All the other scandinavian countries that don't swim in fossil fuel wealth are still doing pretty well, though. Also, lots of countries that are rich in natural resources don't actually let the majority of their population participate in that wealth.

So is the US

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?

True, and worth a reminder. But they choose to do, well, social things with it*. In addition to more "normal" social welfare stuff they give money to people who live in the very North, just for living in the North.

They also have so many waterfalls that all their electricity is hydro, and they have too much of it.

They tried to sell it cheaply to the EU some decades ago but of course our energy lobby blocked it.

* also cultural etc. etc. Like another commenter said: they choose to let their people participate in it

Drained-pool politics.

TLDR: Whites in some parts of America drained public pools rather than integrate them. They should rather no one have a public pool than have to share it with black people.

Broadly, humans are happier when they have more than their neighbors. Having the biggest house in the neighborhood strongly correlates with increased happiness. Having a McMansion in a neighborhood full of other McMansions leaves people no happier, on average, than having an average mobilehome in a mobile home park. (Free public radio audio coverage, links to Washington Post text article: https://www.marketplace.org/story/2026/01/13/why-larger-homes-dont-lead-to-more-happiness)

In the US, having black people be "the ones with less" that makes people of other races get that "better than my neighbor" happiness boost is structurally convenient, but other groups fill that need in other cultures. Jews and communists are other common targets in Western cultures, all non-Japanese get the treatment in Japan, the Tutsis in Rwanda, the eastern ethnic groups in Russia, and on and on. This hugely common psychological tendency is damaging to creating broadly prosperous societies, but hopefully the learnings from the studies of it will help us create strategies to structurally counteract it.

This unfortunately, some people are too far gone

Gotta love that Axolotl.

I see small kids with plushie axolotls these days. For some reason this animal has entered the headcanon of preschoolers around the world.

Oh shit. I don't know why that hadn't occurred to me before 😂

Our cultural imperialism is exporting rebellion and the destruction of civilization.

Damn, that whole great American satan thing hits different.

Social democracy managing capitalism is rather Nice. Freedom of making profits while providing a strong social net.

Or rather capitalism whithin a social democracy. Population shoulf dictate the rules

I think kind people should push for regional economic independance or at least verification of its viability and acknowledgement that they are working their fair share.

Then one can be sure that at least from your point of view, the exploited worldwide are free to choose their own fate, and you are not a leech.

Economic independence is a useful tool, in that when one is economically independant, it can also be determined for certain that any external law or force is unjust and not a component of livelyhood.

No, Norway and America still exist

They’re either both alive, or nobody cares enough to update their pages.

This meme is old enough to drive now.

Senior now runs a restaurant + chopper museum. The guy wanted to run it like a proper business, but without the specials it wasn't running that well. Junior now has his own design studio.