Norway is a stupid example. Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland easily have the same level of welfare or arguably better than Norway in many regards. The key is to make public investments into the country’s resources (be it farmland, forestry, mines, electricity) and build infrastructure and institutions that benefit the people.
By investing directly, you are doing the thinking instead of deferring judgement to bankers and the “invisible hand” that’s really just a bunch of rich dudes with their own incentives that don’t align with yours. You cut out billionaire middlemen and money doesn’t have to “trickle down”, and you can steer the behavior of your industries and universities toward causes that take your country’s needs over time into account.
That’s how good investors think about their business empires - why should countries choose to not strategize at all and just let nature do its thing?
The World Bank had a 1993 report that basically concluded government industrial policy was to be avoided if the goal was to grow wealth broadly. This guided (or was representative of the views of people in power) decisions on international aid and other conditional support to developing countries for decades.
Leaving development of industry and technology deployment entirely to the private market economy didn’t work. Countries with the highest average standards of living, or the most improvements in standard of living, have had significant government guidance of the major industries in their economy. Only this year has the World Bank issued a new report acknowledging this: https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2026/04/24/from-paradigm-maintenance-to-paradigm-shift-a-mood-change-on-industrial-policy/
We’re currently suffering from the nazis-in-government disease. Of course social services are still better than in, say, the US, but we had a decisive downwards trend in the past 2 years. Plus scandals. TBH I don’t think they’ll get re-elected.
And I’m sure many Swedes and Danes would have something similar to say about their own government. Maybe even Norwegians? Idk. My point, “socialist” Nordic countries are not immune from the scurge.
…fascist propaganda, governance, and nationalistic zero-sum resource hoarding are trending globally; i fear it’s only a matter of time until regional conflicts escalate into global warfare…
Norway is a stupid example. Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland easily have the same level of welfare or arguably better than Norway in many regards. The key is to make public investments into the country’s resources (be it farmland, forestry, mines, electricity) and build infrastructure and institutions that benefit the people.
By investing directly, you are doing the thinking instead of deferring judgement to bankers and the “invisible hand” that’s really just a bunch of rich dudes with their own incentives that don’t align with yours. You cut out billionaire middlemen and money doesn’t have to “trickle down”, and you can steer the behavior of your industries and universities toward causes that take your country’s needs over time into account.
That’s how good investors think about their business empires - why should countries choose to not strategize at all and just let nature do its thing?
The World Bank had a 1993 report that basically concluded government industrial policy was to be avoided if the goal was to grow wealth broadly. This guided (or was representative of the views of people in power) decisions on international aid and other conditional support to developing countries for decades.
Leaving development of industry and technology deployment entirely to the private market economy didn’t work. Countries with the highest average standards of living, or the most improvements in standard of living, have had significant government guidance of the major industries in their economy. Only this year has the World Bank issued a new report acknowledging this: https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2026/04/24/from-paradigm-maintenance-to-paradigm-shift-a-mood-change-on-industrial-policy/
We’re currently suffering from the nazis-in-government disease. Of course social services are still better than in, say, the US, but we had a decisive downwards trend in the past 2 years. Plus scandals. TBH I don’t think they’ll get re-elected.
And I’m sure many Swedes and Danes would have something similar to say about their own government. Maybe even Norwegians? Idk. My point, “socialist” Nordic countries are not immune from the scurge.
…fascist propaganda, governance, and nationalistic zero-sum resource hoarding are trending globally; i fear it’s only a matter of time until regional conflicts escalate into global warfare…
Absolutely. I can only speak for Sweden but we have massive problems.