I’m looking for perspectives on which countries most effectively combine high quality of life with low social and economic inequality.
I’m looking for perspectives on which countries most effectively combine high quality of life with low social and economic inequality.
Norway admittedly has gigantic, relatively recent, oil and gas reserves that allow it to fund all sorts of social programs. Not saying those are bad or anything, just not a particularly exportable model.
Except that the Nordic model has been replicated across all the Nordic countries, of which only Norway has vast natural resources.
And even then, Norway, under the policies of the Nordic model, was already quite rich before it discovered oil.
It’s actually pretty exportable. There’s a lot of countries out there that have natural resources that should be the property of the people instead of wealthy individuals.
If you’re going to start nationalizing previously established resources, that’s going to have all sorts of wild reprecussions and is not what Norway did.
But beyond the logistics, which similarly profitable resources are you thinking of?
Norway did nationalize their oil though?
In other words, Norway established this stuff pretty quickly when oil was discovered. That’s wildly different from taking over existing private enterprise.
People really don’t like it when you take things away as opposed to having a set of rules before anyone begins.
Norway did that, though. The pension fund that’s financed from that oil, is nationally owned, iirc.
In other words, Norway established this stuff pretty quickly when oil was discovered. That’s wildly different from taking over existing private enterprise.
People really don’t like it when you take things away as opposed to having a set of rules before anyone begins.
We take nothing away and give everything to the people. Capitalists are the problem.
Yeah, this isn’t going to be productive or interesting.
Have a nice day.
Well of course it won’t be the same. Thats why you have to export it.
All of them. All of a nations natural resources rightfully belong to the people from oil to water. From rare earth minerals to timber.
Yes and we have a liberal democracy to determine how best to use them. Thankfully, most folks understand that simply nationalizing resources comes with huge reprecussions which greatly outweigh the gains.
Do you have a successful example of your proposal in mind?
A liberal democracy isn’t exactly a free democracy. Billionnaires have far more buying power and so the odds are much more in their favour to bribe and corrupt institutions. That is why they like “liberal” democracy and corporate dictatorships.
If you want to understand, then go to one of those US “for profit” prisons. Works well, huh?
Not every liberal democracy is America.
If you want to understand, you might go to Canada where strict campaign finance laws generally reign in billionaires.
Most Oil and Gas reserves remaining in the US are on public land, as is the massive lithium deposit just discovered in southeastern Oregon. Then there are the seabed polymetalic nodules that will be mined sooner or later. There are plenty of opportunities to nationalize natural resources, what is lacking is political will.
Lithium is not nearly as profitable as oil. It costs a huge amount to extract and refine (China has such a chokehold on critical minerals, not because they have so much more but because they’ve built an incredibly efficient set of supply chains.)
And personally, I am very much not in favour of tearing down what little protected land is left in America. But you will be happy to know that trump strongly agrees with you and is opening up a swathe of public land for oil and gas.
Interestingly enough, Norway was already doing quite alright before they discovered the oil - they were at 10th place amongst all European countries. The oil has given them additional wealth, but it has become somewhat of a national myth that the oil is the sole reason for Norway’s success, leading to their current reluctance to spin the industry down, despite it running fully counter to Norway’s self-image of a green nation.
Tenth among European nations in the 60s isn’t particularly good and is not thr standard that makes Norway the model everyone wants to emulate.
Consider how much of Europe was under communism or fascism and there’s really not a lot of competition.
It wasn’t a terrible place but not the high quality with which we currently associated Norway.