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Comment by Gravityloss | Hacker News Reader

> If a country has a large amount of natural resources like Norway, it can be somewhat successful in dispensing with individual excellence.

I'm not sure what is meant by this? I would assume that the more resources the government or the community has, the more they can support people's talents. You can invest more in education and arts.

> Norway used its oil profits to create a sovereign wealth fund and invested it in stocks. What is the system called when dispensable income is used to form capital which is then invested in other ventures to create additional revenue streams ? I would call it capitalism.

True, that's a good point, it's state level capitalism.

If instead the oil money went into tax cuts, what would one call that policy then? Antisocialism?

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> I'm not sure what is meant by this? I would assume that the more resources the government or the community has, the more they can support people's talents. You can invest more in education and arts.

Just investing in arts and education is not enough to bring about people's talents : https://www.heritage.org/education/report/does-spending-more...

> True, that's a good point, it's state level capitalism.

> If instead the oil money went into tax cuts, what would one call that policy then? Antisocialism?

You have missed the point here : even by Marxist standards, Norway's success is due to capitalism. It is better to think about economies in terms of the amount of economic freedom each permits. Capitalism-Socialism dichotomy is largely just fiction.

The Heritage foundation wants a fully privatized school system:

> One promising way to improve resource allocation is to give parents the ability to use their children's share of public Education funding to choose the right school for their children. Children benefiting from school choice programs have higher test scores than their peers who do not benefit from school choice.

Or could it be that parents who would use vouchers are the same parents who are actively involved in their children’s education so those are the same kids who would do better anyway?

“It Turns Out Spending More Probably Does Improve Education”:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/nyregion/it-turns-out-spe...

That said, my understand is that “it’s the teachers, stupid”. Systems that have better teachers, through a combination of means (better pay, better prestige, better training and continuity) have the best outcomes:

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insigh...

So yes, pouring money into the system isn’t a magic fix, especially if none of it goes to teacher salaries.

>Norway's success is due to capitalism

Erm, the wealth comes from finding a valuable resource. The oil isn't there due to following a particular ideology.

A capitalist system would give that resource to private wealthy individuals as reward for being wealthy (eg owning the land where the well-heads are). The sovereign wealth fund is more like common ownership, socialist-communist.

The socialist-capitalist dichotomy is based on ownership and the profit (financial or otherwise) of that ownership. Capitalism means narrow private ownership, the profit going to those owners; socialism democratises the ownership and benefit -- they are contradictory.

Not necessarily, for instance several US states like Texas and Alaska have sovereign wealth funds. Their assets include land (that they sometimes sell) and royalties that they collect on from oil and gas production. So yes, you have the wealthy oil tycoons, but you also have the state benefiting as well.

> If instead the oil money went into tax cuts, what would one call that policy then? Antisocialism?

Perfect!

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