You cant see it well because the graph covers it but this clearly shows how sweden is a digital hellhole. Evryone is a techbro, nobody actually understands tech, everyone uses all the newest corporate bullshit, even the government. This is why we need it education from a younger age, and it education that is platform independant.
I think the Nordics are all in the same shit as Benelux - complete dependence on American tech.
As a Norwegian we’re also heavily invested as owners, with the idiot in charge of the sovereign wealth fund having invested most of our money in American big tech. So when America goes down they’re taking us with them in all kinds of ways. 🙃
Yeah the Scandinavian countries certainly do a lot of things very right, but they also do a lot of things very wrong and sometimes those choices aren’t as independent or unrelated as they seem. Having a massive sovereign wealth fund: Good. Having a massive sovereign wealth fund that invests heavily in Evil because it’s a better return on investment: Not Good. It’s important to keep these kind of facts in mind before somebody starts just copy-pasting wholesale “The Scandinavian model” to solving any problem like some people in the rest of the world like to do.
To be fair part of the reason we have so much money in the US is because we bought stocks before this massive bubble - when it bursts it’s not like we will have lost the money. There’s so much money the only way it becomes worthless is through a full global economic collapse, including infrastructure, real estate, everything.
I’m mostly just angry because so much money is pumped into things I hate, in my name, and it’s not even up for election. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund has around 240 billion USD split between Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. As we’re 5.6 million people, I effectively have $42 606 of oil profits invested in these five companies who are actively destroying the planet, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And instead of using the soft power that comes with the investments they want to remove guidelines so that they can invest more actively in genocide technology or whatever.
You know you could do something funny (not you personally, but you Norway, even though I know you already said the fund manager won’t do it)
You could protect your own assets by pulling it all out of the US stock market. And as a result you could kick off the cascading effect of a bear market and cause this bubble to finally burst.
In fact every European country invested in the US market and reserve currency petrodollars could choose to do the same thing, on the same day.
You could use it as leverage to negotiate with the insane current regime. Or you could just take off the kiddie gloves and do it without warning.
Protect your financial futures and your sovereignty, and help us topple our corporate overlords and global hegemony.
I know it’s not up to the average citizen though, and the people who have the power to do so are probably making too much bank from bribes donations to do it…
There’s a lot of us advocating for, and using, open source alternatives at work. The problem is the higher-ups get really aroused when they see the Microsoft logo. It’s pretty frustrating as a developer, most of the time for smaller systems and projects we get to do what we want and choose open source. But for bigger decisions outside our department big corporate enterprise solutions are always chosen. And of course, they are an absolute nightmare to work with, horrible API’s and so on.
I’m pretty sure Microsoft has bought a lot of smaller European countries by making offers they cannot refuse; offering services for an unreasonably low price, selling at a loss, and only pumping prices up after full dependency is achieved.
I suspect that’s why Benelux and the Nordics are red on the map. They are highly digitalized and rich countries, so great potential customers, but still small enough that Microsoft can afford to operate at a loss for long enough to leave digital sovereignty in shatters.
Starbucks is doing the same thing to independent cafés all over Europe.
The higher-ups are not falling for the Microsoft logo, they are fooled by low prices, the potential for firing the IT department efficiency boosts, and the prioritization of short-term benefits over long-term strategy. To them it has seemed like an obvious choice every single time, which is how we came to find ourselves in such deep shit.
Of course I don’t actually think they get turned on by the Microsoft logo, it was just a bad joke.
We just get frustrated when the higher-ups force in a new expensive enterprise product when we have already told them we can easily implement support for an objectively superior free and open source industry standard alternative. But I guess it fails their enterprise support criteria, which most of the time is worthless (Microsoft should be pretty good on this part at least). Most of the time when we ask why they chose <Corporate product> we just get a blank stare back, as if there was no other alternative. The same happens when we ask for an exit strategy. And afterwards we are doomed to work with a barely working undocumented API.
Yeah, of course, I just figured it’s worth pointing out that it’s not such an irrational decision within their own individual short term logics.
My father used to work for an American software company, providing services for the Norwegian state. I remember one day he came home from work complaining he had to use some stupid system he didn’t want or need, just because his employer had managed to sell it to the state and they needed to demonstrate its usefulness… I suspect that kind of stuff happens a lot.
They’re like old people being fooled by car salesmen.
As someone studying Norwegian and looking to maybe move there, that’s a bit unsettling. Granted, Japan is also in a rather precarious position and North America is, well, full of the US.
The sovereign wealth fund lost 1500 billion kroner of value since this summer. And that’s before the stock market crashes.
All the money in the world is invested in the same scam, so we’re not worse off than anyone else. The biggest difference is that we have a lot more money to lose. I’m just angry because we should have been better than that, but instead hired some finance bro with the IQ of a fencepost and no fucking idea what anything is worth to manage the fund. Now is the time for strengthening ethical guidelines, not weakening them. The social democrats won the election, but they’re not challenging the leadership of the wealth fund because it’s supposed to be "apolitical’.
If funding tech bros is apolitical then so is the guillotine.
As an American, I’m almost certain that your finance bro here is actually an American crony asset meant to do exactly what you are characterizing as incompetence.
Its genius that yall have a shitton of money in case the economy collepses… and all of it is invested in the… economy? I mean truly a genius play. No but actually i used to idiolize norway cause it seemed like yall had everything solved but now i see that many of the same problems are present there as well, tho yall still do a lot of stuff much better.
It’s invested in a pretty diverse portfolio and there will be no reason to feel sorry for us no matter how much the economy tanks (we own everything), but the current leadership of the sovereign wealth fund is in full on AI psychosis, keeps on cozying up to tech billionaires as if their life depends on it, and is working to try to get rid of the few ethical guidelines we have in the fund arguing it makes it impossible to invest in the most profitable companies and that reality has changed to the point where the idea of ethics is outdated and irrelevant.
Nicolai Tangen, may you rot in hell alongside the fascists you enable.
The idea of the wealth fund being under technocratic control is held in extremely high regard especially by the social democrats who both designed the system and are in power at the moment, and they are not wrong in theory. So the leadership would have to be extremely unpopular in order to be replaced. Unfortunately as the stocks have gone up most people are very impressed by their performance, so there’s little incentive to remove them at the moment.
You cant see it well because the graph covers it but this clearly shows how sweden is a digital hellhole. Evryone is a techbro, nobody actually understands tech, everyone uses all the newest corporate bullshit, even the government. This is why we need it education from a younger age, and it education that is platform independant.
They teach education from a young age
I think the Nordics are all in the same shit as Benelux - complete dependence on American tech.
As a Norwegian we’re also heavily invested as owners, with the idiot in charge of the sovereign wealth fund having invested most of our money in American big tech. So when America goes down they’re taking us with them in all kinds of ways. 🙃
Edit: Long live stupidity:
https://belibre.be/mxmap/?country=europe&color=mail&month=2026-11
Yeah the Scandinavian countries certainly do a lot of things very right, but they also do a lot of things very wrong and sometimes those choices aren’t as independent or unrelated as they seem. Having a massive sovereign wealth fund: Good. Having a massive sovereign wealth fund that invests heavily in Evil because it’s a better return on investment: Not Good. It’s important to keep these kind of facts in mind before somebody starts just copy-pasting wholesale “The Scandinavian model” to solving any problem like some people in the rest of the world like to do.
‘Sovereign wealth fund’
Looks inside
Reliance on US tech giants…
If you’re curious, here’s a breakdown of where the money is invested.
To be fair part of the reason we have so much money in the US is because we bought stocks before this massive bubble - when it bursts it’s not like we will have lost the money. There’s so much money the only way it becomes worthless is through a full global economic collapse, including infrastructure, real estate, everything.
I’m mostly just angry because so much money is pumped into things I hate, in my name, and it’s not even up for election. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund has around 240 billion USD split between Nvidia, Apple, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. As we’re 5.6 million people, I effectively have $42 606 of oil profits invested in these five companies who are actively destroying the planet, and there’s nothing I can do about it. And instead of using the soft power that comes with the investments they want to remove guidelines so that they can invest more actively in genocide technology or whatever.
You know you could do something funny (not you personally, but you Norway, even though I know you already said the fund manager won’t do it)
You could protect your own assets by pulling it all out of the US stock market. And as a result you could kick off the cascading effect of a bear market and cause this bubble to finally burst.
In fact every European country invested in the US market and reserve currency petrodollars could choose to do the same thing, on the same day.
You could use it as leverage to negotiate with the insane current regime. Or you could just take off the kiddie gloves and do it without warning.
Protect your financial futures and your sovereignty, and help us topple our corporate overlords and global hegemony.
I know it’s not up to the average citizen though, and the people who have the power to do so are probably making too much bank from
bribesdonations to do it…There’s a lot of us advocating for, and using, open source alternatives at work. The problem is the higher-ups get really aroused when they see the Microsoft logo. It’s pretty frustrating as a developer, most of the time for smaller systems and projects we get to do what we want and choose open source. But for bigger decisions outside our department big corporate enterprise solutions are always chosen. And of course, they are an absolute nightmare to work with, horrible API’s and so on.
I’m pretty sure Microsoft has bought a lot of smaller European countries by making offers they cannot refuse; offering services for an unreasonably low price, selling at a loss, and only pumping prices up after full dependency is achieved.
I suspect that’s why Benelux and the Nordics are red on the map. They are highly digitalized and rich countries, so great potential customers, but still small enough that Microsoft can afford to operate at a loss for long enough to leave digital sovereignty in shatters.
Starbucks is doing the same thing to independent cafés all over Europe.
The higher-ups are not falling for the Microsoft logo, they are fooled by low prices, the potential for
firing the IT departmentefficiency boosts, and the prioritization of short-term benefits over long-term strategy. To them it has seemed like an obvious choice every single time, which is how we came to find ourselves in such deep shit.Of course I don’t actually think they get turned on by the Microsoft logo, it was just a bad joke.
We just get frustrated when the higher-ups force in a new expensive enterprise product when we have already told them we can easily implement support for an objectively superior free and open source industry standard alternative. But I guess it fails their enterprise support criteria, which most of the time is worthless (Microsoft should be pretty good on this part at least). Most of the time when we ask why they chose <Corporate product> we just get a blank stare back, as if there was no other alternative. The same happens when we ask for an exit strategy. And afterwards we are doomed to work with a barely working undocumented API.
Yeah, of course, I just figured it’s worth pointing out that it’s not such an irrational decision within their own individual short term logics.
My father used to work for an American software company, providing services for the Norwegian state. I remember one day he came home from work complaining he had to use some stupid system he didn’t want or need, just because his employer had managed to sell it to the state and they needed to demonstrate its usefulness… I suspect that kind of stuff happens a lot.
They’re like old people being fooled by car salesmen.
As someone studying Norwegian and looking to maybe move there, that’s a bit unsettling. Granted, Japan is also in a rather precarious position and North America is, well, full of the US.
The sovereign wealth fund lost 1500 billion kroner of value since this summer. And that’s before the stock market crashes.
All the money in the world is invested in the same scam, so we’re not worse off than anyone else. The biggest difference is that we have a lot more money to lose. I’m just angry because we should have been better than that, but instead hired some finance bro with the IQ of a fencepost and no fucking idea what anything is worth to manage the fund. Now is the time for strengthening ethical guidelines, not weakening them. The social democrats won the election, but they’re not challenging the leadership of the wealth fund because it’s supposed to be "apolitical’.
If funding tech bros is apolitical then so is the guillotine.
As an American, I’m almost certain that your finance bro here is actually an American crony asset meant to do exactly what you are characterizing as incompetence.
Do you think Norway was allowed to keep the profits while all other oil producing countries are regularly raided?
Its genius that yall have a shitton of money in case the economy collepses… and all of it is invested in the… economy? I mean truly a genius play. No but actually i used to idiolize norway cause it seemed like yall had everything solved but now i see that many of the same problems are present there as well, tho yall still do a lot of stuff much better.
It’s invested in a pretty diverse portfolio and there will be no reason to feel sorry for us no matter how much the economy tanks (we own everything), but the current leadership of the sovereign wealth fund is in full on AI psychosis, keeps on cozying up to tech billionaires as if their life depends on it, and is working to try to get rid of the few ethical guidelines we have in the fund arguing it makes it impossible to invest in the most profitable companies and that reality has changed to the point where the idea of ethics is outdated and irrelevant.
Nicolai Tangen, may you rot in hell alongside the fascists you enable.
There has to be some process to remove him, right?
“Apolitical” shouldn’t be an excuse to make his position more secure than the monarchy’s…
The idea of the wealth fund being under technocratic control is held in extremely high regard especially by the social democrats who both designed the system and are in power at the moment, and they are not wrong in theory. So the leadership would have to be extremely unpopular in order to be replaced. Unfortunately as the stocks have gone up most people are very impressed by their performance, so there’s little incentive to remove them at the moment.
There’s little incentive now because the bubble hasn’t burst yet? Will there be more incentive after the crash?
I swear people have collective amnesia. It hasn’t even been that long since the last time this happened.
Just embrace Silicon Valhalla, bro.
Where you die valiantly only to have your brain scanned and sentenced to eternal wage slavery. Fuck this timeline.