Thank you! You have answered a lot of my questions. One correction, Canada’s hospitals are public, not private, and are run by the provinces. There are some private clinics for cosmetic procedures and some private imaging services in Ontario. Some Conservative provincial governments have tried limited private provision of medical services, but they are invariably expensive and poorer quality.
Why does the Norwegian government own 33 percent of the stock market? Also how are contracts and salaries negotiated with sectoral bargaining?
I understand Norway has military conscription but it is a lottery system. Is this correct and do people like this?
Was Norway affected by the movement of manufacturing to Asia and if so how did the government handle the dislocations. Has farming in Norway become very large scale as in America and parts of Canada? Do you have left behind regions of the country?
Thanks Jane, I should correct that. I didn't read over properly when I moved this older article because a Canadian has mentioned this to me before. But aren't the hospitals actually independent non-profit organizations? Or are the hospitals actually directly owned by the states?
The Norwegian state owns a lot of the stock market in value because it owns either fully of partially some of the biggest companies in Norway. Now why does it do that? That is in large part because Norway is a resource oriented country. A bit like Canada.
But what we saw through history is how countries with valuable resources often got exploited by foreigners. You can see how in many developing countries their most valuable resources are controlled by foreign capitalists.
Early in the 1900s Norway saw how British capitalists were buying up Norwegian waterfalls. Many saw it as our big chance to get developed. Keep in mind Norway had no coal and thus was not able to industrialize very well in the 1800s. Hydro power gave a chance for a different path to large scale industrialization but politicians watched as it was slipping out of our fingers. These British capitalists would get farmers drunk and they'd sell off a waterfall for almost nothing to them.
We have seen the same in many African countries and the Middle East. Many countries get robbed for their most valuable assets and Norwegian politicians were not going to let that happen.
What I would say has been our strongest asset is having non-corrupt politicians. So many countries have been screwed by rich foreigners bribing them. The Americans e.g. tried to cheat us out of our oil. But our politician at the time Einar Gerhardsen was a socialist you could not buy with money. He didn't care about it. He was a former construction worker who even as a prime minister lived in a regular working class apartment. Never wanted to live in a fancy prime minister building.
So when they tried twisting his arm. Saying they would not invest or build platforms in Norway if they didn't get this and that he just said "fuck it, then we'll wait. We are not in a hurry." I paraphrase of course.
Anyway that has been a corner stone here: National control over valuable resources whether that is our forests, waterfalls, oil or fish. And generally also been quite opposed to big business. As in we typically did not let farmers sell their forrest to big sawmills. Or sell away fishing quotas to large operations. They generally wanted a lot of the natural resources spread evenly among the common people. So Norway doesn't have large farms.
It is part of why our agriculture is also quite expensive. On the other hand the small units means that we have low occurrence of diseases and other problems. It is generally very healthy.
Anyway so the Norwegian state built out a lot of the hydro power and when foreigners did it they had to return it to the Norwegian state after something like 90 years. They never got permanent ownership. Because Norway before oil and hydropower was essentially quite resource poor we did not have a big capitalist class to industrialize Norway.
So a lot of key industries were built by the state here. Railroad, telegraphs, phone lines etc was all built by the state or in partnership between the state, local communities and local business. Also because of such a small capitalist class the state also took part in setting up a financial system. So they have often been important in financing industry and the Norwegian state partially owns many of the banks.
But the biggest one is Equinor, the state oil company. We tried a hybrid model from what we had learned from the problems in the middle East. We saw that American and British oil gigants had exploited them and taken their money. That had let to nationalization later but they got cut off from technology and know-how from foreign companies.
So Norway chose a hybrid model. Foreign companies could often come here and drill but very often had to setup partnerships with our state oil company Equinor. Here they had to engage in knowledge transfer. You probably heard about this in China. They actually learned that system from us.
Basically we could have blocked foreigners out totally, but we decided it was better to let them in on the condition that they shared knowledge with us. They got 80 taxes on oil but deductions on any research and development done in Norway. This helped drive Norway to become a high tech oil nation. I used to work in the tech part of the oil industry here with 3D modeling software. People actually come from everywhere in the world to learn from us now.
But basically we started knowing almost nothing about oil but setup a deliberate system for knowledge transfer and Research and Development so we'd become world leaders in offshore oil tech. But that is part of why Equinor got so big and valuable. Today it is all over the world.
And Telenor which is a government telecoms company also gone abroad. It is partially on private hands but the Norwegian state has the controlling stake. But these guys have 200 million subscribers for cell phones around the world. A lot bigger than the 5 million living in Norway. So the oil companies, telecoms and hydropower stations, banks etc being fully or partially owned by the state is why the Norwegian state has so much of the value of the stock exchange.
Conscription was originally for everyone but then the need started dropping and it became more like a lottery. Well they pick the ones most suitable, but I suspect this will change with the new bigger NATO budgets.
You got to keep in mind we all used to serve so lottery is more like some manage to opt out. I think in the minds of most of us it is still a system primarily about having everyone serving.
I am mixed feelings about it. I served myself in the Royal Guard as an infantry soldier. I frankly hated every second of it, but I didn't quit because I do actually believe in the duty. And it is good to have been there I feel. Just not good being there.
Personally I would rather see a reform of conscription rather than a full abandonment. One year of something you hate is a long time. Fortunately the majority actually enjoy the service including the women (it is mandatory for women as well).
I think everyone should learn how to be a soldier within something like a 3 month period. The rest of the military I would instead have a more professional army. Basically I think a hybrid solution would be better.
Yes, Norway was affected by deindustrialization. I grew up in an industrial town in the 1980s. I remember factories closing every year. But the effects was never like in the US. Social democrats would never tolerate towns turned into ghost towns and descent into poverty.
They were very active with counter measures. They would move whole government functions to small towns that lost industry, or have special investments, lower taxes or anything to keep the community alive. We do a lot of money transfers in Norway from the richer areas to the less developed ones.
But in some ways we are fortunate. The Chinese cannot take over mines, farms and hydropower stations. Those are part of the land. So a lot of economic activites on the coast related to fishing, mining, hydropower etc remained.
My wife is Canadian so I talked a lot with my father-in-law about this. I think Norway followed a very different strategy from Canada. Like Canada is also very resource rich but seems to have wanted to instead want to be a manufacturing powerhouse.
Norwegians are much more clear on the idea that we are a resource country and that is what we will build our industry around. So while Canada has a big car industry we rather put more into making and advance oil industry, with attached oil services. We built our own refineries. We also have done more of the wood processing from our forests. And there is a lot of power hungry industry related to our hydro power.
I think that has had the advantage for us that you don't easily lose resource based industries because places like China and South Korea don't have much resources. The problem with resource based economy is of course huge fluctations in commodity prices, but that is why we built the oil fund. It helps stabilize the economy.
Thank you. This is so interesting! The Canadian. Encyclopedia says this about Canadian hospitals
Canada has several types of hospital, including general public (706) and special public (193), both of which are under provincial jurisdiction. As well, there are 45 private hospitals and the federal government operates 1. "Public special hospitals" refers to facilities such as rehabilitation hospitals, cancer centres and chronic care facilities. Private hospitals include cosmetic surgery facilities and vision centres.
Doctors, even those with hospital privileges are all private “contractors” responsible for the business side of their practices. My brother in law is a general practitioner who embraced that side of his practice, not everyone does and it’s a real headache for some. They are paid according to a government schedule for various procedures or office visits. Has Norway had problems with physician shortages? We certainly have here, partly because we had a lot of immigration in the past ten years, without the required increase in medical resources. I also think the system was caught off guard by the early retirement of many physicians and nurses, especially during the pandemic. It used to be common for physicians to work into their 70’s and even longer, but not so much these days. You may be correct that the hospitals are run like de facto nonprofits, but we don’t call them that.
All our big hydro generation facilities are crown corporations, so happily we dodged that bullet. We are apparently in a rush to do more mining for certain minerals. I hope that we follow the Norwegian model. Your country has certainly been a model for the world on that score. I would like to see us do more processing of resources in Canada. We still send raw gypsum to the US for
processing. Norway’s model of using foreign companies to gain knowledge and skills is excellent. I was surprised to learn recently that we were building planes for Airbus in Quebec with many of the parts sourced here. There was some talk of building the Swedish Gripen here, which is a very popular idea especially since DJT came along. I hate what is happening in America but it has probably been a good thing for Canada. We have also benefited from having a very strong non-corrupt public service and legal system, although there are some conservative politicians in our country who are trying to weaken us on that score.
Thank you! You have answered a lot of my questions. One correction, Canada’s hospitals are public, not private, and are run by the provinces. There are some private clinics for cosmetic procedures and some private imaging services in Ontario. Some Conservative provincial governments have tried limited private provision of medical services, but they are invariably expensive and poorer quality.
Why does the Norwegian government own 33 percent of the stock market? Also how are contracts and salaries negotiated with sectoral bargaining?
I understand Norway has military conscription but it is a lottery system. Is this correct and do people like this?
Was Norway affected by the movement of manufacturing to Asia and if so how did the government handle the dislocations. Has farming in Norway become very large scale as in America and parts of Canada? Do you have left behind regions of the country?
Thanks Jane, I should correct that. I didn't read over properly when I moved this older article because a Canadian has mentioned this to me before. But aren't the hospitals actually independent non-profit organizations? Or are the hospitals actually directly owned by the states?
The Norwegian state owns a lot of the stock market in value because it owns either fully of partially some of the biggest companies in Norway. Now why does it do that? That is in large part because Norway is a resource oriented country. A bit like Canada.
But what we saw through history is how countries with valuable resources often got exploited by foreigners. You can see how in many developing countries their most valuable resources are controlled by foreign capitalists.
Early in the 1900s Norway saw how British capitalists were buying up Norwegian waterfalls. Many saw it as our big chance to get developed. Keep in mind Norway had no coal and thus was not able to industrialize very well in the 1800s. Hydro power gave a chance for a different path to large scale industrialization but politicians watched as it was slipping out of our fingers. These British capitalists would get farmers drunk and they'd sell off a waterfall for almost nothing to them.
We have seen the same in many African countries and the Middle East. Many countries get robbed for their most valuable assets and Norwegian politicians were not going to let that happen.
What I would say has been our strongest asset is having non-corrupt politicians. So many countries have been screwed by rich foreigners bribing them. The Americans e.g. tried to cheat us out of our oil. But our politician at the time Einar Gerhardsen was a socialist you could not buy with money. He didn't care about it. He was a former construction worker who even as a prime minister lived in a regular working class apartment. Never wanted to live in a fancy prime minister building.
So when they tried twisting his arm. Saying they would not invest or build platforms in Norway if they didn't get this and that he just said "fuck it, then we'll wait. We are not in a hurry." I paraphrase of course.
Anyway that has been a corner stone here: National control over valuable resources whether that is our forests, waterfalls, oil or fish. And generally also been quite opposed to big business. As in we typically did not let farmers sell their forrest to big sawmills. Or sell away fishing quotas to large operations. They generally wanted a lot of the natural resources spread evenly among the common people. So Norway doesn't have large farms.
It is part of why our agriculture is also quite expensive. On the other hand the small units means that we have low occurrence of diseases and other problems. It is generally very healthy.
Anyway so the Norwegian state built out a lot of the hydro power and when foreigners did it they had to return it to the Norwegian state after something like 90 years. They never got permanent ownership. Because Norway before oil and hydropower was essentially quite resource poor we did not have a big capitalist class to industrialize Norway.
So a lot of key industries were built by the state here. Railroad, telegraphs, phone lines etc was all built by the state or in partnership between the state, local communities and local business. Also because of such a small capitalist class the state also took part in setting up a financial system. So they have often been important in financing industry and the Norwegian state partially owns many of the banks.
But the biggest one is Equinor, the state oil company. We tried a hybrid model from what we had learned from the problems in the middle East. We saw that American and British oil gigants had exploited them and taken their money. That had let to nationalization later but they got cut off from technology and know-how from foreign companies.
So Norway chose a hybrid model. Foreign companies could often come here and drill but very often had to setup partnerships with our state oil company Equinor. Here they had to engage in knowledge transfer. You probably heard about this in China. They actually learned that system from us.
Basically we could have blocked foreigners out totally, but we decided it was better to let them in on the condition that they shared knowledge with us. They got 80 taxes on oil but deductions on any research and development done in Norway. This helped drive Norway to become a high tech oil nation. I used to work in the tech part of the oil industry here with 3D modeling software. People actually come from everywhere in the world to learn from us now.
But basically we started knowing almost nothing about oil but setup a deliberate system for knowledge transfer and Research and Development so we'd become world leaders in offshore oil tech. But that is part of why Equinor got so big and valuable. Today it is all over the world.
And Telenor which is a government telecoms company also gone abroad. It is partially on private hands but the Norwegian state has the controlling stake. But these guys have 200 million subscribers for cell phones around the world. A lot bigger than the 5 million living in Norway. So the oil companies, telecoms and hydropower stations, banks etc being fully or partially owned by the state is why the Norwegian state has so much of the value of the stock exchange.
Conscription was originally for everyone but then the need started dropping and it became more like a lottery. Well they pick the ones most suitable, but I suspect this will change with the new bigger NATO budgets.
You got to keep in mind we all used to serve so lottery is more like some manage to opt out. I think in the minds of most of us it is still a system primarily about having everyone serving.
I am mixed feelings about it. I served myself in the Royal Guard as an infantry soldier. I frankly hated every second of it, but I didn't quit because I do actually believe in the duty. And it is good to have been there I feel. Just not good being there.
Personally I would rather see a reform of conscription rather than a full abandonment. One year of something you hate is a long time. Fortunately the majority actually enjoy the service including the women (it is mandatory for women as well).
I think everyone should learn how to be a soldier within something like a 3 month period. The rest of the military I would instead have a more professional army. Basically I think a hybrid solution would be better.
Yes, Norway was affected by deindustrialization. I grew up in an industrial town in the 1980s. I remember factories closing every year. But the effects was never like in the US. Social democrats would never tolerate towns turned into ghost towns and descent into poverty.
They were very active with counter measures. They would move whole government functions to small towns that lost industry, or have special investments, lower taxes or anything to keep the community alive. We do a lot of money transfers in Norway from the richer areas to the less developed ones.
But in some ways we are fortunate. The Chinese cannot take over mines, farms and hydropower stations. Those are part of the land. So a lot of economic activites on the coast related to fishing, mining, hydropower etc remained.
My wife is Canadian so I talked a lot with my father-in-law about this. I think Norway followed a very different strategy from Canada. Like Canada is also very resource rich but seems to have wanted to instead want to be a manufacturing powerhouse.
Norwegians are much more clear on the idea that we are a resource country and that is what we will build our industry around. So while Canada has a big car industry we rather put more into making and advance oil industry, with attached oil services. We built our own refineries. We also have done more of the wood processing from our forests. And there is a lot of power hungry industry related to our hydro power.
I think that has had the advantage for us that you don't easily lose resource based industries because places like China and South Korea don't have much resources. The problem with resource based economy is of course huge fluctations in commodity prices, but that is why we built the oil fund. It helps stabilize the economy.
Thank you. This is so interesting! The Canadian. Encyclopedia says this about Canadian hospitals
Canada has several types of hospital, including general public (706) and special public (193), both of which are under provincial jurisdiction. As well, there are 45 private hospitals and the federal government operates 1. "Public special hospitals" refers to facilities such as rehabilitation hospitals, cancer centres and chronic care facilities. Private hospitals include cosmetic surgery facilities and vision centres.
Doctors, even those with hospital privileges are all private “contractors” responsible for the business side of their practices. My brother in law is a general practitioner who embraced that side of his practice, not everyone does and it’s a real headache for some. They are paid according to a government schedule for various procedures or office visits. Has Norway had problems with physician shortages? We certainly have here, partly because we had a lot of immigration in the past ten years, without the required increase in medical resources. I also think the system was caught off guard by the early retirement of many physicians and nurses, especially during the pandemic. It used to be common for physicians to work into their 70’s and even longer, but not so much these days. You may be correct that the hospitals are run like de facto nonprofits, but we don’t call them that.
All our big hydro generation facilities are crown corporations, so happily we dodged that bullet. We are apparently in a rush to do more mining for certain minerals. I hope that we follow the Norwegian model. Your country has certainly been a model for the world on that score. I would like to see us do more processing of resources in Canada. We still send raw gypsum to the US for
processing. Norway’s model of using foreign companies to gain knowledge and skills is excellent. I was surprised to learn recently that we were building planes for Airbus in Quebec with many of the parts sourced here. There was some talk of building the Swedish Gripen here, which is a very popular idea especially since DJT came along. I hate what is happening in America but it has probably been a good thing for Canada. We have also benefited from having a very strong non-corrupt public service and legal system, although there are some conservative politicians in our country who are trying to weaken us on that score.