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- Hacker News
- Sufficiency versus maximization. China maximizes output given the means available (and treats ever-growing means as self-evidently good), the Netherlands treats wellbeing as the fixed end and then economizes on the means needed to reach it: effort, resources, consumption.
In words of E. F. Schumacher: "the maximum of wellbeing with the minimum of consumption"
by choutos - >In broad strokes, the Netherlands is a small-scale, low-tech society. Small-scale in that the city hall here has just one window open to queue at, whereas Shanghai has hundreds of citizen service centres, each with dozens of desks. There’s one ATM I know of, and a small library (which, I must say, had a lot of visitors, from young to old).
It sounds a lot like the author is comparing their small town in the Netherlands to one of the largest cities of China.
by heaney-555 - The author is comparing the experience of being well-off in a developing country to middle-class in a wealthy country. Of course they're going to be different lifestyles.by triceratops
- Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260806144459/https://jaapgroll...
Double archive: https://megalodon.jp/2026-0807-0016-17/https://web.archive.o...
by Cider9986 - This is the error I get trying to load the page (Firefox):
Secure Connection Failed
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified. What can you do about it?
The issue is most likely with the website, and there is nothing you can do to resolve it. You can notify the website’s administrator about the problem.
by aklemm - > And because everything is more expensive (both goods and labour), the Netherlands has a way bigger second-hand market
The Chinese aversion for second-hand stuff is cultural. You don't buy stuff that's been used by someone else because it brings energy from the previous owner.
by ragazzina - So many parallels with my experience moving from the US to France. Things aren't as easy to get done here. I'm pretty hot today with my struggling, portable AC. We have to wait for our laundry to air dry. I miss having a garage for tools and equipment. I missed American customer service. But: I can stroll to a bakery here. The vegetables taste. I walk my son to school and we hold hands and talk. It took me a while, but I don't start panicking when someone in the family needs to see a doctor or visit an urgent care center. And that customer service I missed? I realized that it often (but not always) manufactures a feeling of (in)superiority. I now assume loud cracks are engine backfires, not gunshots. On the other hand, I recognize that I was lucky to start life in the US. I wasn't the best student and I dropped out of college (albeit for financial reasons I may not have had here), but I was still able to get a good job in software development—credentials aren't as important in the US as they are in France, in my experience.by gabesullice
- This is an insightful article but it misses the elephant in the room, which is wealth inequality. In Shanghai, there is vastly more wealth inequality than in Netherlands.
The reason why nannies are affordable in China is because those nannies aren't paid very much, and consequently enjoy a much lower standard of living than their employers. In Netherlands, nannies are relatively expensive, but you the employee is much closer to the socioeconomic stratum to that of their employer.
Same goes for the other examples in the article. The author, having a fancy car, modern phone, etc, clearly enjoys a high level of wealth and is able to leverage that wealth to acquire goods and services at a high level. But that only works if there are people willing to provide those goods and services for a price that he can afford. The author didn't mention that the people who provide these goods and services do not enjoy the same benefits of those goods and services: their nanny cannot afford to hire a nanny, nor a Chinese EV, nor a giant smartphone.
The Netherlands has made the intentional decision to reduce wealth inequality and to achieve a fairer society. You can agree or disagree with that decision. But if I had to choose between NL and China, being cast into one country or the other without any choice about where in that society or what level of wealth, NL would be a much better option.
by hackyhacky