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IntroductionI like to challenge Scandinavians, it is often said how good they have it. Scandinavians are often thought of world leaders on many issues, and often they are. Let’s assume Scandinaivan countries are some of the best to live in. Then let’s drill down and look at Norway’s challenges for the future and see how far off the mark they are in meeting them. Overall, this should give readers around the world just how far all of humanity has to go in meeting the global challenges.This article is framed under the narrative that humanity is exceeding the ecological carrying capacity of the planet by over fifty percent and that is increasing (see figure at the end of the paragraph). At the same time we live within economic systems we fully don’t understand any longer and cannot fully control, economic systems that predicate continued growth on a planet with finite resources*, in sum we are robbing from the world bank at rates beyond the planets capability to replenish resources and our systems of global governance and economics are key drivers of that theft.Figure 1. Source: Ecological Footprint - Global Footprint NetworkNorway is an amazing country, an underdog of Europe. Of all the three Scandinavian countries my heart is most firmly planted here. The first book I read coming to Norway was Marianne Gullestad’s (RIP) book a Kitchen Table Society , about how feminism can spread. The second book I read was one about Norwegian Bunads, I was so interested in Bunads found a woman who fit in one nicely (see photo below).Ex-WifeNorway is oppressive in certain ways, this is mostly oppression against itself and is not really harmful to the outside world as much as it is to Norway’s future, except for that Norway is the most irresponsible country in Western Europe regarding greenhouse gas emissions per capita when its oil exports are included in the mix. This behavior is both very Norwegian and very un-Norwegian, that is Norwegians traditionally put bread on the table by exploiting resources yet, have generally taken the moral high ground on countless issues. These days, in an increasingly complex world paradoxes and hypocrisy are par for the course.Oppression in Innovation “Crowding Out”.Norway is resistant to new ideas and new industries. This is due to the Oil industry crowding out other innovation. For example, over the last few decades onshore industry has been cut in half as a measure of GDP and what is left is increasingly dependent on the offshore industry. Research from Fagerberg and Castellacci points this out (cited at the end).The results of this crowding out mean in a Scandinavian context (plus Finland) shows Norway is the least competitive nation of the four in terms of economic complexity.To calculate the economic complexity of a country, we measure the average ubiquity of the products it exports, then the average diversity of the countries that make those products and so forth. (Atlas of Economic Complexity, 2016).The following figure shows economic complexity in the Nordics (excluding Iceland) over time.The main result of the “oppression” of crowding out is this:Norway serves the second industrial revolution by providing the world with minimally processed goods or raw resources. Comparatively, Sweden serves the fourth industrial revolution by exporting primarily complex goods and services produced under increasingly sustainable conditions. Sweden is two or three generations ahead of Norway in terms of developing the infrastructure and knowledge needed to survive and succeed in a limited oil society. The following figure is an example of Norwegian NET exports in 2014, for a time series and greater explanation refer to my publication, Appendix E, located here. In addition net export revenues has declined significantly in the last 5 years.Soruce : http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/What is important about net exports it gives an idea of what a nation’s competitive advantage is, it weeds out domestic issues of cronyism, political influence, and surviving in an over inflated economy due to oil.Norway also produces significantly less triadic patents per million inhabitants then Denmark or Sweden, 24.06, 54.74, 94.07, respectively (OECD, 2015), such patents are one measure of a nation’s ability to generate wealth.The oppression of tradition.Pre World War II Norwegians generally became whatever their parents were. While this is changing there is still some notions of where and to who you were born determines what you become. The most ridiculous of this habit manifests itself in the West vs. East side mentality in Oslo where the West side, traditionally the wealthy, are as talented at creating their own intellectual ghettos as the East. It was only a few decades ago that there were ads for apartments in Oslo that stated they would not rent to Northern Norwegians. These divisions are silly in a country which at least attempts to be one of the most egalitarian in the world.The oppression of tradition makes change exceedingly difficult.During my research for a thesis in a rural region regarding sustainable development via innovation in Norway my conclusions were :The district, named Hallingdal, wanted to change, to become increasingly sustainable and develop more advanced industry.The district lacked the knowledge or capability to execute point 1.The district would not allow outsiders to play a game changing leadership role in the society, therefore they were stuck.Some gratuitous promotion photos of Hallingdal (and nearby regions), while not very innovative or receptive to change it is one of the most interesting places in Norway if you are into Norwegian culture, tradition, nature and people. The region of Hallingdal (and nearby regions). Hallingdal itself consists of 6 municipalities, Flå, Gol, Hemesedal, Hol, Nesbyen and Ål.Near Gol in Hallindal.Outside of Gol in Hallingdal.Photo taken from Langedrag Nature ParkFlå in Hallingdal****On the road from Gol to Hemsedal in HallingdalLastly, I would like to not only give readers a visual sense of Hallingdal but an audio one as well. The following artist, Stein Torleif Bjella (for me) captures the sound of rural mountainous Norway in a very special way. Hopefully, I will write an article about him and translate some of his songs at a later date.Out of the over 40 interviews in the thesis a doctor living in the region summed it up this way rather well:“Hallingdal is the last remnants of a Viking clan culture, you cannot underestimate the importance of families here. I feel like an outsider in my own country, I have not made a difference after living her nearly three decades what makes you think you will?”**At the other end of the spectrum a refugee who was in an asylum center told me “in my culture if you live with us for three weeks you are a member of the tribe, it is not that way here”.Now, I tell those three points above to the innovation culture in Oslo about the rural region and none of them are surprised. However, then I tell them that it is the same way in Oslo and they have a hard time digesting that. However, if I was wrong then Norway would be showing clear signs of transitioning or transforming towards exporting advanced goods or knowledge as the main form of net export revenue, but they are not, it’s still primarily fish and oil.What is a bit sad is when I came to Norway there were maybe 3 or 4 lobbyists, now there are 100’s. There are commercials all over the media from the Norwegian fish industry that “fish is our economic future”. Critical economic decisions are attempting to be steered by political forces rather than good research and this is already a huge problem in Norway (Norwegians seem to focus more on fighting over the domestic pie, rather than making more pies and exporting them***). To me, the sign of a company worth anything in Norway is it’s capability to compete internationally under sustainable conditions, it clarifies who is able to produce real value, not the value of a society pumped up and high on oil for several decades.The Oppression of The Resource CurseNorway is often applauded as having escaped the resource curse. I do think the resource curse definition is not of much use in Norway’s case. To me the resource curse should be defined as:“Any nation with rich natural resources who exploits those resources and is unable to advance the complexity of it’s economy, to the point of gaining a competitive advantage in exporting advanced knowledge under an increasingly sustainable society, to such a degree that they are no longer dependent on raw resources as an export”.Norway under my definition is it’s own victim of the resource curse. Let’s put this in perspective, Noway is using it’s oil resources at a rate compared to the ability for earth to replenish them in this manner:If I were to provide you with a 40 year contract for a job and pay you that entire 40 year salary up front. Then on your first day off you spent all of that paycheck in the first hour. That is roughly how fast the oil is being drained.The resource curse in Norway is called a “sleep pillow or straightjacket” at times. It was not well defined so I made a rudimentary definition of it a few years ago but like the above paragraph in quotes better. The old definition are just symptoms and are available on pages 11 to 15 of the following thesis :“Sustainable Innovation? Addressing challenges and finding opportunities in a rural region of Norway.”The Oppression of holding onto the past rather than embracing and tackling the future.Norway used to produce leadership that looked towards the future even if doing so by examining the past. Arne Næs, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Thor Heyerdahl are a few examples. Norway not only lacks leadership capable of making the changes domestically but also lacks the leadership capable of inspiring other countries to create a viable future, where humanity lives under sustainable conditions on a societal, economic, and environmental level. Norway has sort of become a bootlicker to the US and China, long gone are the days when a future prime minister would go to jail fighting for his beliefs, another hero of mine for his determination maybe not his methods of practicing politics, Einar Gerhardsen. To place this within a context, the world faces a global leadership gap, if it did not we would be solving our global challenges, we would not have problems such as climate change or over utilizing the planets ecological carrying capacity.There are other forms of oppression I have discussed about Norway in the past such as the treatment of refugees and how in a society that has come so far in terms of gender equality still has a long way to go.So what are the solutions to oppression, as a start….Well, everyone should understand what systems govern us, probably a quick way to do that is to watch a few Adam Curtis documentaries, The Trap, Century of Self, Hypernormalization come to mind. Americans should all read “A People’s History of the United States” by Zinn. Absorb Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent is a must) and Zizek. Learn about sustainability issues and how to solve them, read Donella Meadows “Thinking in Systems”. We should take ques from nature’s 3.8 billion years of evolution on this planet, essentially innovation much more refined then ours…a place like Norway would be great to indoctrinate it’s youth from an early age as there is already a reverence for nature here in the form of teaching kids about biomimicry.Due to the rebound effect, our global systems of governance and economics there are not many changes you are going to make within the system that will promote humanity to live within sustainable conditions. We have a system that rewards technical solutions but does not properly reward the socio side of socio-technical solutions. Alas, its the socio solutions that we are in most need of (i.e., changing values and norms in the short ditching Hayek and going back to Polanyi as a jumping off point…creating a global economic system that accounts for the externalities humanity causes to itself and the planet). If there is any country that you could do it from the inside maybe it’s Sweden with their carbon tax and their work towards a carbon net neutral society, but it will have to evolve for several decades perhaps to cause radical change, and do we have the time?We need to create new values where the digeratti are followed due to how well they live within their share of the planet’s carrying capacity, how they promot women’s rights, or reducing population in an ethical manner, or closed the rich-poor gap.We need courage, Norway should be producing dissidents, people who stand up and tell it’s own government to change and in turn it does, and then gets back on track leading by example and showing the rest of the world how to change. Sadly, the important Norwegian history has been forgotten, the oil pie has silenced or marginalized dissent, and the society every year is further turning into a place where consuming more equals more happiness. The late boomers, my generation (X) have taught the youth and young adults how to become good little conformists and submissive to power rather than suffer for bringing truth to power. This applies to the world as well unfortunately.Be impatient and patient at the same time. Humanity needs to go through a transformation and these are generally multi-generational projects. On the other hand, the seeds should have already been firmly planted but are long behind schedule. Zizek said it best, we have no problems imagining some apocalyptic event happening but cannot imagine moderate changes to the global systems of governance (paraphrase).The Clash of Civilization and The End of History thinking that is sort of the last ideological stepping stone the world is standing on is incredibly mis-alinged with solving global challenges (see global challenges below). We let the global banking system decide our fate, in a network world it has amazed me that international grass roots organizations are not stronger. The International Workers movement of the world, 350.org, The Electronic Frontier Foundation and so on should be at the global table of power negotiations. Our own democracies are often pointless in terms of harnessing real political power to cause change and our politicians impotent to the global corporations. Humanity needs to be able to rally together, to shut down all of the factories of the Coca-Cola’s, Nestle’s via striking in protest of the murder of labor organizers or their exploitation of nature resource via public pays / private profit models. The everyday person has little power and especially in a country such as Norway this is quite sad, as its meant to be a country by and for the everyday people. Hopefully Norway can find its way again and help to teach the rest of the world how great it can be when we can all come together.*An interesting point about living within a system we created yet no longer control or understand is we have manged to create a very early form of singularity, while not self aware, it is controlling human behavior and we have not been able to stop it.**There are incredibly interesting and unique sub-cultures in Norway in the rural regions and elsewhere. There should more anthropologists going to study such places as there is a vast amount of valuable folklore, customs, norms, and knowledge that is being lost. There were almost no academic studies of the region I investigated and that is a loss for the whole world in my opinion.***Two good examples of this. Norwegian business awards the Gazelle prize for “business leaders” they don’t measure for sustainability or export capacity. To me, that is a sign of what the Norwegian business community values, they just care about growth. Well of the last 11 or so winners only 3 had any significant export potential and two were bought out by foreign competitors.The second example is Kolonial.no , which is an online and delivery oriented grocer. This product is needed domestically as there is sort of an oligarchy of grocers running the market and some of those large ones are quite uninteresting. For example, Rema 1000’s game plan is to copy low end UK grocers and their ideas. If Norway was so rich why is there not any grocers copying Whole Foods? Anyway, Kolonial.no was started by some of the best and the brightest Norway has to offer. That is rather sad, as the best and the brightest should want to compete on a global not domestic level.****While I would like to tell that I am courageous enough to get so close to two bears the truth of the matter is the photo is taken at a bear park in the town of Flå.ReferencesCastellacci, F. (2008). Innovation in Norway in a European Perspective. Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Vol 34, 2008, Article 1. pp. 36-37Fagerberg, Jan. Mowery, David. Verspagen, B.(2009). Innovationsystems,path dependency and policy: The co-evolution of science, technology and innovation policy and industrial structure in a small, resource based economy Version of 20.5.2009 TIK WORKING PAPERS on Innovation Studies No. 20080624Senter for teknologi, innovasjon og kultur Universitetet i Oslo. Pp. 10-13Fagerberg, (2014). Innovation and Innovation Policy in the Nordic Countries. Video Presentation in Norway April, 25 2014. [Video ]Available at: < Jan Fagerberg: Innovation and Innovation Policy in the Nordic Countries >Fagberberg, Jan-3. (2009). The evolution of Norway's National Innovation System. Presentation. Excerpt from:_-Fagerberg. J. (2009) “INNOVASJONSPOLITISKE VIRKEMIDLER”,. Available at: <Welcome to BI Norwegian Business School> , 2015. slides 18-19.OECD, (2015). Definition of Triadic Patents. OECD Factbook 2013: Economic, Environmental, and Social Statistics.