[Hilliard_Ohiooo]

So many of these articles get it completely wrong. Economically. People weren't going crazy for tulips just because, the government had incentivized investment in tulips. The government at the time basically told people that they could not lose money on investing tulips. It should be a story about governments misallocating resources. That's it, but people quit. Keep twisting it into a story of psychology and mania which it was not.

[cucumber3732842]

>It should be a story about governments misallocating resources. That's it, but people quit. Keep twisting it into a story of psychology and mania which it was not.

The fact that it's marketed as a story about psychology and mania rather than government policy gone awry is arguably itself a story about psychology and mania.

People have a need to feel like the forces that control them know what they're doing.

[stingraycharles]

Ha this is a brilliant take, and worthy of a follow up.

[jeroenhd]

The "government" didn't do much at all, there was no real oversight or guarantee like there is today. The whole concept was novel at the time so there was no law and there were no real procedures. The Dutch Republic may not have had an official king, it also sure wasn't a democracy with real, independent institutions or anything like that. The country was led by a democracy-lite system of nobility/rich people that feels a lot like how early American voting worked (but divided even less evenly).

The closest thing to an involved government wasn't really in favour of trading in immaterial goods at all. Something close to government intervention did happen in one of the two involved government systems after the bubble popped, but it was effectively unratified and useless (the local equivalent of a supreme court even ruled that the government couldn't interfere with the tulip trade).

The entire thing was just a club of a few hundred relatively rich people throwing themselves at a bubble. Most people didn't have the means or money to participate.

The "mania" name is an insult to those who partook as much as it described the trade bubble. It's not related to the modern psychological definition of "mania" that came much later.

[tokai]

Mania has meant madness since ancient times. Its an Ionian Greek word.

[jeroenhd]

In Dutch, where the term came from, manie has also been used to refer to obsessive behaviour for at least 700 years. In English, mania has also been used to refer to a frenzy for a long time. The term itself entered the Dutch language through French, not through Greek, where the non-literal use of the word had already got started.

The Greek word may have referred to a specific mental state, but the meaning has shifted over the thousands of years. The Greek word itself is derived from a Proto-Indo-European word for just thinking if Wiktionary is to be believed, cognate with an old-fashioned word for "remembering".

[soperj]

Sounds a lot like bitcoin.

[mothballed]

That's some similarities to the Salem Witch Trials. They were largely about going after whoever had a vendetta and pull with the courts and the bewitchery was the plausible mechanism under which that happens. The 'mania' was largely a veneer under which hid raw projection of judicial-political power to rid political and personal undesirables.

[kaon_2]

Does it make sense to talk about "the government" in this age? It probably misguides us more than informs us. I've always felt the perception of government at the time is closer to our perception of the captain of the local football team - at best distant and upholding the honor of the village, at worst a thief with a title - rather than how we view it today. Authority of information lay with the church. Maybe replace by "Persons of wealth in positions of power"?

[Lerc]

There are governments at many levels.

I don't think a city of more than 100,000 would be possible without a substantial amount of civil management.

Deciding with bits are for streets and which bits are for buildings needs an arbiter of som sort for starters.

If a place had a sewer it probably had a government.

Sometimes I like to recall that somewhere in Tenochtitlan there must have been some Aztec administrator doing a job like making sure the road signs are repainted every few years.

[mothballed]

Not sure you need any of that. My entire 'city' is private property including the streets. There is absolutely no one to manage them, no HOA, absolutely nothing. If you can't drive on them you literally have to bust out a tractor and fix it. There is no public water or sewer, no public utilities, so you build them yourself and the amortized cost is easily half of paying some asshole working for the state to administer it. No building inspection, no code inspections. No policeman and no fire; you defend your own life and property rather than some crazed man "protecting and serving" the fuck out of you. Taxes are ~$0. Absolutely glorious. I'd be happy if everywhere was like that.

[Lerc]

So you can build a house in the middle of a street?

If someone tries to stop you, by what authority? If they can stop you, there's your government.

More than 100,000 people?

Even Kowloon had a degree of management by criminal groups.

[mothballed]

I'm not claiming there is literally no government, I'm claiming they are not acting in planning or maintenance ('civil management') capacity. If you have an easement contract to travel on a 'street' and someone violates it by building a house on it you can still sue them but the government has nothing to do with planning that. The population is not quite 100k but also not an order of magnitude lower either.

[Lerc]

But you don't have to pay them even if you lose the suit. No police. If they try to take by force you can defend your property and your life.

[tardedmeme]

I'm glad you have the option to live somewhere like that. I'm also glad you can't forcibly impose it on everyone else. I'll take a moderate level of corruption over a completely unregulated hellhole.

[soperj]

I really want to know where this is.

[mothballed]

~Most of rural AZ and probably rural AK is like this. There are some 'cities' that never incorporated and have street grids without any sort of government administering them nor any organized system of maintenance.

[amanaplanacanal]

Interesting. I wonder how large a population that could support?

Similar to socialism, which works just fine in a family, or hunter gatherer tribe, but starts running into problems at large scale.

[rithdmc]

I wonder what the crossover or relationships between the two - Persons of wealth in positions of power and the church - was here at the time.

In Ireland, for as long as it has existed with its own government, the two have been pretty heavily intertwined.

[pqtyw]

Probably not in the Dutch republic (and even in general in Europe) governments did have significant control of the economy, through mercantilist regulation, monopolies and chartered companies (you required a government charter for a establish a joint stock company). The you had the Dutch Easy India company (and later the English East Company) which was more or less controlled by the state and had a monopoly on international trade.

Governments back then were remarkably interventionist and even kind of semi state capitalist even by modern standards.

[tokai]

Eh 1630s in not the bronze age. The Netherlands was a republic, with quite a complex state apparatus. Sure it wasn't a democracy but there still was a government.

[asveikau]

From the article in the comment above, it seems like lack of government involvement is a factor. The article says the courts were unwilling to settle purchase contract disputes. Sounds like a government that is not performing what we today consider a core function, or even libertarians tend to agree civil court is an important function.

[bigbadfeline]

> or even libertarians tend to agree civil court is an important function.

Libertarians cannot agree on anything between themselves, they are programmed to hate the government, the hate for each other and humanity as a whole is just a natural consequence of that.

> From the article in the comment above, it seems like lack of government involvement is a factor.

We now have a government that is unwilling to control market excess because the government and big business have merged into one. Actually, the government has resigned from that "core function".

[NuclearPM]

> It should be a story about governments misallocating resources. That's it,

No. It’s a story that has been repeated with beanie babies, baseball cards, and crypto crap