Dutch To Introduce Net Neutrality By Law 228
An anonymous reader writes "Big news out of the Netherlands this week, where a government minister announced plans to guarantee network neutrality by law. If Parliament approves the amendment to Dutch telecommunications law, and it expected to do so, it would become one of the first countries in the world to legislate against Internet providers who want to charge more for using particular applications or services."
first =) (Score:2)
In depth on the amendment (Score:3, Informative)
I just copied and pasted the first paragraph from the link in the article when submitting, but I didn't think it would be posted this way. I think some more information is required for a proper news article/discussion. Therefore, a short summary of the law in question.
For Dutch readers, here is the amendment in Dutch: https://www.bof.nl/live/wp-content/uploads/Amendement-van-het-lid-Verhoeven-c.s..pdf
Summary for English readers:
It will be forbidden by law to block or induce a bandwidth limitation on select
Wonderful. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wonderful. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm seriously considering moving there asap. Find a decent town with low crime rate and ik vil nederlandse les het goed!
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I come from Newfoundland. The last murder we had was in international news. That's how often it happens.
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Population of 800k, less than 1 annually. We had a freak year with two murders back in 99/00 which threw our average off. Otherwise... 20 years, 5 murders. Total.
Those numbers are pretty good though :)
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Well, I have no idea how many murders you've got annually, but on a country of 16.7 million inhabitants, we had the following numbers of murders from 2010 to 2005: 170 / 178 / 161 / 143 / 149 / 201
And about half of these have been vendetta's, criminals killing other criminals. I think you can safely say we have a pretty safe country, crime-wise (don't leave your bike unattended for too long though ;-)
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Finland's easy to explain - "Why did you kill him?" "I've been stuck in the cabin for two months while it's been dark and snowing, and he just pissed me off!"
Funny thing... (Score:3)
Dumb idea though. But the good news is: as long as you are higher educated and have a good income nobody gives a f... if you only talk English.
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Live is good here, but immigration laws are highly discriminatory.
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But the good news is: as long as you are higher educated and have a good income nobody gives a f... if you only talk English.
Let's be honest. We speak English (or something we think resembles English) to everybody. Dutch is practically impossible to learn because no Dutchman will speak it to you.
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Don't be too quick to celebrate. This is a rare positive decision in Dutch politics. For the most part of the past 10 years, Dutch politics have been going down the drain, becoming more polarized, more populist, and more focused on short term silliness. It's still not nearly as bad the the US, but I'd seriously consider moving to Sweden if I wouldn't leave so many friends and family behind.
Re:Wonderful. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wonderful. (Score:4, Interesting)
The US has always been behind the times. ;-)
Heck we didn't even invent the Bill of Rights concept. It was taken from the British, after we won the civil war. Or the concept of natural rights (invented by the Greek Stoics and Roman Senator Cicero). We're all just a a bunch of plagiarists.
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Re:Wonderful. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll continue to think that even if we're stealing ideas - at least we steal some of the good ones.
Good ideas should be stolen with pride!
That was one of the things we learned during a week-long "team-building group brainstorm" (I jest not).
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Ideas can't be stolen. They can be copied and you can [falsely] claim to be the inventor. But the original creator is not deprived of the idea; merely the credit.
Re:Wonderful. (Score:4, Insightful)
Depending on how you look at it, the Revolutionary War WAS a civil war, as at that time we were part of Britain and were fighting with the main British forces. It's just that the "civil war" tag is usually only applied when the side wanting to break away loses the fight. :)
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It's just that the "civil war" tag is usually only applied when the side wanting to break away loses the fight.
That kinda assumes that civil wars only happen when one side wants to break away. That's not exactly the case - some examples of other kinds of civil wars are Russian and Finnish ones in early 20th century.
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No, the side who lost is now referring to it as the "War of Northern Aggression" or some such nonsense to try to romanticize their fight for slavery.
I think that's more of a TV thing. I grew up in the south (South Carolina - hell we started the war) and still live here. In my 30 years I have not once in my life heard that war referred to as the "War of Northern Aggression" except on television and the Internet. To any other person - even the "south will rise again!" lunatics you occasionally meet, it's just "the civil war".
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"Land of The FEE..." FTFY.
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Given that the "Land of the Free" was heavily influenced by the Dutch Republic [wikipedia.org] (1581-1795), maybe it's not so surprising. Note that this was the period when, despite the lack of rule by royalty or church, the Dutch became a major world power, confounding all expectations at the time. Since the Republic was still a going concern at the time of the American Revolution, I think that there's little doubt that it was a major influence on the Founding Fathers' decision to try something similar. Of course, there
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The Netherlands is the second country in the world to do so. ( Chili was the first ) I'd say that counts as "much earlier than anyone else".
It is however true that at the same other people are considering putting quite dangerous infrastructure in place ( mostly under child pornography banner )
Nevertheless, this is still a move in the right direction.
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Of all the arguments you chose, you chose that one? Seriously, man. His argument is going to be that the ISPs own their own wire, routers, and access to them (that part of the internet) is not public anymore than your personal router and wireless or ethernet is public.
By arguing THAT, you show you don't really understand what the overall issues are about.
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businesses must not be subsidized by governments and governments must not own assets.
If your argument is that the lines are government property still, then they should be seized by the government, and then sold on the market, liquidated, and whoever buys the networks, owns them. From there on, there must be no government money in any businesses, I don't know why this is so controversial now.
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All of the resources of a country are owned by all of it's citizens equally. Control of some of those resources is privatised under conditions applied by those citizens. Don't want to adhere to those conditions, then privatised control of parts of the countries resources will be taken from you.
Wake up to yourself, all of a countries citizens provide the means by which those resources are protected, become available for use, are distributed and rewards provided for serving those resources. If you can't wo
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I don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying that if the lines are sold to private bidders by government, then the government still owns them? Is this your opinion for any asset or for phone lines only? And what happened to the property rights then, if you can't buy something and own it after you pay for it? Are you OK, is air too hot maybe wherever you are there?
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Regulation != owning The government is free to regulate anything that happens on their property.
- that's fine, I disagree that government should own any assets, but that's fine, it can do whatever on its property.
Even if you buy a house, you still have to abide by regulations set forth by the government.
- bylaws are not your federal government telling you stuff.
We all follow laws, it's time that the telecoms did too.
- again, if you think that the phone lines/cables are government property, then that's one thing, (from my POV then the assets should be immediately seized and liquidated), but if a business buys an asset, even if the asset is bought from a government, then the asset is no longer in government's possession.
Realize what you are sayi
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Then there is the issue that many ISPs have local monopolies.
I know of none in the US. Care to name a few? Given that there are dialup ISPs still around that cover the entire US, I'd say you won't be able to name any. And given that this new law covers cellphone ISPs, and that there are at least three major providers that cover most of the US (AT&T/T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint), you are less likely to be able to name any.
They need to be regulated, and net neutrality is one way of keeping the content that runs inside their wires free. This has always been the norm, I don't know why it's so controversial now.
Well, many times, trying to regulate (mandate) "the norm" turns "the norm" into something controversial. For example, "the norm", at least in
Re:Wonderful. (Score:4, Insightful)
you are under the wrong impression.
DARPA took ideas from existing POTS, which already was using packet switching, then it took existing computer networks, which didn't use packet switching, and applied the packet switching and created TCP/IP.
That was the contribution - the protocol.
Now, AT&T was certainly declared a "national resource", it was given all sorts of monopoly powers by the federal government, so that was totally wrong.
However you are arguing about your ISP, not the protocol and not even the AT&T specific lines, so when you look at the fact that most of the Internet (99% of it probably) is private networks, then you can try and ask your question again.
Re:Wonderful. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Wonderful. (Score:5, Insightful)
It was never the "land of the free to use other people's property the way I want."
Really? The history of 19th century America is the history of one group wanting to use another group's property, and doing so over, and over, and over. You must be a real American to be so ignorant of your own country's history. Off the top of my head:
Repeated relocation of Native Americans to steal their land.
Chattel Slavery (using some else's body the way I want without their consent).
Grazing rights conflicts in the west.
Water rights conflicts in the west.
Mineral/oil rights conflicts.
Railroad right-of-way conflicts.
I'm sure a few dozen more specific cases could be added.
In short, America was ALWAYS the "land of the free to use other people's property the way I want."
Ok, that settles it (Score:3)
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You do realize that's where Peter Pan lives right?
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Uh Oh (Score:5, Insightful)
You won't like it you yank. Our beer got taste, our cheese is not just a barely edible plastic, our food isn't genetically manipulated, the soda contains real sugar, the women are the easiest in the world, the pot is so cheap just anyone can smoke it... eh... oh wait, I got it. We are SOCIALIST. You got to pay taxes here. Sales tax? 21%. (might 20% they keep on raising it recently).
That should scare of the Americans... well apart from the beer having taste etc etc. America is an interesting place to visit, just don't eat or drink anything that wasn't prepared by a first generation immigrant.
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Not me, not scared off at all. After my first visit to Germany I was hooked and upon return, could not drink beer back home. The EU drove me to hard liquor except when I get to go back and visit. I'd move there in a moment if I could figure out how to bring my horses over, own enough land to keep them, and get to work from my home from time to time. Alas, even the EU is not that progressive.
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Oakshire Brewery [oakbrew.com]: 5 minutes away.
Rogue Creamery [roguecreamery.com] and Tillamook [tillamook.com]: Both 3 hours away.
Horton Road Organic [hortonorganics.com]: Just one of many CSAs in town.
I cut out soda at the same time I cut out GMO food and other 'fake foods'. So high five to you on that one :)
Debatable. [uoregon.edu] There's something about 9 months of rain that causes promiscuity when the sun finally ar
You had 100% (Score:2)
I cut out soda at the same time I cut out GMO food and other 'fake foods'. So high five to you on that one :)
Nope. We can easily get soda from Mexico that uses real sugar.
And I mean the main ones, Coke, Pepsi, etc. not some dicey thing like "ElPunumbrianOke".
Great point about lumping all of the U.S. into the same bucket being like applying any rule to all of Europe based on state.
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Rogue Creamery [roguecreamery.com] and Tillamook [tillamook.com]: Both 3 hours away.
You do understand that if you drive in the same direction in The Netherlands that there is a 90% chance that you left the country? Saying that something is "only" 3 hours away makes it long distance for the dutch.
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Real beer is brewed all over the world, even in the US, in small breweries run by talented enthausiasts. ;)).
But as far as "mass consumption" beer goes, The Dutch and German beers are by far the best. (though you are free to send me a few bottles and try and prove me wrong
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I do agree Belgium has way better beers (no contest) but please compare with a decent Dutch beer like Hertog Jan. Not as good as a decent Belgian beer, but it gets closer. For a good beer the special types are way more interesting anyway, and Hei***en doesn't have many.
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Unfortunately, the new Dutch govt vowed to make selling pot illegal, even to Dutch citizens.
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You are wrong, Dutch women are not that easy but mostly arrogant and stuck up into their status thing.
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No, up to 52% goes to taxes via income tax (the more you make, the more you pay relatively) and of the money you have left, 20% goes also to taxes through sales tax. Then we have dog taxes, car (double) taxes, mandatory health insurance, profit taxes, parking fees, etc.
I guess it's the price to pay for civilisation.
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No, up to 52% goes to taxes via income tax
That's only the highest scale, paid over only part of your income. With all the tax deductibles, nobody actually pays more than 40% tax here.
To quote Bugs Bunny (Score:2)
I like it.
(sits back to see how many recognize this 'toon)
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Also a Lt. Frank Drebin quote.
Good Job! (Score:2)
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The US congress has been paying attention (Score:2)
That is why the US has invasion plans for Holland ready and had them ready for a long time.
Nothing to scare the US like a country that isn't following US doctrine all the way. Note there are no invasion plans for say North-Korea or other places that are blot on humanity but they do have invasion plans to "liberate" Americans from the International Court in The Hague by invading a friendly country.
Dear US voter, if you want your country to stop sucking, stop voting for the kind of people that let this pass.
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Canada had plans to invade and capture North Dakota up until a decade or so ago.
You might want to look up WWII as to why America has had plans for how to invade Europe.
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Canada had plans to invade and capture North Dakota up until a decade or so ago.
Take Minot? Why not!
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On precisely what basis is net neutrality unconstitutional?
Lesson learned (Score:2)
chile was the first (Score:2, Informative)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/13/2056218/Chile-First-To-Approve-Net-Neutrality-Law
On the downside (Score:2)
Unfortunately, they also introduced a plan [cnn.com] to make pot bars illegal for tourists.
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Which gives you an additional reason to move there permanently.
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I knew there was a good reason I held on to my Dutch passport.
An amendment to an existing law! (Score:2)
What a novel idea! I am sure others have thought of this already. It has frequently been pointed out that there is already law in place which prohibits telecoms from violating neutrality principles. Why not amend that law to include ISPs? Fundamentally, I already believe those laws apply to net neutrality as I don't see enough difference between the networks to justify different laws and precedent.
Great Story (Score:2)
Good thing is... (Score:3)
This idea comes frome one of the most corporate-friendly governments the country has had in a long time. The three ruling parties are all right-wing:
1. VVD: liberal, capitalist, pro privatization of state-run companies;
2. CDA: christian democrats. They're the initiators of this law;
3. PVV: anti-muslim, anti-immigration, populist. Not really part of the government, but they promised to agree on most things (except for their anti-Muslim stance).
The opposing parties are labour, socialist, environmentalist, liberal and two small christian parties.
I can't imagine why any of those parties would vote against this law (except for one or two small ones), so I would be very, very surprised if this law won't be passed.
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Correction:
The law was initiated by the opposing left-wing parties (as I expected). The (CDA)minister is very supportive, but the two biggest parties both say that they will await EU research on the matter. So it's not done yet.
The telco's are not happy.
Tools (Score:2)
The law was initiated by the opposing left-wing parties (as I expected).
And will end up benefitting only the companies. When the internet is regulated, you'll find wonderful controls can be implemented on it, say for the movie industries.
I give you five years at the outside. Probably more like three.
I'll keep my freedom thanks, and chuckle as I watch your decline.
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[quote] but lets just wait how happy they will be when the telcos change strategy (e.g. higher fees and data caps) to get their investments back.
With the current scheme, the users who still use sms pay for the too cheap data plans of others. And the majority with low/occasional data usage pay for the minority that use 2+GB per month. That's not very fair. Prices will rise, bandwith caps will be tightened, but I'd rather pay a fair price than being robbed by insane sms rates, roaming charges and blocked services.
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That being said, all but the most extremist right wing parties in the Netherlands would still be considered far left wing when positioned in the US political spectrum. (though this may partially be because the left-right distinction doesn't easily translate between different countries)
Erm, you're wrong. (Score:2)
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I think he's just a bit confused. It is common for proposals to come from the governing parties, and it is exceedingly uncommon for proposals that actually have a majority to come from the opposition.
So to a naÃve viewer, it might seem that the current coalition proposed this amendment.
Mart
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Ah the joys of a working democracy, over here the right-wing government coalition pretty much merged into what they call an "alliance", and seem to think that one of them voting against the others on even a single issue where the parties had vastly different stances before the "alliance" will somehow completely topple the government.
Sign me up! (Score:3)
Legalized prostitution -and- net neutrality? Immigrating to another country has never been quite so attractive.
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And as a result they have serious problems with human trafficking in sex slaves. The idea behind it wasn't to legalize prostitution so much as improve the lives of prostitutes. They recognized that it was unlikely that they would managed to stop it so they tried to ameliorate the situation. Unfortunately, that's just caused problems with human trafficking.
I realize that this is libertarian /., but let's not kid ourselves about the real consequences of legalized prostitution in that sense. It's not a bunch o
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Whooooosh!
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dunno if it actually works (didn't check on that), but the idea was good.
Test bed. (Score:2)
Actually, if it goes through it might be a good test bed. We'll get to see the implications of such a law, positive or negative. Although, the implementation may vary in the States and there may be different social and economic forces in play. Still, could be informative.
Mobile phones (Score:2)
So while the Dutch par
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Part of the difference might be that european countries are far less forgiving when companies don't behave ( just look at the reaction when Microsoft failed to comply with EU competition law ), and the last thing a company wants is to piss off the people who
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Not so sure about that. We (the Dutch) are leading in telephone taps in the world. And local regulation is already wasting gigbaytes on mandatory ISP communications monitoring. And there have been numerous plans for CP filters and what not.
So, this is just one win in the battle.
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It's the problem of true freedom, everybody gets it, even the people you don't agree with.
Although the real problem is ignorance and deceit that results in a majority vote.
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so if an ISP is discriminating in the US (where your favorite services houses their servers) you service will still be throttled or potentially cut off.
It's pretty hard for a Dutch person to have their ISP be located in the US. Unless they use a satellite service or have a leased, undersea cable. But yes, for a US user, this DUTCH law would have no effect.
This law deals with the ISP, not the servers you deal with. Where do you get the idea that "your favorite services" are required to provide service to you? If the iTunes store or whoever wants to block your IP, they have that right. What this law, and net neutrality in general, deals with is the ISP blo
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He was saying if a Dutch citizen connects to a server in the U.S., the ISP that the server is connected to can throttle your traffic because they are exempt from Dutch laws.
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He was saying if a Dutch citizen connects to a server in the U.S., the ISP that the server is connected to can throttle your traffic because they are exempt from Dutch laws.
I know what he was saying. And he's wrong.
If a person in NL is using a US ISP, then they've either gotten a satellite service based in the US or leased an undersea cable connection to a US ISP. Or they're making a really expensive dialup connection to the US. Otherwise, they're going to be using a Dutch ISP. Especially when we're talking about cellphone delivered internet service.
If you are in Holland and have a cellphone that can connect to a US carrier, you need to get a patent on that real quick. And
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Telecom companies will just move to charging by bandwidth if they need to. Telecom companies should just give up fighting net neutrality here in the US too and just say "OK, fine. We'll just raise prices considerably."
You think ISPs are against net neutrality for bandwidth reasons? HA! They see hugely popular sites like YouTube, and FaceBook and see an opportunity for profit by charging more to access those sites. They also seem to think that they have a right to hold the bandwidth of sites that they have no agreements with hostage if they aren't paid. Or the ISP also operates their own cable network or VoIP service and wants to charge their competitors more. This is all about seeing a way to squeeze every drop of pr
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Instead of being non-neutral, just start charging people for the bandwidth they use just like you pay for electricity, water and gas.
Here in Australia, I get 130GB of data per month to use how I see fit with no restrictions or blocks. If I decide I need more (and am willing to pay for it), I can move up to a higher tier plan. There are lower tier plans also. But none of these plans (or those from many other ISPs) have anything non-neutral about them.
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Well, according to my friends who actually live in the Netherlands, some are US expats, it is a great place to live. There are lots of social services, so the tax rate is close to 75%. Disposable income is a fraction of what it is in the USA. Houses are extremely hard to buy. Credit is very hard to come by. Life is dull, but secure.
The cost of a car is maybe the most expensive in the world. Consumer goods, such as computers and TV's (especially big-screen tv's) are typically twice what you would pay in the
Re:Great job (Score:5, Informative)
I'm Dutch.
Sorry to inform you, you are wrong on much of what you state.
We do have great social services, second only to scandinavia AFAIK. ;)
Taxes are not flat but range roughly from 33% to 50% depending on income with a tax-free bottom sum.
Can't compare disposable income, but from what I've know it's pretty much equal considering in the US you have to pay for a lot of things that are paid through taxes here; the amount of money we have left at the end of the month is probably quite close. More significantly we have far less economic "outliers" around here; few billionairs and few people living in poverty.
Houses ARE more expensive and since the economic crisis, credits have become somewhat more difficult.
As for dull; life is what you make of it; if your friends prefer to live a dull live around here, they can do so
Cars are more expensive, but not by much (OTOH, fuel IS a lot more expensive than in the US).
Consumer goods aren't twice as expensive, perhaps some 10%-20% more expensive. Mostly because of corporate taxes. As I understand it, many US companies are able to pay $0 taxes due to creative accounting. Tax laws are a little less pro-corporate around here.
Internet isn't free, neither wired nor mobile. I don't quite know what you get for $80/mo with AT&T, but the most expensive mobile subscription for iPhone4 around here is roughly $55 a month.
AFAIK, most of the above is similar for the rest of the north and west European countries.
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Thanks for the info. I decided to check what you said and what I thought against the "Pocket World in Figures" on my shelf. Most of what you said is much more accurate than the impressions I got from friends in the Netherlands. I don't know why I thought that internet connection was free; I found references from friends living in other countries where it was free, but not from the Netherlands. (A friend of mine in Italy waited six months between ordering and getting hooked up.)
I checked the used car prices
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I've seen some people say they wanted to move to NL. Probably in jest, but one good place to check if NL is right for you would be to dig into the stories and forums here:
http://www.expatica.com/nl/main.html [expatica.com]
Note that you will find many, many bitter 'expats' there. The majority of which were really just hoping to be an American living like an American, while living in NL, rath
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I've seen some people say they wanted to move to NL.
I've been to NL many times. Very nice place.
Good transit system. It is relatively easy to use, but there is one strange part. It seems there is a town called "Buiten Dienst" (spelling?) that many buses go to, but I cannot find it on the map. And those buses don't seem to stop at any of the regular bus stops. Other than that, ok.
Bad prices. Too high.
The only reason I'd maybe move there is that they know what to put on French Fries. But then, I can buy a bottle of mayo here and do it without moving. Maybe
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rofl
The stuff we put on our French Fries in the stands and such isn't really 'mayo' in the sense of either the Dutch mayonnaise (okay on sandwiches, as a salad dressing base, and often used in the home when eating oven/deep fr
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Good transit system. It is relatively easy to use, but there is one strange part. It seems there is a town called "Buiten Dienst" (spelling?) that many buses go to, but I cannot find it on the map. And those buses don't seem to stop at any of the regular bus stops. Other than that, ok.
Dunno if that's a joke (I thought it was a quite good one) but on the off chance that it wasn't: "Buiten Dienst" means "out of service". They're not supposed to stop.
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You'll also find a lot of posts complaining we Dutch are rude.
They are right.
Much as I love my country, this is really apparent if you've grown up in the provinces, where manners are a bit old-fashioned, or if you've just been abroad. The average Dutchmen:
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You'll also find a lot of posts complaining we Dutch are rude.
We're honest and direct. That's what we like to call it. But we're honest and direct to the point of rudeness, and sometimes that gets a bit out of hand. We're also some other things to the point of rudeness. Although some Dutchmen can be very polite and considerate. Mostly we're all different, though. The thing that anooys Dutchmen most of all is other Dutchmen, except for the ones that are somewhat like us.