this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
534 points (97.7% liked)
Political Memes
2157 readers
356 users here now
Non political memes: !memes@sopuli.xyz
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm so tired of this Norway is only successful because of oil cop out.
Norway, and all other Nordic countries, by adopting social-democratic policies of the Nordic model, became rich before the discovery of oil.
Norway just happened to get incredibly lucky afterwards with oil, but even after becoming a petrostate, still has similar incomes and high standards of living to the rest of the Nordic countries, who don't have oil.
And, as the other commenter pointed out, both the UK and Norway (and the Netherlands while we're at it) discovered North sea oil at the same time. The three pursued three rather different policies; of them, the Nordic policies have produced the most fiscally healthy outcome.
And, equally so, now that we're selling out our welfare and becoming little America, everything is going to shit here in Sweden.
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Norway's oil is the sole (or even most significant) reason for its success, but a different country might have been a more direct comparison.
It might even have "dutch diseased" them a while. Swedens industry was (and is) booming while Norway didn't really have that much. Now they're back on track for what I know, by fantastic management IMO. But cheap natural resources are often a blessing in disguise.
The point is that Norway didn't allow private interests to take all of their oil for no benefit to the nation.