Is Turkey only country which suffers from the exogenous factors?

In the last post I mainly claimed that Netherlands is geographically advantageous than Turkey.  However, last week I came across a video that tells the fight of Dutch people with nature. Netherlands has a coastal side which is next to Atlantic Ocean and most of the soils of the Netherlands is in sea-level. Also there are several rivers in the Netherlands subject to flooding. Due to these conditions Dutch people suffered a lot. To end suffering from its ‘exogenous’ conditions they gave approximately 20-25 percent of their GDP to so called `Delta Works` project in 1950’s. The project aimed to end floods and keep Dutch people safe. So far it seems they succeeded but it is projected that it is only enough for 21^st century. 22^nd century will be different because of the climate change and rising sea levels. The dams and flood barriers have to be upgraded to keep Dutch people safe. Of course, another option is stopping the climate change and to keep sea-level stable which is not only up to Dutch people but whole world. As far as I have observed Netherlands is maybe ten times maybe twenty times more eco-friendly than Turkey which is understandable. Because if the climate change intensifies Netherlands will be affected more harshly. At least they have to upgrade their dams and flood barriers due to rising sea-levels. Nevertheless, Dutch people have most rigorous knowledge about how to build dams and flood barriers thanks to their experience with the nature. But I don’t think it will be easy task because dealing with the nature has never been costless.

To build these dams and flood barriers Dutch people needed human capital and physical capital. To build physical capital enough to build these costly dams , you need to accumulate physical capital with investing without a respite. I think they could accumulate physical capital in 20^th century thanks to being neutral in WW1 and not so highly engaging in WW2. They managed to keep themselves neutral in WW1 and invaded by Nazis in WW2. Nazis only bombed Rotterdam and Netherlands gave up resistance so to keep the damage less. And it worked , Nazis didn’t harm Netherlands much and physical capital of the country didn’t decrease much. However, Jewish people which were living in Netherlands at that time unfortunately massacred by Nazis. Nazis only targeted Jewish people and didn’t touch Dutch people ,most probably because they thought  they were historically has kinship bonds with Dutch people.

So Netherlands is prosperous because it is lucky? I don’t think so because there are other countries have similar conditions with Netherlands but do not have that much welfare . My initial hypothesis claims that uninterrupted trade helped them to increase their capital and also they specialized in specific areas like agriculture and produced highly competitive and innovative products. Their success in the trade also may be related to specialization in certain areas and producing highly innovative and competitive products.  It is apparent that you need universities like Leiden University ,which dates back to 1575, to produce the knowledge as ore of the innovation.       

I plan to trace where the innovation comes from in Netherlands in upcoming posts.

                                                                                                     M.Furkan Guven