Ah, look at that. It’s that time of year again when the Netherlands decides to remind the rest of the planet that they’ve effectively cornered the market on decorative plant reproductive organs. They call it ‘National Tulip Day,’ but let’s call it what it actually is: a high-gloss trade show masquerading as a public service.

The Dutch growers dumped about 200,000 tulips into a square and invited the shivering masses to pick them for free. It’s a masterful bit of PR. By letting a few thousand tourists trampling over each other for a handful of soon-to-be-dead stems, the industry manages to put a whimsical, ‘quaint village’ face on what is essentially a cold, hard, global export monopoly. We’re talking about a country that treats flowers with the same industrial clinicalism that Silicon Valley treats data.

They tell us this ‘ushers in spring.’ Please. Spring is a biological season; this is a scheduled marketing window. These tulips didn't ‘arrive’; they were manufactured, refrigerated, and deployed according to a logistical spreadsheet to ensure the Netherlands remains the undisputed heavyweight champion of the floral world. It’s a flex. It’s the Dutch way of saying, ‘We grow so many of these things that we can literally throw a quarter-million of them into the dirt for you to fight over, and it won't even dent our Q1 margins.’

While the visitors are busy snapping selfies with their free trophies, the real business is happening in the background—in the massive, climate-controlled warehouses where nature is stripped of its spontaneity and converted into a predictable, shippable commodity. But hey, keep smiling for the cameras. Nothing says ‘seasonal joy’ like a carefully orchestrated display of surplus inventory meant to distract you from the fact that you’re participating in a giant, outdoor infomercial for the world's most successful botanical cartel.