I wonder if it's about being developed, vs being about having a high-trust society?

In a lot of places people will immediately get suspicious if you say you're setting up a government fund to hold everyone's money. For the benefit of society, of course.

> I wonder if it's about being developed, vs being about having a high-trust society?

Thats a virtuous loop. You institutions work because you trust that strangers trust your institutions.

Yes, that is how trust works.

It's about Norwegian climate: you don't work - you freeze to death in winter. In a dozen of generations an idea that everyone must work hard becomes an obvious thing.

As a Norwegian this is quite funny. At least the last few decades we've been super focused on not working too hard to such a degree that it's often characterized as national lazyness by the Norwegian press. If a Thursday is a national holiday it is VERY common to take Friday, and maybe Monday off too.

We look down on many countries, like the US, because they tend to overwork and prioritize work over life.

Our success, like the oil fund and high ratings, has much more to do with a series of smart efforts on building a mutually beneficial society where people trust each other, the media, businesses, the police, the government etc than just hard work. Many people from all around the work hard, but just hard work doesn't lead to good societies. In fact the mantra of "hard work" often leads to the opposite - survival of the fittest to the detriment of others.

If Norway didn't have such valuable natural resources, I suspect the "don't work so hard" approach would leave it with starving people...

This is the kind of asinine racism you can only espouse if you've never lived abroad. Let me assure you, foreigners are the same mix of lazy dumbasses and hard workers as your fellow countrymen.

yes, no cultural differences at all between switzerland and mexico

No one said there aren't cultural differences. There are very huge differences! Being lazy or a dumbass is not a cultural difference. The implication that Mexicans are lazy and Swiss are not is racist.

Yup. Well, it's quite sad that there are people who truly believe feel-good stuff like "all people are the same" and "all cultures are equally good" even though the reality tells us different story... All countries have their fair share of basterds but in some countries it's the accepted and standard way of behavior.

Norwegian climate in the most populated areas isn't particularly harsh.

Exactly.

Norwegian climate is not so harsh that it makes life an perpetual fight for survival. But it's nasty enough to slap one's lazy nose every once in a while.

It's not so harsh in Norwegian West, East and South as to be remarkable in any respect. Poland has rougher climate. Northern parts and central-inland in the peninsula are cold, but relatively sparsely populated.

Norway has its natural limitations though which made for a tougher life. Like insufficient options for agriculture, one thing that made feudal system here impossible and diets fairly lean.

Snow and ice 5-7 months of the year in Oslo...

If by 5-7 you mean 3-4 in a good year, sure.

No I mean 5-7. The skiing is rubbish until January but the ground is frozen by the end of October and defrosts in late March/early April. Lots of places have colder winters than here but they do drag on.

I can't really recall when there was snow in Oslo for half a year. Some years were nearly snowless. Officially, the winter period in Oslo is 119 days.

And well north of the city/further from the sea you can feel proper winter better, sure. Even so close as Lillestrøm it's crisper. But again, nothing unusual by North/central European standards.

2 winters ago... Last winter was very mild though.

I would expect similarly: if you are vocationally dishonest you will freeze to death.

This could use a bit more explanation and CGP Grey actually has a very good video out called "The Rules for Rulers" which touches on one of the reasons this really is a terrible situation. Whenever funds are diverted to the common good the party in power is, by definition, kicking less money into cronyism than is possible - in a setting with a poorly activated public, where power ends up being concentrated into the hands of the few, there is a constant pressure from those in power to divert more money to those representative voices from the voices you're unaccountable to - this makes it more likely that even a well intentioned leader will be ousted in a coup.

Probably high-trust, but those who support the Nordic model would argue that this trust is developed. One of the goals is to have cohesion. That is the idea behind for example having universal systems. This trust arguably didn't exist when ~25% of both countries population left the United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway for the United States.

(I wouldn't be sure Norway could do this today either).

I would even make a more general statement: in most countries excess money is usually spent quickly (and usually inefficiently) on the scare-of-the-day.

Developed countries are not immune to this. For example, in late 1990s and early 2000 US budget deficits were falling, then budget went into growing surpluses. But those surpluses were quickly spent on tax breaks and war on terror and US went back into large deficits. Politics :(

But to have the restraint of not spending the money and putting it into a fund is a whole different level.

Being from the Netherlands, which has/had large gas fields, it makes me jealous our government didn’t have a similar foresight.

There is/was more oil in the UK controlled North Sea and England has nothing from the resource.

Australia is the largest exporter of LNG and gets about 3% of the Royalties that Qatar earns. it is simply incompetence and corruption.

I'm sure some England has something from the resource but most of the wealth probably accumulated in the hands of one or two people.

The Dictators Handbook is a great book that talks about how natural resources can lead to autocracy a lot of times, because leaders can extract resources, sell them to get money/power and not give a damn about individuals. Countries that have fewer resources tend to need support from a larger selectorate and tend to (not always) lead to more democratic societies.

So that does go with what you said (I don't know their oil history, but I assume they build a society that was culturally western European before they discovered and started extracting oil resources).

Norway was a poor country prior to the discovery of oil, mostly farmers and fishermen

The US and Canada (Alberta) both were as well. Yet both have massive debt instead of huge amounts of money.

In the US, and to a lesser extent Canada, the idea of the state benefiting too much is seen as lefty socialism (Canada briefly flirted with economic nationalism with the creation of Petro-Canada, but this was vehemently opposed by US energy companies). So we have a classic situation where the profits are privatized to the very few, and the costs are socialized (climate change, abandoned wells, pollution, etc).

as mentioned elsewhere, they don't export nearly as much oil

Wasn't most of the middle east pretty undeveloped before oil?

Most of the middle east is underdeveloped today. There's been some progress (sometimes huge progress, such as Iran), but it may be a generation or more before they really catch up.

That’s precisely the point the GP is making

Yes and it remained that way