EThere are two things you are not allowed to interfere with in the Netherlands. How a parent raises their children. And what someone wastes their talent on. There is no greater social waste than that of talent, argues Rutger Bregman Moral ambition. He wants to entice people with jobs that are useless or even harmful to society to switch.
He locates the Bermuda triangle of wasted competence on the Amsterdam Zuidas. Take a lawyer who, employed by the law firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, helps large companies avoid taxes. Chemical giant OCI is one such customer of De Brauw. The major fertilizer manufacturer was in the news last week: OCI paid out billions to its shareholders without paying dividend tax.
About the author
Marcia Luyten is a journalist and columnist for de Volkskrant. Luyten presented Outside court and worked in Africa for six years. She also wrote, among other things The happiness of Limburg and the biography Motherland, the early years of Máxima Zorreguieta. Columnists have the freedom to express their opinions and do not have to adhere to journalistic rules for objectivity. Read the guidelines of de Volkskrant here.
This is achieved through a clever trick. First, the company’s capital was increased by 2.7 billion euros, a minute later the capital was reduced by the same amount. Subsequently, 2.7 billion euros could be paid out to shareholders, tax-free.
The company delivered the same region in 2022 and 2023. As a result, the Dutch Tax Authorities will miss out on 750 million euros in dividend tax. At the same time, OCI is voluntarily applying for a subsidy from the European Union and the Ministry of Economic Affairs to green its production. Bregman’s point is crystal clear: the lawyers who advise on grab and steal constructions harm the public interest. Even if no rule has been broken; in the twilight resides a monstrous collection of legal injustice.
There are many traders, brokers, advisors, consultants and intermediaries who make millions from transactions that harm society. The pinnacle of pointless trading resides on – how could it be otherwise – Wall Street. Traders locate themselves as close as possible to the stock exchange, with the fastest internet connection, so they receive information fractions of a second before competitors. They trade in shares fully automatically at almost the speed of light. This flash trading has no social function whatsoever. It is speculating on changes in currency and stock prices, buying and selling in less than a second. Minimal price differences, millions of profits.
This no longer has anything to do with Adam Smith’s free market, in which the price contains information about the scarcity of a product. Nor with the function of the very first shares in 1602, with the VOC, namely: raising capital and spreading the risks at the same time. Only through that financial invention did it become possible to build the best and largest trading fleets. (The fact that large areas have been colonized and people, animals and the earth have been violently exploited does not detract from the social and business ingenuity.)
It is significant that Rutger Bregman evokes revulsion, even hatred, with his moral appeal. Apparently there are plenty of people who know that they are giving their best efforts to bullshit jobs or worse, but who don’t want to hear that. Moreover, the generation born between roughly 1950 and 1970 contains an oversensitivity to morality. They were there when the oppressive, coercive sense of norms was disabled. Since then, anyone who uses the words ‘virtues’ or ‘morals’ must be ridiculed.
It is to Bregman’s credit that he does not let that hold him back. In fact, he has also rented an office on the Zuidas. There he is now, undeterred, with his School for Moral Ambition. Because the shameless grabbing that spawned countless scandals shows that no legislation or regulations have been opposed to the will to profit. Only a moral offensive will help there.
