"I don't think anyone expected the fund to ever reach $1 trillion when the first transfer of oil revenue was made in May 1996."
From: https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/19/investing/norway-pension-fu...
http://web.archive.org/web/20100123225932/http://www.ft.com/...
Nowadays everything is “setup” for the cooperation of public and private, but what are the key “ingredients” to make it happen?
The fact that this worked out, is it something unique to that situation, or cannot be duplicated?
The part I find most enticing is this idea of the government shouldering 50% of the risk, and industry only having to do 15%. If anyone could expand on this, I would appreciate it.
Norweigans trust their government, corruption is low, there's strong institutions already in place (a point specifically mentioned by al-Kasim in the Planet Money podcast) to ensure a competent and transparent execution of the plan. There's not many places in the world where all those factors exist sadly.
Although a more accurate formulation seems to be the "sudden resource curse".
E.g. how the discovery that citrus prevents scurvy and the subsequent spike in prices likely led to the emergence of the Sicilian mafia
But the is such huge amount of great mongering about corporate add mineral taxes that no major party will attack it.
The Minerals Council of Australia is incredibly well funded and hugely politically influential.
* We absolutely squandered the previous boom, once the tap was turned off it almost felt like it hadn't happened at all, outside of new developments in the CBD.
* Created an absolutely venomous environment for the workforce. I know dozens of FIFO workers or industrial workers servicing the industry, and I can only think of a few that don't suffer from either substance abuse problems, crippling debt despite massive salaries, depression or other mental health issues, or chronic physical injuries they can't get comp for, not to mention the great strain it puts on their family, and toxic workplaces (Not everywhere, but its not uncommon)
* We've let country towns supporting the industry wither on the vine. If you take Kalgoorlie for an example; Quite a lot of money is being spent in town, and if you take a drive over to the industrial estate most people will tell you that business is booming. The same people have been saying the town is just about ready to pick back up for a couple of years now, but it hasn't, and I don't believe it will. The industrial activity just isn't bleeding over into the town like it used to. The money washes straight back to Perth, back east, and overseas. Half the storefronts in the main drag are closed, and prime showrooms sit empty. The industry has raised the cost of travel to Kal so high that tourism is basically non-existent, and people who used to maintain two households in Perth and Kal are now having to chose one or the other, invariably leaving Kal for Perth
I honestly don't have the expertise to offer a solution to any of these, my gut says collecting fair royalties and using the money to fund services would be a start, but I don't have the background to really make that argument. But what I do know is, for the average punter on the street, it hasn't amounted to much, and one day it'll be gone. I look around sometimes and imagine where we'd be if the prices dropped and the sector closed up shop, and it's a pretty grim picture.
My father worked a life time in the mining industry for several Australian mining companies, and as a result I spent a lot of time growing up in mining towns.
By their nature those mining towns can and do feel isolated, but the lived experience of growing up in mining town can be enjoyable.
Move on to the modern day miner and they are predominantly FIFO and that then which creates the problems you have outline.
So my solution would be:
1. The mining company can not use FIFO workers to mine a resource.
2. Instead they have to existing town infrastructure complete with schools, medical centres etc.
3. If no such infrastructure can be found then it will need to be built.
4. If under these rules the resource can't be mined with a profit then it should be left in the ground until it can.
The resources being mined don't belong to the mining companies, but instead belong to the community and to the country.
By using FIFO workers these companies are just taking that resource without giving back anything to the community and if that is all they have to offer then the resource is better of not being mined.
People here — normal working dudes — have money. What do they do with it? They spend it. On cars, mostly, but on houses, and TVs, and out in the pub, and whatever else. If that discretionary income hadn’t been floating round our economy for the last decade, I don’t think we’d be in the doing-quite-nicely-thank-you situation we are now.
Totally accept that this is to the detriment of specific places like WA, or Kalgoorlie more specifically. I’m not saying it’s good, just that it’s a thing.
(*I’m not an economist, I don’t work in this industry, and I live in Melbourne, so this is pure armchair economics.)
But I feel like when you compare us to other natural resource rich countries, we've let them walk away with the goods for free.
And make no mistake, these jobs are temporary (If you take a long view). The industry is happy to just shut down projects the moment the price doesn't make any sense. We've been lucky that there's been enough they want out of our dirt that's there's always something on the go, but sooner or later it'll dry up, and those jobs will vanish, even if only for a while. And we'll be left with very little.
And this doesn't even go into the specter of automation floating over our head.
Group effects are known, cf bystander effect. Actually companies show a bystander-like effect, "what we're doing here is evil, someone [else] should change that".
Just because such behaviours are common in groups doesn't mean individuals aren't responsible. It's easier to ignore your moral responsibilities by invoking the company as the responsible party.
Corporate culture as in, we want you to be a {insert company name here} person. And the corporation is set up to make that happen.
You're discounting having the ability to mold someone for a decade+, which is not an insignificant effect on their behavior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_Australia
Metallurgical coal tends to be biuminous, which AU has much of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgical_coal Also:
http://minerals.org.au/sites/default/files/181012%20Commodit...
What are the effects of too much lithium though?
(To answer myself, from Wikipedia..) >Common side effects include increased urination, shakiness of the hands, and increased thirst.[2] Serious side effects include hypothyroidism, diabetes insipidus, and lithium toxicity.[2] Blood level monitoring is recommended to decrease the risk of potential toxicity.[2] If levels become too high, diarrhea, vomiting, poor coordination, sleepiness, and ringing in the ears may occur.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
The tl;dr is slightly lower energy density (~14%) in exchange for non-toxicity, extremely low self-discharge rates, not prone to runaway thermalling, and great cycle life.
It also has the advantage of being able to be essentially a drop-in replacement for many lead-acid uses.
Entrance to the rabbit hole: http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/minerals/mineral-reso...
However agricultural usage extends far inland in the temperate regions and there has been a lot of opposition to mining activities in our “wheat belts”.
Australia isn’t communist. If you want to own the land that the minerals come from, buy some shares.
Just be aware that the mining industry isn’t unusually profitable, in fact it is expensive and risky, and owning (part-of) a gold mine isn’t a ticket to unlimited wealth.
Albermarle are building a LiOH plant in WA that will add 33% capacity to current world production on it's own, plus the Tianqi plant adding maybe 15% is half finished construction right now.
We are the also the Saudi Arabia of gas/LNG, plus as a state produce a metric fuckton of the worlds gold and iron ore, but a pity our state and federal governments practically give all our minerals away for trivial royalties and tax the sheeple to the hilt on personal tax...
(plus we have a homeless and public mental health problems due to "lack of funding"" in one of the richest mineral states in the world with only 2.6 million people in an area almost size of Western Europe).