Welcome to Sideline, the podcast for political homeless.
For those who, if anything, abuse their talent.
Around the table today is a talented Trond
Sørensen and me, Vegard Agnes.
Also quite talented.
Yes, I think you're drunk.
Yes, a little bit.
I've gotten drunk.
But it's the first time I've gotten drunk
in 10-15 years.
And it hasn't been something I've done in
real life.
It's the opposite of evolution for us.
Yes, I've gotten drunk.
You've had three beers now.
Yes, I've stopped completely.
So now my form is a bit like...
If I drink only clean stuff, I think
I can drink three quarters of a bottle
of white wine in the evening and go
to work the next morning without thinking about
it.
I could do that when I was younger.
Yes, I couldn't do that before.
Then it was going to work-sickness, a
disease that I just had to go through
to build my character.
Yes, yes, yes.
But your brothers-in-law were surprised by
your professional dedication.
Yes, I deliberately ordered things.
I drove a truck, I was wrong.
I should have used my...
I got another job, but on the other
side.
Maybe it's because I drive a truck.
You seemed too smart to drive a truck.
That was probably the implication.
Yes, fake it till you make it.
But that's nice.
Yes, yes, I take it as a compliment.
If you come from smart people, it's nice
to hear that.
And that's probably smart people we can risk
getting on the podcast at some point, I
think.
Yes, that's not...
You always have a backup plan.
You're out massaging people who are going to
give a lecture at Lib Aften or come
to the podcast.
That wasn't really the backup plan.
Now the backup plan was to lift a
friend who needed to be lifted.
Upstairs?
And I think...
I think he's going to be sick today.
Yes, that's how it is.
Then we gather the troops to go out
and lift those who need to be lifted.
That's good.
Fine with some light stuff today.
Yes, we can.
Since it's the day you're on, we can
do it alcohol-related.
We can do that, absolutely.
Yes.
And what's better than talking a little about
Nanny State?
Yes, Nanny State.
That's...
Nanny State alcohol.
It has a tendency to go very hand
in hand.
Yes.
Let's start with a construction store.
While the rest of society automates to ensure
efficiency and survival, the state administrator in Agder
has taken on the role as a technological
brake.
They now believe in taking district stores straight
to selling alcohol.
It's as if the cash machine is not
operated by a person of meat and blood.
It's not just a struggle for beer sales,
it's a fundamental struggle for economic freedom in
the districts where the state's rigid interpretation of
social control threatens to turn the lights off
in the outskirts of Norway for good.
And this is a made-up problem out
of nothing.
And this is what makes it so stupid.
I don't know how many of our listeners
have been to such self-service stores around
Bygda.
But it's probably a store that has an
opening hour with people at work, right?
And you fill up on goods and put
goods in the checkout and all that.
I've been to several of them.
But then they go home and the doors
of the store are locked.
But by withdrawing your bank card, it costs
you one door, so you can go in
and shop.
And then you have to go in and
pick up goods and pay them yourself.
And then you're done.
And if you need assistance, you press a
button and someone on the back seat picks
up the phone and explains to you what
to do.
Their beer sales tend to close around the
time they go home.
Because if you have a beer sale in
a store in Norway, you have to comply
with the rules of the state when you
are allowed to sell beer.
Yes, not only are the rules stupid and
unnecessary but if you also have people there
until eight o'clock every night, then there
will be an implication.
But I can understand from a state perspective
that a self-employed store without people to
see that there are not 13-year-olds
who are in there with their mother's bank
card.
I see the impulse there.
Yes, I also see the impulse.
And then I think you can't sell beer
without being there.
So if you go home at six o
'clock, you have to lock your beer fridge
and then the store can be open for
the rest of the day.
Wasn't this just that they were not allowed
to sell after the last employee goes home?
That would have been a rational, sensible approach
as you and I would have made if
we had opposed the Social Democrats.
And now they tried to channel the nanny
state perspective.
But it didn't work, because it was too
stupid.
It's deceiving in a way.
What we're saying is that if you're going
to have such a self-employed store, you're
not allowed to sell tobacco and alcohol at
any time of the day.
So even if you have people at work,
you're not allowed to sell alcohol.
That's not how we do it.
What makes this so sad is that these
stores are dependent on this technology to survive.
These are small storefronts that were on their
way to collapse.
They were on their way to saying, we
can't do this anymore, it's too expensive to
run.
And then this solution came.
And when that solution came, we were like,
wow, now we can keep running.
But now we get so much bigger turnover
that we actually hire people in addition.
We need more people at work to handle
the increased turnover as a result of having
this technology.
We keep this storefront alive and all those
who are connected to it get to keep
the storefront where they belong in this grey
area.
It reminds me of that saying by Tor
Mykkel Vara from the good old days.
The idea of who the hell is going
to sell food to the people in the
districts.
And the implication is that if you had
taken the daily goods out of the state's
hands to ensure that everyone got access to
food everywhere, the argument would have been that
if not for the state, you would sell
daily goods only where it was profitable.
And it's funny when you have a market
that actually delivers.
And what the state does is to try
its utmost to get the stores out of
the districts.
Speaking of that, the guy who runs Eurospar
in Brookland is a municipality with 6,000
inhabitants.
He had a turnover of 189 million last
year.
And we're talking about who should run a
store in Bygda.
He has a building with 6,000 people
and he makes 189 million.
It's a completely ridiculous deduction.
Yes, I've been thinking about it.
You hear about the margins in the daily
goods industry, and it's not many percent.
No.
If you have a couple of percent, it's
2 million in turnover.
He apparently runs much better.
I think he had 7-8 million in
turnover.
But he runs the store in a completely
different way than others.
If I want to run a big store
where there are few people, I have to
run the store in such a way that
people want to come to my store to
travel a long way.
So people drive from Oslo, Kristiansand and everything
to shop in Brookland.
Yes, I have a similar experience.
I come from Hadalen on Gran.
That's where I grew up.
Gran is a rather hidden place.
Yes, I've been there.
At least you found out that you should
have a shopping center there.
So you built a shopping center that lived
locally.
It was located on the outskirts of Oslo.
It only took 12 seconds to cross the
border.
There was no customer base.
But it was right next to the railway.
People started to travel from Oslo to shop
on Gran.
It was so cozy.
And you don't think it's possible nowadays.
We set up a twice as big competing
shopping center next to it.
Just 5 meters across the street.
And then you set it up, and it
goes around.
Gran is just something completely different now than
it was when I grew up.
But it's completely...
So not a lot of people live on
Gran?
No, it's a tight place, and there are
a lot of people from neighboring municipalities who
travel to Gran to shop.
But I mean, for me, it's still quite
absurd.
Yes.
But I had a similar experience in...
I talked about Porkfest earlier, right?
And it's far north in New Hampshire.
You can't even take the bus there.
It's so boring.
And it's the closest small town with 14
houses and one church, and a supermarket.
And that supermarket is bigger than anything I've
been to in Norway.
More options.
Bigger area.
Everything is bigger.
And it goes around.
There's something about it.
When someone gets some brilliant ideas, and gets
them put into practice, it turns out to
be really good.
All the way to Nannystate.
You know we have a ban on building
new shopping centers in Norway now?
No, I didn't know that, but it's not
surprising.
No, you're not allowed to build new shopping
centers in Norway, and you know what you
do?
You build out the existing ones.
Because that's allowed.
What's the reason for not being allowed to
build new...
No, it was because we had too many
shopping centers.
It's a state quota to have used up.
Yes, it was something like that.
It took the lives of small shops.
And they want to take their own lives.
That's something they want to do themselves.
Yes, nothing like that.
Without any legal basis.
I've seen it.
I've lived in Nottåden, and they had built
a shopping center on Tuen.
And it's a kilometer and a half from
the center.
And the center of Nottåden is completely dead.
There are 4-5 restaurants out there.
And there are some shops that do something
else to these restaurants, but almost all of
the restaurants in Nottåden are empty.
They have just moved everything out of the
center to Tuen.
And the center of the city is nothing.
And that's what we think was sad when
such things happened.
And I think that maybe they should have
built a shopping center in the city instead.
Yes, and get state souvenirs and fake shops,
so that people don't have to go back
to the center streets.
Yes, that sounds really good.
A brilliant plan, actually.
But on the one hand, and this is
maybe our ideological point of view, there are
attacks on business freedom and property rights.
The fact that you can't run a business
as you want, but we don't operate in
a terrible place for that in social democratic
Norway.
So we can put that aside as an
argument.
But what it shows, because these shops have
tried to get the technology to enforce the
rules that should be enforced.
You may not age on cards and such,
right?
Yes, identification via VIPS, for example.
And you can't only in principle have that
you had to legitimize yourself when you were
going to close the shop with beer.
And you already have in many shops such
machines for snus and tobacco.
So you can just book it on the
cash register and then tell the card if
you're old enough, if you have to check.
Or some other form of ID.
But that's not allowed anymore?
No, and that's a fundamental mistrust of technology,
while it's a super-trust to a human
factor.
But the thing is, if you remember a
little back in the day, it's not so
big, I think it was a few months
ago now, then the new instructions to the
shops, right?
They are self-employed cashiers.
Then I said, yes, but you can't just
...
And they introduced one of those where you
could identify yourself with a bank card, for
example.
No, you're not allowed to use that.
Because you also have to assess that people
are intended to buy alcohol.
Because if you're drunk, you're not allowed to
buy alcohol in the shop.
And that was what they ...
But if you're drunk, you can only buy
alcohol at the bar?
Yes, no, the law says that if you're
apparently drunk, you're not allowed to buy alcohol
anywhere.
But that's the thing.
Therefore, it was like, okay, you can have
self-employed cashiers, but you have to have
a person who goes around and looks after
everyone in the self-employed cashiers.
And then it has solved itself.
They have just put in a few more
self-employed cashiers.
Then there is one person who goes around
and looks after eight cashiers, right?
And then you have a nice effect from
them.
People need a little assistance in various things
anyway, so it works out.
But it was just like that.
They solve the problem, and then someone comes
and says, no, we're finding a new problem
here.
And I don't know how many times it
has happened in recent years that a person
has come to the cashier at the store
and received a notice that you have failed
to buy alcohol.
But I'm pretty sure it can be counted
on one hand.
Yes, I have never seen it or been
exposed to it.
But what does this lead to?
In the worst case, if you lose this
store, then I would believe the MDG facility
thing, because then people have to drive longer
to be able to trade.
Then the climate goes to hell.
Then we don't just have 12 years on
us, then it's 11 and a half years.
Yes, it's like that now.
I would say that the right and the
Center Party actually want to preserve the building
store.
It's not a shock.
But the right actually says, yes, we can
solve this.
We have to fix this.
That is, I must say, rarely a positive
surprise from the right.
Yes, there are new costs in party leadership
now, so that's what makes the difference.
Yes, because you think that it has looked
like people have changed their mind about the
right when they changed leaders.
It doesn't actually look like that.
No.
Shocking enough.
I would give myself some hope on the
voters when they show that, you know what,
they have changed Erna with Erna minus 16
years.
No, it's a joke party.
But okay.
We will probably go into that gang in
an episode soon.
But yes, a little Cobra effect of such
state-administrative measures.
And then there is a little God's law.
It's the idea of you have a way
with copies, measuring sticks, things you measure on.
Here they should not be sold to minors
or drunkards.
Have good control and then it will be
measured in itself instead of practical solutions.
I just notice that those who run rented
kick scooters, they have begun to make such
a promille control on the phone with such
a reaction test.
Damn, I got so irritated the other day.
Right?
Did you get such a course on Void?
No, not on Ride?
Absolutely.
It was like I was on my way
home from a friend and the time was
just before 11, right?
And then there is a kick scooter right
where I have 12 minutes left to go.
And then I thought, okay, this fits well.
And then you click on it.
And then you get that damn course.
And it's not three questions or two or
five, it's ten questions.
Yes, and you have to read through a
lot to read through first and so actually.
Yes.
So when I'm done with that course, it's
past 11 o'clock and then I can't
rent a kick scooter.
Ten out of ten.
But now the city council has decided that
it is not allowed to rent a kick
scooter.
I just remember that this city council promised
to remove that regulation.
They were supposed to say that it should
be allowed to drive.
But it's getting better now because you can
rent a kick scooter if you want to
rent a kick scooter.
Yes, wasn't the idea to include it in
the monthly card or something?
Yes, something like that too.
Because kick scooters need subsidies, of course, like
everything else.
Yes, if it works by itself, then it
has to go just as well on public
roads.
Yes.
I'm not quite sure, but I think it's
very nice that these are competing entities, not
necessarily cooperating.
I think we can end this segment with
a quote from our friend Thomas Sowell.
It is difficult to imagine a more stupid
or dangerous way to make decisions than by
putting these decisions in the hands of people
who do not pay any price to make
a mistake.
It's skin in the game.
Yes.
He has also said with clarity that only
a former communist can agree with.
Yes, it's fun.
Thomas Sowell was a communist and then he
was asked once, what made you change your
mind?
Facts.
Yes, there is something about it, because there
is a part of that category that has
grown up far out on the left and
has been holy and conscious and then met
reality at some point and then they become
the clearest, most crystallized, strongest and clearest and
most straight-backed defenders of the opposite principles
afterwards.
Yes, but that's because they understand where they
come from.
Yes, I think so too.
Yes, yes, yes.
Are you looking forward to the December salary,
Trond?
Yes, half tax and stuff, you know.
That's great.
I have paid a little more tax this
year so that I can get half tax
in December.
I will not pay you any tax this
summer, because then you were on vacation and
tax-free.
It's a bit funny.
I have always annoyed myself a little about
this forced saving, because it's really just a
waste of a good and the implication is
that you can not save yourself.
In many cases, it is true in and
of itself.
You waste money on the account faster than
you waste money you do not have on
the account.
But now that it is approaching December, there
is a growing generation of journalists, is my
impression, who discover these things and wonder about
it.
And then they find out about it and
think, yes, this is probably no one who
knows.
And then they tell it through articles.
And that's probably how it should work.
But these media, led by our state channel
NRK, have enthusiastic articles about why they get
more money before Christmas.
And it feels a bit like a narrative
about that the state is kind and gives
the citizens a little extra money before Christmas.
And then for everyone who can count or
everyone who knows the state, you know that
...
It should be calculated per year, not per
month.
Yes, there is something about that.
I'm going to try an argument here now,
because when you do it like this, and
then pump all the money out, you have
on the other hand a business life that
is prepared to have all the goods in
it.
So there will be more money that hunts
even more goods.
And when you keep the economy down the
rest of the year, we can look at
it as an inflationary measure.
Just an inflationary measure.
Yes, an inflationary measure.
It's a nice way to adjust the inflation
for the last month of the year.
Well, it's not ...
In a way, it's not completely brain-dead,
right?
Summer vacation that costs a little extra, and
Christmas vacation where you should buy some gifts
and stuff like that.
So it's natural that it's a little ...
Didn't you understand why you get vacation money
at the same time as the return, at
least?
Do you think this is because you're going
on vacation?
No, no, no.
This is because you're going to have money
to pay your return.
Yes, okay.
I have actually never received a return because
I didn't know in advance what it was.
I call it control.
I don't have it myself.
I have more of an approach when tax
returns come.
I get a tax return, and then when
I get a return, I get so pissed
off that I look for lights until I
have found all the withdrawals I can look
at, so I can get my money back.
I changed it a few years ago from
a return at NOK 13,000 to getting
it back at NOK 22,000.
I was so pissed off when I got
my return, that I had to promise you
that I would withdraw it.
Yes, I got a quarter of a million
in tax returns at once.
That was so much fun.
I didn't know that then.
No.
But that's when you understand that the state
is your friend.
Because when you get this message in such
a Windows convolute, you get in the first
one there is an invoice, and it says
that this is a little high interest rate.
So you can pay in two rates?
Yes, with 14 days in between.
And it's so good.
Nice.
Thank you very much.
But what you're looking for here is not
really forced saving in any way.
It's that you should have money available at
the right time.
So you should have money for Christmas gifts,
and then you should have money to take
the kids on vacation.
And that is in a way the state
that helps you a little bit with the
parent task.
Or you who lend money to the state
for free interest.
That is also true.
But most people take such bad economic choices
and the interest rate effect is not super
duper.
But it is probably significant for the state.
It is probably noticeable for the state.
And then there is this paternalistic element in
it.
We know better than you citizens.
So we save for you.
And then you can thank us when you
get your money.
For Christmas.
Thank you very much.
But this has something to do with what
we started talking about.
Because this is also a state.
Yes, it is.
And it is reasonable to say that it
is not completely random.
No, it is kind of an understatement to
choose between the day.
But Christmas is coming soon.
Yes, it is.
And that's nice, because then we can have
Christmas wreaths and gingerbread wreaths and all kinds
of cozy Christmas decorations.
They are nice and fun for the kids.
Yes, yes.
On the other hand, no.
Wait a minute.
Gingerbread.
It's not healthy.
It's not just to run gingerbread workshops.
We can't do that anymore, because it's not
allowed to market such things to children.
So no.
So let's take the introduction.
So we don't bury the lead here.
The week has focused on two things that
compete for being the ultimate proof of the
bureaucracy's lack of vision.
In a nutshell, a traditional gingerbread workshop for
children was canceled due to new rules against
the marketing of unhealthy food.
At the same time, there was a fiasco
at the Parliament, when the President confiscated a
bag of tutti-frutti from Prime Minister Jonas
Gahr Støre.
Yes, and it should be said that it
was confiscated from Jonas Gahr Støre, but he
got it from a right-wing politician.
Astrup.
Astrup has shared it with the Prime Minister's
big campaign.
Yes, it's unlawful, and you shouldn't promote goods
in the Parliament.
But the challenge in a nutshell is that
children decorating gingerbread and not having to pay
for it will be illegal marketing of sugar.
Directly against the most vulnerable of us, namely
the children.
I wonder if we have talked about this
new law before and said that this will
have some bad consequences.
We have.
We have also brought up other things that
go in exactly the same direction.
Yes, I feel that this is a nanny
state, and it is not certain that this
is a real legal interpretation.
But because it is so poorly defined as
well, then it is just open for interpretation,
and someone will interpret it in the strictest
meaning, right?
As someone has apparently chosen to do.
We can't do this.
This is marketing, and marketing of unhealthy foods
against children, we can't do that.
No.
And then there is this.
There is something so infinitely trivial and childish
about it.
It is such a literal interpretation of rules,
and it is read so black and white
that things that are obviously okay for everyone
are still put down, because there are some
rules that say, no, but it's just not
allowed.
No matter how stupid it is.
And then you get such a bureaucracy that
is terribly busy handling such banal, simple things.
Because it's easy to handle, and then it
often goes to hell with the big things.
It is difficult to handle, and difficult to
interpret, and difficult to understand, and difficult to
get an overview of.
But as a bureaucrat, you probably feel that
you have done your part when you have
done something, made sure to take care of
something like that now?
It reminds me of these gift rules, where
things that can look like a bottle of
wine that is used as a starlight holder
are put down because there is alcohol advertising
inside a bar where you can buy alcohol.
Yes.
The worst example, I saw an example earlier
this week, where the price list, this is
what we have in the bar now, this
is what it costs.
It was picked up by a bed controller
who said, no, this is the market price
of alcohol.
This is not allowed.
You have solved this problem with snus.
It is impossible to change the brand of
snus now, because you have no idea what's
out there.
Everything is hidden away in a fucking box
without a list or anything.
But we have the coolest snus boxes in
the world.
Yes, we have.
We have gotten something for it.
A snus box with a design price, that
has its price too.
If I am not allowed to inform on
a poster what the price of a beer
or a bottle of wine is, then there
is someone who has not understood their task.
Yes, or understood the task exactly, because it
is a long thread with alcohol moralism in
Norway.
Yes.
Yes, prohibition and abstinence and such things.
It's a bit like the church, that they
have received a lot of power and unreasonable
power over ordinary people in society.
And then you have to bow to such
prejudice, moralism on a daily basis almost.
And then it has just become so routine.
Yes, the ordinary member of the sheep flock
thinks that it is safe and good, that
there are rules on everything.
Yes.
How would it work if ...
How should society be if it is not
rule-based?
Then you have to be norm-based.
The very first political discussion I had with
Muttern Yes.
It was at the end of the 80s,
when the mobster monopoly was on the rise.
And young Vegard was a big supporter that
there should be more TV channels.
Of course.
While Vegard's mother probably thought that NRK was
more than enough.
That it would be really crazy if there
was more.
Yes.
Now she tells me that she watches more
channels than just NRK now.
Yes, but I'm mostly NRK, of course.
Yes, yes.
But I have brought up the discussion later.
Yes.
Do you remember when we talked about ...
Stop talking about that.
Do you want to put down the others?
No, I don't want to, but ...
I think I never heard Muttern complain that
there were more TV channels, actually.
We went from NRK to have NRK and
TV 2.
And then there was NRK 2 and NRK
3 as well.
More state TV.
That's never enough.
Now you have to get one for 8
billion.
Yes, but the days are only 24 hours,
and we don't get to see everything.
No.
But that must be enough nanny state for
today, Trond.
Yes.
I feel that we are well on our
way to winning the nanny state award.
I can't see for myself that any other
nation will be able to take us there
this year.
Yes, or next year, strictly speaking.
But yes, nanny state 2026.
Yes, it's an award every year, so ...
Typical Norwegian to be the best, as it
is called.
Yes, we will be this time as well.
Then we have to say thank you for
today.
Goodbye.
Thank you for listening to Sidelinja podcast.
Feel free to talk about us, like, share
and recommend us in your podcast app or
share in the comment field on YouTube.
Government is not the solution to our problem.
Government is the problem.
Have you got rice or rice, criticism, suggestions,
questions or anything else, you can find all
contact information at sidlinja.transistor.fm