Norway is in the midst of a profound systemic crisis that is not about a lack of values, but about an organised and institutionalised robbery of the country’s inhabitants. The fundamental political truth that is consistently being erased from public discourse is simple: Norway’s natural resources belong to the Norwegian people, not to politicians or commercial intermediaries.
Nevertheless, the ordinary citizen experiences everyday life marked by economic extortion. Through an intricate network of centrally planned food monopolies, international energy exchanges and a percentage-based, multiplying value-added tax (VAT) of 25%, the inhabitants are systematically stripped of values that were originally their own.
This is the unvarnished reality of how the Norwegian people are forced to pay for their own resources up to three times, how national security of supply is sacrificed for profit, and how the established media function as the elite’s most important tool for obscuring the truth.
The absurd food monopoly: You pay for your food three times
The mechanism behind the Norwegian agricultural system is the foremost example of economic central planning in disguise. Politicians and agricultural organisations defend annual transfers of more than NOK 20 billion under the Agricultural Settlement (Landbruksoppgjøret) as a necessary measure to ensure national food production. The truth is that the system is rigged so that you, as an inhabitant, pay for your food three times:
- The first time (the tax bill): You pay billions through your tax bill to finance the farmer’s production costs, subsidies, machinery and operations.
- The second time (tariff protection): You pay in the form of one of the world’s strictest systems of tariff protection. The state imposes enormous, artificial punitive duties on cheaper food products from abroad. This blocks all genuine competition and ensures that the co-operative industry (Tine, Nortura) and the three major grocery giants can dictate the market.
- The third time (the supermarket checkout and VAT): You are forced to buy back your own subsidised goods at the world’s highest prices. On top of this inflated final sum, the state levies 15% value-added tax on food. The more expensive food becomes as a result of the monopoly conditions, the more money the state collects in pure tax on tax as you pass through the checkout.
To understand the absurdity of this model, we must return to the example of Per and Ole:
Per (the taxpayer) owns a large, fertile garden. He hires Ole (the farmer and the state) to grow vegetables and pays Ole a very good wage through his tax bill to do the job. But when the vegetables are harvested, Per is not allowed to keep the crop that he himself has paid to produce.
Ole keeps the vegetables himself and sells them on to AS Grønnsaker (the co-operative industry), which in turn channels them to AS Sentral (the grocery barons). When Per needs food on the table, Ole tells him that he must drive to one of their shops and buy his own vegetables back at the full, artificially inflated market price. On top of this, Ole demands that Per give him an additional 15% in pure tax simply for the privilege of taking the potatoes home with him. This is not a free marketplace; it is an organised cartel.
Energy obliviousness: Exporting the family silver, importing expensive fuel
The same pattern is repeated with oil, gas and electricity.
Norway is blessed with enormous natural resources, but the elite has chosen to treat these common assets as international exchange-traded commodities rather than national infrastructure.
The architecture of the electricity robbery
For generations, Norwegian taxpayers have developed and paid for the hydropower in the mountains. The purpose was crystal clear: to provide Norwegian households and industry with cheap, stable energy as a fundamental competitive advantage and a common good in a country with a harsh climate.
Through interconnectors to other countries and integration into the EU energy market, politicians have relinquished control. The clean Norwegian hydropower, which costs around 10–12 øre per kilowatt-hour to produce, is channelled out of the country. It is sold on the financially driven Nord Pool energy exchange, where prices are directly linked to the most expensive methods of production on the Continent.
When inhabitants are faced with electricity bills of several thousand kroner in winter, this is not because of a shortage of power, but because they are forced to buy back their own electricity at European prices. On top of this, the state adds 25% VAT to the entire bill. The state has a direct financial interest in electricity remaining expensive, because high prices automatically mean record VAT revenues flowing straight into the Treasury.
The fuel deception: The oil nation without security of supply
When it comes to petrol and diesel, the truth about imports is even more critical. Norway pumps millions of barrels of crude oil, but in practice we have dismantled our own security of supply. After the refinery at Slagentangen was closed in 2021, Norway was left with only one functioning refinery: Mongstad.
Mongstad has the capacity to produce more than enough petrol to cover all of Norway’s consumption. But instead of this resource being secured for the benefit of the inhabitants, the crude oil and fuel are immediately sold on the world market at international Rotterdam prices.
At the same time, Norway is dependent on massive imports of diesel and fuel from abroad. Because it is more profitable logistically for the large companies to ship finished refined fuel into Eastern Norway from Europe than to transport it around the Norwegian coast, Norwegian motorists pay sky-high prices.
When you fill your tank at up to NOK 25–30 per litre, you are not paying for the raw material; you are paying for the international exchange monopoly and the state’s brutal tax machine. More than half the price per litre consists of pure special duties (road-use duty, CO2 tax), and the state tops it all off by levying 25% VAT on both the fuel and the duties – pure tax on tax.
The role of the media: The lie of the powerless elite
This gigantic waste and robbery of the community’s funds is taking place in broad daylight. The reason it does not trigger a permanent popular revolt is that the established national media function as the system’s foremost obfuscators.
The newspapers and television channels never present these economic connections in a clear and comprehensible light. They have swallowed the elite’s premises and in practice function as microphone stands for those in power. This protection of the system is due to two concrete factors:
- Economic corruption through press subsidies: Norwegian media are not independent watchdogs; they are financially dependent on the very state they are supposed to scrutinise. When the state distributes around NOK 450 million in direct press subsidies and NOK 8 billion to NRK, it is in reality buying loyalty. Editorial offices know perfectly well that their financial survival is decided by the Storting. As became clear during the budget negotiations, when direct demands were made to change the rules governing press subsidies in order to stop the funding of alternative media, press subsidies are a purely political instrument of discipline. Newspapers that challenge the established narrative or pick apart the electricity and food monopolies risk being financially strangled by politicians.
- Cultural collusion and linguistic obfuscation: Journalists, politicians, NGO leaders and ministry bureaucrats belong to the same social class. They attended the same schools, live in the same central Oslo neighbourhoods and move in the same social circles. When the press covers the electricity crisis or fuel prices, it calls state-funded researchers who repeat the elite’s obfuscatory language. They use terms such as ‘price equalisation’, ‘international obligations’, ‘market mechanisms’ and ‘ACER regulations’. By using this complex bureaucratic language, the media actively help to deceive the people. They create a false narrative that Norwegian politicians are ‘powerless’ in the face of international forces, and conceal the fact that it is the politicians themselves who have rigged the system and signed the agreements that fleece the inhabitants.
The complete collapse of the collective endeavour
What is revealed is a brutal and indisputable conclusion: The original social contract of the Norwegian welfare society has been completely broken. The old principle of a national collective endeavour (spleiselag) – in which the inhabitants accepted high taxes because the money went in its entirety towards building the country and ensuring cheap common goods for its inhabitants – has been replaced by a cynical transfer model.
Norway’s enormous natural resources, which according to the Constitution and historical justice belong to the people, have been taken over by a political elite. They use these assets as their private currency on the international stage to buy themselves moral prestige, finance gigantic NGO conglomerates and pour billions into foreign emissions-trading markets.
When the people (‘Per’) demand to benefit from the country’s oil, gas and electricity, they are dismissed with complicated spreadsheets and exchange requirements, and forced to pay exorbitant prices in the shops and at petrol stations for goods they have already financed through their tax bills. The media effectively ensure that the overall calculation remains hidden and maintain the illusion that everything is as it should be.
The truth is clear: The Norwegian people are being fleeced at home to finance the elite’s global projects. It is a brutal betrayal of the community.
