Hacker News Reader

Comment by StreamBright | Hacker News Reader

>> Fun fact: Norway is mostly socialist. The government owns the majority of the country's wealth.

This is not the definition of socialism.

"The Nordic model refers to the economic and social policies common to the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Sweden). This includes a comprehensive welfare state and collective bargaining at the national level with a high percentage of the workforce unionised while being based on the economic foundations of free market capitalism."

View on HN

It absolutely is the definition of socialism: socialism is common ownership of the means of production. Most of Norway's wealth is government-owned, thus it is mostly socialist.

I'm not sure why people get so vehement about denying this fact. Perhaps because it requires acknowledging that socialism actually works really well?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

I think social democracy is probably closer.

There's free enterprise and the government owns some part of some companies.

Most of Norway's wealth is definitely not owned by the government, where do you get this from? It's mostly owned by corporation's and the people. Statoil and some other large companies are partly owned by the government, but there are many wholly owned privat oil companies competing with them.

I am not sure why wikipedia disagrees with you. Probably because Norway is not a socialist country. Government is not equal to the workers. If workers owned means of production, it would have been a socialist country. This is simply not true. Most of companies in Norway are not owned by workers.

I gues this will help you to understand:

"Ownership: In a capitalist economy, property and businesses are owned and controlled by individuals. In a socialist economy, the state owns and controls the major means of production. In some socialist economic models, worker cooperatives have primacy over production"

Finally, no socialism never has been working very well. There is not a single example of it working well in all recorded human history.

If Capitalism is ownership and control by individuals, and socialism is ownership and control by workers (but not via their collective will as expressed through democratically-determiend state action), then what is Norway?

I guess if you define "socialism" in a sufficiently narrow way you can ensure that no existent successful country will meet the chosen definition, a clever rhetorical trick.

As it was pointed out several times, it is a capitalistic system where ___most___ of the companies are owned by individuals and ____some____ are owned by state while possibly ____none____ owned by workers. Hope this clarifies. I would suggest you to learn from history because this stance on socialism is very contraproductive and you are the most vulnerable of repeating the mistakes of the past. I think socialism is extremely dangerous. I have first hand experience living in souch a country where most of the people are poor while the memebers of the state are accumulating extreme wealth. The difference is comapring it to most capitalistist countries, in an average capitalist country the p50 user has a good life and your wealth does not depend on your party membership or being in the social circle of party members. People can succeed by putting in effort. I think many of the people in the US like AOC think that they can just tax the rich and live off those people, using the exactly same arguments that Marx. History shows that this reasoning is false and very dangerous. I would strongly suggest you to study Ayn Rand. She explains why capitalism is the natural state of mankind, always has been and probably always will be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

Reply on news.ycombinator.com