Downloaded from YTS.MX
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
Hey there! My name is Jonathan Blank, and I'll be your host for this movie making short
statements about tall people. In case you didn't know the Dutch are the world's tallest
people. I'm not sure why that's important, but I figured I'd mention it. In the US, where
I'm from, I've heard some people talk about social democracy like it's a nightmarish hell.
Back in the 1990s I made a documentary about Holland. At the time, it was the world's most
liberal country, and it sure didn't seem like hell to me. But maybe I was too young, too
naïve, and too stoned to realize how nightmarish it really was. So I decided to go back and
re-evaluate the place with my older, wiser, and more nearsighted eyes. What I ultimately
found will surprise you completely, partially, or not at all.
Here more people think, well have a nice life. Enjoy your life. And there's a lot of freedom.
You have a lot of free time and it's paid for … that's also for Americans sometimes
astonishing that you do not only get paid during your holidays you get extra pay to
enjoy your holidays. You get holiday pay on top of your pay?
Yes. Is that required by law?
Yeah. How much holiday pay do you get?
You get one month's pay extra. You get one month's pay extra? So you get
4 weeks of vacation? At least.
And that's paid? Yeah.
And then you get one extra month. Yeah.
So you're paid 13 months … Absolutely.
And you work 11 months. Yeah.
And that's by law. Yeah.
Dutch adults are ranked as the fifth happiest in the world, and according to the UN, Dutch children are the happiest kids in the world.
I went to speak with Professor Margreet de Looze, who is one of the authors of the UN study.
So what is the main problem kids have in the Netherlands?
That's a good question.
The UN had a study, and they said that kids in Holland are the happiest kids in the world.
Have you heard about that? Yeah we have.
Freedom and independence, fantastic communication with their parents. The dinner table, or the
breakfast table even, is an important part of a Dutch family, so everyone will sit around together.
The parents finish work on time to come home and eat with their kids.
Do you have to go?
I have to go soon.
All right, so we'll wrap up.
And then spend the time around the table talking
to each other, and that good communication carries on into the difficult teenage years.
In the UNICEF survey, Dutch teenagers had the best relationships with their mothers
and fathers of all the other countries surveyed.
All our children are biking because as a parent
and your child is 4, 5, 6, you give him the “sturen en handle” the steering wheel
of the bike so you are quite autonomous that you can bike, and being autonomous makes you
more happy then when you are not allowed to make your own decisions.
There’s a socially supportive climate in school.
What do you want to do do, Amber? Do you know? Law School.
You want to go to law school. Yeah
Oh really… high five! No.
Please.
And I think that's related to a larger cultural
characteristic of the Dutch society which is very low competitiveness, more emphasis
on cooperation, on inclusion.
The Dutch in a way already acknowledge this
understanding that their child will more likely not become the valedictorian.
In fact, they don't even have a valedictorian. They don’t have a valedictorian.
They don’t even know what that is, actually. I didn’t know what it was.
Really? Yeah.
I actually think that makes a dramatic difference in how children grow up of not being put on
a pedestal or … …Not being made to compete with other children
but to be the best you can be yourself. So we might not have superstars, but one thing
that I misunderstood as an American because I hate the word average it's something that's
just ingrained in our society. Who wants to be average when we can be great?
But what the Dutch accomplished within the education system is to have a really high level average.
Much higher than what Americans would consider average.
I'm going to email this to my sister immediately after this interview because she was valedictorian.
Oh dear.
Surprisingly. While Dutch kids are very happy,
some moms I spoke with are unhappy about Dutch maternity leave policies that give women 16
weeks of paid leave while men get only two days.
There used to be a woman's party. Is there still a woman's party?
In politics? Yeah.
We do have an animal party. But we don’t have a specific women’s party.
But there are some parties, mostly left wing parties, for whom gender equality is an important issue
and who, for example, propose paternity leave. On some lists of gender equality the Netherlands
score very high and on others they score very low. So if we look at the percentage of women
who are active in the labor force we score very high, but they don't work full time so
they won't reach the top.
Everything is equal until you get children
and then suddenly you feel the difference between men and women. Should I not work?
Should I not have had children. What's the decision? There's no decision there. I always
thought of feminists like they are angry women. It was not appealing to me, but then I thought,
well if this is what I have to be, fuck I’m a feminist. So then I wrote the book about
why we're working like we do and what we can do about it.
Did people get offended by that title? We say “fuck” a lot in Holland.
We don't give a fuck.
You fuck it up for your children.
Really fucked up big-time.
What the fuck!
Nobody has any fucking idea who the fuck anybody is anymore.
Illegal as fuck.
Um…. fuck off
Fuck off!
Eh…. fuck off.
I’m telling you this is really fucked up shit.
What was the word you used? Snoezel…
Snoezelzorg.
It’s when you have a disability or when
you are physically challenged you can also get sexual service, and in the Netherlands
we have a special term for that which is Snoezelzorg. And is that covered by the insurance here?
For some people yes.
It’s interesting that the government would
pay for someone to go to a sexologist. Um.
So how does it work. Do you go to your doctor and get a prescription?
Yeah, although it has changed lately. You can now also decide yourself. You don’t
have to go to your doctor.
My sex care practitioner work is for clients
who are mentally or physically disabled. Do you have sex with people?
Yes I do. Only safe. Do you pay taxes on that? Of course.
Why shouldn’t I? You seem like you're comfortable being out
and open about this. I think it's important to break taboo.
And why is that important? It’s important that this kind of sex care
is going into Insurance. You live in a small town, right. Do your neighbors
know what you do for a living? Some do.
Do you get any negativity towards you? No, I don’t.
Can you teach a guy how to have multiple orgasms?
That’s the standard question.
I mean these insurance companies they have a certain a discretionary, I mean certain
services they can say we do this, or we don't do it, and if it they don't do it you can
appeal and you can go to the court of law and you know you may get your point or not.
Are there people freaking out about that here? No. But if everybody would do they probably would.
So if like 6 million males would, you know … then there would be a problem I guess.
The Dutch national healthcare system has a high approval rating and is ranked as one
of the best in the world. In this country almost the entire provider
landscape in healthcare is private nonprofit. It’s a private scheme but with all kinds
of public regulations, risk-adjustment. Of course, more income dependent, but it's very
much comparable to the Obamacare Affordable Care Act system actually.
There is a certain kind of a basic package for everyone. It doesn't matter how rich you
are etcetera. And there is a certain amount of money you have to pay for that. For a normal
citizen that's which you have to pay privately is about 100 euros a month.
Do you have the same health insurance as a senator as say my cameraman Bas?
Absolutely. Yeah. The same hospitals, same doctors.
In 2006 it was determined by law that no family in the Netherlands could spend more than 5%
of their income in healthcare. Do you have the health insurance CEOs making
millions like in the US. No, no, no, no. There is a law that states
that everybody who works with public money, and healthcare is considered to be public
money, is not allowed to earn more than the prime minister.
The Dutch national healthcare system provides a comprehensive policy which covers a very
broad range of treatments that even includes gender reassignment.
When you feel like you're transgender you go to the VU Medical Center Hospital here
in the Netherlands. They have a gender team, the biggest gender team in the world I believe,
and then you have access to hormones if you desire, to surgeries if you desire that are
covered by your Healthcare which is amazing. And you don't have people protesting saying
I don't want to pay for that? No.
Interestingly, the VU University Medical Center used to be a Christian Hospital it has a Christian
background and here was where it started in the 1970s. And it’s said it's out of a sort
of gratefulness, maybe even because it were Christian doctors working here that it could happen here.
If you live in a space as we do where it’s
relatively safe of course there's also hate crimes here of course there's also violence
here but the social space is safer for trans people.
It's increasing every year like many countries and in some countries it's even increasing
100% every year. So that's what we also see, very sharp increase in referrals.
I really like your story about the humor. Yeah, it’s awful.
The people laughing at your jokes more now. Yeah.
While they’re the same jokes. While they’re the same stupid jokes.
How old do you have to be? So that's what the VU Medical Center is actually
famous for is treating kids.
We also see the young ones before puberty,
but we only see them most of the time for it for just diagnostic and a short advice.
And then they have this revolutionary treatment of hormone blockers, puberty blockers.
I think here in the Netherlands we were the first that started providing blockers.
It has come to be called The Dutch approach. What do the blockers do?
So they block puberty development and once you stop the blockers puberty from the birth
assigned sex will start again. So it's a fully reversible treatment, but at the same time
you don't develop the sex characteristics of the gender you don't experience yourself in.
Coverage of gender reassignment surgery is
part of a larger acceptance for alternatives to traditional gender definitions in the Netherlands
and Dutch courts have ruled that parents no longer have to specify a gender on their children's birth certificates.
LGB population.
LGBT you should say nowadays.
LGBTQ.
LGBTQ…I.
Intersex is being born with more or less.
Ambiguous...Ambiguous...
No. Because then it gets binary again.
Why should we actually have genders?
Maybe we should skip it all together and just talk about people.
There are 4 basic models for healthcare around the world.
Single-payer healthcare delivers 100% coverage
by having the government provide and pay for healthcare through taxes, just like public education.
The government pays doctors, hospitals, and drug costs, keeping expenses down.
It's used in countries like the UK, Spain, and throughout Scandinavia.
Single-payer Insurance achieves 100% coverage by having the government run a single health
insurance program that everyone pays into. Since there is only one insurance company
they have low overhead and can negotiate better prices.
It's used in countries like Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Social health insurance provides 100% coverage
using a private insurance system financed by employers, workers, and taxes.
Though healthcare is private, the system is not for profit and tightly regulated which keeps costs down.
It's used in countries like Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands.
(Beep) the poor healthcare.
In poor countries patients pay for whatever they can afford.
The basic rule is that the rich get treatment while the poor get sick and die.
It's how it is in most of Africa, India, China, and South America
The maximum inefficiency model.
The US is the only developed country that doesn't provide
universal healthcare. It's also the country that spends the most on healthcare by far.
Many workers get insurance through their jobs, the elderly use Medicare, veterans have the VA,
and the destitute use Medicaid. Everyone else gets access to a doctor if they can raise
money on GoFundMe.
Where did the Netherlands’ reputation for tolerance come from?
It started already in the 17th century in. Holland has as it’s called its “Golden Age” where it started practically to rule
the world as merchants. Not so much as an imperial power, but as merchants, because
it was a republic, cities were important and in the cities the merchants the big merchants
were the boss and merchants don't like conflicts because that's bad for business.
To learn about the Netherlands’ Golden Age, I headed over to the country's national art
museum, the Rijksmuseum. Well the Golden Age is say roughly from the
late 1500s until the late 1600s. We generally refer to it as like the 17th Century, but
the real power was roughly between 1620 and 1670. Our saints are the painters of the Golden Age.
Frans Hals and Jan Steen, Johannes Vermeer, the big guys from the 17th Century. But in
the same belief system there's only one God and that is Rembrandt runs right up there
in the place where in an actual church you would find the altar. That sacred space is
reserved for this museum for the Night Watch.
And this is a bust of a mayor called Andries de Graeff and the way he poses tells you everything about the obsession
we have in the Golden Age and that is the Roman Empire, the republic as a state form. Y’know they have the renaissance
body language, the renaissance elbow. This is power. If you’re with your hand like
this it’s always power. I’m going to remember that.
Yeah, you have to do it. If you want to imitate Mussolini you need both hands for that.
I don't know if I want to go that far. Well you have the same hairdo.
But for some people the Golden Age wasn't so golden.
The Dutch, they don't want to acknowledge that their Golden Age was financed a lot by
slavery and that's why Surinamese people are here.
A lot of the Dutch youth,
they don't even know why Surinamese people are here.
Did you guys learn about the history of the Dutch slave trade at school?
Yeah, we did. You did?
Yeah, we did. We got all the history of the Netherlands from start to finish until now
but the slave trade is a really painful topic so you get it. This is how it was and
why we did it. Next topic.
Are there any paintings that deal with the slave trade? No, we do have some artworks that deal with
slavery as such but we have to go down one floor for that. That's in the 19th century department,
the last century we still owned Suriname.
So slavery is more here in this corner.
So out of the whole museum this is all you have on slavery?
Yes, it is quite small. Doesn’t that seem strange to you?
Of course it’s so easy to use Rembrandt as a banner and show all the greatness and
the good things we have done. But the Dutch are more and more trying to get to terms with
the dark side of their history very much spurred on by people who are really vocal about it.
I learned about the Golden Age. I learned about how rich the Netherlands was, but I
never learned the downside of it. I never learned about how Amsterdam is also built
with slave money, and that is something that's resurfacing. That's something that is being
taught. There is a lot of awareness being created.
To find out more about the black experience in Holland, I went to talk to an old friend,
Guilly Koster. As usual, it was hard to get him to tell me what he really thought.
I have a vlog and this vlog is called “Fok Jou.”
All of the black men I know, and they're not criminals, we are just being picked on. Even
if you're the goalkeeper of the Dutch national team, the police will stop you and ask you
why are you driving a Mercedes.
One major flashpoint for racial tensions is
the Dutch custom known as Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, who is supposed to be Saint Nicholas’s
black sidekick. As part of Dutch Christmas celebrations many people dress up in blackface,
and black people aren't too happy about it,
The words silly and unrealistic work were redefined when I learned that Saint Nicholas travels with what was consistently described
as 6 to 8 black men. I asked several Dutch people to narrow it down, but none of them
could give me an exact number. It was always six to eight which seems strange seeing as
they’ve had hundreds of years to get a decent count. The six to eight black men were characterized
as personal slaves until the mid-50s when the political climate changed, and it was
decided that instead of being slaves they were just good friends. I think history is
proven that something usually comes between slavery and friendship. A period of time marked
not by cookies and quiet times beside the fire but by bloodshed and mutual hostility.
You can have the biggest fight about Zwarte Piet here in The Netherlands. The biggest
fight. The biggest controversy about a … schlemiel.
So it was like the 5th of December. You know the night where we're supposed to open up all the presents. Zwarte Piet is going to
come and bring a stack of gifts, and we had a ring on the doorbell. My daughter whips open
the door, and there standing in the door is Stanley the Surinamese guy who delivers packages
on our block. My daughter she's like awwww, and I'm trying to get to the door before she
gets there. I’m like nooooo. And my daughters like Zwarte Piet! And y’know, the American
in me was thinking like my god my daughter is a racist.
My mom used to tell us this is a weird tradition. Don't, don't, don't, don't, you know take
whatever you want to take the gifts and stuff, but this is really weird. You need to know
that this is not okay. So I was raised with that notion, and the uncles, the black men
in the refugee camp, would be like ‘oh my god there we go again every year.'
But public opinion on Black Pete is rapidly changing and the general consensus seems to
be that it's time for him to evolve.
It isn't hallelujah here in the Netherlands.
There are some racial problems, but overall if you look at all the other countries it's
best to be in in Holland in to be a Dutch woman.
I still think that The Netherlands is the best.
And why is that? I love this country. I'm happy with our healthcare
system. I'm happy with the political system. I'm happy with our educational system. And
I'm happy with the fact that there are possibilities to work on all these levels.
In my opinion there's two types of integration. You have the melting pot. You give up who you are and
I give up who I am and we become something new, we melt together. This is what we have
been trying, but it's not working. So I suggest we try the salad bowl model where the carrot
is the carrot and the tomato the tomato the onion the onion, and we're still in this big
bowl together and say ‘oh you're the onion. Fine I'm the tomato. Let's meet. Let's make
the salad. You know let's live together.' Rather than becoming I want to become a tomato.
An onion is never going to become a tomato. I'm okay with this as long as we can get rid
of the capers. The capers yeah. Motherfuckers need to get out.
One of the things Holland is well known for is its legalized prostitution with a visit
to the red light district a common tourist attraction. But like many old Dutch institutions
prostitution also has been changing.
Prostitution is legal, but only in a very
small frame. We have a system where city councils are allowed to create their own rules within
a certain frame and that makes it for a lot of sex workers impossible to be an independent
sex worker in the city they live in. Here in Amsterdam you can only work behind the
window as an independent sex worker, and you can work from a brothel, but then you need
to work under the license of the brothel owner. But if you want to be like an independent
sex worker working from your own home or in your own home that's something that's not
allowed. There are 292 windows left and we're coming from around 400.
And what's behind the move to reduce the number of windows?
We say gentrification. The city council says human trafficking, but there wasn’t really
a legal base to do that so a lot of brothel owners were just bought out with tax money.
Are people okay with that? Yeah, because if you frame it as fighting
human trafficking, people are easy to stand with that claim, but a lot of sex workers
lost their window and to us it's very problematic. In 2000 we had the ban on brothels lifted
and we saw that there were around 1,300 licensed places and now we are around 700.
So instead of having more safe, legal places to work we are having less of those spaces
and we are not allowed to create our own work and create our own businesses on our own terms.
So that's problematic, and we try to get rid of that law.
Interestingly, Yvette’s organization is partially funded by the government.
We’ve got a big project fund from our ministry of safety and justice.
And they give you money? Yes.
Well that's kind of cool. That is kind of cool and it’s also, it’s
very important if you want to have a healthy and meaningful policy on sex work you have to include sex workers.
Prostitution in the Netherlands is regulated.
In most cities you will need a license to operate legally, and it means that we have
to follow a very strict rules. There are a lot of measures that the Amsterdam city council
took to make sure that everybody that works in prostitution does so out of their own free will.
And there's also a lot of responsibility for the people that for example have an escort
agency or that own a club. How much does it cost?
It start with 2 hours and for two hours a client pays 700 Euros and then it can go up
to well like whatever. Do you take credit cards?
We do, with a 10% service charge.
Probably the biggest factor in the slow demise of Holland's red light district is the same thing that's disrupting every industry - the internet.
When we first started, the internet was like
a small thing so then you had the Yellow Pages. The Yellow Pages were really like the main
communication means at that time and now of course it’s the internet.
How do you get your clients? From an advertisement on Kinky.nl
Is that where most people advertise? Oh yeah it is a very busy there.
And what is your ad say? 25 year old trans girl. Come visit me. I have
some nice of pictures also. Something like that.
And how many emails do you get a day? I think 60 messages.
So you could be really busy if you wanted to.
Yeah, but not everybody comes. And sometimes it is just for 'I want to have a nice a conversation.'
That doesn't bring me money. You don't charge for conversation?
No. Why not? Maybe you should.
Well that's another thing.
Simona, Janey’s partner is, believe it or not, a former Italian championship professional wrestler who moved to the Netherlands.
When you have to get a window if you are in the day it’s 80, 110 Euros. If you are in
the night 140, 150. That means that you need 3, 4 customers only for pay the cost. So working
at home is better.
Is looking for a trans prostitute super popular?
Yeah. It is.
It is. And I think it will be more over time.
Why do you think that's so popular? People are sick of a normal thing I think.
They want something special, They want to see a nice a woman and then with something
special and so in this case it is my dick.
The trans have more clients than the women.
When I was working in the windows, the girls had 1 and I had 4.
Do you feel free here in the Netherlands? Yeah. It is a good thing here.
Have you experienced discrimination? Oh yeah.
Like what? When I’m walking on the street and people
say ‘hey man’ or ‘faggot’ or that kind of shit.
Do you find it very much by the neighborhood? Oh yeah.
So what are the worst neighborhoods? Basically where the Muslims are.
They’re the ones calling you names? Yeah they say everything to me.
Do you feel unsafe? For me, I don't feel unsafe there because
I just a walking there and then do my thing. But I can understand for many people they do.
Are you mad at the Muslims?
It is not mad, but that they are different I think. They think like that okay. But the
funny thing is the next day I have the same men that is a calling me and want to fuck.
So you get Muslim men?
Oh yeah. A lot of them. A lot of them. What percentage? Do you have any idea?
I think 60%.
What changes have you seen in the last 20 years?
It’s much more conservative and also what’s
really a very big difference is that now a lot of the times when people talk about prostitution,
they talk about human trafficking like it's the same. But the service itself not that
much changed actually. You know sex is sex and sex was sex 20 years ago so not much difference
in that. I still think it's an amazing business and I really enjoy it … wonderful with the
girls. We've got great clients. We’ve got great staff. So even things might be getting
a bit more difficult but it's still I mean there's so much more pros than there are cons.
It's part of my identity. It's part of my career identity. It’s part of my sex positive
identity. I’m a feminist. I feel much more liberated often when I do sex work then when
I do something else.
I love my job.
What do you say to people who say you can't be happy doing a job like that?
When people say me that I always say to them I am like a psychologist. You go to them.
You put out all your bad feelings, bad things and the psychologist make you happy. I take
other things from you, but in the end I make you happy.
Yeah for me it is just a normal job, I mean I sell my body and for example you are
selling a cars or I don't know. Well movies hopefully.
Or movies … I don't know.
Polderen they call it. You know … to look at it from all sides and then to look at the best possible solution.
Polders are pieces of land in between dykes that have been reclaimed from the sea.
For the Dutch they've come to represent a way of working together to ensure common interests.
The Dutch society was built up according to pillars. Like you had the Catholics, you had
the Protestants, you had the socialist and then you had the liberals. But they all have
to kind of work together so there’s this consensus mentality where everybody gets a little bit.
The landscape requires a good deal of common
cause and so then you do have to overcome your religious differences or you do have
to overcome your class differences in order to work together. So the Dutch, despite the
fact, or maybe precisely because of the fact that they were a kaleidoscope different convictions
had to find ways to work together nevertheless and defend themselves against common enemies including the water.
But not everyone likes the polder model.
The polder model sucks and we have to get rid of that.
Marianne Thieme is the chairperson of the Party for the Animals, the world's first political
party that represents the rights of animals other than humans.
Traditional politicians do not have the answers for the current problems. I call them fossil
politicians. The politicians are dictated by the GDP. We want to get rid of this index.
The index should be safety, health, the index of happiness, the index of sustainability.
And that will change our way of thinking. We've got two seats in the senate and 5 in
the lower house and then 45 in regional parliaments, city councils. So yeah, we are growing.
By focusing on animal rights and by focusing on our food one touches a lot of other big
problems in the world. The fact that the factory farming industry is one of the major contributors
to greenhouse gas emissions, to biodiversity loss, to a manure problem that's got out of
hand. If you try to save an animal life at the same time you try to save a human life.
In fact you try to save the planet.
In the US party animal means something totally different.
I know, but we like to party as well, so it’s no problem.
Thanks in part to the Party for the Animals,
the Dutch have some of the strongest animal rights legislation in the world. They've also
received a lot of attention because they no longer have any stray dogs and every shelter is no kill.
In Holland, municipalities became responsible for animals
on the street. So it means when someone sees a cat or a dog without an owner, the municipality
has to take care of it and so they are paying the shelters.
Do they have an animal party in the us?
I don't know. I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
We barely have a party for humans in the US.
Farm animals have a significant effect on climate change, especially for the Dutch,
because the Netherlands is the world's second largest exporter of agricultural products after the United States.
I just came back from the amazon and there's
a lot of soy being exported. Most of the soy goes to china to feed the 700 million pigs
in china. But the second destination for soy from the amazon is The Netherlands because
there’s about a hundred million animals kept here. The Netherlands imports soy from brazil
that grows in brazil on an area size of half of the Netherlands.
Beef is the main cause of global deforestation in the world.
20 years ago I think people quite rightly
saw The Netherlands as one of the advanced countries on environmental issues. I have
to say I think we lost that position. There is there is no … at least if you look at
it from government policies or ambitions and all that. In any research that is conducted
by the European union on the state of environment we are always at the bottom.
What happened to Dutch environmental policies in the last 20 years?
I think are two important factors. And one is sort of what you saw a globally especially
after 9/11 also in the Netherlands there was a rise of populism. And there was sort of
the swing to the right. And I think the other thing is what people underestimate is the
Netherlands is a truly deeply fossil fuel-based country. Shell is Dutch company. We have the
largest petrochemical ports in Europe. We have the largest gas reserve in Europe. We
have one of the biggest transport industries.
I'm a friend of the then CEO of Shell, Jeroen van der Veer,
and he and I talked a lot in the 90s and early 2000s when he became CEO
and he really set up a whole division for sustainability within Shell. And it was only
that the shareholders said no no this is too costly. A significant part of our climate
agenda moved into a adaptation, and over the last 10 years billions are now being invested
in protecting our country against sea level rise. I'm a coastal engineer. I say, OK, maybe
we can manage one meter, maybe we can manage 2 meters. But whether we could manage 4 meters
or 6 meters, this even looks to me beyond control. I'm optimistic, but on sea level
rise there is no reason to be optimistic.
But the environmental news isn't all bad.
The climate change commitments of Dutch banks are good compared to many of their peers.
So we are happy, for example, that ING, by far the largest Dutch bank, has committed
to not finance the coal sector any longer.
We have together with Norway the biggest number
of electric cars. We have the biggest number of charging stations. We have the highest
rate of recycling of all kinds of materials be it paper, glass, and plastic.
I don’t know if you saw the movie that was put out, that the Dutch railways put out.
You should look for it. You see the CEO of the Dutch railway companies tied to one of
the old traditional windmills and he's saying look we’re 100% wind power let's go.
One of the more interesting developments in Dutch environmental policy comes from the
trailblazing Urgenda case where a group of environmentalists took the Dutch government
to court for failing to meet its climate change obligations.
In the last 20 years we have had many right-wing governments that thought that the market should
do the work and the market doesn't do this work. And then it was a member of our think
tank, Roger Cox, wrote a book that's called Revolution Justified, and in this book he
makes the analysis that it’s needed to prevent climate change much quicker than we do right
now and that the only democratic way that he could see that could still function was
to go to court. And actually nobody in the Netherlands and abroad expected that we would
win. But we won and then within half an hour it was all over the world that the judge has
said that the that the Dutch government should do 25% less CO2.
Urgenda’s victory is the first time that a judge has legally required a government
to act on climate change. It's transformed the debate in Holland and inspired similar
cases in many other countries including the United States.
There is an enormous urgency to stay below 1.5 degree, and then we should really be on
zero fossil fuels in 2030. Is it easy? No of course not. It’s an enormous task and
it will demand a lot from everybody. But it’s still possible and in 15 years’ time it’s
not possible anymore. Then we are too late.
I made an agreement with my wife to protect
my relation. And I promised her I will stop drinking in 2030, I will stop smoking in 2040,
and I will quit with my girlfriend in 2050. This relation is the relation between the
humanity and planet earth which is fixed in Paris.
Maybe if you give up your girlfriend first you can save your marriage and then give up drinking and smoking later.
Holland 100 years ago we were heating our
houses with coal. Then we found the gas, and then the government said hey that's a good
idea. Do you have any idea how many years does it need to put every house in Holland
from coal to gas? It was ten years. So it's possible.
If you think about projects before like Project Manhattan or Project Apollo, when those started
the technology nor the funds were available to do what they had set out to do. And I think
with this project we have the technology we have sufficient means financially to actually
fix this planet … to take the plastic out of the ocean, to put the fish back, to heal
the soil of this planet, and to take out of the air what doesn't belong there. It's completely
doable from a technological and financial point of view. We just need to do it.
One feet before the entrance of the coffee shop if your frisked, your fucked. One foot
inside the coffeeshop, you’re okay. It works, and it’s been working now since 1976.
The Dutch marijuana policy is known as gedogen, which can be roughly translated as tolerating
something you don't like. There are hundreds of licensed coffee shops where marijuana is
sold, but technically marijuana is still illegal.
We do get regular checkups. They can walk
in here and they will search the premises, they will frisk us, but only after we've given
written permission. And what if you don't sign that paper?
They get upset. But one has to consider that the product itself is still illegal.
Anyone who is handling the product outside of the coffee shops is liable to be arrested
and thrown in jail. Does that really happen?
I don't want to say it, but we probably have the most laid-back and laziest police force
in the western world.
The first year we grew a couple of kilos and
the second year we had a thousand female plants there. And then we were busted by one policeman
who came up on his bicycle and he said ‘well guys I don't know what you're doing out here.’
And we were saying ‘oh, we are enjoying the outside life and we like to grow vegetables.’
He said ‘don’t give me that bullshit. I don't know what you're doing here and I
don't want to know it either.’ And we were like ‘oh okay.’ And then he said ‘bye-bye.’
And the whole thing took maybe 15 minutes, and we were busted.
Wernard Bruinig is a legendary figure in Dutch marijuana circles because in the 1970s he
opened the very first coffee shop called Mellow Yellow.
The problem with cannabis are the people who don't use it.
Maybe I should smoke pot again.
I quit school and I joined a group of hippie friends.
The smoking was free as long as you could sell it to your friends. We gave them
tea each time they came to visit us. And the standard joke was y’know we should maybe
charge money for the tea so that we don't need to work for money. That was the basic
idea behind starting a coffee shop. So in 1973 we started the coffee shop and one
of us would sit in front of the bar pretending he was just a visitor. And this person had
a big bag in which he held several kinds of hash and grass. The law didn't provide
the possibilities to close down a shop just because there was a customer inside who had
a lot of hash or grass with him. This coffeeshop was a huge success and we were also an example
to a lot of other people who saw our success and thought we can do it also and we can
do it better. And we called ourselves the green team. And the idea of the green team
was to turn Holland into the Jamaica of Europe. And that's what happened.
Surprisingly there are a lot less Dutch marijuana smokers then in California.
That's certainly something to be proud of as a Californian. From Berkeley.
Wow … Man …
Paradise… 6 AM in the AMS. It doesn’t stop.
It doesn’t stop. Everywhere hectares and hectares of our greenhouse genetics. Look here.
What a place. So much pot.
This was the Strain Hunters world book of guiness records for marijuana, that’s for sure.
See you on the next i-report for Strain Hunters. Bye bye.
Coffeeshops are technically illegal. We always have been prosecuted when they catch us with
more than 500 grams. They can take away your license. They can cause all kinds of other
problems. In the last 3 years, the last 20, 30 cases, the judge threw out the DA and said
‘ok he’s guilty but I give 0 days prison.’ So now it’s a big riot. Even the justice
minister is saying the judges are not allowed to do this, because they're sitting on the
chair of the legislator. But the judges said ‘listen you had 30 years to solve this problem.
They're paying tax. We think they’re legal. We think they’re contributing to society.
You go organize it. We are not prosecuting anymore.’
Do you love what you do? Yeah, I think I have the greatest job on earth.
It’s so nice because it's very diverse. You know I make movies, I make seeds, I travel
a lot, I meet a lot of very interesting characters, and I can be high at the same time.
You can't sell mushrooms? No. Not anymore.
You sell truffles. Yeah.
What's the difference between a mushroom and a truffle?
It's the same organism only mushrooms are the part the blooms above the ground, truffles
are the part that grows in the ground. But they did ban the mushrooms in 2008, so we
only have now the truffles left. But it is the same organism. It’s also the same active ingredient.
So those are fresh?
Yeah. They're not dried?
No because that's illegal. We cannot process the product and drying is processing the product
and by law that’s illegal. I don't see how drying is processing.
We either but … That's the law …
That's the law we have to follow. How did they come up with that?
I have no idea.
Are there problems with psychedelic mushrooms here?
There are with tourists.
With tourists. Generally we see people getting into trouble
with especially mushrooms - magic mushrooms as they’re called - in Amsterdam and it
causes the first aid a lot of trouble. But that's generally because they don't realize what
sort of potency they have. If you look at what's typical about the way Dutch people
who take drugs look at drug use they're quite responsible in how they deal with this. So
they are aware of these risks and they try to sort of use in a rather responsible way.
We know that we should always tell them there is no safe way of using drugs so be aware
and you are taking risks, but if you are doing so, do it as responsible as you can. And we
sort of enable them to use as responsible as possible.
3 days a week you can come here and test your ecstasy and other drugs. And we test them
on the quality, so what's in it and how strong is it. We have 32 testing facilities in the
Netherlands which are all connected. So as soon as we pick out a tablet that has something
in it that shouldn't be in there then we started warning system. So there's warnings going
out on television, on the national news, and through the internet, all the social media
systems. But also we hang up posters in all the clubs and parties so people know for example
you can't use this pill.
So the government is paying ... Yeah.
to test people's ecstasy tablets? Yeah.
What do you say to someone who says that that's encouraging drug use.
No, I don’t think that’s encouraging drug use. We did research because of this and what
a lot of those people said is that it actually pointed out that ecstasy use was kind of risky
because else why would you have to test an ecstasy pill. Our ecstasy use in the Netherlands
is quite as high as a lot people have experience with ecstasy. But then ecstasy is not a substance
which people get addicted to. But if you look for example at heroin use and heroin addiction
or opiate addiction that's very low in the Netherlands. The good thing is about Dutch
drug policy is that health goes first. Of course certain drugs in the Netherlands are
illegal, which means that you're not allowed to sell them in and you're not allowed to
have them on you, but as soon as you take them it's not legal anymore. You can't be
punished for that. We have the focus that we don't want to marginalize the user. If someone
has a problem with drugs you just want to help them and not get them a rap sheet so
that it's going to be more difficult to get a job and they get into this negative spiral
in which their addiction will start all kinds of other problems. And the Dutch government
has decided to stop that and to look at a different way.
So your show is funded by the government? Yeah.
Do you get into trouble for that?
No, because it's for educational matters. Yeah.
I never had an orgasm before that episode, and I discovered my orgasm. So yeah that was
that was a pretty personal episode. And I got a lot of response about that.
It was my first time, and I want to discover my inner whore I said. I want to discover
my inner whore.
Young people will experiment with sex and
with drugs. Let’s not to put it in the taboo atmosphere, but let's educate them and get
it into the light so that people talk about it instead of doing it secretly, dangerously,
illegally. So I think that's a very noble thing to do.
Like next week we’re making an item about ecstasy, and we're going to use it on television
and we're going to show our young watchers how to take it properly.
Some of our episodes are really in your face. So for example we have had some beautiful
stories about … let's say ... anal sex.
You’re discovering the world of the anus.
Yeah. Anal stretching … fisting. And what are the topics you are …
You’re discovering the world of the anus. Yeah.
Does that mean that you meet a lot of assholes? Uh … well, not yet, but I'm speaking with
people now who are anus stretching, and I really want to follow someone who wants to
be fisted. Like fisting.
Do you get any pressure from the government what to make, what not to make, what they'd like to see,
what they'd like you to stop showing? No. No.
Zero. Zero.
Spuiten & Slikken is so popular that it's spawned a spinoff program called Drugslab.
It's an educational show in which three hosts are taking the drugs that the audience wants
them to try so the audience don't have to do it themselves.
That’s the slogan. Yeah, that’s the slogan.
We use drugs so you don’t have to. Do you wear a lab coat lab coat?
A lab coat? No, we don’t. We’re not professors. We thought about it, but no.
Did you guys bring some drugs?
No, we did not. No, we didn’t.
So this is the Dutch government paying to show kids doing drugs on television?
Exactly.
What are some of the drugs you've taken on Drugslab?
Oh … a lot ... Yeah.
Do you want me to make a list? Sure.
Okay. MDMA, ecstasy, cocaine, DMT, GHB, Salvia Divinorum, 2CB psychedelic.
Aren’t those are illegal? Yeah.
They are. Yeah.
So you’re doing something illegal on television. Yeah.
And you don't get into trouble for that? Um … No.
Aren't you running out of drugs to do?
I don't think so, because there are a lot of drugs.
Openness about sex and sex education is a hallmark of Dutch culture. Goedele Liekens
is a sexologist and UN goodwill ambassador for reproductive health who has a show on
Dutch TV called Goedele on top.
I'm a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations
for UNFPA, so I travel a lot of around to world talking about sexuality, sexual health,
reproductive health, women's empowerment, and I must say the Dutch really have a
very good way of giving sex education.
What age does sex education start in the Netherlands?
Whenever you want to talk about it.
When I'm having my little Dutch kids
and we visit the US and they say ‘grandma, grandma read us a story’ and it’s “Sammy the
Supersperm.” Grandma’s like ‘oh well, I don't know if that's appropriate.’
My son’s in the second year of high school now. And he’s just had about 6 months of
sex ed. Like biology has been sex for like months on end.
At the age of 15, 16 when adolescents have a boyfriend, or girlfriend and it seems to
be a bit stable, Dutch parents are much more likely to allow a sleepover. We want our children
to be safe, but the Dutch parent would say ‘I know children can’t be controlled.
I know they'll become sexually active no matter what I do so I don't want it to happen in
the bushes at night, somewhere at a dangerous place, but if it happens I want it to happen in my house.
The Dutch tend to lose their virginity later than
other countries where they try and stop them from losing it. They’re much better at using
contraception and that's far lower teenage pregnancy here as a result so if it's proven to work.
The contraceptive use of Dutch women is extremely
high. Sterilization is also high. Both male and female.
More male. So that’s what the Dutch guys do well.
The number of abortions in Dutch women is very low. If you need it, you can have it.
It’s paid for by the insurance system. The whole thing is that you tried to prevent it
by a good contraceptive practice. The number of unwanted pregnancy and teenage pregnancies
is extremely low.
The more sex education they get, the later young people
will start to have sex, the less amount of partners they will have, and the less amount
of risk for STDs and unwanted pregnancies. And a very important one, the less high is
the risk for sexual harassment to be to become someone who does it, or to become a victim
so how many more reasons do we need?
According to Reporters Without Borders the
Netherlands is one of the highest ranked countries in terms of free speech and freedom of the
press. One of the organizations working to keep it that way is the Pirate Party
Do you feel like you're free here in the Netherlands? We are quite free, especially if you compare
it to other countries. What's your vision of an ideal society?
People's rights should be protected, and they should have the freedom to organize themselves.
Which country in the world comes closest to that?
I think we come pretty close actually. The nice thing I think about the Netherlands that
we have less and less people in prison. We don't have private prisons. We have more and
more empty prisons, and now they're being used as universities or to house refugees.
We also see it with the Pirate Party as a test that we have to empower people to
not be tracked by large companies or governments. So we also organize crypto parties in which
we help people install applications which are better. There are many lists of open source
alternatives with which you do not get tracked. Do you guys do ecstasy at the crypto parties?
Not a crypto parties. At the crypto after party?
Some people do maybe.
So when you go on a date do you go Dutch?
Well I thought about that but yeah … No. No.
I ended up being called this honorary title called “allochtoon” which is a wonderful
term that you earn if you live here long enough. Allochtoon … it's a word that Dutch people
made up so that if you don't say it right they know you're not from around here.
I think the official definition is if one of your both parents are born outside the
Netherlands, then you are considered allochtoon. Which you could say is migrant. But in a sense
it's very strange because if you're born here how can you be a migrant?
Family members always call me and they’re like ‘So is it true that drugs are free
in your country?’ I’m like, they’re not free. You can buy them, but they’re not free.
In general, from the police they take you
to asylum, to the camps, to everywhere, it is perfect. Yeah. Everybody smiling. Everybody
take care of you. This is a great. And to take asylum in 2 months, 2 and 1/2 months,
it is the fastest asylum in all Europe.
Coming from a war torn country into this country
the Netherlands has been like my safe haven. I have relatives who were struggling in war
torn countries who are trying to travel to the west, so I was pretty lucky growing up
in this country. But then with all of the terrorist attacks happening all over the world
my sense of safety has changed.
As long as it went good nobody was complaining.
When the economy went down end 70s early 80s we started to hear these people are not adapted.
But then again the economy went good during the rest of the 80s. And then with the huge
crisis and after 9/11 we have to have a scapegoat.
It kind of freaks out when we see the rise of the right in Holland because Holland is
so liberal and chilled out. Part of it has to do with a we see everywhere
and that is that the people who voted for him were done with the traditional political
leadership in this country. They saw them as essentially giving Muslims or immigrants
greater consideration than the interests of hard-working Dutch people. And for that reason
they voted for him in a vote of protest.
Geert Wilders is a very astute politician
you know. He keeps winning politician of the year. Specifically the year 1933.
Unlike right-wing populists in the US, in Holland they are strong supporters of national
healthcare and the welfare state and though they always say that politics makes for strange
bedfellows it was still surprising to hear about Wilders support for gay rights.
He's thinking the Muslims hate the gays. I hate the Muslims, so I must love the gays.
It works like this, and there's actually quite a few right-wing LGBT friends of mine falling
for this but … So Geert Wilders loves the gays?
Well I haven't seen him with one around him, but …
In Holland, the right-wing parties and not necessarily anti-gay. Often … Geert Wilders
Freedom Party's pro-gay. And one of the first populists in Holland Pim Fortuyn was gay himself.
And the religious parties are not necessarily anti-gay either.
There is no politician in Holland who could be homophobic. If they try, they will have
huge problems. It's still different than in many other countries here in the Netherlands.
I'm also known as drag queen Jennifer Hopelezz. Can I Google that and see what Jennifer Hopelezz
looks like? Yeah … very pretty.
The liberal climate here is what really attracted me to the country. We were the very first
country and Amsterdam very first city where gays and lesbians could marry. Six months
after I came I met my husband and that's why I stayed here all these years. We’ve been
together 26, nearly 27 years. How do you stay together with someone for
26 years? We don’t live together. That’s the number one secret.
I came out very late. Around my 28th. And
what I have always seen here is as a gay couple you could do and have everything. In some
subjects you have to deliver more paperwork, it took a little bit longer maybe. But I
think everything is the same between heterosexuals and gay couples.
The country has moved to the right, and I think the world has moved to the right and
I think Holland is still the most liberal country in the world, but yeah it has got
more conservative. In terms of AIDS prevention we were really ahead of a lot of countries
when it first hit. The education programs were really good in Holland and the rates
were fairly low compared to other countries, but we’ve really stalled.
I’m gay. I have a husband and I can’t walk around town holding his hand or kissing
him in public. I should to make it more clear guys like us are gay as well, but you just don’t.
While 15 years ago it wasn't a problem at all.
I still see a lot more people having less and less problems with the issue. Less and less homophobia.
I think it is one of the best countries to lead a gay a life I'm quite sure about.
It’s not totally a gay paradise but it’s as good as it gets.
I was working with students from different
countries and one of them was like ‘I was told that I had to have this Dutch cuisine
kapsalon.’ Kapsalon is basically shawarma with french fries and salad and cheese. So
this American guy was telling me I have to have this Dutch cuisine, and it was really
interesting to me because it is Dutch. The guy who made it up is a Moroccan guy who lived
in Rotterdam. Identity is fluid, and I think the Moroccans and the Dutch and the Somalis
and the Pakistanis and Suriname and everyone who lives in this country is also influencing
that idea of identity.
When we say in the Netherlands this is typical
Dutch, I always ask myself what do you mean with that. And it's still changing and that's
something I've learned. In the beginning you think will orange is the Dutch color, you
know the tulip, the potato. And then you study and you think potatoes are actually
from southern America and the tulip is from Turkey and what else is really Dutch. And
then you can deconstruct what the culture is made of.
Is there anything in your mind that's typically Dutch?
Well the language, I think.
The problem with Van Gogh is that if you would
pronounce him by his Dutch name and say ‘Van Gogh’ nobody would recognize that
you're talking about that artist.
I'd like to say I can speak Dutch, but I don't
like to speak Dutch because it makes my mouth feel sad.
That's not me. That’s Jonathan. When I talk Dutch he thinks I'm a pig.
(Clearing their throats.)
The French used to say that Dutch is not a language, it’s a problem with your throat.
I visit Arnhem, Wagningen … I’m sorry, Wagenin-gen?
I think the Dutch actually pronounce it ‘nech-mech.’
Do you do your porn in English or Dutch? I do my porn in English. Especially
my webcamming. I prefer not to speak Dutch. Why is that?
Because Dutch has very ugly words to describe sexual desire.
Are you learning Dutch? No! It's an impossible, impenetrable fortress
of language. My bass player says that he thinks the Dutch just make it up as a joke on everybody
else and that it’s just completely not a language at all. They secretly all speak English.
It seems like when you first come here that there are more bicycles than people and that is exactly accurate.
Do you ever participate in the world naked bike ride?
No. I'm not allowed from my public affairs person. But I like the initiative very much.
We say there are about 13, 14 million cyclists
in a country with 17 million people. We also cycle towards a high age. We have every year
maybe 10 or 20 80 plusers who die while riding their bikes
So the people are dying on their bicycles. Yeah, or they fall down. Some of them die
when they have a heart attack or stroke or whatever.
I'm not sure that's the best advertisement for bicycling.
There are a lot of bikes out there. Yeah, that’s true.
Does every kid come to school on a bike? Walking, biking …
Do you have a school bus system? No.
What happens if a kid's family can't afford a bike?
That's like saying people can’t breathe. Everyone in Holland has a bike.
My mom and dad also bike, and our Somali family members in other countries are like ‘do
you bike?’ Like my dad is 70 and my mom is like this Somali lady with her dresses
and they’re like ‘do you really bike?’ And my mom’s like ‘yeah … how else do I get around?’
Did you get a bicycle yet?
No. No. I don't think also I will use the bicycle
Don't they make you get a bicycle as part of the asylum process?
Yeah, they try.
Queen Beatrix rode a bike and now our present king also rides a bike and they also do it with the families.
Everybody cycles here – even the Prime Minister. It’s because we have a really egalitarian
society. You’re very on the same level. And I think this is one of the explanations,
the reason why people like biking because it keeps us all the same. We made choices,
consistent choices over 30 years for giving priority to slow mobility to bikes and pedestrians
It's been point of pride for Houten that their city has, for many years, won the Cyclists
Union Cycling City of the Netherlands Award.
Yeah, they used to be the bike city. The top now is Nijmegen.
Saskia told me that you lost your crown to Nijmegen. Yeah.
Is that true? Well it's true of course. But we always say
there is only one bicycle town in the world and that's Houten. So I think that's just
envy of all the others. But we are best for sure.
Are you going to challenge the mayor of Nijmegen to a bicycle race?
Well I will win for sure. I don’t know if you’ve seen the mayor of Nijmegen. I should say look him up.
Dutch cyclists, they kind of behave like a
swarm of sparrows. We anticipate to the cyclists who are nearest to us. So if we see them going
to the right we tend to follow because we know probably there's something in front that
I don't see but he sees so I follow. I really strongly believe that builds a culture of trust.
While bicycles make create a lot of trust
in Dutch society, they're also the cause of the country's leading annoyance.
Have you had your bicycle stolen? Sure.
My bikes get stolen once a year.
Yeah mine was stolen, I think 2 weeks ago.
I've had two bikes stolen while I've been here. Actually both in the last week.
I don’t lock my bike for the last 2 months and it's not stolen yet so it's a bit of a luck.
Can you tell me where it is?
So you can take it?
Is there some kind of government agency where
I can go as a tourist to get my money back for my 2 stolen bikes?
No.
How many locks did you have in your bike? One.
On the next bike you should put two or three.
Two or three? But that takes so long. That's the thing. That's why we work less
than Americans, so we have time to lock our bikes basically
According to the OECD, the Dutch work among the least number of hours. So how does their
system pay for so much time off? It’s a welfare state. The highest taxation
is 52% of your income. It goes with steps up and I’m in the 52% bracket so I have
to pay quite a lot. Does that bother you?
Uh yeah when I have to … No, it doesn't bother me so much because you get a lot for that.
The institutions and policies that the Nordic
countries and the Netherlands have adopted get you very good outcomes in the area of
economic security, low poverty and equality of opportunity, and they do just as well if
not better than on lots of other outcomes including economic growth, but also liberty,
privacy, community, and many, many others.
What do you say to someone who says that you're breeding laziness? How?
By having people work too little. Oh…well the productivity levels were reasonable.
Has Holland's expansive welfare state turned
the Dutch into a nation of lackadaisical layabouts? Apparently not. In fact, the Netherlands is
ranked as one of the best countries to be an entrepreneur.
If you look at the World Economic Forum, we are now number 5 in competitiveness. We are,
after Germany, the greatest exporter in the European union. If you look at the agriculture
we are the second exporter in the world after the United States
In a society where government provides to everyone some of these basic services and
supports in the form of public insurance programs we in fact can be more individualistic.
A bit more government services and public insurance programs can enhance rather than
limit or subtract from freedom.
The theory of capitalism. You work hard, save
up and buy two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, the economy
grows, and society prospers.
The reality of capitalism. A multinational corporation forecloses
on a farmer and repos 2 cows. It sells one to a subsidiary company, leases it back to
itself, and declares a tax loss. After giving the remaining cow drugs to make it produce
the milk of 4 cows, it executes a credit default swap to buy 20 more cows and transfer the
rights to 50 leveraged cows via a Panamanian intermediary to a Cayman Islands company secretly
owned by a Russian oligarch. Three people who donated the most to the government win
and everyone else loses.
Social democracy. To create more cow ownership all of the world's
developed nations have evolved into social democracies that mix free market capitalism
with socialism, so the government runs important public services like education, police and
firefighters, the military, utilities, pensions, and healthcare. The difference between countries
is in the amount of services they provide. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but the countries
with the most generous social programs are also the world's happiest.
There's this word that has come up a lot in talking to people. Gezelligheid.
Yeah. Gezelligheid. Gezelligheid. Gezelligheid. Do you think that
plays a roll in Dutch happiness? Well I think maybe the fact that we have such
a word does show that social values are considered important.
Bringing people together, sitting them around the table with some kind of food and drink
often and then they say oh yeah, this is gezellig. This is really cozy I suppose is the closest
you can say. Cozy and together.
Dutch people like to confirm that it’s gezellig,
when it’s gezellig. So we sit together and we say ‘gezellig yeah?’ ‘Gezellig.’
I think it’s just a nice social atmosphere, we value that.
It’s one of those words that it's difficult to translate because it encompasses more of
a feeling rather than actual definition. So when you think of love and coziness and also
the feelings of acceptance and belonging. The idea is to actually foster human connections
and I'm a firm believer that’s one of the reasons why Dutch kids and also Dutch adults
are among the happiest in the world.
If you want to know what a good society is look how happy the people are.
The happiest countries in the world are typically western
countries. The first key is sheer survival … safety, food. Once that is arranged it
comes more to freedom. And why is freedom important to happiness? Well in conditions
of freedom people can choose a way of life that fits them best.
A big difference is how wealth spread within the Netherlands, and we've seen some very
interesting studies looking at the differences in how wealth is distributed in a country
and the level of happiness and there is a very clear connection to it. So you see in
countries where there is less difference between rich and poor, people are generally much more happy.
If you assess religiousness of a country, then
you see a negative relationship. The more believers, the less happy.
The number of churches is going down. The number of ministers is very much going down.
The theology departments at universities have absolutely hardly any students anymore, so
it's really a secular country these days.
Well, the Dutch may be the happiest people in the world.
I’m not totally sure whether they are, but they complain a lot.
Yeah that true. Especially in Amsterdam. We really like to complain.
They like to complain. I mean that’s the Dutch national pastime.
The majority of the Netherlands, of the Dutch people, still think that the country is moving
into in the wrong direction The majority thinks it’s in the wrong direction.
Yes. What percent thinks that?
It’s about 60% normally.
The Dutch writer Simon Carmichael wrote in
the 1950s already ‘The Dutch are a satisfied people but express it in an unsatisfied way.’
Do you think the Netherlands is getting more free or less free?
I would say less free.
There’s less freedom. Less desire to explore liberties.
Nowadays I think a lot of people don't dare to express themselves.
The fear of globalization is also present
in this country of course. The feeling that there are too many people from other countries.
Dutch people are very vocal about things that they think don’t work, so that leads to
a lot of questioning of things and a lot of improvement of things. So I think that's part
of what helps things improve here is people who say it's not good enough.
At the same time you see that this a democracy reform is coming up.
There is also a thriving culture, an underground culture.
I also think there are a lot of people nowadays that are coming forward
20 years ago gay marriages were not yet there. The law on euthanasia was not yet there.
I recently got knighted. You know that which is completely impossible 20 years ago.
Maybe you have seen the line of happiness in the Netherlands. It goes up and we live
now longer and happier than ever in human history. I think it would be wise if governments
invest in happiness just like they invest in health. And it will also be profitable
for governments because happy people appear to be better citizens. They participate more
in the democratic process. Typically better informed. They vote more. And especially interesting
for governments, they better pay their taxes. You mean they’re more honest, or they pay more?
Both.
Are you happy? Yes I am.
You look happy. I feel so.
Tim, are you hopeful about the future? Yes. But it will be a bumpy road I think.
I believe in humanity. I think that humans are smart enough to realize that we have to
take a different course.
In these times of crisis, we need boldness
and we need a view and we need ideas. I think it's time to choose.
My agenda is I want to change the world. I was picking up on that.
Economy me now is the relation between humanity and money. The new system will be the relation
between humanity and planet earth.
So what do you think Johan? Are you hopeful about the future?
I wouldn't do this work everyday with Banktrack
if I thought it's all hopeless. But it's all pretty hopeless. I read this saying that I
really took as my slogan. ‘We have no chance at all, and we will grab it with both our hands.’
Rather than fighting the darkness, I prefer
lit up a candle. I believe our children together will be able to get this to a better place.
There is enough room in the Netherlands for solar and wind power and to a certain extent
geothermal heat to make all our energy in a renewable way.
Those companies that go for sustainability have made more profit, have created higher employment,
and are growing faster than the traditional companies, the old economy.
Ivette, are you hopeful about the future? Yeah. I'm really hopeful. I'm hopeful because
of the amount of people that are standing up and are getting aware.
This is a reward for living in Holland. As a child you get to hear this story, and as
an adult you get to turn around and repeat it. As an added bonus, the government has
thrown in legalized drugs and prostitution. So what's not to love about being Dutch?
There you have it - Dutch social democracy in the 21st century. 20 years later I still
see a lot of myself in this gezellig little country. Only now we both have less
sex, less drugs, and more bicycles.
So is social democracy the nightmare we've been warned about?
It sure didn't seem that way to me. But everyone has to decide for themselves
how nightmarish it is to have month-long double paid vacations and universal health care.
Thank you all so much for joining me on this journey and if you see me on the bike path
make sure to say hi.
And why are Dutch people so tall?
You’re not going to ask me that question? Why are Dutch people so tall?
I have no idea. I think it must be the diet. They’re the tallest race on earth.
They are, and it’s freaky. It’s freaky.
And they’re much taller than 20 years ago. Oh really?
Yeah they are. Or maybe your spine’s just compacted.