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61
Why are Nordic companies so successful? (www.economist.com)
submitted 1 week ago by CAVOK@lemmy.world to c/europe@feddit.org
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Paywall? https://archive.is/DpHwa

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[–] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 52 points 1 week ago (5 children)

the social democracy is nice and all here, but the tl;dr seems to be innovation. (and having companies owned by non-profits helps with reinvestment)

E.g. watching Germany argue over heat pumps is funny from northern countries that have no gas network but a loooot of heat pumps. Oil furnaces in existing homes were banned back in 2020 here in Norway—and Germany can't even ban fossil fuel heating in new homes.

We have a mostly electric car market now, after having taxed cars heavily forever and then not taxing EVs as heavily, so they became more competitive at the time of purchase. Then they go on about charging networks, but I'm not so sure there's actually a higher density of EV per km² here, given how small our population is. It smells like an excuse.

And then paper: The postal service in Norway is on the verge of being functionally ended, and all letters might get treated as parcels that you pick up at a hub in the near future. There's just practically no paper being circulated any more, except for books and newspapers in a mix of habit and intentional non-screen time. Ten years ago there was barely any paper in offices, and since covid it's practically zero.

So hearing about how things are in Germany feels like we're living in some impossible sci-fi future here in the Nordics—and I'm pretty sure the Germans could catch up to us real quick if they just decided to. But instead they seem to be held back by the kind of conservative who believes technological progress is impossible and that the status quo is all they can aspire to.

[–] HaiZhung@feddit.org 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

How do you combat against misinformation / yellow press? I feel like that’s the main problem in Germany. Whenever someone starts a sensible campaign to move things forward, it seems that the BILD launches a month long smear campaign; just to avoid any progress whatsoever.

Though I’m sure Russian meme networks are doing their part too.

Not a problem in Norway?

[–] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Currently the party doing best in polls is the populist right. They were in government a few years back too, but the conservative/liberal/right populist coalition got replaced with a labour/agrarian populist coalition after the last election. Next election in September 2025.

I think we're just kinda lucky we don't have Springerpresse or Murdoch etc running publications here. And something like 25-33% of the population seems to be pretty solidly populist, only switching between the various populist parties. Our Labour and Conservatives don't seem willing to go for a GroKo to keep the populists out either.

[–] Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’m curious how y’all are so inoculated against “brown immigrants bad” compared to say Germany. It definitely seems to still be a thought, but y’all have like 3-4x the migrant population per capita and are doing better than they are.

[–] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago

I'm not so certain we are all that inoculated. Most of our migrants are swedes and other Europeans, too. I'm not versed in specific differences of migration policy though, so I'm not going to start speculating about financing immigration classes or whatever.

[–] varyingExpertise@feddit.org 12 points 1 week ago

But instead they seem to be held back by the kind of conservative who believes technological progress is impossible

Well - rather by a LOT of people that for some reason feel personally attacked by change and cling to whatever the old thing was like a kid that won't have their plushie be put in the washer.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 week ago

But instead they seem to be held back by the kind of conservative who believes technological progress is impossible and that the status quo is all they can aspire to.

Thank you for putting it that way.

I've read a lot of definitions of what "conservative" actually means, and mostly i don't understand these definitions.

In physics, a "conservative field" is one who has a potential and is the gradient field of that potential. In the real world, that doesn't seem to be the case. Conservatives have no potential, and aren't any gradient either. They're just a bunch of dumbasses who refuse to look at things the way they are. Really. Makes me angry.

Sorry that i lashed out like this, i just felt like saying it.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

The postal service in Norway is on the verge of being functionally ended, and all letters might get treated as parcels that you pick up at a hub in the near future.

You don't have parcels delivered to your doorstep???

[–] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago

You can get the home delivery, but the common thing is to get it delivered to the post office, which is usually in the grocery store closest to you. (The dedicated post offices died a few decades back afaik.)

So I get a notification in the post app, or by mail or sms, depending, and then I just pick it up wherever I'm getting groceries. Same thing happens if someone tries to mail me something that doesn't fit in the mail box.

[–] AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can confirm that my brother that lives in Norway does not. All his mail is at the post in the gas station on the mainland. There is no mail service, or literally any commercial services, on his island; he has to take the ferry to get anywhere or anything.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That may be because he is living on an island rather than Norway thing in general, no?

[–] AstridWipenaugh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

It's a bit of both, I think. I believe that's common in a lot of less-accessible rural areas, not just islands.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

(and having companies owned by non-profits helps with reinvestment)

Bosch, Zeiss, Possehl, that's off the top of my head. Not to be confused with family foundations like Aldi though TBH regarding reinvestments it's probably cheaper to pay out stipends to the founder's offspring than it is to do charity work.

watching Germany argue over heat pumps is funny from northern countries that have no gas network but a loooot of heat pumps.

Blame the Greens and their general bourgeoisness. Somehow they needed a reminder that not everyone has just money lying around to switch over. They should have factored in financing from day zero (e.g. cheap KfW credits that can be paid back with half of what you're saving in running costs), and simultaneously set up a district heating programme because in many places that's the overall cheaper option.

The Greens absolutely suck at selling their good ideas. They're like those kinds of vegans (they're not all vegan) who think that "but you'll feel good about yourself" is an argument that makes people drop everything and get on board. The Church is saying the same and they're not exactly gaining members.

We have a mostly electric car market now

Financed with oil sales and you know it. Join the EU, pay your dues, and you get to say such shit but not before. You don't even have 8m measuring tapes.

The postal service in Norway is on the verge of being functionally ended, and all letters might get treated as parcels that you pick up at a hub in the near future.

Yeah, no. The reason is that when a letter arrives in your post box it's legally assumed that you read it and administration relies on that. If you get rid of the postal office the work would shift over to bailiffs which is overall less efficient.

[–] syklemil@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

We have a mostly electric car market now

Financed with oil sales and you know it. Join the EU, pay your dues, and you get to say such shit but not before.

Increase your car taxes to our levels and then you get to say shit like that. :)

The postal service in Norway is on the verge of being functionally ended, and all letters might get treated as parcels that you pick up at a hub in the near future.

Yeah, no. The reason is that when a letter arrives in your post box it's legally assumed that you read it and administration relies on that. If you get rid of the postal office the work would shift over to bailiffs which is overall less efficient.

There are no letters any more. The important stuff that the government sends us we only get electronically at altinn.no (some stuff at skatteetaten.no), and reception is acknowledged that way too.

We currently have mail service every other weekday (so mon-wed-fri, tue-thu, repeat) and there's nothing really to deliver except physical spam. At this point the people who relied on paper out of habit are mostly dead of old age, and there's not a lot of public sentiment for subsidizing a handful of anti-computer cranks.

Blame the Greens and their general bourgeoisness.

Of course it's DIE GRÜÜÜÜNEN, not, you know, the conservatives that ran the country for ages under Merkel, and the people who want to be "technologieoffen" just in case the country's horse-and-buggy industry can actually compete against a modern auto industry.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

and reception is acknowledged that way too.

Great then I can just ignore them.

mail service every other weekday

That sounds sensible. From 2025 on the postal service is free to take up to three days to deliver 95% of letters, currently it's 80% overnight, 95% the day after. Volume halved since 2000, currently about half a person receives a letter a day. Statistically speaking that is in reality it's probably less than one a month for an ordinary citizen. Like your health insurer sending you a letter making apologies for increased rates while blaming the government, that was the last one.

Of course it’s DIE GRÜÜÜÜNEN, not, you know, the conservatives that ran the country for ages

I don't expect any different from conservatives. From the Greens, I expect better. They can do better. They could even have won the last elections if they didn't have their head stuck up their arse. That would've been better: Actually winning elections instead of complaining about the evil conservatives. Yes, they're evil, but they're not winning because they're strong, they're winning because the Greens are being stupid.

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 29 points 1 week ago

Can't be, Americans and Conservatives always tell me that a good social safety net makes people lazy

[–] pedroapero@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

This title looks like a clickbait.

[–] Vincent@feddit.nl 6 points 1 week ago

cries in Northvolt

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think the title would be closer to, why are nordic companies so successful compared to other European countries

In the big picture vs USA and China the EU isn't doing so well: https://youtu.be/MGD5lktvExU?t=373

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 25 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

The only logic comparison would be then Nordic vs US if you Claim they aren't that good.

Also Quality of Life, Life Expectancy and other factors are still better in Western Europe, so I couldn't care less about the better profitability of US companies

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone -3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The only logic comparison would be then Nordic vs US if you Claim they aren’t that good.

Well I mean yeah, that's what I'm saying, they're good for Europe but not that amazing in the context of the greater world

Also Quality of Life, Life Expectancy and other factors are still better in Western Europe, so I couldn’t care less about the better profitability of US companies

That's true (for now ((I'm not sure how well the UK is doing in comparison to the US)) and I'm not saying for you to care about America, I care more about the profitability of European companies because those big companies pay tax, and that tax pays for things, and I think there are some people who could use more tax right now:

What's true on a broader continental scale is even truer for debt-ridden France. The fall in productivity is more dramatic in France than in neighboring countries. Although it had stabilized in recent years, deindustrialization is accelerating once again. The level of education among young people and skills among adults continues to decline. And the financing of our social model is weighing more and more heavily on wages, creating growing discontent regarding the cost of living.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/12/20/europe-is-stalling-and-france-is-looking-the-other-way_6736298_23.html

Looks like someone else could use some as well:

German debt has grown since 1950 and currently stands at €2.5 trillion ($2.68 trillion). This puts Germany in third place in the eurozone, behind France and Italy.

https://www.dw.com/en/should-germany-be-concerned-over-its-national-debt/a-67695712

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

German debt has grown since 1950 and currently stands at €2.5 trillion ($2.68 trillion). This puts Germany in third place in the eurozone, behind France and Italy.

Germany is the biggest economy in Europe by a fair margin and the second largest population. Even if it had the largest absolute debt that wouldn't necessarily be a bad sign, as it would only mean that it's carrying at least as much debt to GDP as other countries, but as the article shows Germany's debt to GDP ratio is actually unusually low compared to both its major European peers and other major economies worldwide

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I agree with you on this, but the reason it is unusually low is due to the debt brake which has caused massive issues for the government and help to cause the government to collapse:

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-coalition-government-collapse-olaf-scholz-finance-minister-christian-lindner/

So my comment was poking fun at this and suggesting that if they had bigger and more corporations paying more tax they would not be having these problems, but that's obviously not even starting on the real fix for the debt brake problem (which is getting rid of it)

[–] Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

those big companies pax tax

How do I make the world’s biggest [Citation needed]?

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone -1 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

https://itep.org/55-profitable-corporations-zero-corporate-tax/

Hopefully you can hear the distant rumbling, that’s just my eyes rolling.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Holy crap 55 corporations paid no tax! I had no idea there was only 55 corporations!

Hopefully you can hear the distant rumbling, that’s just my eyes rolling.

omg mine too

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It's funny that you Mock the Economy Of Europe given that Australia is completely dependent on Mining

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone -1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Is this mocking the economy of Europe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m89gnGLMQoU

If not, why do you think I am?

edit: Just reading: https://www.siliconcontinent.com/p/the-compliance-doom-loop

The Compliance Doom Loop

Why the rules keep growing

Consider this example. Spain does not have any frontier AI companies. But the country rushed to establish the first AI agency in Europe — the Spanish Agency for the Supervision of Artificial Intelligence (AESIA). The organisation will have a president, a director, two subdirectors, a secretary general and 10 departments. It includes offices with names such as the “Department of Instrumentation of Mechanisms for Trend Identification and Impact Assessment”, and the “Department of Awareness, Training, Dissemination, Promotion and Consciousness-raising”. Readers in the US are familiar with competitions between cities to host companies. In Spain, León and A Coruña fought over the decision of where to establish AESIA — the regulator for an industry that does not exist!

Is this also mocking the economy of Europe?

[–] federalreverse@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

those big companies pay tax, and that tax pays for things

That seems like a bad take.

  • Money is imaginary, literally just a system to bring a certain order into society.
  • Money is created by countries (with banks as the middlepersons). It's not created by tax payments.
  • Money doesn't provide food or shelter – food and houses do that; money doesn't teach people – other people do. I.e., it's people and things that create our wealth, not money. All the money in the world is absolutely no use if there are no goods or services to exchange for it.
  • Big corporations, especially profitable big corporations tend to pay the least taxes. Corporations are not particularly creative overall, except in avoiding contributions back to society.
[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Money is imaginary

I was going to stop reading after you said this, lets stay out of hypotheticals and stay in reality

You can easily search for countries that have gone broke and those that rely on IMF funding, they are poor, they live incredibly poor and terrible lifestyles, they suffer from disease, starvation and abject poverty, they would love to have big companies making them lots of "imaginary" tax money and giving their people jobs so they can pay for real life things like sanitation, education, food, medical equipment etc

Money doesn’t provide food or shelter – food and houses do that;

Food provides food?

You'll have to tell that to the billions of people who are working right now for money to pay for food and shelter, and also the people who can't find jobs who don't have food or shelter, I think this might be a bad translation or something

All the money in the world is absolutely no use if there are no goods or services to exchange for it.

Money exists in order to exchange value, a world that exists without goods or services has no need for money but this is a hypothetical so I don't care for this

Big corporations, especially profitable big corporations tend to pay the least taxes.

As a total percent of the pie sure, however if you were to ask the majority of countries on the planet if they would like to have a 3 trillion dollar company like Apple or Google, they would love it, the benefits for the country are enormous.

You can see this from Ireland who has come into just a fraction of the taxes Apple has paid and will pay:

https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and-comment/2024/0910/1469335-apple-analysis/

There are three potential options for using the money.

The first one is to pay off some of Ireland's €223bn national debt.

The second option is to put the money into two recently established funds set up to save the windfall gains from tax on multinationals.

They are called the Future Ireland Fund and the Infrastructure, Climate & Nature Fund.

The third option would be to spend the money immediately on infrastructure.

Already the opposition is calling for the funds to be spent on housing and schools.

Corporations don't just pay billions and billions of euros in corporate taxes but also provide jobs and income to people... who then pay taxes.

You really think that if you were to go to Africa and offer them a trillion dollar company they would decline and say no thanks? We won't take all that extra tax income, work, productivity, stability, etcetc?

You are free to read the report on EU competitiveness: Looking ahead

https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/97e481fd-2dc3-412d-be4c-f152a8232961_en?filename=The+future+of+European+competitiveness+_+A+competitiveness+strategy+for+Europe.pdf

Or if you prefer the speech:

https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/fcbc7ada-213b-4679-83f7-69a4c2127a25_en?filename=Address+by+Mario+Draghi+at+the+Presentation+of+the+report+on+the+future+of+European+competitiveness.pdf

And these figures do not include the many young, talented Europeans who go to study in the United States and found their companies there. It is a huge loss for our economy in terms of jobs and brain drain.

[–] federalreverse@feddit.org 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I was going to stop reading after you said this, lets stay out of hypotheticals and stay in reality

It's not a hypothetical. The reason why money exists is that humans needed a tool/a system to allocate goods and services in society. I don't know what's supposed to be controversial about that.

I find it helpful to keep that in mind. It helps against cart-before-horse notions like money being strictly necessary for us to satisfy needs. Which you appear to espouse.(?)

You can easily search for countries that have gone broke and those that rely on IMF funding, they are poor, they live incredibly poor and terrible lifestyles, they suffer from disease, starvation and abject poverty,

So, is this strictly because of a lack of money? Or is it because of a lack of physical resources or a misallocation of physical resources? I'd be seriously surprised if you could find me a single example where it is the former.

(Not to mention the IMF being quite the neoliberal ideological shitshow.)

Food provides food?

That's a fun deflection, but I can reword to: Food provides nutrition, money doesn't. (Money can be a tool to allocate food to yourself though. But food is just as edible if it comes from something you planted yourself. Or if you got a donation.)

As a total percent of the pie sure, however if you were to ask the majority of countries on the planet if they would like to have a 3 trillion dollar company like Apple or Google, they would love it, the benefits for the country are enormous.

Given that we can watch the generative-AI boom change society for the worse and make the planet less livable in real time, I find your examples rather interesting.

Indeed, Ireland appears fairly happy hosting the EU subsidiaries of Google/Apple/Toktok/Meta/[any other company selling digital goods within the EU]. The rest of the EU tends to be unhappy that Ireland is reallocating money from them to itself that way. Especially as in effect, Ireland is only taking a small cut for allowing money to bleed from the EU to random Carribean islands as profits. And yes, given that we use money as a tool to reallocate goods and services across the world right now, that bleeding-off means something.

And as their second USP within the EU, Ireland is also fucking up on oversight of those corporates. Good job, Ireland! Thanks for lending a hand in destabilizing democracies!

You really think that if you were to go to Africa and offer them a trillion dollar company they would decline and say no thanks? We won't take all that extra tax income, work, productivity, stability, etcetc?

Ah, wafting through my nostrils is a faint odor of colon...ialism!

Also, I never said anything like that. However, the major real bit that company would bring with itself is a reallocation of physical resources. It's not strictly about the money.

Also, it's basically brainrot to expect any returns for societies from big corporates unless they're extremely well regulated.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As a total percent of the pie sure, however if you were to ask the majority of countries on the planet if they would like to have a 3 trillion dollar company like Apple or Google, they would love it, the benefits for the country are enormous.

Given that we can watch the generative-AI boom change society for the worse and make the planet less livable in real time, I find your examples rather interesting.

If pleasing megacorps lead to better societies, the best country to live in in the whole of the EU would be Ireland.

[–] federalreverse@feddit.org 1 points 1 week ago

I mean ... I do think Ireland is fairly livable (though I've never been there). It's just that in some ways the country has achieved this at the expense of other EU countries.

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone -1 points 1 week ago

Also, it’s basically brainrot to expect any returns for societies from big corporates unless they’re extremely well regulated.

Then isn't that something Europe can do better than anyone?

If anything I would argue that the EU is currently over regulated at the moment and it is causing flow on effects like stagnation and loss of business to the US and China

Given that we can watch the generative-AI boom change society for the worse and make the planet less livable in real time, I find your examples rather interesting.

You'll have to extrapolate further on that, AI has been a huge improvement in my life, reasons here:

https://aussie.zone/post/16417192/13952149