I'd be curious to hear some first hand experiences of those who've made the move to Europe and what you think of the process and considerations one should make.
A few questions to start the conversation:
- Where do you live?
- What's the biggest sacrifice you had to make (i.e. pay, housing, friends, etc.)
- What have you gained?
*If you ignore wide swaths of the 20th century, during which certain disarmed Dutch citizens were systematically sent to be executed. Which by the way, happened within plus or minus 1 expected lifetime of your future children.
I don't think the holocaust is "irrelevant." When you stop believing it can happen again (which apparently you've done), you lose the defenses to keep it from happening again. I'm very glad my minority kid has means to self defense if people ever choose to attack her perceived ethnic group. Also, there are plenty of murders in Netherlands, too. Although not as many (but then again, stay away from gangs and a few large cities in US, and you'll probably find you're far from any non-lottery-ticket risk of murder).
- Our kids won't ever have the internal debate about reproductive rights: birth control will be a norm and abortions will be available.
Neither will ours, many US states allow this.
- We'll stay healthy more easily with healthier food and a more active, less car-dependent lifestyle.
Healthy food is widely available in US and you can live with just a bicycle in places like Chicago or even in rural areas if you stay fit.
- Our lives won't revolve around our jobs, we'll be able to be more present for our kids.
I have this same thing in US.
- We won't have to solve all of our problems (education, health care, housing) with huge piles of money, driving us to work harder and take jobs that exploit others just so we can stay ahead.
My family makes maybe 75th percentile at best in our city (and I'm guessing you will too if you're internationally mobile). If you live away from the coasts that is plenty for those, like in Midwest. Is that huge piles of money?
- Our kids will probably not have to spend a ton of money or time taking care of us when we're old.
In US kids are not deemed slave to their parents, they can do as they wish after reaching adulthood.
- Our kids will grow up in a more multicultural environment, hopefully giving them a broader view of humanity.
I live in one of the most multicultural nations in the world. The city I live in, in fact, I am a minority as a white European descent person. Will Europeans be minority where you live in Netherlands?
Netherlands sounds like a great place. I'm sure it'd be fun to live there. But the reasons you give make no sense, you can achieve all your goals in America and many other nations. I think you're just culturally, ideologically, or politically interested in Netherlands. Which is a great reason to go of course.
The rest of your comment feels like it's from the perspective of someone who's not tried these lifestyles, or is naive to their costs. Cycling in the US is super dangerous. Living in the Midwest subjects you to intense levels of religiosity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a thorough lack of multiculturalism. Obviously kids aren't obligated to take care of their parents, but we don't want to force them into a system of bad choices. A nation without equal access to reproductive freedom teaches each of its citizens that women do not have a fundamental right to control their bodies.
It is true it's possible to carve out the kind of life we want here, or perhaps other non-EU countries. We don't know if we'll stay in NL past a year or two. But it's really about what kind of society we want to live in and what values we want our kids to absorb. And yeah, the US really just isn't on that list.
This couldn't be further from the truth. I was born and raised in the midwest, and founded my career there. I raised my family there for some time as well (and you may be suprised, but my brown wife and half brown daughter were never mistreated because of their race, even in our white town I (white guy) was the only one of us to ever receive scornful racial slur said to me). There was never a single 'shooting' you are so worried about at my school, or any of the surrounding ones. The only school where I can think of where that even happens is the closest big city. The most violence I ever saw were a few consensual fist-fights amongst middle and high schoolers, which always ended when one opponent gave up.
My parents were school teachers. Which in rural America is to say, they made barely more than a factory worker. Like the factory workers, we had a single family home, health care, and I received such a good education at my shitty midwestern public school. With that rural ('free') public school education I received a full scholarship to a top 10 engineering school in the US.
>Living in the Midwest subjects you to intense levels of religiosity, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and a thorough lack of multiculturalism
This is utter bullshit, have you ever lived in the midwest? I experienced none of this in Chicago, in fact in many areas I was minority as a white person. One neighborhood I lived in on the north side, probably half the people were LGBTQ. I worked extensively with people of all nationalities; in fact most business owners I met in my line of work came from either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants.
Yes I lived most my life in the US (although I have lived and fought in 3rd world and married a 3rd world national). I used a bike exclusively for 5+ years. I exclusively biked in Chicago, which is a walkable Midwest city, and had healthcare/education/decent apartment all for ~75th percentile wage. I was hurt a few times on a bicycle but never murdered. Were I to have owned a gun while in Chicago, I thankly never would have had occasion to have used it, because unless I was dumb enough to sell drugs on the south side no one had any interest in murdering me.
>A nation without equal access to reproductive freedom teaches each of its citizens that women do not have a fundamental right to control their bodies.
There are plenty of states in Europe too with reproductive rights controversy, such as Poland. To suggest contraceptives or abortion are inaccessible in US is just fabrication.
>The holocaust really has no relevance to gun policy.
It does if you want people to have some sort of defense to soldiers, even if it means dying on their feet instead of their knees. The ghetto uprising held off the Nazis for days and that was under incredibly unfavorable gun policy. When the Russians attempted this same genocide in Chechnya, widespread arms in Chechen hands prevented a holocaust sort of scenario and in fact the Chechens even gained independence for some time. And in the French underground, policies restricting arms to civilians in France played significant factor in issues with arming the underground (who helped liberate Paris from holocaust causing Nazis).
>garbage pro-gun rhetoric we're hoping to escape by leaving.
You haven't escaped it. People are printing FGC-9 and other home manufactured firearms in the Netherlands as we speak. And jail sentence is very lax/minimal there compared to US, so you can be assured those trading in arms in Netherlands are really not worried about being caught. Here is example of people selling them in NL on insta [0]. Oh and ammo -- don't worry it can easily be made from completely unregulated components in EU, although mostly only people in EU interested in firearms know about this.
Anyway, have fun in Netherlands. You do have my jealousy for the experience. It's always fun experiencing life in new places, and I hope it is a great time for you.
[0] https://twitter.com/Xaniken/status/1345308913189715970/photo...
Yeah I've lived across Iowa, Indiana, and eastern Pennsylvania for ~30 years. I spent a few years in NYC and I've been in DC for about a year now. Since it seems relevant, I'm also a straight white atheist guy.
I'm actually very happy the midwest works for you; there are a lot of benefits and I weirdly kind of hold out hope for it. But my guess is climate change will be very hard on it, and I don't think--outside of Illinois maybe--there's governmental competence to handle the coming challenges. But hey, what do I know.
I don't dismiss your experience, and I think one of the kind of confounding things about the US is that it is actually very good for most people, and especially good relative to almost anywhere else. I'm sensitive to the optics of criticizing a system that is way above average, and definitely aware that it's an insane privilege to be able to easily pick a country to live in.
But mostly what I'm referring to are surveys of public opinion and statistics. I'm feeling too lazy to dig any up, but google around for surveys of homophobia/racism/sexism/etc. and compare there results of say, Kansas, to a classically "blue" city like NYC. The differences are stark. Obviously racism exists in NYC, but degrees matter and degrees are what we're talking about here. Look at the rates of school shootings in the US vs. school shootings in the UK, Germany, etc. etc. Sure you can 3D print a gun, you can make acid in your kitchen. But degrees matter, and making it harder to hurt people makes it less likely people are hurt. Every study shows this. Look at the rates of maternal and infant mortality in the US vs. EU countries. Look at the rates of educational attainment, the Global Gender Gap index, etc. etc.
I do want to drill down into abortion for a second, because there's a lot of information people just don't know about it. Generally the argument goes, "OK well, if Texas outlaws it it's no big deal, you can just drive to a surrounding state". First of all, that can be a pretty long drive depending on where you live. Second, that presumes a neighboring state also hasn't outlawed abortions, or has a reasonable abortion regime--there are some restrictions that require an examination before getting an abortion, and you can't have both on the same day, so you're making multiple day-long trips. For many, many women that's practically impossible. Abortion is also not always purely elective, it's often the case that women need abortions to stay alive, or they miscarry and an abortion is simply removing the dead fetus.
The current state of abortion policy in the US is really terrifying [0], but the fact that it's happening in a country where a strong majority (60%!) support a right to an abortion honestly terrifies me more.
These differences aren't happening by accident, they're happening because the EU isn't encumbered by a moribund government and a powerful proto-fascist political party. Like, I'm glad it's easy to bike where you live, but I'm tired of Mitch McConnell trying to disenfranchise people of color so the American right can (re)build a white chauvinistic corporatist theocracy.
Which brings us to guns, my favorite least favorite topic. You're never gonna convince me that a populous armed with AR-15s and the odd SAM will be a defense against the US military, who are armed with unimaginably sophisticated weaponry and have the ability to completely strangle our society. You'll never convince me that the people who are armed (largely right-wing) will even be the ones defending us from the government (you can imagine a Trump presidency in 2024 going pretty sideways, and the pro-2A people welcoming a "change in government structure to save our country"). In no way am I reassured by the prospect of an armed resistance against a tyrannical government--that sounds like a complete failure case with global repercussions. It's an absurd position to take. The US has a staggering nuclear arsenal, space weaponry, and still leads the free world. The very idea of it collapsing to the point where it would be comparable to situations like Paris in WW2 or Chechnya is horrifying and probably precipitates a protracted period of darkness for all of humanity.
But you'll also never convince me that a violent military coup is how it'll happen. If there were some power that invaded and conquered the US, rounded up millions of LGBTQ people and people of color into forced labor camps, prisons, and psychiatric facilities where they're subjected to constant violence and sexual abuse, stole all our wealth for themselves, forced their religious beliefs on us, propagandized us through talk radio, cable news and internet news sites, and militarized our police force, we all think that'd be pretty bad. But it's also the modern Republican party so, some amount of frog boiling is happening here.
[0]: https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion
I disagree on a few points but I think your move to the Netherlands is right for you. I don't think it's going to be very productive to continue on some of these points, although I have to be honest I think you're just kind of offloading the responsibility of protecting you onto someone else and hoping for the best when you relinquish legal means of armed defense. But it's worked for the past several decades (as long as you don't look further back), for most the people most the time in the Netherlands, and you're probably of European appearance, so there may not be much risk to you personally if you're surrounded by people who may see you as one of their own. Fortunately as someone of international mobility it's a decision for you rather than a position of no alternative.
I think we've pretty much drilled down into political reasons being a very significant reason for your choices. I also lament the problem of poor political tractability in the US, although I think some of this has to do with federal consolidation of power in a nation with wide interests, culture, region, economy, and values. EU has solved this by have a loose confederation of nation which for each individual nation may be more homogenous than US, and maybe the US could offer more to different sets of values by breaking up some of the federal power that forces bad compromises for everyone.