Comment by Yeul

Our politics does have some good parts. The political system we have is reasonably good. We have many political parties due to the proportional representation system. A single party is also unlikely to get a majority in parliament on their own, so parties with different backgrounds will have to work together to form a functioning government.

We do suffer from many political parties not willing to cause short term pain to improve long term outcomes. There are a few urgent issues going on in politics at the moment. Stuff where a decision needs to be made now and action should be taken. But the political parties do not want to make those decisions because they would inflict short term pain to some voters but would also improve the long term quality of life and economics of the Netherlands.

The worst part is that those issues have been known for a long time, but decisions were postponed over and over again because politicians didn't want to make the decision. Making the issues worse and more urgent over time.

At the same time populism is clearly on the rise in the Netherlands. A famous thing happening in a debate before the previous elections was a populist saying "But this woman cannot wait for the costs to be decreased, she needs it now." about decreasing a specific part of healthcare costs for citizens. Of course when the same populist became the biggest party during the elections, they never introduced anything to decrease that part of the healthcare costs.

Paradise is maybe a bit much. I’m German and from close to the border. Not right across but close enough that I visit a lot and my city is overran by Dutch people every Christmas.

On average as a tourist, the Netherlands is straight up just a better version of Germany. However a friend of mine recently moved. She’s from India, moved to Germany and then fell in love with a Durch man she ultimately married. In the process of moving she of course also switched into the Dutch health care system and that I think is legit worse than the German one but I don’t know how much that might be a symptom of a greater issue in the Netherlands.

The difference is essentially that the Dutch health care system tries to be profitable which is nice but then results in procedures not being covered by health insurance that a German doctor would find essential. Specifically preventative care and child birth related stuff where very problematic for her.

But otherwise I think the Netherlands takes a very practical approach to society. Is it annoying for cars to navigate Dutch cities? Yes but also it’s the only country where you can basically always take a bicycle anywhere and be safe. Is 100km/h on the highway annoying? Yes but it’s also the most relaxing drive in heavy traffic I can imagine. I think in a quite literal sense, i think the Dutch are less conservative than we are. The way things were done matters less which results in people seeing the benefits of change much more. Like everything car related. Youd start a riot in germany just doing parking like the Dutch do.