At least they spend their our money and don't expect us to finance their folly.

Posted by: erp at September 13, 2005 9:39 AM

I really like the Norwegians, wish them luck and lower alcohol taxes.

A legacy of their oil industry development is the blue grass and country music played on their radios by local artists singing in Norge or English.

Interestingly, they don't seem to consider themselves Socialist. Hah!

If they have that extra cash, they should up their contribution to the UN.

Note that they haven't joined the EU because then they'd have to share their wealth. So much for taxing the rich, guess that only applies to individuals, but it's okay for rich countries to keep their own money and use it as they see fit.

to spend more of Norway's huge oil wealth on the welfare state

Is that possible?

Thus we have the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

What the SETI folks fail to realize is that if there's anyone out there, why would they want to talk to anyone else, or pay for that privilege,when that money could be better spent on prayer wheels or video games or intoxicants? If anything, the only voices we will hear will be the galactic equivalent of the urban homeless guy standing on an overpass with a megaphone shouting things no one cares to hear or could ever understand.

Raoul:

Where that we can get to haven't we visited and impacted?

They'd better enjoy that "huge oil wealth" while it lasts:

Norwegian oil production continues to fall

The Norway Post 9. September 2005

Preliminary figures from the Oil Directorate show that the oil production on the Norwegian Shelf is dropping. [...]

Figures for the first seven months of the year show that the production of oil was altogether 11.2 per cent lower than in the same period last year.

'Course, it might be smarter to use that money to establish an alternative industrial base instead, for when the wells are sputtering even more, but I suppose that even America doesn't do mass public planning very well.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at September 13, 2005 4:17 PM

oj:

Mars.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at September 13, 2005 4:19 PM

Michael, the question is why is the production dropping. I believe they're limiting production to save it for future generations; at least that was a plan about four years ago.

Michael:

we're on our way.

Oh, I agree. I think the Great Silence is because no one is out there. They've had billions of years to get here, or at least pass by and leave a "Kilroy Was Here" and trash heap or two. (One thing that always bugs me about sci-fi movies and TV series is that they think 1000 years is A Long Time, and 10,000 An Eternity. One of the worst offenders was Babylon 5.) If we find anything in this solar system, it's more likely to have been something the dinosaurs sent up and left behind (think of all the junk we are scattering about these days) before their suicide than from someone from Out There. That's because I think (based on no evidence) techonological intellegent complex multicellular-organism based societies are extremely rare.

A Scandanavian friend of mine pointed out once that the Norwegians have been using a lot of that wealth to build infrastructure, like long tunnels and bridges to connect isolated towns and cities (think Don Young with an unlimited checkbook.). This has the effect of keeping those places viable and "Norwegian" where in other circumstances they'd die off as being uneconomic and inefficient, forcing the young people move to the cities or even farther south. The real question is will they be able to pay all the support costs that come with keeping that infrastructure going, or just delaying the inevitable for a few decades with some huge monuments all to show for their efforts.