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NES, a podcast from the news. >> A hearty welcome to Jens Rugsett, investor and job creator. And, uh, as I said to you right before we started here, that I'm, I'm getting a little bit crazy, Jens, you should be happy to be in Spain. >> Yes. Because in Norway, I feel like we are in an alternate reality, and where everyone speaks a language that I, I understand, but a lot of foolishness is said in that language, so it becomes a bit difficult. >> But I, I think it has a little to do with the fact that we have now moved into a new phase of the government's Støre's term. So, the first two or three years, they were relatively active in talking about plans for Norway. Uh, they were going to have an active industrial policy. They were going to implement the green revolution. Um, uh, they were going to focus on ordinary people and, and they were going to ensure justice and equalization, and many people believed in that. And then there was quite a lot of mess with them having one, yes, crisis after another with people who, one might say, both stole and cheated and had all sorts of crises that made them have to replace almost the entire team. Um, but, but they did initiate a lot of strange things, they initiated investments in hydrogen and carbon capture and storage and battery investments and ocean investments. And they initiated processes to achieve a significant equalization by significantly increasing wealth tax, uh, increasing dividend tax, increasing taxes. Uh, and at the same time, they entered a period of extreme increase in state earnings. So, um, just a few months after Støre came in, the oil price naturally went through the roof because of the war in Ukraine. And the state has, over the last four years, just been swimming in money. Uh, and they feel that they have succeeded with that, uh, even though they have nothing to do with what they have done. And the effect of that is that they have, like, had no brake on what they have been willing to spend money on. Uh, and to, in a way, try to hold back a little on, especially private consumption, they have had to increase taxes and fees so that it is the state that should be able to spend money and the people should spend less money. And the new phase is that now we are beginning to see con >> Let me just repeat those two sentences and keep your thought. It is the state that should spend money, not the people. >> That is absolutely correct. And, and now we have entered the new phase where we see that state spending has been a disaster. So, none of these green projects are anywhere near what the intentions were for Støre's government. So, the battery thing is still fresh in memory, of course, but it has been a, a, a disaster since Northvolt went bankrupt, well, nearly two years ago. Uh, and there is practically nothing left. Um, uh, ocean, it's not taking off. So, the only thing happening there is enormous spending. Hydrogen, nothing is happening. Uh, carbon capture and storage is proving to be extremely much more expensive and much less effective than what was planned. Uh, and when it comes to the investment in building new power, nothing is happening. So, not a single project has been approved in this five-year period that can provide us with any significant new power. Uh, so, and I think people are perhaps seeing that now. And the new phase, what does it entail? Well, it entails that a number of measures have been implemented. Everything from, uh, environmental taxes, uh, everything from the consequences of power in Norway being priced essentially in Europe, uh, and, uh, that the oil price, on which Norway earns extremely much money, makes things very expensive for the people. So, instead of addressing the core of the problem, namely that we have a tax and fee level that is outrageously high, we are patching it up by, on the one hand, maintaining a ridiculously high tax and fee level, and then giving it back to some extent in the form of subsidies. So, now we are at a point where there is soon no industry in Norway that is initiated or owned by the state, or at least partly owned by the state, uh, or consumption in Norway that is not heavily, uh, subsidized, as they say, because they have to maintain the fee levels, so it's better to maintain the fee level and then give money back in the form of subsidies. And then, if we take, for example, environmental taxes that the industry pays, uh, they pay a lot of money, but at the same time, Norwegian state-owned companies like Norsk Hydro, Røros, Elkem, and so on, receive back 10, 20 billion kroner a year, which they then use to pay the state for taxes. Uh, and we see it now with petrol prices, where they are now going to use. Yes, I mean, how much could it be, that it will be 10 billion, it will surely be, uh, to temporarily reduce taxes, because they are going to maintain the taxes as soon as the oil price normalizes. And we see it with electricity, where we now have a Norwegian price that is based on an electricity regime that has gone bankrupt. Um, uh, and it's like, it's completely outrageous. You collect money on the one hand, which gives the state enormous surpluses, and then you cry about every krone that is given back because you see that the population actually doesn't have the economy to bear the consequences of the government's policy. And, and that's where we are now, that we are not addressing the core of any of the problems. We are just pouring out money to make the pain for the people, or for the industry, for the businesses, less. Uh, and I find it quite amusing, especially with electricity and petrol, because the whole idea behind the green shift was that we should use less electricity, less energy per inhabitant. Uh, and we should move from a world that runs on diesel or petrol, uh, to becoming green. And then we go in afterwards and subsidize so that the people don't notice, and the people certainly don't save. Uh, and there are so many ways things could have been done differently. The problem for the state, or for Støre's government, is that most other ways would have benefited individuals. Uh, and that's a bit of the challenge. We see it area by area, that all measures that, or tutti frutti, that the government does, all measures are designed to ensure that the state benefits, and the state has control. So, I would say that the main problem in Norway, if you compare with Sweden or Switzerland or other countries, is that the state, or the government, does not trust the people. They don't want the people to be able to succeed with businesses that the state does not control. Um, and they want the people to be dependent on the state. Um, and the effect of that is that it becomes completely impossible for a state with a lack of competence and, for that matter, a lack of resources when it comes to how to make things happen, to come up with one ridiculous proposal after another, uh, to try to fix the consequences of its own mistakes, mistakes that have been made. And, and if they are to be very concrete, I find it amusing to discuss. >> Because now we saw Skjæran on TV the other day, who is now going to fix the housing market, and the background, or the situation, is very serious. So, we have a, an important industry in Norway, which is the construction industry, the industry, the housing industry, where there is one bankruptcy after another, both in relation to private homes, in relation to cottage construction, in relation to commercial buildings, which are going bankrupt, in numbers we haven't seen in, yes, 20, 30, 40 years. Uh, and the reasons are, there are many reasons. So, we have high interest rates in Norway. We have a, a sharply increasing bureaucracy, which has made it extremely much more expensive to build, especially housing, but also cottages and commercial buildings. Uh, and we have a slow bureaucracy that can take up to 10 years to approve a, a land-use plan or a project. And then we have a completely new model for how, who is going to pay for infrastructure in the country. Now, all these things mean that the housing market has essentially stalled. And then Skjæran comes as the new minister and says that, no, no, now we are going to solve all the problems. So, what he says, what he does, is that he first comes out with a goal and says that 130,000 homes will be built within the next five years. He said that after the election. And nobody believes that, not the construction industry, not, you know, the business community. But he unfortunately continues, and then he gradually gets told that, you know what, this is just nonsense. Nobody believes it, and it's not realistic. And then it turns, and then it's no longer about building 130,000 homes. Then it's about 130,000 housing starts, which is still a totally unrealistic goal. But, but at least it goes from being idiotic to just being stupid. Uh, and then they realize that it's not possible to achieve that either. Uh, so then it's also, uh, approval for, approval for renovation of industrial buildings into housing. So, they are constantly adding new things. And then, at the same time, they say, half a year after they launched this proposal with great fanfare, they say that, okay, it's not realistic, but we are working hard to create the conditions to get as close as possible. And how are they working hard? Uh, well, what they are primarily doing now is that they say we are going to start a project where we are going to simplify building housing in Norway. And, and that in itself is a very, very good project, but it accounts for perhaps between 5 and 10% of what is needed to get the construction industry going. Now they say that, yes, uh, we will, for example, be able to remove an intermediate space in new apartments that costs a lot of money, uh, and that, in a way, spoils the use of space. So, historically, when you were in an apartment, you opened the door and you were inside the apartment. Now they have said that there should be an intermediate space and then another door before you enter the actual apartment. They might be able to remove that. So, they have some such, uh, concrete points, and then they have some ambitions that municipalities should change their ways, that we should remove some of the objections, that you should be able to, it's enough with single protection for radon. Many of these points are very good points, and they mean that instead of missing the target by 50,000 homes by 2030, we might only miss it by 49,500 homes. And the reason, of course, is that the measures that would really help are ideologically blocked from being implemented. What is needed to speed up the housing market? Well, the first is, of course, interest rates. Uh, and we can come back to what they can do to lower interest rates, but then they must also make the housing market attractive again for investors and owners. So, and there they have introduced, uh, when they started, they first introduced, uh, a higher wealth tax on owning a home. Then they introduced, or at least the municipalities governed by the left, they increased property tax. Uh, and then they have come up with a housing value model that means that both wealth tax and eventually property tax will increase significantly. Uh, and then they are now in the process of introducing new rules for renting out housing, which will make it extremely unattractive to rent out housing by giving tenants more or less perpetual tenancy rights. Uh, and they are also talking about limiting, uh, price increases. So, the effect of these things they have done is, first of all, that they have reduced housing construction. They have sharply reduced the number of apartments available for rent, especially in the larger cities. Uh, and as a consequence, those with the least resources among us have now seen rent prices increase, for example, in Oslo by around 40% in recent years. So, all these measures, the ideological reasons behind them, have made life much, much worse for the approximately 20% of the population who at any given time need to rent, not own. And there are many reasons why people need to rent. It could be that they have divorced, that they are in education, that they are in an establishment phase where they want to save money, that they are in a job situation where they commute, so many reasons. And the only effect of all this, the government has messed with here, is less construction, more expensive housing for the poor, the poor, and made the entire rental market an unprofitable industry, where when I talk to people who have previously invested in building apartments for rent, they say that they will not do that anymore. That's it. We can't build housing where we might have 3% direct return per year when the state is going to take 2.5% of that in taxes. Uh, and on top of all that, they are now not going to implement, because they understand that, you know, that having a new cottage value model in addition, which would cause the cottage market to also implode, that would be going too far. Even though in the socialist tradition, the only right thing is to ensure that, uh, building expensive cottages, we should stop that. So, so we are in a situation where reality does not fit with ideology. And it hasn't for these five years. Um, and they simply, they don't have the ability to sit down and ask themselves what is needed. And, uh, the construction industry is probably the third largest industry in Norway, if I remember correctly, maybe the fourth largest. What characterizes the construction industry is that it is as much a regional industry as a central industry. Uh, and the effects of the construction industry being dismantled in the regions are catastrophic because it doesn't just come back on its own. Um, and we don't see the incentives. They, they get completely, they get completely frozen when someone talks about incentives. I heard, I noticed one thing. One was that now they've come up with this about wanting emission-free construction machinery. >> Yes. >> So, like excavators with batteries. And then I heard the podcast "Politisk preik" in Dagsavisen, where the same people are, this is a left-wing newspaper, and these are journalists discussing, so I'm not directly responsible for this, but they are discussing the need for a third housing sector, that now the state must come in, and there you increase, you know, municipal housing and like, a third housing sector, and, and >> But, but, uh, the incompetence, purely in principle, I am against a third housing sector. But that said, there are cities in the world that have succeeded very, very well with a third housing sector. But, uh, the problem with a third housing sector in Norway is that to the extent we have a third housing sector, for example, Oslo municipality, which I believe owns, uh, yes, what do they have? They have at least 1,000 apartments, and they can't keep them occupied. They can't keep them rented out. So, that third housing sector in Norway, with the bureaucratic model we have, is not possible to implement. But there are cities in the world, for example, Houston or Tokyo, that even though these are cities that have grown a lot in population, have managed to keep prices at reasonable levels. And that is because they have been, uh, very practical and said, okay, what is it that allows us to build enough housing? So, they have been willing to compromise on land use. They have been willing to look at norms for apartment size, densification. Uh, so they have just said, you know, they have been pragmatic and said that if this city is to continue to grow, which we can, as central functions in our country, and then the capital and Houston is the oil capital of the USA, then we must actually compromise on some of these principles that, that the left traditionally adheres to. Uh, and we must also accept that there are people who actually profit from building and from owning property. So, Houston is a place where, uh, over the last 10-15 years, rent prices have increased less than inflation. Uh, the same in Tokyo. Tokyo, which is a megacity with, yes, nearly 40 million inhabitants. There, they have managed, uh, and in Norwegian conditions, by accepting building norms that are, of course, complicated. So, there, families can live in 35 square meters without, you know, they sleep on mats on the floor and so on, but that is, in a way, a Japanese tradition. Uh, and we shouldn't go that far in Norway. But in Norway, we don't compromise on principles. So, on the contrary, we push the principles as far as possible. And, and the latest new thing is, of course, the fantastic IKEA decision at Forus, where they require 1,159 bicycle parking spaces and, uh, and you are not allowed to have car parking spaces. Now, that was overturned in the Storting yesterday or the day before, but the fact that it even reaches the Storting, and that it is even considered a victory for the right, this is a catastrophic loss for Norway as a nation that we can put ourselves in a situation where we force, yes, I still call it the county governor, the county governor, to say here there shall be 1,200 bicycle spaces and no car parking. >> But, but the state administrator there, Bernt Høye or Bent Høye is it? >> Yes, they washed their hands and said they just had to follow the rules. >> Yes. So, and, and we see that area by area, that there is no pragmatism in Norwegian politics. It is ideology. Uh, and when ideology is to steer the development of Norway, we know that it must go wrong because they don't look at the consequences. They only look at the intentions. And, yes, let's take, to talk about something else, the salary negotiations this year, which have, you know, effectively killed the tripartite cooperation. And they do that because >> tripartite cooperation, >> Tripartite cooperation is, it's dead. >> Uh, by two. Tell for those who don't know what it is. Historically, there has been tripartite cooperation, and there has been a so-called front-line model, where the export-oriented industry determines how much wages can be increased. And the three parties, the government or the state, the employers' organization (NHO), and then LO, the trade unions. And historically, it has been thought that there should be a balance between the interests of the three actors. So, employers want a larger share of the pie, employees want a larger share of the pie, and the government or the state should contribute to smoothing out the differences between the two major actors, employers and employees. Støre stated early in his government period that he would cheer for the team on the left side of the field, namely LO. And has, in a way, said that NHO represents something foreign to him. Um, and we have seen over the last two years, where, due to lack of success, both in keeping interest rates lower and in providing people with real wage increases by running the country well, he has broken all principles of tripartite cooperation and gone out and said, now the people deserve a significant real wage increase. He argues that the basis for a significant real wage increase and wage level alone is the death of achieving anything with the interest rate level in Norway. Uh, and he justifies this by saying that large parts of the industry are doing well, so employees are getting a smaller share of value creation. And that is correct, to some extent, but then he is very selective in which industry he looks at. He mainly looks at raw material industries, like oil, energy, mining, that type of thing. Fish, that type of thing, which in times like now, when there is economic turmoil, sell their goods at higher prices than they normally would. And then he says that this short-term upturn these businesses are experiencing, employees should be allowed to take out larger shares of the profit. And that sounds reasonable, in a way. The problem is that the front-line model leads to all other actors who do not have the economic capacity to follow the front-line model being forced to follow the front-line model anyway. So, that means that the entire public sector, that means that private nurseries on the list must increase wages by 4-5% even though economically they cannot afford it. So, what are the consequences of Støre saying that everyone deserves a real wage increase now? It is that he weakens the private business sector, excluding those businesses that the state co-owns and that are doing very well now. And he fuels the inflation fire because the nurseries on the list have to say, okay, this tulip must increase by 20% in price. The only way I can pay those wage increases, and the only way I can cover the tax increases. So, what he, what he could have done, and what he should have done, was to say that Norway is in a situation where we are characterized by high price increases. We can no longer blame foreigners. One couldn't really do that before either, but one did. This is domestic inflation. And if we are to reduce domestic inflation, we must have a wage settlement that is at or below the inflation level. And we understand that it is difficult for employees to accept, but the government has instruments that can contribute to you actually getting a real increase, but not one that drives inflation like now. And that can be done by reducing taxes and fees. And that can be done by limiting spending elsewhere in the public sector. Neither of those things is close to the mindset of our good friend Støre. He sees, oh, now more money is coming into the Oil Fund. Then we will spend more money, and we will spend it on sensible projects. It could be a salsa course for Somali pirates, or it could be, yes, subsidizing here and there, and pouring more money into these green projects, which, of course, create domestic demand, and which means that we, now we have, this wage settlement we have done now, where it is a missed opportunity to get inflation under control, means that we will have, we will have an interest rate hike. We will have an interest rate hike in the fall. LO says that now, and for that matter, SV and Rødt say that now we must control interest rates politically. So, it's like, it's disciples. And they, and they know what happened in Turkey. They know that when they started to control interest rates politically, it went completely wrong. >> But they don't care about that. Because they are only after short-term gains and can say that we control interest rates. But that leads us straight, that leads us astray. >> We become so banana, we become so banana republic that it's not, and we become it in a, I think about this with Morrows. So, then the Minister of Trade, Ms. Mørk, just says that sometimes we don't succeed. It's like, if you get into a car and just floor the accelerator towards a cliff, then it's not a good answer to say that sometimes we don't succeed. It's like, no, you never succeed when you enter into competition with high costs, zero, higher costs, worse competence, and you are going to import everything from China. So, you, you never succeed. Uh, and then a mayor comes along who is allowed by NRK to hear this, that it's Sylvie Listau's fault because she talked about the project, and then she, and then everyone sits there, yes, if we had just given Morrows more money, they wouldn't have gone bankrupt. And that's true. But it's, it's, I feel we are, and then salary negotiations, I think, and then we have strikes, but the reason for the strikes is that NAV doesn't work. >> No, and that is, and that is an issue that is not, you know, prominent in the newspapers. So, >> The government has implemented some measures or agreements recently that really, that really drain the business sector of money. For the first thing, they changed, uh, uh, the payment of taxes. So, historically, you had a tax account where you paid taxes every two months that the employees had paid, which you pay to the state. So, you had, in principle, a 4 to 6 week deferral to pay these funds. And then they were in an account with you. And then it was considered part of the equity capital in the business, so part of the business's capital. Now, that has been changed so that the day you pay wages, you immediately pay the tax. And that might sound logical and reasonable, that there is no point for the company to hold onto that money. But the reality is that the effect of that, the cash flow effect for businesses, is that Norwegian businesses, with just that small adjustment that was very convenient for the Financial Supervisory Authority or the Ministry of Finance to make, reduces the equity capital or worsens the cash flow for Norwegian businesses by between 3 and 5 billion kroner. Small change, perhaps, but those 3 to 5 billion form the basis for bank financing. And most businesses, at least with a certain number of employees, they have, uh, uh, yes, let's say working capital financing and 50% equity financing. So, the effects are that by withdrawing, by making businesses pay taxes the same day as wages are paid, instead of being able to wait for two months, we reduce the financing capacity of the private business sector by 10 billion kroner. And this is done in a situation where large parts of the business sector, outside of the state-owned ones I mentioned, are struggling. And that is quite negative. If we then take the next point, which is that NHO, this should have been protested on TV, and the state should have done its job and said that this is our responsibility. The state finances NAV. Uh, instead, Støre and his guys calmly say, it is completely natural that the business sector advances sick pay because we have a functioning state. We have a non-functioning NAV that cannot do its job. So, they say the private business sector, and we are talking about billions of kroner in advances. And you can imagine there has been some pressure on NAV when individuals are to receive sick pay. But you can imagine that now, when a company has two people on sick leave and advances several hundred thousand kroner that they really cannot afford to do, and then NAV says, yes, well, we can't do it now for, God knows, 8 weeks or whatever it takes. But that is a business, it's not that bad. Let's prioritize the projects that concern individuals, the weak in society. Businesses can expect that processing times will now increase. It is no longer a priority because it is not individuals who can come forward and complain. And NHO has agreed to that, and that, uh, they are, yes. No, but it's perhaps not surprising that NHO has agreed because they know that in this tripartite cooperation that is dead, LO has full control over the third party. Where Støre, fully supports LO at every opportunity. So, it's possible that they thought, okay, this is a lost cause. It's not, we don't have the energy to fight that battle. It costs too much to fight that battle. I, I don't know. Total madness. >> I, I must admit that I think that NHO, once upon a time, was the employers and capital owners, but now the largest actors in NHO are state-owned companies. So, at least either controlled or with dominant ownership stakes. DNB, Telenor, Statkraft, Statnett, Yara, Hydro, and then Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk, Equinor, and so on. And that's, that's the bulk of NHO. And in addition, the better ones like Norsk Hydro, they live in such a symbiosis where, okay, it's total governmentality, it's not that bad with CO2 taxes as long as we get CO2 compensation. And then, suddenly, for large systems, it's clear that if, yes, we get a competitive disadvantage, perhaps, but it affects the small players even more. >> And that's, and that's, it's the large ones that get, it's the large ones that get the large subsidies. >> So, with today's, uh, carbon tax system, which is of course increasing towards the thirties, uh, if Hydro hadn't received all these subsidies, then, uh, the value of Hydro would have been less than half. So, now, through subsidies, the Norwegian state is subsidizing the value increase of these companies. Uh, if it hadn't been for the fact that Snøhvit, you know, forcing electrification against the will of the people in Northern Norway, then that would have been a project that would have been killed by the carbon tax over time. So, and, and that's, I, I think that this NAV thing is symptomatic of how things happen. We are in a situation and say that, okay, NAV cannot pay out sick pay. That's a huge problem. How do we solve it? Well, most business owners would say, how do we attack this? We will state, it will only be one salary, then they get the money on average for 14 days. What do we have to do to achieve that? No, we don't do that. We say, oh, here we have a huge problem. Okay, we'll get someone else to pay. And, and that's, you know, the businesses pay, and then we don't have to do anything. And that's how it is. Uh, once the state has agreed to implement the green shift, and here are the consequences, then one asks, how do we get to the green shift, and then one sees, oh, this is going to cost a lot of money. Uh, and if we impose on our businesses to do what actually needs to be done, then they will go bankrupt. Yes. So, then you either give exemptions or you take state money and put it in so that the company doesn't notice the path to the green shift. And it has actually gotten so bad that those who have been good at reducing their footprint, their carbon footprint, are now in a situation where they don't get subsidies. So, it's negative to achieve the goals of our government. So, they, they constantly, instead of addressing the core of the problem, they patch up and add new things, which, of course, do not solve the challenges. It just postpones it. At some point, someone must address this. And in Norway, we have, or all of Europe is now suffering under a green ambition that we didn't know the cost of, and we still don't know the cost. We don't know how we will get there. But politicians always have grandiose ambitions and go for the most expensive and difficult projects. And here, Norway is in a unique position because when, especially the EU says we must reduce our footprint, or we must reduce our carbon footprint by so and so much by then, Norway says, "Oh, we can do much better. We can actually do so much better that we will not work with nature." Other countries in Europe, they calculate how much carbon is absorbed by water or the sea and water, how much is absorbed by forests. While in Norway, we say no, no, we will save without working with nature. And the reason is that we were already so environmentally friendly because of our hydropower that reaching the EU's goals would have been a simple matter. So, but Norwegian politicians didn't think that was a good idea. So, they said no, we will have much stricter requirements. We will not work with nature, and we will set goals so that everyone can say that we are the best in class. And then you don't achieve any of this because the consequences of the goals are so dramatic that they don't dare to implement them. And then Norway, compared to Sweden, for example, and Sweden is a terrible country according to Støre. They have high unemployment, which they don't have, and they have immigration problems, as if we don't have them. And everything is wrong in Sweden, but the reality is that they have approached environmental protection in a completely different way than
It is that they use 10 times more money on energy efficiency. So, they are taking the small steps that are sensible to take, while we have grandiose projects that will come to nothing. I do watch a lot of what Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway are doing. In Switzerland, over the last 30 years, they have managed to reduce electricity consumption per household so that the average Swiss household uses half as much electricity as the average Norwegian household. Why is that? It's completely illogical. And there are two reasons for it. Firstly, the Swiss said very early on, we must reduce energy consumption for environmental and cost reasons. Secondly, in Norway, we have a large industry based on hydropower owned by the public sector, which has no interest in us reducing energy consumption. Quite the opposite. We should have said that all new homes must be heated by district heating or heat pumps. Or solar power, for that matter, or solar cells. But that's not happening. The entire Oslo office building can be connected to district heating, but it's not happening. And why not? Well, Statkraft has no interest in its revenues decreasing. So, the state-dominated industries say, "Yes, if you invest in energy efficiency, your tax revenues will decrease." That is the only logical explanation for why we are not investing in what actually works. And then we say that yes, we need much more power in Norway. And last year, we produced 160 terawatt-hours. So, we have managed to get more power out of both solar and wind on land and all that. And we have a potential for savings in energy efficiency of at least 30 terawatt-hours, maybe 40. So, if we had invested in energy efficiency, we could have dropped offshore wind. But we are not doing that. The reason is that the state envisions that the day oil stops, we need a new cash cow. And that new cash cow is selling electricity to Europe. And the potential, the potential if you develop power, let's say you develop 50 terawatt-hours of power that can be exported. And you export it on days when the wind or the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing, then you might get 4-5 kroner per kilowatt-hour. And then those 50 terawatt-hours will generate an income of 200 billion kroner. And that is the reason why Norwegian consumers today pay much more for electricity than they should. Considering that we have paid off this power production we have. It's because the state is working to secure future income and the cost of the population's ability to pay.
Here, I think you reveal the problem, that the state has become an economic actor, acting like other economic actors. They maximize their own profit. Yes. On the one hand, they do that, and on the other hand, they don't quite know what to spend money on, so they waste it. On the other hand. Someone must. Yes. Yes. Because they don't have a proper owner behind them saying that now. No. If you take companies like Statkraft, Equinor, and Telenor, just those three alone. In the last 10 years, they have lost more than 200 billion kroner abroad on idiotic projects. The biggest and worst is, of course, Equinor's investment in shale oil in the USA. They invested in an oil concept they didn't know before. An oil concept that produces a completely different type of oil than what we produce in the North Sea and requires a completely different type of processing than the oil we have in the North Sea. They invested in it anyway and spent enormous sums and lost at least 125 billion without any significant consequences. It was like, yes. Yes. It's like Cecilie Myset said, sometimes we don't succeed. The same. Telenor has succeeded in some countries when they were first movers. Being the first into Bangladesh, or yes, the first into Thailand, the first into some countries, and then they succeeded, and then they become completely wild about their own success. Then they enter a market that is extremely crowded, which is essentially already divided, called India, and lose 30 billion there. No resistance in government or the public sector about whether this is the task of a state-owned company. No, then we lose 30 billion on that. Take Statkraft. Now, there have been new costs in Statkraft, so at least in the short term, they are now incurring large losses on foreign projects and seem to want to concentrate on producing electricity as efficiently as possible, at least in the immediate vicinity. But they have also started one project after another because the state wants higher revenues and is willing to take risks that other investors are not willing to take, with the consequence that enormous sums are lost. So, yes, no, that has been. And it is in this discussion, when these three companies have lost 200 billion plus, that we have a discussion about property tax where the Norwegian state says, "Yes, but if 35 billion in property tax disappears annually, how will we finance the state then?" Well, just stop letting these state-dominated companies waste money. Take the sails in, but it's completely out of the question because the state or the government thinks that this money is theirs. They actually don't understand that they are managing it on behalf of the population. And what we see so often, when you go area by area, we see so many decisions made by public authorities that are so negative for the population. Let me mention two very briefly because I just get so outrageously angry when I see it. One example is the money managed by the public sector. It could be children who have lost their parents, it could be inheritances for people under 18. We are talking about a significant number of billions of kroner that the public sector forces to remain in zero-interest accounts or accounts with 0.5% interest. They could have been invested in index funds and had a return of 6-7-8% per year. And these are funds that the state itself uses, but when it comes to the population, it's not an option. Then this money must be forced into where it is eaten up by inflation. And this has been a known issue. I have at least known about it for 30 years that it cannot be like this, and it has come up periodically. But do politicians do anything about it at all? Absolutely not. So, that's one example. In principle, they take billions a year from the population and the weakest among us, simply because they can't be bothered to think about what's best for the population. So, that's one example. Another example that I find terrible is our pension model. I saw a statistic now showing that Norwegian pensions are severely underfunded. And that's because it's a running pension. And money is not set aside from year to year for your pension. So, you will receive an underfunded pension that is extremely low. Personally, I, who still pay millions in taxes to Norway, will receive a pension of only 300,000. If you go to Sweden, although it's not a large portion, a small portion of the annual pension is actually paid out and put into a fund. The 7th AP pension is typical. The consequence in Norway is that if you die the day after you retire, the payout stops the month you die. So, the family gets nothing. If they are lucky, the first payout might cover a decent coffin. In Sweden, you have built up a safety buffer over 40-50 years because part of the pension is set aside. And then there is money left for the family if you are unlucky enough to die the day after you retire. An extremely unfair model from Norway to Sweden because the Norwegian who works for 50 years and dies the next day gets nothing. But the Swede who dies the next day secures the family. And the consequence of this is that the Norwegian who dies, or the average Norwegian, has a fortune that is one-third of the average Swede's. And there is no interest in the Norwegian political environment to say, with the capital situation we have, we should help the population. Now, of course, you can save, and it has become personal pension savings. But that hasn't reduced the state's pension savings, as you still pay 9% of your salary into the National Insurance Scheme. But that's just a typical example of how the state manages money on its own behalf, not on behalf of the population. And that makes me furious because people are shocked when they retire and how little they get. And then they can no longer deliver basic services either. I saw the most shocking news recently, I think, was this school administrator in Oslo who said that one in five in Oslo schools are at the lowest level in reading literacy. That means one in five cannot read. Yes. And that's area by area. And, well, what are we doing here in Lillesand? The local waste management department has now figured out that they collect garbage once a month. So, I and many others in Lillesand have started taking our garbage to the environmental station ourselves. And in the newspaper, this waste management company, Liby, I think it's called, explains what a fantastic success this arrangement is because they collect so much less garbage than before. If they can go any longer, they might as well collect garbage once a year, I think. But the waste management fees, no, they don't go down. And then you have to stand with stinking garbage, and soon it will be shellfish season, so now we will have to put rotten shellfish in every garbage can in Lillesand throughout the summer. This is a banana republic. Idiotic land. You get to the point where you think, okay, I'll just drive myself then for the garbage. But you start to wonder, what is this? And then these teachers in Oslo schools, who don't teach the children to read, one in five, they are suddenly going to get a 4-5% pay raise. For what? I thought, if you work in the private sector, if you get a raise, you understand that it's because the company you are part of is doing well or you are doing something extraordinary. You understand that you are part of something. But we have gotten such a mentality, and then a large part of the business community is discussing CO2 compensation instead of how to win in a market. No. And we sit, from my perspective, if the state has money left over, that money should go back to the population. It belongs to the population. I can live with having an oil fund, but then it should be used for what it was intended for. So, for example, it should be used to cover pensions, to build infrastructure, and to invest in education. We don't do much research in our country. We are the worst in Europe at it. But the main challenge is that we have, in principle, the world's richest state, and then we have the OECD's most indebted population. And the effect of that doesn't happen by itself. It's not like in Sweden where the state is poor and the population holds the wealth. And that's politics. In Norway, we have chosen that it should be the opposite. The people should be indebted, and the state should be extremely rich. And then you can say that from an equality perspective, that's a good thought. Because the wealth is divided equally among all citizens, whether they are rich or poor. The problem isn't there. The problem is that they cannot manage the wealth. The waste is at a level that is unimaginable. And we have a system that is quite extraordinary. If you look at the core problems in Norway, and they never talk about it. Their favorite pastime is to spend time attacking some idiot from Frp who will talk about minus variants, which is of course not smart. And it's made into a much more important issue than the last 30 years of in-depth corruption in the Labor Party. It's not something to talk about. Because according to Støre, it has nothing to do with the Labor Party. It's individual people. While an individual in Frp, it has to do with the entire Frp and the entire history of Frp. So, they spend time on such superficial, stupid things instead of saying, listen here, guys and girls, we are in parliament. We must focus on the core problems. What is the reason why Norway is less successful than, for example, Switzerland in integration? What is the reason why Norway has the most expensive education system, perhaps except for the USA, and has such poor results? What is the reason why we have the second most expensive healthcare system in the world, but still live a year shorter than the Swiss? And it's very strange because the Swiss smoke more and eat almost no fish. They eat meat. And why are we getting more and more poor people in Norway? Why can't we lift the poor? It's madness that this country is like this. And why is the bureaucracy exploding? How can a small country like Norway and Western Norway manage to take two years from saying we need a new crosswalk until it's ready to send out the tender? They don't ask those questions. So, why does the state accept that state companies have lost 10 billion? No, 200 billion in the last 10 years? I remember when I wrote about Statoil, now Equinor, and yes, this was over 10 years ago when the first analysts started reacting to how badly things were going in North America. There was Endre Røsjø who blew the trumpet loudly, all credit to him. And then I was in the ownership of the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, and I remember I asked them, okay, how do you monitor the state company? Who is responsible for creating it? And then they manage ownership worth several hundred billion kroner, but there is no one in the ministry who can create a spreadsheet or a financial model and monitor the state. Then they hired analysts from brokerage firms who came to the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and made presentations for them. But there wasn't anyone. They had an ownership department without financial competence. So, they have no one who can sit and monitor what the board is doing. It's two, I wrote about it, and I thought this is a complete mess. And it permeates the whole country. Politicians, it's common for many politicians in this country to have extra income, to sit on boards of public companies, whether they are toll companies, municipally owned companies, or state-owned companies. And they get that role because of their party membership, not based on their competence. And they don't understand how to run this efficiently. How can we do this much more efficiently? And that is a fantastic example, I think, that Norway, again, as one of the world's richest countries, has the highest proportion of toll road financing of all. It's always like this: yes, this is the state's money. We must limit people's enjoyment of it. So, here we must impose tolls. Or now, the population has paid for all power production for 100 years. But now it has to be paid for again. We have a grid rent that is now on par with the electricity price. But when you buy a product from Leftal, you get a bill that says shipping from Norway to China costs 3 kroner and 40 øre. So, you have to pay extra for that. And then there are always extra costs that they can increase a little here and a little there, so that they can. Yes, we have an energy minister who managed to say that no, electricity should only cost 40 øre. Then he forgot the grid rent and VAT. And it's like they have so many boundless ways to increase costs. And then they say we're just increasing it a little. And we are in a situation where, even though there is so much money available, we cannot. The water and sewage in Norway are terrible. Our fjords are dying because we cannot make decisions to fix them. And it's just a bureaucracy that just grows and grows and grows. I live in a city called Lucerne where we have two independent water supplies, and Lake Lucerne or Vierwaldstättersee, as it's called, which we use as drinking water. It's one of the rainiest lakes in the world. And two independent ones. If something were to happen, if the water supply were to be poisoned for some reason or whatever, then we have an extra. Tell me, where in Norway do we have an extra water supply? They have achieved all this, while Kask says it's a tax haven where only the rich benefit from what happens. But they have a completely different perspective on what the role of politicians is in society. A completely different pragmatism around it, and ideology is not guiding, and that is our biggest problem. They stand on TV and chatter about equality and secure governance, while the results show that they achieve almost nothing. But the people, or at least 20%, if you include the "tutti frutti" crowd, half of the people think intentions are more important than results. And then I think, in addition, that very many people have some kind of, some have big straws, others have small straws, and they are terrified that if we change this, maybe there will be less waste, but there will be less in my straw, and then we get a false equilibrium, and then we get a shedding of all those who want something. Either they don't want anything anymore, or they leave. And I, some people say to me, "I don't understand why you bother to protest and complain." And then I say, "No, but I have six, soon seven grandchildren in Norway. And I would like them to grow up in what can be, in fact, a fantastic country. We could have zero income tax, zero wealth tax, zero income tax, and a higher level of proper services." Just the fact that I think about this idiotic debate about the age limit for social media. For me, it's so obvious that this is something that maybe will help a little, maybe it won't help anything, but it's not going to change anything. Just. If I had been told as Minister of Education that one in five in Oslo schools cannot read, I would have thought, now we have to get them to work, seriously. Hello, it's overtime for the Norwegian teachers in these schools from now on. What do you say to the parents and say, like, do you really want your children to go out into the new economy with the world's biggest handicap? Even a delivery driver depends on being able to read. And that would be going to the core of the problem. But what they do is they ban mobile phones in schools, and now they are going to ban social media. My children learned to read with Messenger because when it came out 30 years ago, it did wonders for writing and reading. And so, instead of saying, what is it, then we have a huge debate about mobile phones, digital solutions, and then we give 30 million to buy some books. But what we don't think about. Yes. What we also do is, oh, things are going badly here. So, what do we do now? Well, we have to remove the tests. We have to remove the statistics. Because if we just remove the evidence, then there's no problem. And then I think, and then the people, well, here on my mobile phone, I have Google Family, and then I follow my 12-year-old son's internet use, what he plays, how much he plays, what he does. If he wants more, he gets an hour of screen time a day from me, because then he's social, and then I say, okay, as long as you read for two hours, then an hour of screen time is fine, but if you go down to an hour of reading, then your screen time is down to half an hour. So much of the problem in Norwegian schools arose because we had such high theoretical ambitions. So, we thought that people would become wiser and learn more and know more. And then we have misunderstood what people actually do. So, whether you become an electrician, a carpenter, or a doctor, you must be educated to a level that is relatively high by world standards. And then you should preferably stay in the education system for as long as possible so that we can say that we have low unemployment. And that's where the Swiss are incredibly good. What they say is, what do you want to be? What are you capable of being? So, they have the first career conversation at age 11. And then you might say, I want to be a police officer or a carpenter or whatever. The consequence of that is that people get motivated to pursue what they find interesting. I think no 11-year-old dreams of becoming a social worker. When you are 11 years old, you dream of becoming a firefighter or a carpenter or something. Then they are given tasters. And then they can, of course, choose to opt out and say that it wasn't what I wanted after all. The consequence, when you see people who are 25-30 years old in Sweden, 30% of the population taking higher education at bachelor's and master's level. While in Norway now, there were how many applied for higher education? There were more applicants for higher education in 2026 than there are children in the three or four-year-old cohort. Yes. So, what we are doing is educating many people to be overqualified for many of the jobs that need to be done in Norway. And then, and then I would actually say that some of these overqualifications we have seen, in quotation marks, because there is an element of deception here. You are not very wise necessarily because you have a master's or a bachelor's degree. Everyone who has, I mean, I have interviewed quite a few people, and I usually say that the dumbest people I have interviewed have been professors. But you have a very, very, so they are so, you have a very negative effect, and that is that many people fall through this theoretical education model we have, and as a result, they cannot even meet the academic requirements for a general vocational school. And then they fall outside, and they could have become the world's best carpenters or electricians or hairdressers or whatever. But because we want them in this mill, they fall outside. And I think a large part of this exclusion we have, with 6-700,000 outside the workforce, is because they have been given requirements that they theoretically cannot keep up with, and which makes them feel like losers or at least unable to find work that gives them meaning. And we see the effect of that, that in Norway we struggle to have people who know a trade. There are far too few of them. And it has gone the wrong way, really, since Hernes introduced this education reform. He introduced it in '84 or whenever it was, which was a significant increase in theorization, where we have now increased the number of people in the higher education system by, if I remember correctly, about four times what it was in the early 1980s. It should have been increased, but it has gone too far. And the consequence is that many of these people who do not fit into our politicians' theoretical education model end up in exclusion instead. And you see the effect of it everywhere. Municipalities don't have people to. They don't even mow the lawns in the parks anymore. Roundabouts won't be mowed this year because we don't have people to do it, or we don't have the money for it. Instead, there are 35 social workers in a small municipality who are meddling in everything parents do. Yes. And then there are these crisis teams they have all the time. Have you seen that? When some accident happens or something, I think that this is a tragedy. This is terrible. But then suddenly they set up these crisis teams and all that. And I think, if I had been run over, good riddance, that I was so stupid that I went out cycling here and got run over, I wouldn't care that the municipality of Lillesand set up a crisis team to inform the nearby schools or my children. I would have thought it would have been nice if they had sent, maybe they could have paid for my children's funeral, because, you know. But this is a kind of therapeutic academization of everything. You see it when weather forecasts come, there's a storm, and then it's overtime at the town hall, and they sit and plan, and there's no end to it, and then it's like, yes, but there will be a storm. But a crisis team is prestigious, you know, because then the mayor might be interviewed on TV and so on. It is interesting that when something like that happens, they can mobilize an extreme number of people at the local level, and we don't really know what they do. But when a crisis arises that is somewhat special internationally, we have seen over the years that when the tsunami came in 2004, Norway was probably the country with the worst preparedness. And we saw the same during July 22nd, where the preparedness was catastrophic. And every time, we hear the government or the prime minister say that we will learn from this. And then the war in Iran started two months ago. And what does Jonas Gahr Støre do? He says if you are in Dubai, you have to fend for yourself. Perhaps the country in the Western world that was slowest to secure its citizens. It makes absolutely no sense. Yes. The Americans, whom we can criticize, of course. They immediately said that this is the state's responsibility. We will bring you home for free. While in Norway, the preparedness was such that planes were sent down that flew back empty or relatively empty. And then we had a plane where they filled a third of the seats and informed the Norwegian authorities that we can take 100 or 120 more. And then the Norwegian state says, "No, we have that. It's more than two days away, so we can't organize that." So, we learn nothing. There is no learning, and there are no heads roll. And if anything is to be learned, then heads must roll. That is what responsibility means, that sometimes heads must roll. And I covered the Gjørv Commission after July 22nd, and the only people who were easily identifiable as scapegoats in the entire fat report were the two police officers who stood for three minutes at the pier to Utøya and had not received instructions and who could have, on their own initiative, scrambled for a boat and gone over. That they should have had a funeral loan. But otherwise, they didn't ring a bell on a single cat. Or take the deputy director of the National Police Directorate, who caused the destruction of all of Oslo city center, but he didn't press the national alarm. He was such a fascinating guy, and he stayed there until retirement. I followed him because I thought, this is someone, if you can't press the national alarm when you are the deputy chief of the National Police Directorate and all of Oslo, the government quarter, is destroyed, then there is something wrong with you, I thought. I will follow his career, but nothing happened. He just went through and was retired. The worst thing about the whole 22nd of July, in my mind, was that Jens Stoltenberg, the day after, praised the Minister of Justice for his efforts. Yes. And I was thinking, and indeed afterwards. The parents of those who died at the boathouse, people had been killed there for an hour. They could have been there with a helicopter. They were offered a helicopter with snipers, but Delta declined, because now they were going to be heroes. Those parents must have been, yes, that weekend I was with my brother-in-law, who is in the military from Australia. And he just had a completely cool reaction. He just looked at me and said, "Why didn't they kill him from the shop?" Yes. "Why didn't they shoot him from the shop?" It was just like, what is it with this country? The police immediately said no, using a helicopter was not possible for snipers. But Norway had done that in Afghanistan for several years. So, no, that's for me. But I think the core of what we have discussed is that we have a political system where taking responsibility is not part of the job description. That there should be consequences is also not part of the deal, and the system does not require them to be accountable, either to the people or to themselves. And as long as that is the case, and I think it is almost impossible to change it because it is not in the politicians' interest to change anything. They know that now I have a job where I earn between two and three times as much money as I would in a regular job. And where I work eight months a year. And where I can travel at the state's expense and have a very, very good time. Why should I accept that we should change those rules? Everything Parliament has done in recent years is essentially just about pulling the ladder up even further behind them, and that the parties control who gets to sit there, and where loyalty to party politics is more important than loyalty to the people. I, I see the tax commission now. I have spoken with some of those who are there. You would think that the people who come into the tax commission from the parties would say, okay, let's be a bit practical and see what is good for the country. No. They come with their party book and say that the party has the following enshrined in its program: justice for
All. And that means we have to take from the rich or, uh, we have to keep people in the country, so we have to build big walls. Even if the consequences are extremely negative, and and I think they even see the negative consequences, but the party book doesn't allow, or the party program doesn't allow them to do anything about it. It is, uh, it is very sad. And at least when I sit and I sit, I live in a country where, uh, ideology really has no place in practical politics. Uh, and if ideology gets some traction in a decision, the population comes and shuts it down immediately. We see it in vote after vote after vote that, uh, the people do not accept it. I feel like testing one of my impulses on you now. Because, uh, by nature, when I deal with public finances, I think that if you are going to give a tax cut, you have to cut correspondingly. But now I'm starting to feel like I'm becoming a bit of an American Republican, not a Trumpist, but in the sense that I think, starve the beast, give us cuts to the food tax, cut wealth tax, cut 100 billion in income tax, not cuts in the state budget necessarily, because you'll never agree on that. But then at least the citizens get some money and >> I have no faith. I have no faith in that model because, I mean, what we see in Norway is that when a decision is made, it has consequences. So when you, for example, introduce Norway's price, a negative consequence is that people stop investing in energy efficiency. Uh, and energy efficiency is something we should actually be doing. And it's the same if you, if you cut individual things in that way, then you have to try to understand what the consequences are. Uh, and I think it's not a problem for Norway if you cut the VAT on food down to 8% or zero for that matter. Uh, and I think that yes, uh, the producers will probably take a bit of the cake, but but not very much. Most of it will go to the citizens, but I am more concerned with going to the core of the business. If you look at agriculture in Switzerland, which I, which has a couple of funny variations. Firstly, the subsidies are very area-oriented, so you get paid for, um, yes, that the area you manage looks very tidy. And they control that with satellite images and so on. And therefore, when you go into the mountains or go for a walk in Switzerland, it's beautiful. These farms are jewels, really. They are so beautifully maintained. Uh, not just the farm itself, but the entire area. That's one thing. The other thing they do is that as a farmer, if you sell from the farm shop or at a market, the first, uh, approximately 1.3 million kroner you sell for during a year is tax-free. You pay neither VAT nor tax on it. So that's just another way of subsidizing. But the consequence is that the Swiss farmer becomes extremely creative, makes products on the farm, same quality requirements and so on. And if the product you make isn't good, the market will tell you very quickly that, okay, I don't want to buy this. But the effect of that is that we have, uh, a vibrant farm shop life in Switzerland and we have a market life in all cities and towns. Every, uh, if I remember correctly, it's every Tuesday and Thursday there's a market where people are and present their children. And the effect of that is that the Swiss have a, what shall we say, a quality and a breadth in their cheese offering that is absolutely fantastic. They have an offering for the production of all sorts of goods that they can produce from what they make. And going to a farm shop or a farm cafe when you're on a trip is very, very important. And and it's a big part of the financing for the farmer and and it's so, it's so results-oriented. I made an apple pie. I sold an apple pie. I got to keep all the money. In Norway, the results orientation is how many applications you submit to get money. So when the farmer is out plowing the field, he doesn't get paid for plowing the field. He gets paid because the Ministry of Agriculture or agriculture has decided that they will receive approximately one million kroner per year. So there is no connection between the quality of what he does and the money he receives. But in Switzerland, it's the complete opposite. Uh, yes, the important part of the income, the first 1.2 million to the farm or 1.3, is because you are creative, because you make an effort. Um, and the next money goes to, uh, that, uh, the area you manage is managed in a very good way. And then it's like, you can produce as many pigs as you want or, uh, I mean, but but you don't get paid per kilo of meat. So it's a completely different way of thinking. And large parts of Europe have reformed agriculture so that it should lead to, first of all, larger production units, but also much more how the farmer can creatively live off what he does. In Norway, it's boots, cooperative uniforms, and, uh, interviews, uh, inside the barn, saying we need more money. That, that is, that is such a completely different view of the farmer in Switzerland, and it doesn't cost any less in Switzerland, agriculture as a whole, but there is a completely different pride. The average Swiss person is like, yes, Swiss food is fantastic. Uh, and the farmer is like, he is truly a businessman. >> I feel like making a jump, because now we've been a bit negative, >> but I'm sitting here and am >> very, very optimistic, and there's a reason for that, and that's artificial intelligence. I think that I'm lucky to experience this technological revolution, but then I wonder if I'm too optimistic. And then I think that you are now involved with ownership in, uh, and and on the inside of a number of different companies. >> We do a lot of this in >> Yes. And and what effects does it have? Is it a productivity revolution, or have I had too much of the Møller Strand? >> Uh, yes, no, I mean, for now, we are still on the hype curve when it comes to artificial intelligence. We see, no, that is to say, the expectations are much greater than the results so far. >> Uh, and I see that, the projects that are currently succeeding well are small projects that are very focused on streamlining a work task. That works excellently. Uh, and both the public sector and private companies are reaping great benefits in such narrow projects. Uh, and then the expectations in the market for artificial intelligence development are that it should be pervasive everywhere. And over time, I think it will be. But here and now, it's more about quick wins, uh, reducing the time it takes to create new solutions, um, uh, and reaping effects in areas that are extremely well-suited for this. But in the long term, there are some trends that are incredibly interesting and that will completely turn the whole society upside down. Um, I was at a lecture a short time ago where we now, uh, and you got an explanation of why Tesla is worth as much as they are. I mean, Tesla is central to three of the four major drivers in artificial intelligence. Tesla is central to everything related to communication. I mean, SpaceX, the network that will kill Telenor. Telenor says that yes, there will probably be someone at a cabin here and there who will buy, buy satellite communication for Tesla, but, or for SpaceX. But I mean, this is going to roll over. I mean, the prices will, uh, I would guess that communication prices will function all over the world. It will cost the same and it will be reduced by 75% from where it is today. And that is very important for businesses and very important for families. The second thing is that we have perhaps 15 years left of private car ownership. Not because you are not allowed to own a car privately, but because it is completely meaningless. So, uh, if you are under five years old today, the probability that you will ever get a driver's license is small. There is no reason to get a driver's license. And those cars are already here. Uh, and Tesla is perhaps the one with the best value chain for autonomous driving. They have already figured out how these autonomous cars will be cleaned, charged, uh, maintained, while most of the others are very software-focused. How can I make the car turn right and left? Um, uh, and the third is robots. Uh, you and I are probably not too old to have our own personal robot within the next 10-15 years. And that personal robot will solve many of the things that make it difficult to live at home. Uh, it will solve many of the services, uh, that are very labor-intensive today. Whether it's in logistics, in healthcare, uh, in agriculture, in maintenance, uh, those robots will take a lot of that. So it will create a lot of free time and a completely different work, a completely different working life. Uh, in a few years, uh, then, of course, there are some negative aspects to it that I don't think we've even started to look at. I mean, if you look at what the Ukrainians are doing with drones in the war against the Russians, that has, in many ways, turned the future prospects for that war. Uh, in traditional warfare, it was really just about how many people the Russians could, like, uh, fill up with, and then at some point they would, like, roll over Ukraine. Now we see that artificial intelligence, in drones, makes it almost impossible. I mean, they have, in a way, not worked with warships or, uh, boats in the Black Sea. The Russians have been driven out of the Black Sea. It doesn't work with tanks anymore because the cost, a tank costs, like, 50 million kroner. The drone that destroys it costs 2,500 kroner. It doesn't work with large missiles because the missiles cost 2 million dollars each and then they are taken down by something that costs 2.5 million or 2,500,000 or 2,500. All of this is actually very good. What is the big problem here is that when the Ukrainians can fly a drone in and take out something in a red square or something, then terrorists, as we have now, for at least 25 years since 9/11, we have focused on physical security. You should not be able to drive a car into a crowd. You should not be able to enter an airport with a bomb in your suitcase, and so on and so forth. Uh, but the development we see on the drone side suggests that, uh, and I don't want that to happen. I am worried that some guy is standing on the outskirts or, uh, on the outskirts of London and dropping bombs from drones into Piccadilly Circus. And how are we going to defend ourselves against that? I find that extremely worrying. So very many positive aspects to this. Uh, it will make life easier for people, but also more dangerous. Much more dangerous. >> We'll leave that. We'll leave that as the last word today. And then I thought maybe we could even get a prime minister robot. >> Yes. What we could get, as in Switzerland, they have the president for a year at a time, and that is very, very good for the people's, uh, well-being. We don't get, we don't get people who think they are something because they know that, okay, I'll be gone in a year. >> In Norway, we get people who think they are something and who are nothing at all. That's my summary. I am, I am damn angry now. But now I have to start packing garbage, like. So enjoy yourself. >> Talk to you later and have a good May. 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