[edejong]

As a dutch citizen from a city near Utrecht, I am baffled by the number of surveillance systems in place operated by surveillance capitalists. This has to stop. Uncontrolled invasion of our public space without properly informing the subjects and giving a choice is totally unacceptable.

[mercer]

Sadly I find that the Dutch, in general, are extremely indifferent and even antagonistic towards political activism.

I'm not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps it's general wealth/comfort, or perhaps a history of, at best, amoral profit-seeking.

Or maybe I'm just seeing things. But in general my experience has been that the kinds of people that I would expect to be activists are much less so over here than in, say, Germany or France or Spain.

[edejong]

Well, before talking about the reason why we are moderate in activism (which is debatable), I'd like to understand why you believe the Dutch are particularly amoral profit-seekers. Do you have references comparing the Dutch history with the Spanish? With the slavery practices among the African tribes? With the destruction and mass-murder of the American natives by the Brits? With the plundering of the South American treasures.

At least the Dutch stayed independant during the first world war, while entire generations were slaughtered on the battlefield from other nations. For what? Economic reasons.

No, we're meek activists for simpler reasons. Our population density is high, so we needed to build on a culture of tolerance and acceptance. We are constantly battling a common enemy: water from the seas and the rivers. This required understanding, cooperation and negotiation. We are a country with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, which also requires a certain level of cooperation instead of activism.

And yet, I think we are actually quite high on the political activism ladder, but not on the militant activism. Hurting our neighbours entails hurting ourselves, so we prefer talking over destroying.

[huffmsa]

> Or maybe I'm just seeing things

No, I've always been befuddled by how both the Dutch and Belgian have basically had their colonial reigns of terror handwaved away.

It's likely that neither nation really acknowledges it or has anyone agitating internally for the nation to own up to it. So like you said, they're rich and a bit amoral.

[mercer]

My impression is that we don't even bother to hand-wavy and justify or defend any of it. We just don't care. It happened. It's in the past. And we didn't personally do it.

[_u5xo]

Definitely, authoritarian regimes are scary but it seems like we are already verging on one with surveillance capitalism.

[huffmsa]

But the capitalists can't field the firepower to enforce their surveillance unless they become part of a governmental apparatus.

[ionised]

Of course they can. PMCs are already a thing and some companies (and individuals) are wealthier than entire countries.

Private military forces are going to become a lot more common.

[dsfyu404ed]

I wouldn't have a problem with PMCs replacing police for pretty much everything but detective work. It would actually give society a lot more leverage over law enforcement and separating after the fact investigation and prosecution from active enforcement would remove a lot of bad incentives from the current system. If the PMCs you've hired to do cop things shoot someone wrongfully you can sue them and not be suing the taxpayer. You can force them to have insurance as part of the contract. You can fail to renew their contract if they screw up. Having a profit motive removes the desire to have unnecessary military hardware for the same reason your local landscaper doesn't own a mining dump truck.

Obviously there's trade-offs but it seems like having privately security instead of cops would be an end run around most of the things that are bad about modern policing.

[huffmsa]

Like the TSA private partner screening program [0]. They didn't have any staffing issues during the shutdown, because they're not a magic money Government entity. I don't have the source handy, but I believe they're more efficient and do a better job than the TSA at catching contraband.

[0] https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/travel/tsa-screening-partner...

[ionised]

A profit motive brings its own perverse incentives though.

Look at companies like G4S in the UK or Blackwater (or whatever their new name is) for private security horror stories.

I'm sure other countries have even worse tales.

[huffmsa]

Yeah but that was in an active warzone where there was little to no retribution for poor behavior. If you have to live next door to the people you police, you're probably going to behave a bit better.