Column | It is irrelevant whether the market ‘it can be better’

« It’s just crazy to say it on his Amsterdam. » For example, a local retention of the AT5 summarizes the threatening disappearance on the Westerstraat in the Jordaan. Name, and they are always good for that priceless service: just come there at an unmanned safe in the supermarket.

It is not news that the crumbling of utilities provides social atrophy – I have seen it happen in the countryside where I come from. That is also why the privatization of such facilities has been a capital error. It is irrelevant whether the market ‘it can be better’, as long as the conclusion that ‘it is no longer possible’ is unacceptable. In fact: what is ‘better’ when you cannot quantify the social profit of such a place?

I was involuntarily thinking about the history of the Amsterdam city lighting, in which I recently studied – in the context of research for a historical novel. For centuries the night was very dark and dangerous. The city council was in the stomach and in 1505 ordered that anyone had to take a lantern after the crimp’s clock was ringing. In 1669 the painter Jan van der Heijden came up with a plan for thousands of oil potatoes on posts and yokes, to be filled and ignited by an army workers, the first organized street lighting in the world. The night was accessed.

Less known is the story of the loss of that Enlightenment, early 19th century. Causes: poor maintenance, theft, cuts, and the resulting privatization. In 1809 the city lighting was leased to the Maastricht entrepreneur FL Behr, an ex-colonel, dating from a noble genus that represented the interests of a lamp factory. Behr had promised better lanterns for a sharper price. And indeed, new lamps were installed in the main streets. But the employment conditions of the ‘streamlined’ maintenance army deteriorated visibly, as well as the Enlightenment in the popular neighborhoods. He could not go out anymore. Behr had little trouble with it in his house in Maastricht.

In the end, the city took the lighting again, to indirectly privatize it – something with a donkey and a stone – when the municipal energy company was privatized in the 90s. After four years, remorse followed and the public lighting was bought back. Costs: 74 million guilders.

And the post? The postal law of 1850 ordered that every municipality should have a post office, but privatization made a short work of it – the last real post office was closed and sold in 2011. It is difficult to argue that this privatization was a good thing for society. It has not necessarily become cheaper and the post offices have mainly been replaced by face -free lockers in supermarkets and a fickle network of retailers who prefer to do with them core business would be busy. Not to mention the employment conditions of delivery people.

The private post office on Westerstraat has something of a post office once. The success of it shows that there is a need. The fact that it will disappear now is mainly the result of the grabby mentality on the commercial rental market. The building is not in the hands of an entrepreneur in Maastricht, nor of an American venture investor, but of an Amsterdam property owner who got it a quarter of a century ago for about three tons. While Mona Keijzer is freezing social rents for two years, you can wonder whether a similar guideline should not apply to companies with a social function. If only to make up for the original sin of privatization.

Auke Hulst Is a writer.

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