A lot is important in life. But some things are more important than you think!
We are seduced into believing that the acquisition of a particular car, a special kitchen, a unique skin cream, is more important than the time we spend meeting with each other. Making over a million with a lot of overtime is believed to be more important than being present with our children while they grow up, and then “only” earning 85,000,- the US. a dollar a year.
We are fooled into thinking that our esteem in the world will rise if we can buy a villa by the sea and a cabin in the mountains. Or buy a yacht where we can reef sails in the evening and cruise into a narrow bay, to drop anchor. “Champagne friends, and toast!” We think we will be worth more if we can send selfies to our friends from a beach in Phuket, a golf course in Mauritius, or a peak in Nepal.
How easy it is not to let ourselves be duped by being able to buy constantly new clothes, quality wines, subscribe to Netflix, HBO, and CMore movies and series?
All this keeps us passive about the really important things in life. Such as: How we really feel about ourselves, our life, and others. How our country is governed, how the values are distributed, and whether freedom, equality, and brotherhood are distributed equally among the population. Do we at all understand the consequences of the policies of the various parties that stand for election to government power? Or do we not bother because we are doing economically and materially well? Or is it so that we don’t bother because we are sick, handicapped and poor, and have altogether given up believing that our voice counts in society anymore?
To take the common values from the people and and give it to the rich capitalists
In my small country Norway, there has been a gradual development from democracy and rule by the people toward what I would call elite government and “financocracy”. This means that between each Governmental election, where you and I can freely vote for the party we believe is best for us and the country, – decisions are made that have certainly not been discussed during the election campaign. These are decisions that the people have not been asked about, and that can have enormous consequences for our economy, our future health, and our country as a whole.
What has this to do with psychology, you may ask. In short, I will say it has a big impact on your feeling of participation, feeling of being heard, feeling of having value, and making a difference to your country. If these feelings are not any longer present within the population in your country or society, you will disengage yourself in politics and feel worthless as a voice by others. Look to Belarus and Myanmar now, where this has been drawn to the limits.
SCANDINAVIA
I will soon come to some examples of this, but will first say something about my country Norway, and our neighboring countries in Scandinavia. Norway, like the other Scandinavian countries, has had a so-called welfare state model at the bottom of its system of government. We have had this for the last 70 years, almost regardless of whether the right or the left has ruled the country.
Admittedly, it is the left-wing politicians in these countries with the Labour Parties that have stood up and fought for this model of society, not the conservative right-wing forces! But the Conservatives have also gradually realized over the years from the 1950s up to the 1980s, that the welfare state has also had its economic benefits for employers and the rich.
Neo-liberalism with Reagan and Thatcher
Then something happened after Margaret Thatcher’s reign in England and Ronald Reagan’s in the United States. They were inspired by economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, as well as Ayn Rand’s hatred of the State. They saw the state as an enemy, not as a helper, – an enemy who hindered people’s freedom and desire for development, and who stole your money in the form of taxes and fees. Besides, they meant the state apparatus to be too expensive to run. People who worked there were even considered lazy and unproductive. The state and the public sector, therefore, had to shrink as much as possible, and the small remaining rest had to be greatly streamlined. (Ayn Rand 1957, “Atlas Shrugged”)
For the left-wing in Norway, these were provocative attitudes. The Labor Party in particular had believed that a strong state was the way to success in terms of school, health, care, infrastructure, roads, communication, etc.
But then Tony Blair appeared in Labor. He came in the wake of Thatcher’s ravages, which, it must be said, mostly harmed ordinary workers and low-wage earners, since many mines and factories were closed down and as a consequence created high unemployment. The same period, however, was very lucrative for the upper-middle class and the richest, with unusually low taxes for the well-off. But hordes of striking workers and frequent lockouts, created a state of emergency in a formerly relatively peaceful England if we disregard the conflict with Northern Ireland.
Tony Blair and “The Third Way”
What Labor politician Tony Blair found out was that one could still retain the state by streamlining it according to the pattern of classical business operations. New Public Management, NPM they called it.
This NPM mantra led the leadership of the Norwegian Labor Party to copy this new model of production, in an area where it certainly did not belong, namely health, care, and the hospital sector. Because also parts of the Labor Party in a government position, realized that the Health and Care Sector cost a lot of money.
Classical economists held that this sector was too expensive. Not least the running of hospitals. (Read about the so-called “cost sickness” in the health, care, and service sector, under Baumol’s law in J. Heilbrun, “The cost disease” 2003) (Kalle Moene, UIO 2020, “The private sector is not productive because it is private”, HTTPS: //www.sv.uio.no/econ/om/aktuelt/i-media/2020/2020-06-05-moene.html) And now we come to the examples I want to point out that support my claim that we, the people, the voters, were not informed: From the people’s ownership of the country’s common values to private companies taking over.
And now we come to the examples I want to point out that support my claim that we, the people, the voters, were not informed:
From, the people’s ownership of the country’s common values, to private companies taking over.
1. Our Hospitals.
As of January 1, 2002, all the county municipal hospitals in Norway were transferred to the state. Ie. they were expropriated with a stroke of the pen. But the state and stately ownership, you may ask, doesn’t it precisely provide security for the people, against privatization?
No, unfortunately as we will soon see, not when the state relinquishes political control. I’m getting to that.
Thus the Norwegian capital Oslo lost its ownership of perhaps Europe’s largest and most beautiful hospital campus with buildings, parks of trees and plants, as well as 1744 rental housing for employees. The city, which has its own government, called the “city council”, thereby lost control of its own hospital.
Instead, we got a hospital board consisting of former bank managers and economists, and a few employee representatives. Over this board again was another mainboard with about the same composition, which was to decide over an entire health region. The new scenery now, was that the activities and finances at all our hospitals were to be effort-based and goal-oriented, functioning according to the market principle of earnings.
All in all, we got from the right-wing parts of the Labor Party and the Conservative Party, a production-oriented management model for our health and hospital system, which over the years has developed into a “Catch 22” – straitjacket. In practice, this created some supranational bodies, the so-called Health Enterprise Boards, over which politicians had little influence, and where money and not the patients’ needs became the governing principle. I come to some very serious consequences of this eventually.
First another example of walking behind the backs of the Norwegian people in the period we are talking about. And here we are talking about great common values.
2. Our Gold.
In July 2004, while Norwegians were on summer holiday, and under a conservative coalition government, “The Norwegian National Bank” (Norges Bank), sold our gold bars reserves at a cheap sale. There were gold bars with a weight of 33,500. kg. Even if the Gold Standard internationally is abandoned, this gold, which the Norwegian people jointly owned, was intended to be used as a reserve to obtain foreign loans in any serious times of crisis. Over the last 18 years, the gold value has risen enormously in the world, while the Norwegian people have lost all this money.
NB: It has been pointed out that investments in foreign banks, foreign exchange, and government bonds, as a result of these sales, have yielded higher returns for Norway than the gold value has risen worldwide.
I am still not convinced that in the long run, neither de facto financially nor symbolically, that it is wise to sell real values for the purchase of paperized values, which are admittedly highly valued in global interaction but seem very prone to speculation.
Why did not the government ask the people, when they handed over our common values to private investors?
3. Our Minerals.
Minerals worth at least NOK 1,000 billion have recently been found at Helleland / Ualand in Rogaland. Like the large oil discoveries in the North Sea in 1969, it is also this time privately-owned companies that started the search for the minerals.
* The Norwegian oil.
When we found oil along the Norwegian coast, the oil companies Philips Petroleum and Esso, among others, were deep in the process. But since the oil deposits were on Norwegian territory, the so-called Norwegian continental shelf, the Labor government took the initiative to establish Statoil in 1972. This was to ensure that the state among the Norwegian people would benefit from the values that lay in this oil. The result of this very successful state control over the enormous resources from our oil and gas deposits has since been called “The Norwegian Oil Fairytale”. In this way, Norway went from being a relatively poor fishing and agricultural nation with some industry and mining to becoming perhaps the world’s richest country.
– RICH, BUT CANNOT AFFORD:
Nevertheless, for the last 20 years, we have been told that we cannot afford a number of life-saving medicines, important hospital operations, local communities and schools where people live in the districts, social assistance, psychiatric institutions, which are threatened with closures every year. We can neither afford Norwegian agriculture, where the farmer with a small or medium-sized farm can survive on one income from this hard work alone. Nor can we afford proper pension schemes for the elderly.
Despite the fact that the state and municipalities do not have the money for the essentials, it seems that the conservative and neo-liberal government we have had for eight years, we believe we can afford to give away mineral deposits in the billion class. For the right-wing, private financial institutions, foreign owners, and hedge funds are allowed to extract the values of this huge field of mineral deposits.
Minerals such as vanadium, phosphorus, titanium, and gold, which have a very high value on the world market. Thus, Norway loses these revenues which of course could have financed school, health and care, and the hospitals, yes our entire welfare state for years to come. And here is my main point: This is happening again without the Norwegian people being asked about it. So on paper, we have democracy and democracy, but it seems that in reality, it does not work that way.
It has been pointed out that we have the Minerals Act. (see the guide to the Minerals Act, Regjeringen.no) Then we can hope that this law is used before it is too late. Yes, that is not just overlooked, as the Security Act was overlooked in the sale of Bergen Engines until the case was uncovered by chance.
4. Our hospital appartments. (« Sell the homes of the hospital employees, and evict them!”)
New Public Management means that you, or your company, must raise capital to run a public business. It can happen by loan, or “user payment”, that you pay for the service you receive, with a subsidy from the state, adjusted according to the number of “services produced” or the enterprise’s efficiency in “production” of services. It can also happen through the sale of state property. This especially applies to the latest maintenance and development of infrastructure, e.g. in the form of buildings and new facilities.
When the state and municipality sell properties to get rid of expenses, it is often because too much tax relief has been given to the richest in society. This sales mania of public property is a Klondyke or money Mecca for housing sharks that drool over large dividends, at the lowest possible purchase price. I have previously ironically suggested that the state should sell Slottet and Slottsparken to make NAV, more robust!
That happened in 2001 when the above-mentioned 1744 hospital homes were sold to a financial acrobat in Sunndal Collier named Ivar Tollefsen. The sale took place internally and without a bidding round. It has been called, “The great Oslo robbery”, or the rawest insider trading in Norwegian history (E. Folkvord 2015). 2,500 employees at Ullevål Hospital lost their homes, and Oslo lost in 2001, one billion kroner.
Ivar Tollefsen now owns more than 100,000 rental apartments and his company has a value of NOK 150 billion. The planned sale of Oslo’s largest and most important hospital, with world-class emergency and trauma wards. When the right-wing extremist Breivik massacred 69 young people on Utøya in 2011 and killed 8 in the government quarter with a bomb, many were also life-threateningly injured. Thanks to Ullevål Hospital and the unique emergency trauma team there, far more of the critically injured survived than expected.
Now the NPM Health Enterprise Board wants to level this hospital with the earth, a hospital that was established during the great cholera epidemic in 1887-88. The huge plot that is particularly suitable for further hospital development they will sell, possibly also to the real estate baron Tollefsen above. Instead, they will build new on an already existing Rikshopitalet, which is a specialist hospital for the whole country. This plot does not have space for the planned buildings, says the Planning and Building Agency. The new buildings will destroy the open space and the surrounding nature, which is intended for patients in the recovery phase.
But to afford this huge new building, the hospital board must take out a loan, and when the loan matures, there will not be enough money for the operation of the hospital, ie the treatment of patients. Although doctors and professionals who really know the everyday treatment of the body have protested with well-founded professional arguments, it clearly does not help.
Not even close to 30,000 active advocates and supporters in Oslo, who want to save their hospital have anything to say. The boards are in power, it seems, and our Conservative government does not care. Right now, the boards are in a hurry and have already begun surveying work so that a new left-wing government hardly will be able to save the country’s largest hospital, Ullevål, after the election on 13. September this year.
Conclusion and summary.
If the plans to demolish and sell our dear and vital Ullevål hospital are being realized, I would say, together with the development we have seen since 2001, that Norway has clearly moved from an egalitarian and popularly governed parliamentary democracy to an elite and money-driven “financocracy”, where the decisions take place in the closed spaces, far from the will of the people and the needs of the people.
What do you think about your own country regarding this development? I myself hope that I am worrying too much and that there really won’t be more such examples of “selling out Norway”, a country known for its stability, equality, brotherhood, and freedom. As for the moment, the question about freedom, brotherhood, and equality seems to be: Freedom, equality, and brotherhood for whom?
Should this trend, continue, however, what I have written above gives serious cause for concern. Why? Yes, because, just as Thomas Piketty (Capital in the 21st Century, 2014)) and Wilkinson & Pickett (“The Spirit Level” about the price of inequality” 2012) describe in their books, this type of political governance and democracy has greatly increased the economic differences in the country! The right-wing shift in the country has also shifted power from the people to economists, bankers, and those who can afford lobbyists, who on a daily basis can influence the Congress “Storting”, and the government with their money.
So please wake up and take part in making democracy in your country real, not only a forlorn concept in the dictionary. As poet T.S Eliot put it in his “Wasteland”: Hurry up please it’s the time! Then we might have a chance to make sure that we do not get a situation like that on the caricature below. Because some things are more important than other things in our lives.
