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How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

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Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#11
post #8
post #3

C'mon man. Norway's the #1 importer of Teslas [1] Otherwise, man I wish Canada would manage our oil money like Norway. But we burned that bridge a long time ago. [1] look it up

The Tesla isn't priced as a luxury car in Norway. Electric vehicles are exempt from taxes and fees, which is mostly where the money goes when you buy a more traditional vehicle. They also don't pay anything when passing toll booths, IIRC. Where I grew up, people now pay ~$10 just to pass toll booths to and from work every day. There are other benefits as well, like free parking, Tesla's free charging station--and mos…

The last benefit actually is starting to become a problem, since so many people have gotten Teslas. There's a lot of traffic in the bus lane, as electric cars, buses and taxis fight for the same spaces.

Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#12
The rise of these sovereign wealth funds has been pretty extraordinary- if corruption is kept under control those resources are politically "out of bounds" for spending.

This list ranks SWFs by size- notice there are several US states on the list: www.swfinstitute.org/fund-rankings/

Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#13
post #8
post #3

C'mon man. Norway's the #1 importer of Teslas [1] Otherwise, man I wish Canada would manage our oil money like Norway. But we burned that bridge a long time ago. [1] look it up

The Tesla isn't priced as a luxury car in Norway. Electric vehicles are exempt from taxes and fees, which is mostly where the money goes when you buy a more traditional vehicle. They also don't pay anything when passing toll booths, IIRC. Where I grew up, people now pay ~$10 just to pass toll booths to and from work every day. There are other benefits as well, like free parking, Tesla's free charging station--and mos…

All of this is indeed correct. People here don't buy Teslas or other electronic cars because of the environment. Most do it for the economical reasons listed above [1]. However there has been a lot of discussion recently about whether these economical advantages are here to stay. Currently the electric cars are clogging up the bus/taxi lanes and the government is losing money as a result of the electric car boom we've seen here recently [2]. It will certainly be interesting to see what removing the advantages will do to the electric car market in Norway.

[1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=y&prev...

[2]: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=no&sl=no&tl=en&u=h...

Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#14
post #8
post #3

C'mon man. Norway's the #1 importer of Teslas [1] Otherwise, man I wish Canada would manage our oil money like Norway. But we burned that bridge a long time ago. [1] look it up

The Tesla isn't priced as a luxury car in Norway. Electric vehicles are exempt from taxes and fees, which is mostly where the money goes when you buy a more traditional vehicle. They also don't pay anything when passing toll booths, IIRC. Where I grew up, people now pay ~$10 just to pass toll booths to and from work every day. There are other benefits as well, like free parking, Tesla's free charging station--and mos…

With incentives like /that/ I too would buy a Tesla.

Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#15
The steps of building infrastructure and investing outside the country, are pretty much exactly the same as was suggested for Scotland in the McCrone report in 1974.

Unfortunately, that report was classified as "secret" at the time, as it was felt the conclusions would boost support for Scottish independence. It wasn't released until 2005.

Link: http://www.oilofscotland.org/mccronereport.pdf

Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#16
I am jealous of Norway. Social relations in most other countries, even the "first world" ones, seem uncivilized by comparison. I always wonder how they arrived at this point - this looks like they have some magic ingredient that made their Prisoner's Dilemma converge on 'cooperate'. It must be the fjords.

Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#18
post #4
post #3

C'mon man. Norway's the #1 importer of Teslas [1] Otherwise, man I wish Canada would manage our oil money like Norway. But we burned that bridge a long time ago. [1] look it up

Well, it's not really Canada that has oil, it's more like just Alberta isn't it? Norway is a unitary state while Canada is very federal.

Mostly Alberta, but also other places, especially given that many provinces have smallish populations, so it doesn't take a lot of oil to be a large part of the economy. British Columbia, for example, has 4.6 million people and produces 20k barrels/day of oil, which is more per capita than Texas (even after the recent jump in Texas's production). But it's not as economy-dominating as in Alaska, Norway, or Alberta.

Re: How Norway has avoided the 'curse of oil'

#20
post #19

Since we're talking about how awesome Norway is, this [0] should be mentioned. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#Norway

Scotland also has similar "right to roam" legislation (as listed on that page you linked to) - which given the ways that large landowners often acquired land here seems rather just to me.
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