6 ms·

Are human rights concerns running cover for more straightforward financial interests here? Norway and Saudi Arabia are both petrostates with large sovereign wea

by sigil 10mo ago

Are human rights concerns running cover for more straightforward financial interests here? Norway and Saudi Arabia are both petrostates with large sovereign wealth funds.

alephnerd 10mo ago
Not in this case. Norway's SWF has become increasingly politicized [0] due to the death of the center and the rise of the populist left and right, which is a common issue for any SWF in a Western Democracy. The same thing happened with CalPERS, the Alaska Permanent Fund, Australia's Future Fund, and the Ontario Teacher's Fund as well because these funds are not firewalled off from politicians, thus making them ripe for a populist conversion into ideologically activist funds (this is a both sides problems - as can be seen in California [1] and Florida's [2] case). A major reason why the gold standard of SWFs are funds like Singapore's Temasek, Japan's GPIF, or South Korea's KIC is because they work hard to remain technocratic in nature and single minded about their goal: provide an economic base for self sufficiency for their citizens should adverse economic crises hit, along with the economic cushion to underwrite social security and welfare programs. At some point for an SWF, too much "democracy" just becomes a hinderance to the underlying mission, which in Norway's case, building a SWF to support Norwegian state pensions in perpetuity once their oil wealth dries up. Complaining about "woke/ESG investments" (like in Florida) or stunting about "human rights abuses" (like in CalPERS or Norway's case) doesn't actually shift the needle one way or the other because most other institutional investors (public and private) are much more single-minded about their aims, and a number of funds and LPs have begun to reject investments from politicized SWFs because of the headaches associated with a fund that wasn't supported to be an activist fund dealing with an internal conflict over becoming one or not. SWFs are a fundamental weapon in a government's economic arsenal, and using them in a non-strategic but politically popular manner leads to you only stealing the future from your kids - as can be seen with the woes the Alaska Permanent Fund now faces due to populist promising of constantly raising the Alaska dividend. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-04/norway-election-trump-ally-takes-on-world-s-biggest-wealth-fund https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-04/norway-el... [1] - https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_55faf935-81b3-457e-9cb3-006fd895dbdf.html https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_55faf935-... [2] - https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-ron-desantis-further-prohibits-woke-esg-considerations-state-investments https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-ron-desan...
- bjourne 10mo ago
  That's not true. Both Japan's and Singapore's fund follow ESG guidelines. Avoiding Israeli investments is no more "woke" than avoiding investing in tobacco companies. It's only "politicized" because you don't agree with their politics.
  - alephnerd 10mo ago
    I'm not complaining about ESG - I think it's an overloaded term that fell prey to populist attacks from the right, as I pointed out in my Florida example. What I'm saying is the primary goal of a sovereign wealth fund is to invest in developing an economic cushion for it's home country no matter the cost. This is why the GPIF and KIC heavily invested in China and each other despite both counties fighting trade wars amongst themselves. And similar to how Temasek heavily invested in Malaysia in the 1980s-90s despite virulently anti-Singaporean and anti-Chinese sentiment in Malaysia back then. In all honesty, it's people like you like you who have lead politicans on both the right and the left to realize that turning SWFs into a political football yields electoral wins while ignoring the long-term impact it has. And this specific case in the article is about Microsoft's investment in KSA which is unrelated to the Israel-Gaza Conflict. And in all honesty, when the far right end up winning in Norway in 2-3 election cycles, they'll do similarly stupid shenanigans with the GPF. Non-experts do not have to have a say in every single nitty gritty decision. At some point, governance needs to be left to the administrators. And not everything needs to be a moral battle or culture war.
    - Teever 10mo ago
      > What I'm saying is the primary goal of a sovereign wealth fund is to invest in developing an economic cushion for it's home country no matter the cost. Obviously there has to be some nuance there. It wouldn't be a good idea for Norway to dump their entire SWF into the Russian economy even if their economic analysis showed that this was the most prudent thing to do with the money.
      - alephnerd 10mo ago

by sigil 10mo ago

Are human rights concerns running cover for more straightforward financial interests here? Norway and Saudi Arabia are both petrostates with large sovereign wealth funds.

alephnerd 10mo ago

Not in this case. Norway's SWF has become increasingly politicized [0] due to the death of the center and the rise of the populist left and right, which is a common issue for any SWF in a Western Democracy. The same thing happened with CalPERS, the Alaska Permanent Fund, Australia's Future Fund, and the Ontario Teacher's Fund as well because these funds are not firewalled off from politicians, thus making them ripe for a populist conversion into ideologically activist funds (this is a both sides problems - as can be seen in California [1] and Florida's [2] case). A major reason why the gold standard of SWFs are funds like Singapore's Temasek, Japan's GPIF, or South Korea's KIC is because they work hard to remain technocratic in nature and single minded about their goal: provide an economic base for self sufficiency for their citizens should adverse economic crises hit, along with the economic cushion to underwrite social security and welfare programs. At some point for an SWF, too much "democracy" just becomes a hinderance to the underlying mission, which in Norway's case, building a SWF to support Norwegian state pensions in perpetuity once their oil wealth dries up. Complaining about "woke/ESG investments" (like in Florida) or stunting about "human rights abuses" (like in CalPERS or Norway's case) doesn't actually shift the needle one way or the other because most other institutional investors (public and private) are much more single-minded about their aims, and a number of funds and LPs have begun to reject investments from politicized SWFs because of the headaches associated with a fund that wasn't supported to be an activist fund dealing with an internal conflict over becoming one or not. SWFs are a fundamental weapon in a government's economic arsenal, and using them in a non-strategic but politically popular manner leads to you only stealing the future from your kids - as can be seen with the woes the Alaska Permanent Fund now faces due to populist promising of constantly raising the Alaska dividend. [0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-04/norway-election-trump-ally-takes-on-world-s-biggest-wealth-fund https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-04/norway-el... [1] - https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_55faf935-81b3-457e-9cb3-006fd895dbdf.html https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_55faf935-... [2] - https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-ron-desantis-further-prohibits-woke-esg-considerations-state-investments https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2023/governor-ron-desan...

bjourne 10mo ago
That's not true. Both Japan's and Singapore's fund follow ESG guidelines. Avoiding Israeli investments is no more "woke" than avoiding investing in tobacco companies. It's only "politicized" because you don't agree with their politics.
- alephnerd 10mo ago
  I'm not complaining about ESG - I think it's an overloaded term that fell prey to populist attacks from the right, as I pointed out in my Florida example. What I'm saying is the primary goal of a sovereign wealth fund is to invest in developing an economic cushion for it's home country no matter the cost. This is why the GPIF and KIC heavily invested in China and each other despite both counties fighting trade wars amongst themselves. And similar to how Temasek heavily invested in Malaysia in the 1980s-90s despite virulently anti-Singaporean and anti-Chinese sentiment in Malaysia back then. In all honesty, it's people like you like you who have lead politicans on both the right and the left to realize that turning SWFs into a political football yields electoral wins while ignoring the long-term impact it has. And this specific case in the article is about Microsoft's investment in KSA which is unrelated to the Israel-Gaza Conflict. And in all honesty, when the far right end up winning in Norway in 2-3 election cycles, they'll do similarly stupid shenanigans with the GPF. Non-experts do not have to have a say in every single nitty gritty decision. At some point, governance needs to be left to the administrators. And not everything needs to be a moral battle or culture war.
  - Teever 10mo ago
    > What I'm saying is the primary goal of a sovereign wealth fund is to invest in developing an economic cushion for it's home country no matter the cost. Obviously there has to be some nuance there. It wouldn't be a good idea for Norway to dump their entire SWF into the Russian economy even if their economic analysis showed that this was the most prudent thing to do with the money.
    - alephnerd 10mo ago