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Those lucky sons of bitches in Norway. 1. Huge oil and gas resources 2. Huge hydropower resources. 96 per cent of all electric power generation comes from hy
by nabla9 3y ago
Those lucky sons of bitches in Norway.
1. Huge oil and gas resources
2. Huge hydropower resources. 96 per cent of all electric power generation comes from hydropower.
3. Gigantic phosphate deposits.
4. Sensibility to avoid resource curse and invest excess money.
5. Fjords designed by Slartibartfast
- fulltimeloser 3y ago6. https://www.tasteatlas.com/map-of-european-cuisines-with-ratings https://www.tasteatlas.com/map-of-european-cuisines-with-rat...
- royjacobs 3y agoI'm fairly sure Italy would happily trade some pasta-based dish for unlimited hydroelectric energy.
- manuelmoreale 3y agoAs an Italian I have my doubts ahah
- benj111 3y agoTinned spaghetti hoops?
- fastball 3y agoItalians will let you take their pasta over your dead body.
- intothemild 3y agoAs an Italian living in Norway.... No
- avgcorrection 3y agoThis is because Jamie Oliver hates brunost.
- timeon 3y agoYou can't take this list seriously. Cheddar has similar score as Gruyère. Or Norwegian Salmon similar as 'Fish and Chips'. No wonder English cuisine is rated so high there.
- YurgenJurgensen 3y agoSounds like someone hasn't had real cheddar.
- timeon 3y agoOk I'm not going to make flamewar over cheese so I'll just say, that I was maybe bit unfair.
- speedgoose 3y agoAlmost all food is great if you get the proper high end quality. What matters more in my opinion is what you can expect to taste most of the time. If you go to the supermarket or an average restaurant in a medium sized city for example. As a pedantic Frenchman immigrant living in Norway, I would say that Norway isn’t the best about food but also not that bad. They have good stuff and terrible stuff like most countries and once you know what to eat you can live happy.
- YurgenJurgensen 3y agoGeneric cheddar isn’t usually considered for these ‘National specialties’ lists though. I believe the full name is West Country Cheddar, like how not all sparkling wine is Champagne.
- short_sells_poo 3y agoFermented fish is artisanal and yet borderline war crime at the same time :)
- ascorbic 3y agoYou can buy great Cheddar in almost any supermarket in the UK
- Kuinox 3y agotasteatlas is know to make stupid list, and here a new one.
- heywhatupboys 3y agolmao, some stupid list. Scandinavia has world renowned cuisine, with some of the best (THE best) restaurants in the world, new inventions, and a food culture quickly spreading throughout the world. Then some live laugh love travel girls and guy come to "list cuisines". What a stupid list. I could as well just have pull something out of my arse by vacation photos posted here by HN contributors. If you think that list is in anyway meaningful or sophisticated I have a whole highway to sell you
- gumballindie 3y agoI’d say number four should be first in your list. Had they not been sensible they might not even have found this deposit, nor would they have had a massive sovereign fund. They’d been buried in rusty lambos and warlord money.
- vizzah 3y agoWell, investing their surplus into Facebook/META (among many other stonks) is a pretty risky trade.
- nradov 3y agoWith that much money they pretty much have to invest in every publicly traded company.
- bugglebeetle 3y agoFamously saved by a former Iraqi petroleum executive, who knew about the resource curse: https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.2604105 https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.2604105
- gruez 3y ago[deleted]
- bugglebeetle 3y agoThis is honestly such a bizarre degree of skepticism for something so widely reported, I’ll try not to impute what might be motivating it. Farouk Al-Kasim was knighted by the King of Norway for his efforts in this of all things, so no, not really. You’re quite wide of the mark. His guidance was also shaped more by the experience of Netherlands in the 60s as much as it was Iraq, as is cited in the article.
- vages 3y agoNorway had successfully georgist tax policies in place for hydropower for half a century at that point. He was not fighting as much of an uphill battle as he would almost anywhere else: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/05/17/norway-the-once-and-future-georgist-kingdom/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/05/17/norway-the-once-and... https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/norways-sovereign-wealth-fund?ts=w https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/norways-sovereign-... (Update: This is not to detract from his achievement, but to harp on the fact that Georgism is one of the most useful, underrated tools in the economic toolboxt)
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoAnd the population of Norway is 5.4 million. For comparison, metropolitan Berlin is 6.1 million.
- camillomiller 3y ago? The latest official figure for Berlin is 3.6 million. You mean the Berlin + Brandeburg metropolitan region, which is Berlin (city state) plus an area that’s at least as big as the metro area including the Berlin city suburbs expansions into Brandenburg. With the resulting area, 6.2 million people still amount to a quite low density compared to many other cities. Paris would have been a better example.
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoHave I not said metro Berlin? Yes, Berlin is 3.6, metro Berlin is 6.1. I picked a random city from wikipedia, not attached to Berlin.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hju22_-3 3y agoNumber two isn't very accurate nowadays, since they're exporting it and importing more expensive and pollutive power instead. A certified 4 dimensional big brain achronal chess move us puny mortals are incapable of comprehending.
- avgcorrection 3y agoThe current Norwegian energy import/export policy is completely stupid.
- rqtwteye 3y agoThey need to work on their weather though.
- avgcorrection 3y agoSee point 1 and climate change.
- timeon 3y agoThere was first tropical night of the year already at the beginning of June in Oslo.
- snovv_crash 3y agoIt isn't about temperature, it's about sunlight. Norway, despite its material wealth and natural beauty, has one of the world's highest suicide rates.
- avgcorrection 3y agoThe tilt of the Earth has nothing to do with “the weather” (that you can do something with).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- puchatek 3y agoNorway's suicide rate is average. That's Finland you're thinking of.
- nabla9 3y agoToday in Oslo: sunrise 04:03 sunset 22:39 Nights are very short in the Nordics during the summer. There is so much sun you don't know what to do with.
- oblio 3y agohttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Europe_sunshine_hours_map.png/1119px-Europe_sunshine_hours_map.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f8/Eu... It's the non-summer months that kill you.
- weatherlite 3y agoYep. that's what happens we decide 4 million people get the territory the size of Western Europe more or less. They were there first so ... makes sense.
- fastball 3y agoWere they there first or were they there last?
- namaria 3y agoWhat? Norway is smaller than Spain. And why do you think countries were distributed to people by some sort of collective decision?
- oblio 3y agoI'm guessing they're counting the EEZ and maybe the fishing zone?
- weatherlite 3y ago> And why do you think countries were distributed to people by some sort of collective decision? Countries were not "distributed I obviously don't think that, hence what I wrote. I think they were in many cases fought for and the strong got the best land for the most part. There was no collective decision making. And I'm hinting that maybe the current situation doesn't make much sense for team humans.
- namaria 3y ago> I think they were in many cases fought for and the strong got the best land for the most part That's an incredibly simplistic way to see History. Lands are not ranked from best to worse. How a modern population ended up where is a long and complicated process of migration and moved back and forth several times. Great lands have been scorched and abandoned and changing technology, trade and population patterns change drastically what is great land from one generation to another. Not to mention until very, very recently, Norway was very poor land. The people who ended up being there for the oil boom in the 70s were not, by any means, some very strong people who fought their way into prime land.
- arcticbull 3y agoFor those unfamiliar with the resource curse [1] this isn't usually a ticket to victory. The largest proven oil reserve in the world isn't in Saudi Arabia, it's in Venezuela - the poorest country in the Americas. What Norway deserves huge credit for is the way they manage their natural resources, and how they designed their sovereign wealth fund. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
- Chris2048 3y agoBut didn't Venezuela explicitly kick out foreign oil corps, despite not having a sophisticated oil extraction industry itself?
- arcticbull 3y agoI believe that kind of behavior explicitly qualifies under 'resource curse.' Even if they hadn't, check out the 'enclave effects' section of the Wikipedia article. > "Oil production generally takes place in an economic enclave, meaning it has few direct effects on the rest of the economy." Venezuela is just one of many examples.
- hfkwer 3y agoVenezuela's poverty has as much to do with incompetent leadership as it has with the US embargo.
- arcticbull 3y agoWhich is also mentioned in the article -_- in the "Violence and Conflict" section. Note that oil-rich states are both the targets and instigators of conflict. For instance, Venezuela's recent conflict with Guyana after their recent discovery of oil. [1, 2] [1] https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-guyana-territorial-dispute-court-c84c5410e5658aa4541b17f09a461eb9 https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-guyana-territorial-disp... [2] https://apnews.com/article/guyana-oil-discovery-money-14c23a72c6d7c13675493ede42ed1000 https://apnews.com/article/guyana-oil-discovery-money-14c23a...
- ur-whale 3y ago> Those lucky sons of bitches in Norway. Well sure. But then they also have Lutefisk [1] and one of the world's most annoying population of mosquitoes. You can't have it all good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutefisk
- saiya-jin 3y agoCan't comment on that processed fish matter but mosquitos there are beyond ridiculous in the summer (Finland ain't much better). Having dozens of bites on every bit of skin that isn't completely covered, constantly. One hitchhiker who I've met who had his one hitching hand uncovered counted 168 bites, on one hand, within 2 hours. When you hike, you have easily 100 of them sitting on you, your backpack, everything. They are also huge compared to central Europe. Sure, you get used to being full of red spots, you stop scratching them, but occasionally you run some part of your skin against something and all hell breaks loose. Then you come back to sanity and realize freedom has many shapes, and being able to dress as you like in summer is definitely one of them.
- throwawaylinux 3y agoNorway really should have their ill gotten carbon profiteering assets stripped away and redistributed to less advantaged nations. Hopefully that will come soon, and this rock deposit could help pay for some of the interest.
- MandieD 3y agoPoint 4: as a notorious economics philosopher once said, "never get high on your own supply." Along with not immediately blowing the petro money on a national level, Norway taxes petroleum products more heavily for local consumption than even its high tax neighbors - for a long time, gasoline was cheaper in Germany than in Norway, and Germany has high fuel taxes like pretty much every other European country (EU and non).
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoI mean it'll be more expensive, but since their economy is doing so well I can imagine it's still a lower percentage of people's incomes than in e.g. Germany; all is relative. I mean cost of living is higher in cities but so is income. Usually. Sometimes.
- MandieD 3y agoIt's a high enough petrol tax it prevented Norway from being full of gas guzzlers, and that it has been a disproportionately large EV market, despite being a) a giant oil producer and b) cold.