Is Norway the New East India Company? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#141

Post by jessaustin » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

hjek wrote: post #133

dathinab wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

This is the philosophy of Yaakov/Justin Fauci.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#142

Post by dathinab » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #113

levzettelin wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is not perfect: it doesn't look like Norway is going to start a war to push its product. But I get the comparison: Norway looks pretty hypocritical here to me.

I've heard that before and it's always been a difficult point of view for me to understand. Could you perhaps describe how rich democracy that both uses and produces oil should behave if it were to be ⓐ not at all hypotcritical ⓑ unremarkably average ⓒ very hypocritical? You may assume that the there's a spectrum of opinions among the voters on the relevant issues, and ideally that the country has a tradition of choo…

ⓐ accept and knowledge both problems and find reasonable compromises while keeping the larger/global picture in mind.

ⓒ Ramp up Oil production as much as possible to sell as much Oil as possible, covertly use money and influence to make people dependent on Oil but in the country and to the press say that Climate Change needs to be stopped and Oil usage needs to degree and make your country less dependent on Oil usage (so that it has no problem when it runs out and so that you can sell more).

As far as I can tell Norway tries to go with ⓐ but not perfectly 100% commitment, but then expected a perfect type ⓐ approach is IMHO unrealistic. For example as far as I can tell their Arctic(1) expeditions are more about being able to keep their Oil output around the current level if necessary then about ramping it up.

A country which could be saied to go with type ⓒ is Saudi Arabia I think, but I'm have vastly to little knowledge about it to make that judgement.

(1): One note about Arctic Oil mining. There is nothing which makes Arctic Oil mining inherently more climate damaging then non-Artic Oil mining. The reason many see it as a no-go is more related to environmental concerns (which are not the same as climate concerns!). Through there are also arguments about reducing the amount of Oil which can be blasted in our atmosphere by blacklisting Arctic Oil. Either way while there are many reasons to complain about it I also can think about reasons why it might make sense and why I maybe might have done such decision. (Mainly related to increasing geopolitical tensions, increasing influence of China, and the China US conflict.)

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#143

Post by ALittleLight » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #140

FredPret wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Receiving bribes is too, right? The fault may be shared between corrupt countries and companies, but Nigeria is not blameless.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#144

Post by boardwaalk » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #140

FredPret wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Shell is not a US company and besides, relying on another country’s laws keep yourself from being exploited isn’t going to get you very far.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#145

Post by SergeAx » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

> what type of arguments do they plan to use to convince Mexico, Gabon, Nigeria, Russia to reduce production of gas and oil?

They cannot convince anyone to reduce production. And you don't fight climate change reducing production. What needs to be reduced is consumption, and Norway doing just like that.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#146

Post by vmception » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

levzettelin wrote: post #87

dathinab wrote: post #79

Is it just me or is whole "Is Norway the New East India Company?" a absurdly extrema leap of logic? 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, it might even have lead one of the foundation stones which might start WW3 (if a WW3 starts in the not to long future involving China as a major ag…

The analogy is not perfect: it doesn't look like Norway is going to start a war to push its product. But I get the comparison: Norway looks pretty hypocritical here to me.

I think it is important to decouple two issues:

1) Is it hypocritical by definition? Yes or no.

2) Does it bother me? Yes or no.

I think it is incredibly juvenile to find their push for sustainable consumption domestically to be a problem. Or, alternatively, incredibly juvenile to consider their nation building and wealth building oil exploration to be more of a problem because they tried to stop consuming it themselves. The oil production won't stop whether they were consumers or not, since that is the constant and their domestic behavior is the variable, then why create an argument based on the presence of the variable?

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#147

Post by elcdodedocle » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 7:05 PM UTC

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…

This. If only every other country with oil managed their wealth with such good intentions and for the common good the whole world would most certainly be way far ahead in getting rid of much of our dependency on it. So no, I do not think that selling oil to oil dependent countries is the same as selling opium. They have the same knowledge, means and even more motivation (no freaking oil) to get their shite together and follow the same conversion Norway has been undergoing for almost half a century now. What, do you think their fight is that they just grew a conscience yesterday and decided to replace all their petrodollars with Teslas? They freaking groomed generations of environmentally conscious citizens with all around free access to the best education to become great scientists and engineers to fight off this dependency. In and out of their country. They imported some of our best research scientists which were struggling to make a living out of their work and did not even care about it (At least until they reached their mid 30s and tried to start a family). They now own and live in literally million dollar mansions because their research efforts paid off by a country acknowledging their value. As they should. They were even able to monetize this fight for the environment, making good bucks from it. The fight for our freaking oxygen and clean water. Which shouldn't need any monetary incentive by the way, in case that is not obvious enough. In my mind they are the best kind of society you can get nowadays. I do appreciate the point of view comparing them with freaking vicious enslaving East India trading company and I am sure there is people with that mentality in their numbers but... Bitch, please.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#148

Post by webmobdev » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #79

Is it just me or is whole "Is Norway the New East India Company?" a absurdly extrema leap of logic? 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, it might even have lead one of the foundation stones which might start WW3 (if a WW3 starts in the not to long future involving China as a major ag…

No, you are not alone in rightly assuming that the whole article is bullshit. The whole basis of the article is that East India company did not sell opium in the west, but sold it to the Chinese. And that "similarly" Norway advocates for clean energy but grows wealthy by selling oil and gas. The comparison is illogical because the East India company was the poster boy of imperialism and corporate exploitation. It had its own private army of 250,000+ soldiers that was larger than the British army! It is the only instance I know of a corporate conquering a country (India) and establishing a British colony that it ran for decades. In fact, the exploitation was so perverse that the British government had to step in take control away from them to ensure that India (the jewel of the British crown) did not slip away from their hand because of the greed and cruelty of the East India company. (In the 19th century, they chopped away the hands of Bengal weavers as the clothes they produced were superior in quality, which made it difficult to sell the inferior machine produced British imported garments.)

I'd also like to add that oil and gas are not going to fade away anytime soon as we shift towards "clean energy". There are a lot of petrochemical products that are are manufactured from the oil we drill.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#149

Post by zohch » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 7:50 PM UTC

sydd wrote: post #104

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…

> 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.

> 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.

What western company is using what political and economic threat? I think if we are specific about this we can work together to bring accountability to it.

Re: Is Norway the New East India Company?

#150

Post by zohch » Sat, Jul 24, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

klunger wrote: post #123

We got click-baited by an interesting headline, friends. Instead of trying to tackle all the problems with this piece, I will just address the most glaring ones: 1) Norway is a nation, not a company. It does not have maximization of shareholder value as it's primary driving force. Yes, there is the sovereign wealth fund. But, that is about managing the assets that have been collected. It has nothing to say about wher…

> 2) Speaking of Norway being a country -- it has 5 million people and dozens of political parties. Most of those people and political parties do not actually support further north sea exploration [2].

Your citation is about political parties, and the majority of political parties would not translate to the majority of actual voters.

> Much like in the US and most other countries I suppose, the actions of the government do not represent the will of the majority of the people.

Maybe get a better source for the position you claim is held by Norwegian citizens before speculating on this.