Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "The Infographics Show"
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Norway was less populated than Sweden, so when there was not enough land to farm for everyone to feed themselves poverty started to grow and this was more of a problem in Sweden than in Norway in the late 1700s when the economist Malthus visited Norway and Sweden came up with this idea why some countries were rich and others were poor.
Sweden and Norway formed a union in the 1800s, and Norway gained much independence and favourable trade deals with Sweden, because the Swedish king hoped to win the hearts and minds of the Norwegian people so they would want to become Swedes on day, but that day would never come...
The early 1800s was great for the Norwegian economy, but for Sweden not so much.
Norway had a saltwater coast that didn't get frozen during the winter, while Sweden could not use its ships or watermills during the winter because of the frozen waters.
Sweden had 4 times more forrest than Norway, but Norway could still export four times
more timber than Sweden because it forrests were close to the coast and could easily be loaded onto ships and be cut water powered saw mills most of the year.
But Sweden couldn't do that. And Finland also had almost as much trees as Sweden, but all of them were deep inside of the country and far away from the coasts and too costly to transport with horses and water canals could only be used in the summer.
So Finland remained the poorest country in Europe until the 1930s.
And Sweden was also very poor in the early 1800s. But Norway was getting rich thanks to all timber exports to England, and all help it got from Swedish transport ships and trade deals. And when the Norwegians got richer they felt like they could do better on their own, instead of having to pull their poorer neigbouring country after them.
So ironically did Swedens kind treatment result in more Norwegian nationalism.
Norway was a succesful modern and progressive country by the standards of the mid-1800s. But Sweden was backwards. Even arab countries like Egypt had built railroads in their country by 1850, but Swedish politicians refused to build any railroads because they hoped the magic of the free market would solve the problems without any help from the government. And for 20 years nothing happened.
And finally did industry leaders in Sweden realize that something had to be done if they were not going to get outcompeted completly by other countries. So the Swedish government then decided to build the railroads in Sweden. And that was the start of the industrial revolution in Sweden.
With the railroads it become possible to transport all heavy timber from the middle of Sweden out to the harbours at the coast. And with the invention of steam power, did Swedish factories no longer have to close down their factories when the winter started and had frozen all water wheel powered saws.
And with the invention of the martin process could Sweden start using the iron ore at Kiruna - that would bring in billions of profits for the Swedish government, because everyone wanted huge amounts of this high quality iron ore. And Hitler so desperatly needed it to make steel for his tanks, planes and warships that he invaded Norway to protect the harbour in Narvik that transported this valuable Swedish iron.
The Swedish railroads also made it possible to transport other heavy stuff than timber, like coal and iron, so now it was possible to build large scale steel factories everyware in the country far away from iron mines and forrests that made woodcoal.
And the iron mines and ovens that made steel also began using electricity instead of steampower. And that was the birth of the electric industry in Sweden and Norway.
Sweden began building hydroelectric powerplants for electricity. And Sweden also invested heavily into education, so that innovators like Alfred Nobel and John Ericsson would create new high-tech jobs of the 1800s. Sweden already produced steel and electricity so it became natural that Sweden then also began producing mechanical tools and machines as well. And after we had begun with that we also started to make cars, military equipment, telephones and planes as well. And then Sweden also had enough skills with electricty to start working with nuclear power and even become the world leadning expert in that area in the 1970s. And the skills in making in machine tools and electrical components also gave Sweden a good starting point to make mobile phones, and Ericsson would later on become one of the largest companies in the world.
But it was the forrest industry that started to make Sweden a rich country in the 1870s when this poor country started to get rich. And just like the iron industry had led to new the development of new industries, did also the forrest industry lead to the creation of new industries in Sweden.
Sweden did not just sell timber, but also discovered that it could sell matches (as with Ivar Kruger that made Sweden the world producer of matches). But Sweden also began making paper by chemical processes that made the paper bleech. And Sweden began selling so large amounts of paper that it needed to build its own chemical industry to provide the paper industry with all the chemicals it needed. And so was the Swedish chemical industry born in the early 1900s.
And when world war 2 happened Sweden got cut off from all trade with the rest of the world. So it had to invent ways all foreign products with products made in Sweden - everything from Brazilian coffee, to military planes and tanks, to medicines had to become self-made. There was simply no other option, if Sweden couldn't make those things on its own then it would have to remain without them.
So the Swedish chemical industry was ordered to started to make medicines, just like our car producer SAAB started to build military aircrafts. And when the war ended Sweden had created another high-tech industry in pharmaceuticals, and companies like Astra and Pharmacia would become some of the most succesful medicine companies in history.
Norway would however more rely on oil, and Denmark on agricultural products - even if tuborg and carlsberg beer could be considered as industrial products. Finland however, would long remain a poor country that became independent from Finland very lately. It would however make some impressive progress with its strict protectionist policies in the 1900s and the stubbornness of the Finnish government would eventually pay off. The government supported the company Nokia that lost money for all the first 17 years of existance, before it became one of the largest and most succesful companies in the world and created mega profits for Finland and created thousands of jobs.
I think the key for the future is to let countries constantly create new industries. Norway is smart to stay out of the EU and have this option of having their government creating an own industrial policy instead of just listen and follows every order from Brussels that isn't in the country's best own interest.
The oil will one day run out. But Norway will never run out of new ideas to build industries around - like new medicines to invent and sell, like new weapon systems to sell, new solutions for cyber security, or enviromentally substainable biotechnological building materials.
Old industries die out and new are born. Facit no longer sells typewrites to the world, now when everyone rather use a computer. No one use telegraphs anymore when we have telephones. And the car industry created new jobs by destroying jobs of the horse and buggy industry. But society as a whole benifited.
Everyone in the world wants new better products, and they are willing to pay much money for those new products. And if only your country is the one with the knowledge how to make those products, then you have no competition on the market that will push down prices. So if you are leading the technological race then you will not have any competition and you can sell your products for extremely high prices and make high profits. And those high profits for your companies makes it possible to pay workers high wages and pay high taxes to the government.
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The EU will fail by itself economically.
Furthermore is nationalism on the rise and the Merkel pig have lost her job, Macron is super unpopular and the EU parliament election in May looklike becoming another backlash for the Europhiles. The socialdemocrats have lost 90% of their seats in the french parliament the last election, and the socialdemocrats in Germany, Netherlands and Greece have suffered catastrophic losses while nationalists are winning in Italy, Austria, Poland, and Hungary and Brexit will soon happen.
Any unified decision on immigration, military and economics is now hopeless since so many member countries have backed out, that the EUs attempts to become United States of Europe is totally blocked.
The leftwing parties have lost votes all over western Europe, and now there are only 2 countries with leftwing governments - and those are Portugal and Spain. But even in those countries we see the same trend with socialdemocrats losing 10% of their voters the last 10 years. So not even in those countries could the left keep their positions for long if this current trend sticks.
The leftwing globalists is on retreat, populists are increasing everyware - even in countries where they don't have power yet, like Germany, Sweden, France, Netherlands and Denmark.
And in the rest of the world we see the same trend. Trumps support is still incredibly strong. Nationalists recently won the election in Quebec in Canada. And Brazil also recently got a nationalist into power. And countries like Russia, Turkey, Mongolia and India also follow the same trend.
Globalism is dying. The question is rather how it will die. Will EU break apart because of another Euro crisis? or will it break apart because of populist movements?
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