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Comment by delano | Hacker News Reader

Some of the symbolism is a bit extreme but overall it's a pretty good overview of life in the Netherlands. There is a level of comfort here that I haven't experienced anywhere else however that comfort has both positive and negative consequences. This is the only article I've read that touches on that aspect of life here. And I'm glad he mentioned the lack of anything open 24h a day and rarely past 6 (some grocery stores are open until 10). It's madness!

By the way, if you're interested in the history of the Netherlands, there's a dutch movie coming out later this year about the flood of 1953: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1230194/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953

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Generally the Dutch like their system, and I think it works pretty well for them. But as the article suggests, it works because they have such a communal spirit and sense of shared values. Americans have that individualist spirit and we are a very heterogeneous group with little in common beyond our love of freedom to roam and make a buck.

Perhaps a small New England state could pull it off (and they do try) but to engineer a Dutch system from Washington is asking a bit much. The author perceptively observed that Dutch don't trust government any more than we do, but have a strong sense of communal responsibility to each other. That is only possible on a small scale, I think. After all, they only have 16m people on a tiny piece of land.

When I lived in Holland some years ago, one of locals pointed out this irony: "You Americans have only two political parties but can't agree on anything, while we Dutch have dozens but pretty much see eye-to-eye on everything."

> After all, they only have 16m people on a tiny piece of land.

Do you think that matters? I feel no more connected to people living 100 km away than people living 300 km away.

Individualistic spirit my butt. Americans aren't a special and unique snowflake. Every country's system is largely an accident of history.

Please, don't make comments like that. This is hacker news: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Oh geez what was it, the "my butt"?

I was too lazy to find more a classy way to call BS on a sweeping generalization that makes it sound like Americans have some special individuality gene, while the Dutch are all genetically predisposed to socialism.

Pardon my French, but if you don't like it vote me down.

> makes it sound like Americans have some special individuality gene, while the Dutch are all genetically predisposed to socialism.

It's called culture -- not genetics. Would you agree that there are several important distinctions between Dutch and American culture?

Yes, but not in that way. Let me put it this way, if you have the choice between breaking laws and breaking customs, always choose laws. I see the biggest differences between the US and Holland as legal.

Lets not forget that Holland basically invented modern capitalism and the US has many programs much more socialist then their equivalents in the so called social states of Europe.

It wasn't the language, it was that your comment was not thoughtful, interesting, intelligent, or even justified.

I lived in rural Japan last year, and had similar experiences with stores being open or lack thereof. There were three restaurants and two bars. One restaurant never opened for dinner, another was run by a family, was closed at 8PM and was closed on Sundays, the third was run by one woman and was closed for dinner on weekends and also tuesdays. One of the bars' closing schedule involved being closed on the third Sunday of each month. Grocery stores closed by 8.

I spent a lot of time thinking about how things must have been to live 50 years ago, and how much we've come to take (this very limited sense of) openness for granted.

Whoa, an irregular schedule to boot. You must have had to do a lot of pre-planning.

Pre-planning is hard. Let's go shopping.

Anyway, when in Rome, do as the romans. Hard if they have weird customs, I agree.

That's pretty weird, considering Japan probably has more 24-hour convenience stores than any country on Earth.

You must have been pretty far out in the "inaka". :)

http://jet.wikia.com/wiki/Inaka

That's how it is in rural America (Midwest, the South) also.

You need a large population to support 24 hour consumerism.

In the Netherlands it's not a matter of population -- shops are not allowed to be open outside the regulated hours. I believe the law was introduced a few decades ago in order to protect the mom and pop stores (a misguided attempt to put mom and pop stores on equal footing with larger businesses. If the mom and pop store can't afford to stay open at night then nobody is allowed to. Because that's "fair".)

Since gas stations have permission to stay open around the clock they're used to get emergency food. You can also get food delivered on Sundays and in the middle of the night, so it's not so bad.

>If the mom and pop store can't afford to stay open at night then nobody is allowed to. Because that's "fair".

Any time I finding appealing stories of the allegedly comfortable northwest European life, I just remind myself of things like this.

... On the other hand, a lot of the appeal in such a life is in the fact there are still lots of unique mom and pop stores, often with generations of history, still in existence...

This is how it is in small New England towns also. I used to live in a lively tourist trap seaside city where everything closed after 9:30pm.

But in rural Alabama, at least, Walmart is open 24 hours a day, and chain pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens as well.

Also had a similar experience while living in Munich a few years ago. I learned I had to plan out my food purchases much better, but otherwise it wasn't very inconvenient. Definitely a change of pace, and I comforted myself thinking that it meant people didn't have to work at their crappy grocery store jobs late / on Sundays.

If it somehow enabled 50 cent beers and 2 euro bottles of (good!) wine, I am not about to complain.

The limits on opening hours for German shops have mostly been lifted in the last years.

Aldi enables 50 Cent beer and 2 Euro wine. Their drive hard bargains with their supplieres. Interestingly Aldi pays their employees quite well and seems to occupy a higher moral ground in the German opinion than Walmart does in America. (Lidl, the second big discounter chain, has a reputation for mis-treating employees, though.)

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