There are reasons to hate Jeff Bezos and the super-rich, but him buying a big boat from a Dutch company isn't really one of them.
Would you rather he bought the boat from a company in another country? Remember, buying luxury yacths is not the same as taking precious resources out of a country, and he doesn't decide the salaries of the ship builders.
The link posted here on HN doesn’t seem to work, but the anger is about dismantling a national monument bridge that was promised to never be dismantled again (unless, apparently you are quite rich and then you can get the promise broken), not that a Dutch company built it or that it took natural resources out of the Netherlands. https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/02/a-bridge-too-far-local...
Do you think the average Rotterdam resident cares nearly as much as the press and online forums would like you to think?
Also, I find it rather suspicious that none of these articles are actually discussing the technical implementation and potential issues facing that. What real risk does opening the bridge present?
I live here, people are upset and talking about it. The article I linked to also covers what you’re asking about, going over the perspective of the citizens concerned with breaking the promise as well as the perspective of the mayor and companies who believe they can do it safely.
Agreed, it will also be debated by our elected representatives next week.
In the end Dutch people tend to be pragmatic and I suspect it will be dismantled again, but we will see. At the same time, there is a strong sense of societal fairness and that being rich shouldn’t be able to buy you exceptions. In the meantime it is a real discussion that is happening, not anti-billionaire propaganda that no actual citizens care about.
That’s right, jobs matter too and that’s the discussion that’s happening (otherwise they would presumably just keep the promise to not take it back apart).
For what it’s worth, it didn’t go off the previous time without a hitch, it ended up being covered with scaffolding for over a year I believe. That was where the promise to never do it again originally came from.
My guess, informed by nothing other than my own cynicism, is that the Rotterdam city council will use the manufactured outrage to extract more money from Bezos to dismantle that bridge.
All this is does is hurt the local shipyard. Do you think the next buyer of a super yacht is going to build there? Or even smaller yachts now that there's a political limit on the size of ship they can sell.
Also throwing eggs at the boat just makes work for some poor souls who will have to clean it. The boat is designed to withstand the ocean, it can get wet and be washed.
This whole thing is so silly, I'm compelled yet embarrassed to comment.
What I'm getting at is that Jeff Bezos didn't plan for the bridge to be dismantled, he was probably not even aware of it, and him buying a big boat is besides Amazon's exploitation of workers, tax-avoidance and sucking money out of countries.
Would you rather he bought the boat from a company in another country? Remember, buying luxury yacths is not the same as taking precious resources out of a country, and he doesn't decide the salaries of the ship builders.