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Is Norway the New East India Company?

branko2f7.substack.com

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Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#131

Post by londons_explore »

nemo44x wrote: post #108
londons_explore wrote: post #18

The root of this issue is that everyone is doing what they can to appear clean and eco friendly without much regard for actually being clean. Oil rigs hundreds of miles into the ocean look very clean when you can't even see them from the beach. Gasoline cars look much worse, so they're what gets addressed. Home heating is another thing that is hard to see, yet is very bad for the environment. Eco houses that are supe…

Wouldn’t a home with that type of insulation be rather unhealthy to live in over time? Homes are designed to “breath” - you not only want to circulate air but also prevent mold, etc from taking form. Saying that, many homes could use better insulation in their roofs. It’s interesting on a snowy day to see which homes have good and bad insulation.

They use a heat exchanger to get fresh air in while still keeping the heat in.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#132

Post by karencarits »

ttul wrote: post #13

Norway is perhaps the best run petro state in the history of the world. To avoid Dutch Disease, whereby an economy becomes dependent on a particular commodity, Norway long ago decided to invest its considerable oil wealth in assets located outside of Norway, building a massive sovereign wealth fund that will provide income to Norwegians long after the oil is all gone. Compare this situation to Nigeria, whose similarl…

There is a live counter showing the approximate value of the fund: https://www.nbim.no/en/

"On average, the fund holds 1.4 percent of all of the world’s listed companies."

At the moment, NOK 12 121 718 452 052,- or about $1 368 155 330 418,05

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#133

Post by hjek »

dathinab wrote: post #110
hjek wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean the East India Company caused (as far as I can tell) a extrema degree of damage of which the echos still noticeable affect all of us today and will so in the future, That's because you fail to mention the climate catastrophe which causes an extreme degree of damage[0] and will so in the future[1]. [0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7eyn8/five-million-people-d... [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/vbwpdb…

Not really, Norway reducing Oil production will most likely not affect the climate change, it might even make it worse due to less environmental friendly produced Oil and much less reinvestment of Oil money into trying to reduce the Oil consumption. At least currently there are still enough Oil reserves around the World that Norways reduction of Oil production would be fully compensated by other sources. Maybe this w…

> Not really, Norway reducing Oil production will most likely not affect the climate change, it might even make it worse due to less environmental friendly produced Oil and much less reinvestment of Oil money into trying to reduce the Oil consumption.

I find it interesting, this argument of "If we don't do it, someone else will." It can be used to justify any kind of unethical activities, from arms trade to factory farming, and somehow in that logic the Norwegian oil becomes friendly for the environment.

The article's comparison is only an "absurdly extrema leap of logic" if you buy into that kind of magical thinking that can make responsibility disappear.

Imagine me grabbing your wallet out of your pocket and arguing: "If I didn't steal your wallet, someone else would've done it, and they would've been far less polite about it than me, so in the end you're better off with letting me keep it." I guess you'd be okay with that.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#134

Post by nautilius »

lenkite wrote: post #71
nautilius wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yeah, who doesn’t remember the infamous famines and the collapse of police and industry in the U.S. during the oil crisis in the 70s.

There was even a book authored on this "Eating Oil: Energy Use In Food Production" in that era that showed how reliant agriculture is on oil and how close the first world was to food crisis.

But there wasn’t a food crisis. So if I understand you correctly, the economy is resilient enough for a sudden, externally imposed oil shortage, but if we decide it ourselves and give us a few years to prepare, the economy, and indeed society, will collapse?

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#135

Post by karencarits »

f6v wrote: post #111
ttul wrote: post #13

Norway is perhaps the best run petro state in the history of the world. To avoid Dutch Disease, whereby an economy becomes dependent on a particular commodity, Norway long ago decided to invest its considerable oil wealth in assets located outside of Norway, building a massive sovereign wealth fund that will provide income to Norwegians long after the oil is all gone. Compare this situation to Nigeria, whose similarl…

Is per-capita data on oil income available for both Nigeria and Norway?

In Norway for 2021, the oil sector accounts for about 14% of the state's total income (154 billion/milliard NOK) [1]. That's about $3500 per capita

For Nigeria 2018, it seems to be about $160 (USD 32.6 billion [2], 201 million people)

[1] https://www.norskpetroleum.no/okonomi/statens-inntekter/ [2] https://eiti.org/es/implementing_country/32

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#136

Post by Hjfrf »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #85
Hjfrf wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Norway is absolutely shifting away from fossil fuels themselves for domestic use. They're the world leader in electric cars, for example. The thrust of the article is that somehow they should change worldwide oil production (which they have little control over) rather than domestic oil use (which they are working on with relative success). Simply put, the writer is either completely mad or a cynical shill of some sor…

>They're the world leader in electric cars, for example. There are about 5 million Norwegians, and 9 million people in New Jersey. Would anyone care if 1/2 of New Jersey “was the world leader” in electric vehicles, or would you consider that some side effect of other variables? “Smaller rich country has new vehicles that work well in short ranges” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Norway is a large sparsely populated country.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#137

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

Hjfrf wrote: post #136
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They're the world leader in electric cars, for example. There are about 5 million Norwegians, and 9 million people in New Jersey. Would anyone care if 1/2 of New Jersey “was the world leader” in electric vehicles, or would you consider that some side effect of other variables? “Smaller rich country has new vehicles that work well in short ranges” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Norway is a large sparsely populated country.

It’s a single charge for an modern EV side to side, it’s long, but populated area to populated area it would be almost impossible to run a vehicle dead on the highway.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#138

Post by sopooneo »

I was about to ask for help understanding why the East India Company needed to sell anything in China? Why not just buy the tea/porcelain/etc in China and sell it in Europe for a profit?

But in writing that question, I think I got the answer. With what money would the company buy the Chinese goods? They can’t pay with European money if there is nothing the Chinese want to buy from Europe. And they can’t acquire Chinese money without selling them something.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#139

Post by wizzwizz4 »

lenkite wrote: post #128
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How will cargo ships run without heavy fuel oil ? Sails? It might not be as profitable , but I see no reason it can't be done.

Huh. I thought this was a joke (moving a 100k tonne cargo ship via sail), but apparently there are actually some prototypes. Though its more like Sail assistance than pure sail.

The tonnage that makes sails ineffective also makes drag ineffective, so you just end up with reduced acceleration, rather than reduced speed.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#140

Post by klyrs »

FredPret wrote: post #116
sydd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compare this situation to Nigeria Not really comparable. Nigeria is in this case more like China during the opium wars - the western companies are taking away their oil from them with bribery, political and economic threats. Just read a bit about how Shell operates there, they have more power than the government.

This seems to be the fault of the Nigerian government no? Shell is going to push its luck as far as it can with every country

No, bribing foreign governments is illegal, and also immoral.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...

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