Living Economies Forum Fellow, Jacob Bomann-Larsen, reports from Norway on the emerging and expanding New Economy initiatives in the Nordic countries.

Summer 2017

A report to Living Economies Forum – seen with Norwegian eyes. Can we save the Nordic model and can it be a useful guide to a better world?

[Viking Economics by George Lakey] is about the development of the social democratic economies in the Nordic countries, especially Norway. Reading the book made me very proud of what my country Norway and the other Nordic countries have in fact achieved. In a time of more and more market liberalism where plutocracy and corporatocracy more and more replace democracy it is of utmost importance to present alternative models which have through many decades proved to be working very well. The Nordic model has so far been working very well.

Our present market liberal government led by the Conservative Party is learning from the Americans and seems unfortunately willing to destroy the Nordic welfare society and our Viking economies very rapidly: deregulation, centralization and privatization. The government is trying to introduce very quickly market liberal and centralizing reforms concerning defense, agriculture, police, higher education, health, municipalities, and national regions. Read more…

Fall 2016

This year most of my time I have spent on trying to stop our blue-blue government from destroying our local municipalities through its profit oriented municipality reform. I will write more about that in the last part of this report. Read more…

Fall 2013

During the last months most of the public discussion in Norway has been concentrated on our national election of members of Parliament and the establishing of a new national government. I shall in this report analyze the election and the new government with my LEF lenses.

I am trying to promote the New Economy/Living Economies framework in the Scandinavian countries and with a main focus on Norway, and will report on my most recent initiatives.  Read more…

February 2013

Inspired by a suggestion from David, when we had our Skype talk early in 2012, we have developed a Norwegian New Economy Forum. We had our first meeting in the Forum on the 5th May 2012, which I have already reported from. About 50 specially invited people participated. The second meeting we had on the 18th September 2012. It was a full day seminar in the middle of the week, and about 150 people took a day off from their ordinary job to spend the whole day with us. It was the same kind of enthusiasm we experienced more than ten years ago when David gave his talk in Oslo at an evening meeting arranged by Forum for System Debate and where about 700 people participated. Read more…

August 2012

I had the privilege to present my understanding of the New Economy framework at the June 5 meeting with about 50 especially invited key organizational people in Norway. I concentrated on an economy supporting ecological balance, equitable distribution, high quality of life, living and real democracy (including economic democracy), international networks of strong local living economies and developing new indicators for quality of life and for the health of people and nature. Read more…