I’m looking for perspectives on which countries most effectively combine high quality of life with low social and economic inequality.
I’m looking for perspectives on which countries most effectively combine high quality of life with low social and economic inequality.
Norway admittedly has gigantic, relatively recent, oil and gas reserves that allow it to fund all sorts of social programs. Not saying those are bad or anything, just not a particularly exportable model.
Except that the Nordic model has been replicated across all the Nordic countries, of which only Norway has vast natural resources.
And even then, Norway, under the policies of the Nordic model, was already quite rich before it discovered oil.
Interestingly enough, Norway was already doing quite alright before they discovered the oil - they were at 10th place amongst all European countries. The oil has given them additional wealth, but it has become somewhat of a national myth that the oil is the sole reason for Norway’s success, leading to their current reluctance to spin the industry down, despite it running fully counter to Norway’s self-image of a green nation.
It’s actually pretty exportable. There’s a lot of countries out there that have natural resources that should be the property of the people instead of wealthy individuals.
If you’re going to start nationalizing previously established resources, that’s going to have all sorts of wild reprecussions and is not what Norway did.
But beyond the logistics, which similarly profitable resources are you thinking of?
Well of course it won’t be the same. Thats why you have to export it.
All of them. All of a nations natural resources rightfully belong to the people from oil to water. From rare earth minerals to timber.
Yes and we have a liberal democracy to determine how best to use them. Thankfully, most folks understand that simply nationalizing resources comes with huge reprecussions which greatly outweigh the gains.
Do you have a successful example of your proposal in mind?
Most Oil and Gas reserves remaining in the US are on public land, as is the massive lithium deposit just discovered in southeastern Oregon. Then there are the seabed polymetalic nodules that will be mined sooner or later. There are plenty of opportunities to nationalize natural resources, what is lacking is political will.