A friend asked for comments on a Telegraph article on Sovereign Wealth Funds of Norway and Qatar.
So here are my comments:
The US could have chosen a similar route, but instead it chose to "lease" oil lands at marginal costs if any, and otherwise allow private entities to profit from the material wealth of the landmass of the USA, which is among the greatest in the world. So the money flows to private actors (mostly) in the US, not to the US itself.
Does Norway have greater material wealth than US-in-total? No. Are citizens of Norway more frugal with themselves? I'd suspect Norway spends as much (if not more) on its citizens than USA. Nevertheless, because we worship "wealth" in all it's arcane forms, so if someone/something has it we think it must show some kind of superiority (and along the peculiar myths of capitalist superiority, even when they are inapplicable).
This (1) is something like a social choice, though few ever had a chance to vote on it (in US anyway), and (2) arguably it maximizes the (aka destruction) wealth produced, since nobody is greedier than private actors. It also tends to make the society more unequal (something I'd think the Telegraph would like).
And if you really want to see who/what is running the world, don't just look at government and their resources and/or debts. Look at all the private actors.
IIRC, the world is awash in "funds" OTOH 100's of quadrillions if not more. Much of it is controlled by actors in London and NYC. That's where the western world is actually being run, not Norway and Qatar.
This is normally considered by capitalists to be a wonderful thing.
Much of that may be relatively soft compared to Norwegian investments. But one the money is flowing around the world in risky investments, it looks pretty similar: promises to pay sometime in the future.
The Norwegians are obtaining this "wealth" by destroying the world with CO2 and other kinds of pollution. (Others may do that and worse.). Nevertheless we focus on the financial wealth (in the form of someone else's promises to pay sometime in the future) rather than the real material wealth and costs. The real wealth of good soil, water, etc, is everywhere being compromised for financial wealth. And the destruction of the earth's real wealth will likely continue until it's all gone. Some people in USA are already savoring the next planet to destroy.
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