Raising money in Germany or the UK is a huge pain. Purchasing things is a pain. Hiring and firing. Finding people who actually understand startups.
What on earth would make you qualify the situation like that?
-- all right, ive read it I think the final paragraph gets it right: gov pending was at an all time high in that decade. And it sounds like, most of the supposed risks no longer apply, because of the Euro.
But you are correct in that Holland isnt the best place for a startup.
Basically, once you discover natural resources (in the case of NL, natural gas), it crowds out all other activity. You can earn a great return from exploiting the resource, so the best people, best capital, etc. goes into that.
With floating exchange rates, you get currency inflation, but you can have the same problems even with fixed exchange rates or common currency.
A bigger problem is the general "resource curse". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
I remember talking to people who said "at least we (Afghans) don't have oil, then we'd really be screwed."
Americans are in favour of a person being extraordinary, the dutch are not. We cherish "acting normal". One of the most used expressions is "act normal, and you'll already be weird enough"
Generally speaking, this is not a bad thing. The amount of attention whores and drama queens is much lower than the states. But for truly remarkable people, this does not make their perfect habitat. Theyll need thick skins.
To be fair, most of the places you lived in that 15 years sucked really hard, even just objectively. The good non-US places are way better than the states in almost every measurable aspect.