the central planning to which Hayek is talking about. And one only has to look at the farmer protests of 2019-2020 to see the popular response when the government overreaches. Additionally all of the dunks on the US are misguided. The Netherlands is a country of 18 million people, in one of the flattest countries in existence with >90% of the population in urban areas. “We love bikes.” Well, duh.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  Additionally all of the dunks on the US are misguided. The Netherlands is a country of 18 million people, in one of the flattest countries in existence with >90% of the population in urban areas. “We love bikes.” Well, duh. Don’t forget it’s much less scorching and/or humid in the summer than most of the US, and much warmer in the winter.
  - ruuda 5y ago
    Temperature and weather conditions do not significantly affect the level of winter cycling: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
    - hogFeast 5y ago
      It gets nowhere near as hot or as cold as most of the US. It is like most northern European coastal countries...maybe negative temperatures in winter, maybe 29 degrees on the hottest day in summer...the only months where the weather is really different are July and late December/January. Weather is pretty much the same all year round apart from that (just to be clear, I live in a coastal area close to the Netherlands). The non-coastal regions of the US are more like Eastern Europe where you can get 35 degrees in the summer and -20 in the winter.
      - woutifier 5y ago
rdschouw 5y ago
As Dutch born but moved to US 10 years ago, this article sums up everything I don't like about The Netherlands. He speaks about all the positive notes but there are plenty of downsides to it as well. The biggest one is that if you don't fit the Dutch mold, it feels like having an overbearing parent at your back at all times. If you do fit the Dutch mold, it is the greatest country to live in. Some more negative aspects. There are limits to parking spots per home. There are neighborhoods were you can only have a single car per family. There are no more parking spots. Expecting visitors? Sorry. The Dutch government prefers people to take public transportation which generally is excellent but they make owning a car expensive and complicated (like parking example above). You need building licenses for almost any change to your home - outside or inside. You want to create an extra bathroom?Apply for a license. Want to remove a tree from your yard? Well good luck with that. The Netherlands is one of the most beautifully urban-designed places in the world for sure but it comes at a price. Some people love it and some people do not.
- the-dude 5y ago
  This is not accurate. Although I don't own a car, my neighbors do and there is enough space left for visitors. You don't need a license for every change to your house. For a tree, depends on the tree.
- Vinnl 5y ago
  > Expecting visitors? Sorry. Of course this is not "Sorry, no can do" but a "sorry, they'll have to come by public transport, park their car at the edge of the city and do the last part by public transport/bicycle/foot, or park their car in one of the free spots that's available because some neighbours are away with their cars".
- Aachen 5y ago
  Do people in the center of big cities in the USA have multiple private parking spots right out front? (I genuinely don't know but I'll make an assumption.) Perhaps in smaller cities they might have made it a priority over the decades while the city grew, but in something like NYC I can't imagine they didn't run into practicality issues. Do people there not expect visitors ever? Of course they do. You hop on the metro, I assume at least. Same here, and if you live outside of a big city's center, you'll find it's not only free to park anywhere, it's actually annoyingly hard to do normal things without a car. I was in Limburg a few weeks ago for 8 days, alone without a driver's license to use said car parked out front (the thing expired, I didn't notice). Let me tell you I didn't see many places and family had to pick me up or I'd have had hours of public transport time for a 20 minute drive to their place.
CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
I can't comment on the Dutch aspect, but for anyone interested in Hayek, the Mises Institute has many of his works available for free: https://mises.org/search-mises/field_author_1/1122?search=Hayek https://mises.org/search-mises/field_author_1/1122?search=Ha...
ruuda 5y ago
Not Just Bikes talks about zoning in the US vs Dutch cities in this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ. My impression was that the US has more restrictive regulations on what can be built.
tinco 5y ago
> Americans could never do this, he said. We would not trust the builder to make a building so watertight. We would not trust the window manufacturer. We would not trust the water authority to keep the water level perfectly constant. Our insurers would not insure this. Our families would not buy it. Our regulators would not permit it. Our builders would not attempt it. As a Dutch person, it would be easy to feel a bit flattered and proud. But instead I'm gonna have to take the modest pill and call bullshit. Building is sort of my hobby, I've stripped (to the studs if it were American ;)) down and rebuilt my house in the past 4 years, and while doing so have watched endless youtube videos of builders, many american. From my perspective there's only one thing in that paragraph that's correct, and that's that in the US you wouldn't trust the water authority to keep the water level. That's not even an American thing per se (although the US is infamous for aspiring to be independent from government), but mostly a Dutch thing. My house is 5 meter below sea level, a window being 6" above the water line is just not a big deal when you've got that in mind. It's not just I'm at risk of a moldy basement. If the government fucks up, everything would be under meters of water. The U.S.'s has excellent building quality and whenever something is not up to snuff locally you just import from Germany. The U.S. is also not as homogenous as the tiny Netherlands are, you could have a cardboard sheathed house in Texas, or you could have a thick walled brownstone house in Chicago. Also we don't have as many talented tradespeople. Our education system is geared towards getting people to work desk jobs, I think the U.S. system spreads the talent a little bit more evenly. In the past 30 years or so, we've mostly been building cookie cutter houses, the only thing you could say is we've been working on fancier cookie cutters.
- t0mas88 5y ago
  As a fellow Dutchy I agree with all of this, and to add to it: We pay for water management, it's not free. Probably unheard of in most other countries, but every building owner in the Netherlands pays what translates to Regional Water Authority tax. That money is used directly to fund the pumps and employees needed to keep the water at the right level. More accurate levels (not needed everywhere) obviously cost more to implement, so the cost varies by region.
  - usemigrant 5y ago
athrowaway3z 5y ago
The author seems to make some grand philosophical point. Instead here is my take : a handy list of things we know markets can't solve in societies best interest ( 1: at some specific scale , 2: given a certain moral framework ) -Violence (police , jails) -Firemen -Healthcare(/insurance) -Currency -Transport / Infrastructure -schooling And probably a couple more I missed.
- campl3r 5y ago
  citation needed. Why do "we know" that markets can't solve these issues?
- tomtomtom777 5y ago
  To sum up: The free market is only useful for things in where maximization is the optimum.
- magila 5y ago
  I agree with violence, it is perhaps the one true natural monopoly, but the rest of the items on that list are very much up for debate.
- padobson 5y ago
  -schooling This is a pretty big stretch, considering what it costs the public to provide and the results it achieves for that price. Thomas Sowell's[0] latest book has a fair amount of evidence to the contrary. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Schools_and_Their_Enemies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Schools_and_Their_Enem...
- seniorivn 5y ago
  you haven't provided any proofs, but I'm sure the best you could do is to give examples of failed flawed implementations. It's still entirely possible that if done right some of it could work and it's even possible that there already are examples you are just not aware of
- a9h74j 5y ago
  Well put and proviso[d]. I cannot quote the page, but Hayak in Road to Serfdom himself endorses government handling of [health insurance or care]. "Many people don't know their own scriptures."
isoprophlex 5y ago
The author touches upon the housing crisis, and it's connection to mechanisms for urban planning. To me it's a moot point: it doesn't matter if there's central planning or rule-based federal coordination or whatever. if you have toxic (foreign) capital using housing as investment objects, that'll drive up the price for everyone and create an affordability crisis.
- padobson 5y ago
  Your cart is in front of your horse. Housing is only the kind of attractive investment vehicle you describe in an environment where the price is artificially inflated by constrained supply from zoning and other regulations. I promise you, if the price wasn't rising so rapidly and reliably, investors would find other places to park their capital. Build housing to meet demand and the investors will go elsewhere.
- fleddr 5y ago
  True, but that's not the main factor driving up prices in the Netherlands. At its basis, its the scarcity of land versus the ever growing demand. The current outlook is that an additional 1 million homes have to be built before 2030. This mismatch between supply and demand has been here since forever. As such, prizes rise as far as the maximum affordability stretches. For example, the transition from single income families to double income families has resulted in prices skyrocketing. More generous loan conditions lead to higher prices. The government may then conclude that young people are priced out of the market, and lower property taxes. This extra room is then immediately used by the market to rise prices even further. To put some numbers on this: we now crossed the average home price of 400K EUR, or 476.000$. For a young couple both having median salaries, they can't afford it. They'll need a significant cash donation from parents. If they're lucky to have that, they still need to outbid other buyers by some 30K at least. And the most bitter thing is that if they overcome all that, they still have a shit house. Smallish, in a busy street, maybe even just a row house, hugging the neighbors.
  - t0mas88 5y ago
    > maybe even just a row house, hugging the neighbors. At 400k that's not a "maybe" but a "definitely" in all the major cities in the Netherlands.
OliverJones 5y ago
An interesting parallel: the early days of the Internet assumed universal competence in a way like this piece describes. Postel's law says "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send." Relying on competence didn't last long though. The internet has essentially no regulation. It's firewalls that protect against those who are "liberal" in what they send and voracious in what they accept. There's some planning, but it's not centralized except in the large-scale walled gardens like mobile service providers and the big cloud providers.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
"Several caveats are in order. Hayek did not predict that planning a single aspect of the national economy would lead to totalitarianism. He even offers ‘modern towns’ as an area where some planning is necessary" Sort of renders the whole article unnecessary to me.

72 points by de_keyboard 5y ago

"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." -- Friedrich Hayek But who wants to listen to that, right?

da_big_ghey 5y ago
Indeed, here are reasons why Keynesianism and Neo-Keynesianism seem to dominate "political economics": it satisfys the Politician's Syllogism of "we must do something, this is something, therefore we must do this". Telling of government that interference, recapture, bad monetary policy is probably a large reason for a crash and that it must reduce interference is no good when all voters are running saying "do something".
- Iamadog19782364 5y ago
  Dissolve the state.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    You can't "dissolve the state". Someone always has power. You either have a say in who that is and what they can do to you, or you don't.
    - Iamadog19782364 5y ago
      You had ought to read Graeber before making such assertions.
  - tlear 5y ago
    Problem is that you can dissolve the current state, but new one will always arise after a period of epic blood letting. It is like a business cycle it seems. From chaos to some sort of order and freedom from daily threat of brutal death, to crystallization into a monstrosity, to fall and repeat. There are few example of states that lasted for some time without a regular civil war and mountains of corpses. US is one of them having only had one mountain of dead civil war in 2 hundred plus years. However it seems to approach crystallization state. Try opening a business in place like SF and NYC to see the final form of the monster. Nothing can be abolished and state just grows till the what was a necessity becomes a parasite.
    - Iamadog19782364 5y ago
      There is quite a number of extant peoples who evince me otherwise. Mondragon corporation and Linux Foundation both serve as evidence against your position as well. You most probably don't have an example of a functioning society because you've misconstrued your definition of society to be exclusive to the design of states. But the stateless form of man is that of small networks of aligned people, and therein lies the check and balance. And I'd postulate given the wide proliferation of knowledge, the high literacy rate, the level of interdependence and so on of the modern era, that people are more able than ever to self-organize in a positive and stateless life to produce a far more egalitarian landscape and one with a greater deal of optionality to the participants therein. And if I'm being frank, what I see peering over the modern landscape is that the state is little more than a puppet for corporate interests, protecting malefactors from retribution while allowing them in turn to exploit the trust of people that the system isn't stacked. More or less it's a dissolution of the rule of law that consolidates power into the state through that means, and producing what is more or less a completely unruly class which is allowed at length to exploit everyone. I suppose you're arguing the Hegelian perspective, but I assert the apex of man or the geist, is precisely that which is described in anarchist utopian literature. It's also corroborated inexplicitly by Popper in "The Open Society and Its Enemies" towards the end. Failing to assert position that leads us to continued systems of oppression and a constancy of ennui within the zeitgeist, and a zeitgeist itself which is quite probably unhealthy as it inherits inertia and in being resistant to change it is constantly misdirected which we see everywhere constantly.
      - akie 5y ago
        If you dislike the state so much I might suggest you spend some time in Somalia and let me know how you like that.
        Iamadog19782364 5y ago
        If you like the state so much why don't you renounce your citizenship in whichever developed nation you currently reside eschew your money, and ride out life in China? Maybe India? Vietnam?
- dalbasal 5y ago
  Keynesianism and Neo-Keynesianism (assuming this includes Friedman/Monetarism) dominate because their theories/proposals are, usually, based in the world and institutions that exist. Austrian economics is mostly the economics of utopia, masked by an inexplicably pessimistic tone. The newest keynesian variant, modern monetary theory, isn't a "modern" theory of money... it's a theory of modern money systems. These aren't based on gold coinage. Austrian macro is centred around the idea that interest rates are prices. Some people have a desire to consume now. Others have a desire to consume later, interest rates are the price they negotiate. No second order effects. No money supply. No interest in where money comes from. No money, in fact. Money is just a trade good. There were two must-do-somethings" that "killed" Austrian economics, outside of dissident goldbug circles: the great depression & WW2. Their answer to "how do we win the war?" was "we can't, not enough money." The same applied to "how do we rebuild europe & japan?" Meanwhile, post war economists were aware of these theories. Yet, they often observed "non clearing markets" in the form of unemployment in places where Austrian economics reckons there shouldn't exist.
dalbasal 5y ago
Listen... a lot of people. Hayek still has a following. Well regarded. Nobel Laureate. Implement... different story. Actual skepticism is a conundrum... notoriously difficult to adhere to. The tables turn when you need to defend your price theory of business cycles... you need to claim to know things. This pamphlet is as good an example as any. It claims knowledge of what lies down which path... in a way that sounds quite naive to a modern reader, no different than the peers he was chastising. Austrians were as loud and involved as anyone in building institutions.
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
It's easier to pretend economics is a science with real natural laws than admit it's all voodoo invented by humans. Personally I think all economists should study history and psychology, but they prefer their fancy numbers.

derriz 5y ago

An issue I have with this essay is that it assumes that it's the absence of central planning which gives rise to unlivable and automobile dominated cities. But if you look at old photos of European or American cities before the rise of the internal combustion engine, you typically see a completely unplanned street usage: bicycles, pedestrians, horse drawn vehicles, kids running amok, etc. all sharing the space in seeming anarchy. It required massive central planning to replace this shared space with segregated streets with 90% of the space dedicated solely to motorised traffic. Entire neighbourhoods were razed to allow central planners to run huge new traffic arteries through the centers of cities. Land was "opened up" for suburban development through central planning and massive centrally planned road and motorway building. I guess my point is that associating "central planning" with liveable patterns of development does not seem reasonable to me. Central planning can and has been used for good and for bad - it was used to destroy urban environments in favour of motorised vehicles in some places, just as it's been used to promote much more liveable development patterns in places like the Netherlands.

nickff 5y ago
"Zoned in the USA" describes the history of zoning in Canada and the USA, which accords with your view. James C. Scott's "Seeing Like a State" includes the example of razing neighborhoods (in Paris) as you describe.
- walshemj 5y ago
  That was to make it less likely the mob could raise the barricades and also to provide a nice field of fire for cannons.
  - nickff 5y ago
    The traffic arteries had multiple uses, which also included movement of soldiers (as was the case for the Eisenhower interstate system as well).
sudosysgen 5y ago
You're confusing design, planning, and central planning. Traffic arteries are not the result of central economic planning. They are the result of the free market dumping the externalities of cars. At that point you have two choices. Either you ban the car, and interfere in the free market and "pick winners and losers", something Hayek wouldn't like, or you adapt the infrastructure to what people are asking for in order to reduce traffic fatalities and other externalities of car ownership. Central planning would be saying - no, cars aren't working at scale, we will limit the production of cars. In this case the government didn't do central planning. It didn't pick winners and losers. It went with what the free market decided.

Iamadog19782364 5y ago

The author immediately contrasts the US, which itself is planned. Pretty silly if you ask me. I don't think there's a nation in the world that actually applies the liberal capitalist mode as Hayek wishes it to be applied. I would say because of the perception that America is the laissez-faire model, the culture of the US allows it to be further perverted while still maintaining the sheen of its laurels as a liberal state.

JackFr 5y ago

This post off-base in all dimensions. The Heritage Foundation economic freedom index ranks the Netherlands ahead of the the United States. Zoning and regional transportation planning are not the central planning to which Hayek is talking about. And one only has to look at the farmer protests of 2019-2020 to see the popular response when the government overreaches. Additionally all of the dunks on the US are misguided. The Netherlands is a country of 18 million people, in one of the flattest countries in existence with >90% of the population in urban areas. “We love bikes.” Well, duh.

xyzzyz 5y ago
Additionally all of the dunks on the US are misguided. The Netherlands is a country of 18 million people, in one of the flattest countries in existence with >90% of the population in urban areas. “We love bikes.” Well, duh. Don’t forget it’s much less scorching and/or humid in the summer than most of the US, and much warmer in the winter.
- ruuda 5y ago
  Temperature and weather conditions do not significantly affect the level of winter cycling: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Uhx-26GfCBU
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    It gets nowhere near as hot or as cold as most of the US. It is like most northern European coastal countries...maybe negative temperatures in winter, maybe 29 degrees on the hottest day in summer...the only months where the weather is really different are July and late December/January. Weather is pretty much the same all year round apart from that (just to be clear, I live in a coastal area close to the Netherlands). The non-coastal regions of the US are more like Eastern Europe where you can get 35 degrees in the summer and -20 in the winter.
    - woutifier 5y ago

rdschouw 5y ago

As Dutch born but moved to US 10 years ago, this article sums up everything I don't like about The Netherlands. He speaks about all the positive notes but there are plenty of downsides to it as well. The biggest one is that if you don't fit the Dutch mold, it feels like having an overbearing parent at your back at all times. If you do fit the Dutch mold, it is the greatest country to live in. Some more negative aspects. There are limits to parking spots per home. There are neighborhoods were you can only have a single car per family. There are no more parking spots. Expecting visitors? Sorry. The Dutch government prefers people to take public transportation which generally is excellent but they make owning a car expensive and complicated (like parking example above). You need building licenses for almost any change to your home - outside or inside. You want to create an extra bathroom?Apply for a license. Want to remove a tree from your yard? Well good luck with that. The Netherlands is one of the most beautifully urban-designed places in the world for sure but it comes at a price. Some people love it and some people do not.

the-dude 5y ago
This is not accurate. Although I don't own a car, my neighbors do and there is enough space left for visitors. You don't need a license for every change to your house. For a tree, depends on the tree.
Vinnl 5y ago
> Expecting visitors? Sorry. Of course this is not "Sorry, no can do" but a "sorry, they'll have to come by public transport, park their car at the edge of the city and do the last part by public transport/bicycle/foot, or park their car in one of the free spots that's available because some neighbours are away with their cars".
Aachen 5y ago
Do people in the center of big cities in the USA have multiple private parking spots right out front? (I genuinely don't know but I'll make an assumption.) Perhaps in smaller cities they might have made it a priority over the decades while the city grew, but in something like NYC I can't imagine they didn't run into practicality issues. Do people there not expect visitors ever? Of course they do. You hop on the metro, I assume at least. Same here, and if you live outside of a big city's center, you'll find it's not only free to park anywhere, it's actually annoyingly hard to do normal things without a car. I was in Limburg a few weeks ago for 8 days, alone without a driver's license to use said car parked out front (the thing expired, I didn't notice). Let me tell you I didn't see many places and family had to pick me up or I'd have had hours of public transport time for a 20 minute drive to their place.

CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago

I can't comment on the Dutch aspect, but for anyone interested in Hayek, the Mises Institute has many of his works available for free: https://mises.org/search-mises/field_author_1/1122?search=Hayek https://mises.org/search-mises/field_author_1/1122?search=Ha...

ruuda 5y ago

Not Just Bikes talks about zoning in the US vs Dutch cities in this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ. My impression was that the US has more restrictive regulations on what can be built.

tinco 5y ago

> Americans could never do this, he said. We would not trust the builder to make a building so watertight. We would not trust the window manufacturer. We would not trust the water authority to keep the water level perfectly constant. Our insurers would not insure this. Our families would not buy it. Our regulators would not permit it. Our builders would not attempt it. As a Dutch person, it would be easy to feel a bit flattered and proud. But instead I'm gonna have to take the modest pill and call bullshit. Building is sort of my hobby, I've stripped (to the studs if it were American ;)) down and rebuilt my house in the past 4 years, and while doing so have watched endless youtube videos of builders, many american. From my perspective there's only one thing in that paragraph that's correct, and that's that in the US you wouldn't trust the water authority to keep the water level. That's not even an American thing per se (although the US is infamous for aspiring to be independent from government), but mostly a Dutch thing. My house is 5 meter below sea level, a window being 6" above the water line is just not a big deal when you've got that in mind. It's not just I'm at risk of a moldy basement. If the government fucks up, everything would be under meters of water. The U.S.'s has excellent building quality and whenever something is not up to snuff locally you just import from Germany. The U.S. is also not as homogenous as the tiny Netherlands are, you could have a cardboard sheathed house in Texas, or you could have a thick walled brownstone house in Chicago. Also we don't have as many talented tradespeople. Our education system is geared towards getting people to work desk jobs, I think the U.S. system spreads the talent a little bit more evenly. In the past 30 years or so, we've mostly been building cookie cutter houses, the only thing you could say is we've been working on fancier cookie cutters.

t0mas88 5y ago
As a fellow Dutchy I agree with all of this, and to add to it: We pay for water management, it's not free. Probably unheard of in most other countries, but every building owner in the Netherlands pays what translates to Regional Water Authority tax. That money is used directly to fund the pumps and employees needed to keep the water at the right level. More accurate levels (not needed everywhere) obviously cost more to implement, so the cost varies by region.
- usemigrant 5y ago

athrowaway3z 5y ago

The author seems to make some grand philosophical point. Instead here is my take : a handy list of things we know markets can't solve in societies best interest ( 1: at some specific scale , 2: given a certain moral framework ) -Violence (police , jails) -Firemen -Healthcare(/insurance) -Currency -Transport / Infrastructure -schooling And probably a couple more I missed.

campl3r 5y ago
citation needed. Why do "we know" that markets can't solve these issues?
tomtomtom777 5y ago
To sum up: The free market is only useful for things in where maximization is the optimum.
magila 5y ago
I agree with violence, it is perhaps the one true natural monopoly, but the rest of the items on that list are very much up for debate.
padobson 5y ago
-schooling This is a pretty big stretch, considering what it costs the public to provide and the results it achieves for that price. Thomas Sowell's[0] latest book has a fair amount of evidence to the contrary. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Schools_and_Their_Enemies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Schools_and_Their_Enem...
seniorivn 5y ago
you haven't provided any proofs, but I'm sure the best you could do is to give examples of failed flawed implementations. It's still entirely possible that if done right some of it could work and it's even possible that there already are examples you are just not aware of
a9h74j 5y ago
Well put and proviso[d]. I cannot quote the page, but Hayak in Road to Serfdom himself endorses government handling of [health insurance or care]. "Many people don't know their own scriptures."

isoprophlex 5y ago

The author touches upon the housing crisis, and it's connection to mechanisms for urban planning. To me it's a moot point: it doesn't matter if there's central planning or rule-based federal coordination or whatever. if you have toxic (foreign) capital using housing as investment objects, that'll drive up the price for everyone and create an affordability crisis.

padobson 5y ago
Your cart is in front of your horse. Housing is only the kind of attractive investment vehicle you describe in an environment where the price is artificially inflated by constrained supply from zoning and other regulations. I promise you, if the price wasn't rising so rapidly and reliably, investors would find other places to park their capital. Build housing to meet demand and the investors will go elsewhere.
fleddr 5y ago
True, but that's not the main factor driving up prices in the Netherlands. At its basis, its the scarcity of land versus the ever growing demand. The current outlook is that an additional 1 million homes have to be built before 2030. This mismatch between supply and demand has been here since forever. As such, prizes rise as far as the maximum affordability stretches. For example, the transition from single income families to double income families has resulted in prices skyrocketing. More generous loan conditions lead to higher prices. The government may then conclude that young people are priced out of the market, and lower property taxes. This extra room is then immediately used by the market to rise prices even further. To put some numbers on this: we now crossed the average home price of 400K EUR, or 476.000$. For a young couple both having median salaries, they can't afford it. They'll need a significant cash donation from parents. If they're lucky to have that, they still need to outbid other buyers by some 30K at least. And the most bitter thing is that if they overcome all that, they still have a shit house. Smallish, in a busy street, maybe even just a row house, hugging the neighbors.
- t0mas88 5y ago
  > maybe even just a row house, hugging the neighbors. At 400k that's not a "maybe" but a "definitely" in all the major cities in the Netherlands.

OliverJones 5y ago

An interesting parallel: the early days of the Internet assumed universal competence in a way like this piece describes. Postel's law says "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send." Relying on competence didn't last long though. The internet has essentially no regulation. It's firewalls that protect against those who are "liberal" in what they send and voracious in what they accept. There's some planning, but it's not centralized except in the large-scale walled gardens like mobile service providers and the big cloud providers.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

"Several caveats are in order. Hayek did not predict that planning a single aspect of the national economy would lead to totalitarianism. He even offers ‘modern towns’ as an area where some planning is necessary" Sort of renders the whole article unnecessary to me.