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Norweigan oil fund

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Re: Norweigan oil fund

#281

Post by asdfgasd »

ramblerman wrote: post #142
Ididntdothis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anybody claiming otherwise? It seems pretty obvious that someone there messed up majorly for a long time.

The people who barricaded the Venezuelan embassy when there was an attempted coup against Maduro for one. There is a big ideological drive to show that communism works, and as such all the problems Venezuela faces are just imperialism at work (In their argument).

Venezuela has less public ownership of resources than even the US. To say that they are 'communist' is an ideological farce.

People are opposed to regime change because the US government has a long history of destabilizing foreign governments in deference to US capital interests. It's unlikely their motivations are just, especially as the people involved were responsible for some of the worst atrocities in Southern American governments in the 50's-90's.

Furthermore, applying economic sanctions hurts the material conditions of poor Venezuelans without significantly affecting the corrupt government. This is evidence the US does not have a strong interest in helping poor Venezuelans, but primarily forcing regime change to a government more amenable to the interests of US oil companies.

If the US was truly a force for good, wouldn't we see the same pressure on the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil? The story is similar, a corrupt rise to power achieve through unjustly jailing political opponents. If you doubt this, read Glenn Greenwald's reporting in The Intercept.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#282

Post by punnerud »

dg4 wrote: post #253

It's interesting to me that they don't appear to hold private equity or venture funds, unless I'm missing something. Presumably at that scale they have unlimited access to any asset class in the world. Does anyone have any insight as to why they might be avoiding those?

I am living in Oslo/Norway, and there is a bill now on vote to open up for investment in companies that are not listed.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#283

Post by asdfgasd »

hcurtiss wrote: post #264
odonnellryan wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only available to people who have the means or opportunity to invest. We're taking from everyone and giving to few.

There are a lot of people who rely on those investments, whether through their government retirement, their employer's retirement, or through their own holdings. Even many social programs are funded with investments in equities.

Slightly less than half of all Americans have any investment in the stock market. Pension funds were largely replaced with 401k's, but salaries were not increased to compensate.

While you're technically correct, the stock market primarily benefits those with enough disposable income to generate large investments where they do not need to draw down the principle, and that certainly isn't the majority of Americans.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#284

Post by fastball »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #179
fastball wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the emphasis being on "pursue new things and be creative". UBI is generally not intended to allow people to live out their entire lives without doing anything of value for anyone else. And if you're doing things that are valuable to the rest of society, you are paid under capitalism. So the hope with UBI is that you should never need it for your entire life because you're not making any money at all.

What do the people do if their new thing doesn’t work out? There will be plenty of these. If UBI isn’t life long then it’s more like giving everybody a sum of money which they can use to start something new. If they cant fall back on UBI then it’s exactly the same situation as we have now where a lot of people stay in careers they hate because they are afraid of losing what they have.

There already are those people. UBI does not create more failed people.

15 years is a long time. 2 years can be enough to try something new for a lot of things. If it doesn't work out, you can go back to the career you had before, or maybe even find one you hate slightly less. Or maybe you didn't hate your job, you just wanted to try something new. If it doesn't work out, go back to the job you liked well enough.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#285

Post by asdfgasd »

hcurtiss wrote: post #279
asdfgasd wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when in many ways it's a shining example of how to do things right US prosperity is largely a function of imperialism and military might, not some magical economic formula. For instance, in South America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r... The US government overthrew a democratically elected government for the prosperity of a _fruit company_. > all it seems anyone talks about is how to…

Oh please. If imperialism and military might were the source of a country's wealth, then Mongolia would be on top, and Russia, and the sun would have never set on Great Britain. No, strong property and contract rights combined with the rule of law and relatively low corruption is what made the US wealthy. And, yes, natural resource extraction and up until recently relatively prudent management of its fiscal resources…

Mongolia's dominance was far before the industrial revolution. That argument is so devoid of context it's not worth addressing. They did achieve huge gains in wealth through imperialism anyway...

The USSR was imperialist, and did achieve massive increases to the standard of living of the elite through imperialism. It's much easier to feed Russia when you can starve Ukraine.

Colonial Britain and the Dutch East India company both achieved massive gains in wealth through imperialism.

The only argument you've made is that strong property and contract rights with rule of law and low corruption can prevent squandering the spoils of imperialism. I'm not sure if I agree with that, we're too early into the US's age of dominance to tell, but it's adjacent to my point.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#286

Post by asdfgasd »

abvdasker wrote: post #200

A lot of comments in this thread seem fixated on the fact that this originated from oil profits, but to me it feels like more of a consequence of the Norwegian government's partial public ownership of its domestic energy companies and other industries. Lots of countries have a surplus of at least one natural resource; few of them have central governments with the authority (and lack of corruption) to publicly own tho…

Yes, thinking of funds like this as cash flow is absolutely a mistake. Strong democratic ownership of capital will be necessary for true democratization of society, and this is an important step (although too centralized in my uninformed opinion :D).

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#287

Post by hcurtiss »

asdfgasd wrote: post #285
hcurtiss wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. If imperialism and military might were the source of a country's wealth, then Mongolia would be on top, and Russia, and the sun would have never set on Great Britain. No, strong property and contract rights combined with the rule of law and relatively low corruption is what made the US wealthy. And, yes, natural resource extraction and up until recently relatively prudent management of its fiscal resources…

Mongolia's dominance was far before the industrial revolution. That argument is so devoid of context it's not worth addressing. They did achieve huge gains in wealth through imperialism anyway... The USSR was imperialist, and did achieve massive increases to the standard of living of the elite through imperialism. It's much easier to feed Russia when you can starve Ukraine. Colonial Britain and the Dutch East India c…

None of those countries stopped those practices. That is, they realized the end of their prominence due to policy positions and factors other than imperialism (or maybe even because of imperialism). That is, imperialism doesn’t necessarily make a country wealthy, and it certainly doesn’t keep it that way. Distant wars are expensive. See Rome. The US’s escapades in the Middle East May break it yet. No, I maintain that those imperialistic tendencies are not at all what’s made the US so prosperous, and they may in fact lead to its demise.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#288

Post by UnFleshedOne »

fulafel wrote: post #248
lnsru wrote: post #28

Wow! These people must be extraordinary to use oil money this way! Not kidding! Never been in Norway, but in countries I have ever been this would be barely possible due to corruption and the needs of the politician’s buddies. Like yachts, private jets, Bentleys and Vertu phones. This $186k/person isn’t far from what average German poses: https://www.bundesbank.de/resource/blob/617492/cd59713c156ad...

I wonder which model is better for phasing out oil/gas extraction, which is a precondition to stopping climate change. It might be bad for the voting public to be invested in oil.

If public receives regular dividends then yeah, there is a risk. If the fund is used for large scale projects and as an emergency fund, then votes are harder for populists to buy.

There are fewer vested interest with a megaphone that would stand to personally lose or gain massively, so more rational discussions can be had.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#289

Post by punnerud »

outside1234 wrote: post #229

And all it cost was the earth's climate. I think this "oil fund" will be an interesting target when countries and states start disappearing under water and their crops start failing for reparations. Also, why does Norway not contribute the full 2% to NATO spending again?

We have the second largest investment per person in NATO.

1. US = 1894 USD (3,5% GDP)

2. Norway = 1483 (1,61%)

3. UK = 899 (2,1%)

4. France = 787 (1,81%)

5. Canada = 643 (1,23%)

https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/forsvar/innsikt/budsjett/...

Because of the GDP-measure, if we stop producing oil/gas we will be over the 2% but with a lot of value in the ‘bank’. So the GDP measure is not the best. We still try to get to 2% by building up our own industry around the money, not pending it blindly.

Re: Norweigan oil fund

#290

Post by [deleted] »

dmix wrote: post #271
refurb wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wealthy? You do realize the gov't has a per barrel royalty on each barrel extracted. And that's why some provinces are wealthier than others? What a odd comment.

If it's not 100% managed by the government it's only helping evil rich people and multinational corporations... that's how economics works in certain political circles. Despite the thousands of workers it employs directly, supply chain income it generates to countless smaller firms, the actual oil being transported and exported, etc etc. All of those are heavily taxed and all of that "distributes" income to regular p…

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