Amsterdam supermarket offers free groceries, life coach to struggling families

https://nltimes.nl/2023/01/25/amsterdam-supermarket-offers-free-groceries-life-coach-struggling-families

by zerof1l • 3 years ago

186 280 3 years ago

nltimes.nl

shdon2• 3 years ago

Dang, gotta find out how to donate to this.

tinco• 3 years ago

You can donate here: https://studiezalen.com/doneren/

They have raised 250.000 to fund this supermarket. Beyond the fact that a notable newspaper reported on it (Parool) I can't vouch for it other than that link really is their donation page.

kvdveer4• 3 years ago

Here you go: https://studiezalen.com/doneren/. That's the donation page for the organization that's making this happen. They focus primarily on education, and found out that undernourishment or the threat thereof is really detrimental for education. That's why they started this project.

Alternatively you could move to Amsterdam or Zaandam and pay your taxes. This kind of organization lives off government subsidies, donations are just an extra. Last year their total income was 2.1 million euros, although they do not specify how much of that is from donations.

Here's their annual financial report (extended report available through their contact form): https://studiezalen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/publicati... Here's their annual non-financial report (i.e. formal newsletter): https://studiezalen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Jaarversl... All of these are in Dutch.

shdon2• 3 years ago

Living in the south of the country (near Breda), I wouldn't be caught dead in Amsterdam and I despise the city. But this is certainly a worthy cause, so I'll gladly donate.

AdrianB14• 3 years ago

This looks like a combination of supermarket and charity; both are great, but does the combination make sense? A regular supermarket is a for-profit legal entity, a charity usually has tax-exemption, how can one manage the legal complications of mixing it?

luckylion5• 3 years ago

What's the complication? Their supermarket seems to be "shop normal items, sit down for a session with a social worker instead of paying", so they don't have a commercial interest. Seems like a good approach to get people the items they need and also reaching them with social work and understanding their needs and what problems they might need help with.

ambrose2• 3 years ago

So where is the money coming from? Can they sustain the program? Who decides the cutoff? Do they get tax exemptions to write off the losses?

AdrianB14• 3 years ago

So it is not a supermarket, just a charity? Regular people cannot go, buy something and pay like in any other supermarket? I haven't seen that explained in the article.

clnq2• 3 years ago

I wonder how effective life coaching is to people in poverty. The condition seems to have a risk of just humiliating those who are poor. Do they have the scale to do this for 80 families or more, or is it more of a rush job with the usual life advice those who are rich patronizingly give to those in poverty?

Manfred• 3 years ago

These coaches are usually people who come from the same families and neighborhoods that face these kinds of problems. Help with navigating government programs and simple tips and tricks with finances can make a huge difference.

hnhamdani• 3 years ago

I think this is more of the case. I used to live around the described neighborhood. It was an area with a notorious reputation as 'ghetto' where certain ethnic of immigrants live.

I personally have no problem other than the casual nuisance and I have positive experience overall during my stay over there for a couple of years.

The founder of the supermarket/umbrella foundation seems to have the similar background as the people live in the area. Thus, I think he has insight on what the community needs and how to help them.

jvm___• 3 years ago

Have you tried not being poor?

Life coach is dependent on the opportunities available to that family, otherwise the life coach might just be left with cutting the only entertainment or treat food the people buy to alleviate some of their daily stress.

asdff7• 3 years ago

Life coaching could mean things like, here's how to open a bank account, here's how to navigate all the low income programs offered by the government, here's how to enroll in community college or a trade school, here's a local code bootcamp, here are the local food pantrys and their hours, here is a low cost daycare option, etc. All the things middle class people take for granted because its either irrelevant to them, or their parents who already understand these systems help them figure it all out.

phphphphp6• 3 years ago

I completely agree with your skepticism but based on the description of the service I expect it to land on the good side.

The problem with a lot of poverty focused charity is that it is, essentially, a payment to a vulnerable person to be dehumanised. Fortunately, that means we can assess a poverty charity easily: do they humanise the people receiving help? Allowing people to come into a store and shop and engage with bespoke support is very humanising, because it’s just removing money from the equation, it does not take away agency or trust. The support they’re offering is not one size fits all, or a jobs-pipeline, rather, it’s whatever the customers need help with — essentially, what someone with money pays for!

There’s certainly the possibility that even a well designed service can become a karma-mill for the middle-class, but in this case, I think we can be quite optimistic.

That said, “life coach” has terrible connotations in the US but I think that’s just something lost in translation.

kvdveer4• 3 years ago

In a vacuum, i'd be inclined to agree with you. However, this is not rich people telling poor people to stop being poor. This exists in a extensive web of social organizations that work together to solve poverty at the root cause.

I can't vouch for this specific organization, but i'm very familiar with similar organizations. This kind of organization runs on volunteers, many of whom have experienced poverty firsthand, and virtually all have experienced poverty secondhand. This kind of volunteer work is typically people actually caring, not people 'virtue-signaling'. This kind of work is done in intimate collaboration with municipal social services, which are typically well-respected in the Netherlands.

There is no doubt in my mind that everyone involved is intending and capable of affecting a change for good.

I wonder how effective life coaching is to people in poverty.

I've personally volunteered as a coach in poverty situations. It works. The coach doesn't need to do much, just listen to the problems people cope with, and occasionally point them towards a resource that'll help them is enough. Just being able to vent to someone who knows how it feels to deal with poverty might be enough. If it's not, helping people navigate social services and programmes typically ends up lifting them from poverty.

It helps that in the Netherlands, poverty is typically unnecessary. There is (almost) guaranteed livable income for everyone independent of employment, due to our strong social security system.

alright_scowl2• 3 years ago

It helps that in the Netherlands, poverty is typically unnecessary. There is (almost) guaranteed livable income for everyone independent of employment, due to our strong social security system.

I lived in multiple countries, including the Netherlands.

Living there substantially changed how I view subjects such as taxation and social security. Taxes were high, but the benefits a strong social security brings to the place are great.

Not saying that there's no waste, things that could be improved, etc. But in comparison to the other places I lived, the Dutch were way ahead of the curve.

mathieuh• 3 years ago

Perhaps "life coaching" here means something similar to a thing we have in the UK called the Citizens Advice Bureau which basically helps you navigate bureaucracy, as opposed to charlatans with shiny teeth teaching 10 simple tricks to get rich

xyzelement7• 3 years ago

I keep hearing this but it doesn't resonate against my experience.

My family came to the US in the early 90's with zero dollars, but now we're doing well. The difference between us and those who didn't make it out of the neighborhood was what we did with the little money and time we had.

Basic things like figuring out how to get a bank account open vs paying a check cashing fee, things add up quickly. If you don't figure that stuff out, you're screwed. I find it off for poverty-advocates to get indignant when poverty education comes up, because they don't understand how much ignorance/lack of interest/lack of skill exists in those communities, and how much of a headwind that is.

Forget things like encouraging your kids to study in school, apply for competitive courses - etc. Even if your kids are capable of that, if you don't know to push them, you perpetuate your poverty. In contrast to say Asian immigrants who drive their kids to excel and go from poverty to 1% in one generation. Any coaching that helps people recognize and take advantage of the resources and opportunities in front of them - if it actually sticks - is super valuable.

pydry5• 3 years ago

Very often if you diff "poor successful immigrant" stories to the stories of poor people who grew up in the same city, the key difference was they relied on bonds of trust between them and other immigrants from their country that helped give them a leg up.

I was pretty shocked to discover that one of my friends (2nd gen asian immigrant in amsterdam) had parents who even tapped large interest free loans, and that the community largely expected this kind of help to be given freely.

I find it off for poverty-advocates to get indignant when poverty education comes up

Yeah, coz it's well known to be ineffective (by design, pretty much), and is almost universally used by banks and politicians fronting for banks to try and get the heat off their backs and let them keep raking in profits unimpeded.

Stuff like interest rate caps and banning payday lending, on the other hand, is very effective but impedes profits. The goal of corporate lobbyists is to present solutions (usually faux) that appear genuine but don't impede profits.

dangwhy2• 3 years ago

My family came to the US in the early 90's with zero dollars, but now we're doing well.

May I ask what was the path to financial well being ?

Coming to US with zero dollars is pretty common and doesn't really tell the whole picture. You might come with things that can be converted to money later like an education, family connections ect.

I came to us with no money but I had education for in demand jobs. Lots of patels from india come to usa with zero dollars but they have family connections that get them started on a path to setting up a business. We are close to a patel family that came to usa with zero dollars but grinded for years to finally become business owners. They are insane hardworkers but having that family connection that set them up on the path was critical imo.

phphphphp6• 3 years ago

The disadvantageous behaviour you describe exists at every level. There’s wealthy families who couldn’t care less about any of the things you describe — most generational wealth is lost within a few generations!

There’s also a selection bias amongst immigrants like yourself: immigrant families have already made the biggest leap, they’ve uprooted their family and gone to a new country, and so they’re already on the path towards all of the behaviours you describe — they didn’t arrive in America and then decide that education was the path forwards, they arrived in America with optimism and gusto and were ready to do whatever it takes to realise their dreams.

Many people just want to live a life, they don’t want to pursue greatness at all costs. Many of those people are in poverty, many of those people are rich. Many people are not suited to a life of intense pressure to succeed.

The problem of poverty education as the solution to poverty is that it is built on the idea that education is why people are in poverty, and that if they just knew a bit more than they’d be doing great… but that’s not really true, poverty is a trap, education cannot save you from the poverty trap.

The value of support for people in poverty is that it gives them a better chance to escape poverty and for many people, education is a part of that support, but it’s important to understand that the solution to poverty is not education about how to open a checking account, it’s the whole spectrum of support from financial to education.

Give every person in poverty a million dollars, and many will escape poverty and go on to live very prosperous lives — no education needed.

clnq2• 3 years ago

That's good to hear. I didn't mean to be indignant, I just don't have a nuanced understanding of this. So thanks for the insights.

bluGill2• 3 years ago

That depends. People are in poverty for many different reasons.

I know people in poverty where the root cause is downs syndrome: they mentally don't have the ability to be any more than assistant usher at the movie theater. They can handle most usher tasks, but when there is someone difficult they need the head usher: some 16 year old kid who has been on the job for at least 2 weeks.

I know people in poverty because they despite getting straight A's in school they dropped out at 16 and started having kids (I'm not sure if they dropped out before are after the kids started coming, it doesn't matter: both dropping out and having kids were intentional decisions). 10 years latter it finally occurred to them how much their bad life choices has hurt them.

There is nothing a coach can do to help the first person, no matter what they will still be in poverty as they are not capable of doing better. The second just needs a bit of help to turn life around - this help will work now, but at 21 this person would have refused all help as they didn't see that they were doing anything wrong in the first place. Most people in poverty are somewhere in the middle of these two.

The above is based on real people (though I'm hiding a lot of details for privacy reasons). These are not strawman examples, but they should feel like it. I intentionally picked people who are on the two far ends of the extremes.

sofixa2• 3 years ago

Person 1 doesn't have to be in poverty, in most developed countries there would be disability help/insurance/payments/etc. to help them live a non-impoverished life because they cannot realistically work a job.

ravenstine• 3 years ago

It's tricky because maybe life coaching doesn't work for most of those in poverty but is good to have for the minority who respond to it.

foobarian• 3 years ago

You know, life coach helping a group of those in need almost sounds like a shepherd looking out for a flock... now where have I heard this before?

I really wish we could take the good parts of organized religion and turn them into regular institutions. In our town the local library has taken on a strong community center role but that's just because the staff there happens to be excellent.

detrites• 3 years ago

Seems a bit close to "I wonder how effective knowledge is to people who don't have it."

The two things required for this program to work are useful information & willing learners.

By making it free, the organisers are incentivised to provide the first, and by requiring participation with a coach they're asking for the second. Could your question be more accurately stated as "is the information good?".

People stay in bad situations when they don't know how to change and/or they don't want to change. The former is kind of up to those with knowledge, however ultimately nobody can do anything about the latter but those affected themselves.

foxyv• 3 years ago

Often I find that people in poverty have a great deal of trouble engaging in the external effort necessary to improve their situation. It's nearly impossible to muster the time and energy to fill out applications and forms necessary for assistance when you are barely treading water.

Social workers and life coaches are really great when they are able to fill in the gaps. Help people acquire the resources they need and take advantage of the services offered to them that they may not already know about. Even something as simple as filling in a form properly can be life-changing. Not to mention connecting them to resources like housing assistance and debt forgiveness.

rbanffy2• 3 years ago

It's a nice reminder that everybody wins when nobody loses. Life isn't a zero sum game.

ljf• 3 years ago

So many people seem to forget that - helping those with the least, helps us all. From a purely mercenary point of view, it helps build you more customers and more skilled workers.

newsclues3• 3 years ago

Poverty is costly, and if your region has a social safety net that includes healthcare, thus resolving poverty will save tax payers in the long run.

But from the mercenary point of view, I think reducing poverty is worth it from a security and quality of life point of view. If public spaces are dangerous that is no good for people and poverty also degrades peoples quality of life, examples like not having to step over homeless people outside your front door don't really have dollar values, but they make people happier.

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

You also just build a nicer world to live in. The mere concept of a “gated community” is bizarre and dystopian.

WeylandYutani2• 3 years ago

Absolutely.

The political reason for the Dutch social safety: stop an impending socialist/communist revolution. This was a real threat in Europe at the time. A second reason was scientific: poor people were spreading diseases which are a threat for everyone. A third reason was economic: healthy and happy people work harder.

4gotunameagain5• 3 years ago

one could argue that struggling families are families that for one reason or another are not fit enough for their current environment, whereby by assisting them you are gradually lowering the fitness of the entire population, therefore everybody loses.

now of course I am not claiming that this is true, nobody can know, and I'd much rather we helped eachother than not, but there's certainly an argument to be made.

greedo• 3 years ago

Modern society isn't some Mendelian pea experiment. And using the "one could argue" trope is really not helpful and could be construed as incendiary...

actionfromafar2• 3 years ago

For as long as we have been humans, we have also changed current environment. Accepting Mad Max as the outcome to breed for, one could also argue, sucks.

tenebrisalietum• 3 years ago

Two counterpoints:

The sum total of all humans alive at moment X are fit to be alive at X and have an equal fitness of survival.

Divergence occurs when we talk about probability of surviving in future time frame Y. Even so, criteria that defines current and future fittest in "survival of fittest" can be many things. Dinosaurs roamed the earth, but mice survived whatever killed the huge, strong lizards.

A society that does not care for its least might find that its least are not loyal. This can have security implications, especially when bordered by unfriendly states.

techdmn• 3 years ago

Many years ago, I worked as a short order cook at a chain restaurant. The economy was doing quite well, and unemployment was low. This was actually a real problem for us, because we couldn't hire dishwashers. Turns out nobody wants to do a shit job for shit pay when alternatives exist.

A perhaps generous view of how the Federal Reserve manages our economy is to avoid inflation. A less generous view might be that they aim to keep unemployment high enough that workers are desperate enough to accept shit jobs, and that wages don't take too large a slice of the pie. Obviously this requires less than full employment, such that they actually define full employment as "the highest level of employment that is consistent with price stability".

In other words, one output of the way our economy is managed is that some people are desperate. At that point you're simply stack-ranking people, and claiming that the bottom 3-4% deserve to be desperate regardless of actual fitness. (Never mind that we don't have anything close to a meritocracy.)

makeitdouble• 3 years ago

Is it worth making this specific argument if you don’t think it’s true ?

Otherwise, we’re in societies that evolve at crazy paces, some parts of our lives 5 generations ago were radically different from our lives now, while other groups almost didn’t change. I don’t see the concept of “fitness” to be relevant to our current situation where we have no idea of what’s coming up even in 50 years. In times of uncertainty, diversity is a better bet than trying to optimize for a status quo.

troupe3• 3 years ago

From what I've seen of families in poverty, it is usually less about them fitting into the current environment and more an issue of them having a surrounding culture that makes it hard to take advantage of the current environment.

A simple example is that people in a poverty culture tend to spend money immediately on short term gratification. On one hand, we could assume this is because they are foolish, but many have experience that if they try to save $20 for something longer term, someone in their household will end up just taking the money for something else. So their are acting rationally by trying to convert that $20 to something that will bring pleasure to them rather than deferring the pleasure only to lose the ability to spend the $20 on something they would enjoy.

l33t2333723• 3 years ago

This seems like an argument in favor of social darwinism — a school of thought that has been (and still is, with any amount of thought) thoroughly debunked.

asdff7• 3 years ago

This of course makes the assumption that the current environment is any good. Sometimes the current environment is quite bad and hostile to most people. If you are in the artic circle, its probably more realistic to survive being given some warm clothing, than to strip down naked and march thousands of miles to the equator where the environment suits your (lack of) clothing.

The latter is not generally what we do as humans, only when all other means of survival fail do we migrate. We have the ability to use technology to adapt to our environments, such as in making clothing, and even change the environments, like making a warm dwelling or lighting a fire. These are within our toolsets for survival so we should use them, versus moving to where we happen to find adaption without these abilities.

jmyeet3• 3 years ago

It is nice to see things like this but we shouldn't forget that we can't charity our way our of systemic problems.

Example: the recent MrBeast video where he restored sight to 1000 people [1]. Really, this should make you angry at a system that allows people to be virtually blind when fixing it is so cheap. It makes no sense from an economic standpoint. People who can see can be way more productive (let alone all the personal benefits of course). But we don't do that. Why? To protect private health care profits.

There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over their heads and enough to eat. It is a choice to deny it to them. Why? So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy. That's it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2ifmkGGus

xyzelement7• 3 years ago

There's a chicken and the egg problem here.

The reason our country/world has so many resources, is because people with a commercial interest worked had to develop/build it. Like, our medicine is amazing because there historically has been so much money in it, which attracted talent and research dollars.

So it's easy to look at that and say "oh wow we have so much, how can we not be giving it away for free" but that misses the point that with that mindset, we wouldn't have built what we have to begin with.

People often fail to understand that it's a balance.

SamoyedFurFluff• 3 years ago

I don’t actually know if we have stuff because of commercial motivations. The guys who discovered insulin didn’t do so out of commercial desire. Neither did the people who figured out vaccinations. There are inventors who make money off of their inventions, but they are often poor salespeople and are mostly tinkerers.

jmyeet3• 3 years ago

This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda. The myth here is that nothing happens without the profit motive.

Another commenter mentioned insulin. Despite insulin being invented 100 years ago and the IP being given away for $1 to benefit people, we're still paying outrageous prices for insulin in the USofA even with supposedly limited patent life. The system has been successfully gamed and government bought so that people can be charged $1000/month for something necessary to live that costs a fraction of that to produce.

A lot of pharma is like this: pharmaceutical companies primarily spend on marketing and lobbying. A huge chunk of the so-called innovation actually happens with Federally funded research in universities that we just give away to a company to profit from.

If you accept that "our medicine is amazing", what about pretty much every other developed nation giving universal access to health care? Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse because we restrict access only to those with money.

Kalium3• 3 years ago

There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over their heads and enough to eat. It is a choice to deny it to them. Why? So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy. That's it.

Can we stop a second and talk about this? Morally and ethically, you are absolutely and completely right in every possible way. There's nothing at all to talk about.

Yet food and shelter aren't just moral questions of basic humanity. They're also logistical questions. Having a warehouse of stored grain in Nebraska is useless to starving people in Indonesia without a way to get it there and a way to feed them for all the days to come. Having empty houses in Detroit is not useful to unsheltered people in Budapest without a way to get the latter to the former and enable them to actually live there - never mind if they would accept such an offer.

You're absolutely right. These are moral and ethical non-questions. There just might be practical questions in there too. Ignoring the latter to focus on the former is perhaps not an ideal way to identify systemic changes that can address systemic problems.

Otherwise you wind up in a situation like San Francisco's, where people point to misleading numbers on vacant housing (and decry the abominable human greed) in order to distract from a decades-long failure to produce enough housing for people.

lnsru• 3 years ago

But why Budapest? People are doing there fine. All ex soviet block countries are doing fine actually.

PurpleRamen2• 3 years ago

There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over their heads and enough to eat.

Only on paper. Reality is not that simple. The problems are not solved with giving people food and shelter. Rich countries did that, they still do it, it solves nothing. People will stay hungry, and now they depend on it, and will also raise demand. In the past, we've seen horrible cases of charity destroying local economies, making people even more depending on charity. This can't be an answer for making the world a better place.

We can do better, but not with a simplistic view. It will make things just worse.

jimbokun5• 3 years ago

There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over their heads and enough to eat. It is a choice to deny it to them. Why?

Because the dictators where a lot of desperately poor people live will use their militaries to control donated food and goods to increase their control over the people.

jimbokun5• 3 years ago

Really, this should make you angry

We are all angrier than at any time I can remember, and it's not accomplishing anything.

We need to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric, and start implementing practical solutions, like what you describe.

jmyeet3• 3 years ago

We are all angrier than at any time I can remember, and it's not accomplishing anything

Because that anger is being directed towards culture war wedge issues. That's on purpose.

We need to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric ...

I'm more concerned with the direction rather than the intensity.

akira25012• 3 years ago

It is a choice to deny it to them. Why?

Because the choice to just give it to them will have consequences and will very likely fundamentally change the nature of the society we live in.

So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy. That's it.

That's one consequence. I highly doubt that would be the only one.

jiggywiggy2• 3 years ago

Somehow the forced coaching feels patronizing.

kvdveer4• 3 years ago

There already is the 'voedselbank', which does roughly the same thing without the life coach. People can choose what will help them best.

jiggywiggy2• 3 years ago

Not really sure why the fact that other services exist make this service less patronizing.

Basic assumption is, we know you need coaching, you probably won't take it, so we will bribe you with basic necessities.

It might work or might not, but it's patronizing for sure.

dandanua• 3 years ago

Meanwhile, in Russia some supermarkets use locks on garbage cans, so that poor won't gather around in the search for outdated food.

euroderf• 3 years ago

Meanwhile, some American stores were pouring motor oil over discarded food to prevent foraging, until exposure and a public outcry.

is_true• 3 years ago

Wow. That's bad in so many levels. One thing is to avoid other people to get the food but that method also pollutes a lot of water.

test1235• 3 years ago

is that not to protect themselves against lawsuits? A better solution would be to have a big disclaimer about taking discards at your own risk.

mtmail• 3 years ago

Same in Germany. A Lidl supermarket employee explained in a TV interview it's a liability issue though. Somebody could hurt themselves entering a garbage box. Also supermarkets worry people throw in their own trash.

sgerenser• 3 years ago

In the U.S. I frequently see dumpsters meant for store/office employee use locked, and the reason is always noted to prevent randoms from throwing their trash in there. They’re usually hauled away less frequently than residential trash cans and they don’t want it to fill up with bicycles, furniture, broken appliances, etc.

lm284694• 3 years ago

It happens in a lot of countries, not so long ago in France they'd spray bleach on the food before throwing it. It wasn't until 2016 that it was made illegal.

JumpinJack_Cash4• 3 years ago

Change my mind: The Netherlands are in the top percentile of every quality of life metric except for weather.

From pensions, to drugs, to sex work, to engineering they are always at the frontier.

No big tech but that's more a function of 'working to live' vs. 'living to work' than outright inability to mint unicorns.

ddorian432• 3 years ago

Programmer wages are pretty low compared to cost of living.

chaoz_• 3 years ago

Rent is not cheap, but if you are okay with 1 hour commute you can live in the Hague, Leiden or Utrecht. Less tourists also.

Btw, there are large companies in AMS (Booking, Amazon, Meta, Uber) and some financial shops. It's not comparable with US, but definitely in top3 in EMEA region.

dtech• 3 years ago

This is kind of an outdated notion. In the 90's NL was very progressive, but after 3 decades of conservative-neoliberal governments it's middling at most.

E.g. selling weed to stores is still illegal - massively funding the underworld because there's no legal supply - which is quite backwards compared to Canada & some US states. Or up until a few years ago NL was dead-last in the EU for amount of parental leave a father gets (2 days), which was only changed when the EU forced them to by setting a minimum. Most (semi-)public services like health, public transport, taxes and education are also performing poorly and/or very fragile after long periods of budget cuts and neoliberal policies.

JumpinJack_Cash4• 3 years ago

> massively funding the underworld because there's no legal supply

If the underworld only crime is to sell weed then what's the problem? It's just a matter of semantics. I think what you mean is that it's defacto legal but you have to chit-chat with some guy or gal who'd also try to sell you some of his/her music or a club entrance when they are DJ-ing as opposed to just ordering it on Amazon

The football ultras/hooligans phenomenon might also qualify as underworld but they mostly beat each others up

lr4444lr• 3 years ago

Can you keep it? As I read 1.55 births per woman, with population growth probably fueled by low skilled immigrant labor. Yeah, you might educate them in time to maintain that high standard of living, you might not.

mrsuprawsm• 3 years ago

There are a decent amount of big tech jobs here. Uber/Meta/Amazon have a local presence, there are many other non-FAANG tech companies HQ'd here (Booking.com, Adyen), and some household names that also hire remotely or have some presence here.

tmnvdb• 3 years ago

Housing affordability is a problem at the moment.

zachrip• 3 years ago

I moved to the Netherlands when I found out that I am going blind. I really enjoy it here - it's very accessible which is my number one need; but with that accessibility comes a more peaceful and active lifestyle. I'm starting a family here and I've been very impressed all around about the process. It makes being a good parent much easier: parental leave, cheap birth, government takes care of things like vaccinations/baby checkups, parks are everywhere, and many dads take "papadag" on Wednesday off from work to spend time with their kids. I'm really happy to be here and I appreciate all of the benefits that come with it. I had to start a business to get a visa but despite all of that hard work it's still very worth it to me.

AdrianB14• 3 years ago

I have a relative that is an university professor of some social sciences in the Netherlands (not sure what is the exact title); she is very left-leaning, she attended college and doctoral degree in the US and she was a professor in US for more than 10 years and in the Netherlands for almost 15 years: even she is not that optimistic about the country. I had very long discussions in the past 10 years (we spend family vacations together) and she believes the Netherlands is better in many aspects than US, but there are areas where it is a lot worse. The most obvious ones: healthcare, quality of services and social relations (including large scale xenofobia, not so well hidden).

throw_pm23• 3 years ago

* Attitude towards food. In many workplaces, universities, schools, etc. a doughnut with some syrup and colored candy sprinkled on it, or a sad sandwich of a lettuce between two slices of bread is seen as an acceptable lunch. Compared to the Netherlands, the country of Germany or Nordic countries seem like the ultimate foodie-paradise, which tells it all. Perhaps dutch people consume all the good food for supper in the privacy of their homes, but this is invisible to the public.

EDIT: "frikandel-automaat" -- that beast tells all you need to know about a country's attitude towards food.

* Over-designed, over-controlled environment. If your idea of high quality of life is ultramodern office-buildings with no natural light offices, cities with every square foot either concrete or manicured lawn, buildings where you cannot open a window, and cannot water the plant because some central authority takes care of it, and every aspect of your life is efficiently managed, then go for it. I for one, need some unstructured "messiness" every now and then, otherwise I start to feel tense.

* people are nice and open though, society seems to work pretty well, and companies are efficient. No unicorns? ASML makes the machines that make the machines that make semiconductors, the modern world runs on them.

JumpinJack_Cash4• 3 years ago

> no natural light

What natural light? As I said weather is very gloomy there

nodelessness• 3 years ago

>frikandel-automaat

I was just inspired by FEBO listing themselves on UberEats. I thought if they could put themselves on UberEats, I can aspire to be anything in life.

olivier_martel• 3 years ago

You forgot a big one: Urban Planning.

user_78322• 3 years ago

The Netherlands are in the top percentile of every quality of life metric except for weather.

I’m not going to say it’s bad because on average it isn’t, but this is patently untrue. The Dutch housing market is one of the worst in the world, and doubly so if you don’t speak Dutch or are on a budget. Double whammy for international students.

The healthcare system is... let me put it this way. As an Indian, I’d rather be in the Netherlands if there was a critical medical condition. You’re not actively suicidal or dying in the next 24 hours? Excellent, join the seven month waitlist for getting medical help. Or become suicidal enough to go to the ER, and then back to the waitlist you go!

In India (and what I’ve seen/heard of UK/US private healthcare) you can get faster treatment if you can pay. Nothing of that sort here haha.

(I should probably add that Germany and Belgium have similar issues from what I’ve heard, though that doesn’t excuse the Netherlands.)

lm284694• 3 years ago

and doubly so if you don’t speak Dutch or are on a budget

Like literally anywhere in the world, in the vast majority of country if you show up poor and not able to speak the language you won't find a place to live.

andrewl• 3 years ago

This is the only thing I ever read about healthcare in the Netherlands (and it’s from 2007, so I have no idea what things are like now):

https://supasuze.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/the-dutch-midwife-...

I first read it back in 2007, but I’ve always remembered it.

gield2• 3 years ago

(I should probably add that Germany and Belgium have similar issues from what I’ve heard, though that doesn’t excuse the Netherlands.)

For Belgium at least, these issues are not similar. Our housing prices are high in some cities but definitely not on the level of the Netherlands. And the waiting list for medical help is much less of an issue here.

Belgium definitely has their own issues (often issues that the Netherlands don't have), but the issues you listed are not as relevant in Belgium.

sofixa2• 3 years ago

I've heard relatively bad things about Dutch healthcare from people who have had to use it - basically the doctors will either give you vitamins, or antibiotics and operate, with little nuance inbetween. Maybe it was "foreign student/young person" bias though.

mettamage3• 3 years ago

Dutch healthcare has many issues, also for non-foreigners.

gattilorenz• 3 years ago

If they prescribed antibiotics it’s either not true or the person was bordering septicaemia :)

asdff7• 3 years ago

They have too many nimbys that make housing expensive and squander their transit infrastructure. places like zunderdorp or ransdorp or really that whole area outside the a10 in amsterdam are ripe opportunities for housing that is perfectly bikeable to a whole lot of transit, currently being used for agriculture like it has been for the last millenia, and at this rate will continue to be used for that for the next millenia. Then that leaves you with adding housing in town to match job growth demand, seems logical right? But you can't because of height limit ordinances prevent adding any meaningful housing supply even if you were allowed to take down a historic building. This leaves you with the inevitable end result we have today, of Amsterdam being one of the most expensive places to live in Europe.

osener• 3 years ago

Better source: https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2023/01/a-fresh-approach-f...

madsbuch3• 3 years ago

Related to this: I started reading the Dutch author Rutger Bregman who iterates the point that poor people are just that: Poor. What they need is usually not help but money.

If one believes that this is a well intended effort that, however, is nothing more that a publicity stunt.

This appears to be a private initiative, and the only potential harm done here is iterating a point that is wrong (if one puts themselves in the Rousseau camp).

luckylion5• 3 years ago

I'm not sure that's true unless you account for different reasons for poverty. My neighbor is classified as poor, at least judging his official income. He's long-term unemployed by choice because he doesn't like working and has three children he'd have to pay alimony for if he had an income. So he instead does not work, get's ~60% of average net income (part of that isn't in cash, but paying for housing, health insurance etc), has lots of free time, and the state pays the alimony for him.

He's poor. Sure, doubling welfare payments would make him have more than the average citizen, but it wouldn't address the reason he's poor: because he doesn't want to work. If he worked, he'd have more money, but the calculation is simple: get 500 Euros + 77sqm flat + utilities + health insurance for 0 hours / year, or get 2500 Euros, pay everything yourself (including alimony) and have 300-400 Euros more a month for 1600 hours / year.

madsbuch3• 3 years ago

This is completely aligned with the initial point. Do you think a life coach would benefit him? It is clearly not because he is stupid. He just made some life decisions that you do not agree with.

insane_dreamer4• 3 years ago

groceries == money

madsbuch3• 3 years ago

I'd love to see you accept your monthly salary paid out in fresh vegetable leafs!

cushychicken5• 3 years ago

I have a ton of admiration for Dutch society and their social safety net. They do a great job culturally of remembering to treat everyone in a very humane manner. I wish America was more like them in that regard.

mr902105• 3 years ago

It’s ok to wish, but don’t you forget that the Dutch government has to solve problems for only 17 million people whereas the American government has 333 million people to take care.

Yes, America can learn from The Netherlands and other countries that are doing well, but it’s also reasonable to acknowledge how hard the American problem is.

Retric6• 3 years ago

I don’t get this argument. Government scales with population size just fine.

quacked• 3 years ago

More specifically the Dutch do not have multiple different multi-million strong underclasses with specific histories of dominated adversity. If you restrict the count of 333 million down to people who more closely match the financial and social background of the majority of the Dutch, you actually find a sub-nation inside America that's doing pretty well.

hazzahzah• 3 years ago

to be fair, the american government also have a bigger budget to play with. It's more of a priority issue than a scale issue.

PurpleRamen2• 3 years ago

It's not so much the size of the group, but the size of their problems and conflicts. USA is a very diversified country, with many different groups, cultures, interests and conflicts. Probably more than any other country in the world.

cushychicken5• 3 years ago

That seems like an acceptable excuse until you recognize that America also has about 23 times the GDP of the Netherlands - about 15% more money per person.

insane_dreamer4• 3 years ago

Maybe if the US didn't spend about $700 billion a year on its military, it might have money to take better care of its citizens.

It's not that the US doesn't have the means. It's just clear that its priority is not improving the lives of Americans.

quijoteuniv2• 3 years ago

Not everything is about the US.

dokem• 3 years ago

The Netherlands doesn't have tens of millions of citizens who refuse to engage with society in any meaningful way due to certain circumstances from many generations ago.

contravariant• 3 years ago

True but that is a vacuous statement as the Netherlands does not have tens of millions of citizens.

pipodeclown3• 3 years ago

Sure but isn't that a bit of a chicken-egg question? Why doesn't that the Netherlands have a huge poor underclass? Perhaps it has something to do with education at all levels being practically free and having social safety nets to ensure people don't fall through the cracks of the system ending up being homeless/destitute. I can tell you btw we do have a significantly large underclass, they just don't live on the street or in crime ridden ghettos.

recuter• 3 years ago

Of course, because they didn't keep them anywhere near themselves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Dutch_slavery

It did help them jumpstart their economical development by.. quite a lot tho and they have been very prudent with their money ever since.

l33t2333723• 3 years ago

Jim Crow, redlining, and other “official” forms of discrimination are not things from many generations ago.

paulmd2• 3 years ago

Many europeans would feel that precisely describes the roma. Hoo boy you wanna see a European get real ugly real fast, ask them about the Roma sometime. I'm not racist but with those people it's not really racism, it's just fact... type stuff will follow.

but like, at the end of the day thinking that "multiple cultural groups" is the problem basically a coded/socially-acceptable way of saying that we can't have a social safety net because of black/hispanic people (or whatever disfavored minority/immigrant group is currently en-vogue). It always has been.

mcv6• 3 years ago

Because we don't have tens of millions of citizens. But we do have people who, due to a wide variety of circumstances, are excluded from society or aren't very productive.

Our string of right-wing governments haven't done much to fix that (and sometimes made it a lot worse), but it's good to see citizens step up with these sort of projects.

I still think it's a failure of the system that this is even necessary.

madboston2• 3 years ago

Hey we can help everyone out there. Just not in my backyard bro and definitely not with my tax $$ /s.

themaninthedark4• 3 years ago

Interesting thing to me is: This is a story about a supermarket doing this on their own, not with government assistance or for a tax break and not with tax dollars.

The comments here are focused on how the US government should do more.

In the US we have churches and other religious institutions that would help with problems like this locally but as time has gone on, their membership has dwindled. Perhaps we should take a look at this article and try to get our companies to emulate what is being done here?

jiscariot• 3 years ago

Seems to me the US and Dutch societies have moved even further apart when it comes to social trust/social capital. e.g. Fukuyama's warned the US about in 1992's "Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity" has happened.

Everything gets easier, when you live in a high-trust society--unfortunately I don't think the US has been high-trust in quite some time. The bad part is that it takes generations to build and a decades to erode. My local bodega doesn't have free groceries, but rather a sign on the door prohibiting people from wearing ski masks, because groups were walking out with merchandise.

thunky• 3 years ago

As a counterexample, I know of a church (in the US) that gives away groceries for free. It's once a month, but they allow people to take home a good amount of food, including meats.

WeylandYutani2• 3 years ago

True but I wish that it wasn't necessary.

There was a time when people with a minimum wage job could afford to pay rent. Now the government has to pay 10k euro to help them make ends meet.

vinni2• 3 years ago

It’s amazing how many European countries have transformed from their colonial past.

mcv6• 3 years ago

This is actually proof of the official safety net failing. It's a private project funded by donations from people and local companies, not taxes. They're helping people who fell through the gaps of the social safety net.

For all it's progressive reputation, Netherland has had economically conservative right-wing governments for a long time now, and vocal extreme-right parties trying to push further into that direction, while the left has been dwindling. A couple of years ago there was a massive long-term scandal where poor families of a mixed background where treated as fraudulent criminals, which has done tremendous harm, and despite everything coming to light and everybody being upset about it, the main person responsible for it is still our prime minister.

It's good that the Dutch people and companies are stepping up where the government is failing, but it would be better if the government wasn't failing this sort of thing.

theodric• 3 years ago

Pity the reality of everyday isn't so friendly

INTPenis• 3 years ago

In Malmö, Sweden, they started a special store for people who can prove that their income is below a certain threshold. These people get a membership to the store and are granted access to goods that are much cheaper.

kazinator• 3 years ago

Things that wouldn't work in America, #47.

Amsterdam supermarket offers free groceries, life coach to struggling families

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