George Hahn

A 2025 report from London's Center for Economics and Business Research that looked at education, STEM employment, and overall innovation across 35 countries ranked the Netherlands 10th in global tech competitiveness ahead of every G7 nation and one spot behind Sweden.

The Dutch focus on digital infrastructure has put the country at ground zero for AI.

Outside of the U.S., the Netherlands has the most data centers per capita, while also making Amsterdam the go-to EMEA headquarters for transnational companies, including Cisco, Netflix, Nike, PepsiCo, TikTok, and Uber, just to name a few.

None of what makes the Netherlands great comes at the expense of its commitment to empathy and equity.

The Dutch poverty rate is 5%, half the rate of the US.

Unlike most EU nations, the Netherlands leverages a heavily regulated private insurance sector to cover its citizens.

Using a managed competition model, the Netherlands ranks third in healthcare globally based on public surveys evaluating medical quality, infrastructure, staff, wait times, and costs.

The takeaway?

If we followed the Netherlands, we might cut our per capita healthcare spending in half, improve outcomes, and keep private insurance.

No system is perfect.

Immigration, a housing crisis, and political volatility are among the issues facing the Netherlands.

Sweden is trading its German-style fiscal discipline for deficit spending in order to ramp up defense.

It also faces a potential housing bubble linked to high levels of private debt and has struggled to integrate immigrants.

Nevertheless, the Swedes and Dutch remain committed to capitalism built on a foundation of empathy and equity, whereas Americans are divided on fundamental questions.

In the U.S., the right is cheering on crony capitalism and the hollowing out of the social safety net.

The left is embracing socialism, and as Joan Didion famously wrote, the center will not hold.

This isn't a matter of policy, but the scarcity of one of society's most important assets, trust.

Then Senator Barack Obama made this point in a 2006 speech at the University of Nairobi, delivered as Kenya was in the throes of a constitutional crisis.

When I visited Stockholm last week, I spoke with the founder and leadership team at Spotify.

They'd all lived in Silicon Valley, but each had returned.