Financing change: Norway’s experience in sharing wealth

By John Carlisle

Statement by Norwegian Minister of Finance Trygve Slagsvold Vedum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, prior to G20 Finance Ministers meeting, 25 July 2024

Taxing the riches of nature: sharing in the prosperity from national resources

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Let's return to the American thinker Henry George [the progressive nineteenth century American economist] for a minute.

In the late nineteenth century when the railroad was expanding westwards, he was interested in the extraordinary income that could be generated from the extra value of central land.

What if he had been alive today?

How would he have looked at the digital platforms and large-scale AI models?

Could we consider it as something like digital railroads?

A few companies earn their super profits through building the digital infrastructure. And they depend on our data to generate profits.

Not just our joint digital history, but also our thoughts, emotions, expressions and interactions.

Everything your mobile phone and smart watch registers.

What you search for on the web.

Where you look on the screen. For how long.

How you are feeling.

What triggers your happiness, or what makes you angry.

The total of all of this is very valuable. Extremely valuable.

Thousands, millions, billions, of people join together on digital platforms – and just a handful of companies are controlling them.

The asset, the resource they can earn from, is me. And you. Our data. Our values.

Like the land, the oil, the waterfall, the power - our data is the resource.

It forms the basis for the super income the platform owners can extract.

And just imagine what AI is going to do with the potential to generate even more income from this precious resource.

Their business models only work because of data from you and me – and human history. Our common story. This is what adds the value.

So, should we be thinking of our collective data as the new jointly owned property? The natural resource?

And if this resource generates super-profit, how should these enormous values be shared?

Of course, the businesses who invest time, knowledge, capital - and take risks, should get returns for their efforts.

But shouldn’t we - at the same time - think that the value generated by using our common property, our data, should also come back to the global community?

To benefit society as a whole?

Is this a direction for sharing the wealth generated in our digital world today?

Can it be, that our data is a resource which generates super profit, and is something which should be taxed across the worldwide digital economy?

I don’t have all the answers.

No person or country can answer it alone.

We need to continue working together internationally and find a joint approach.

Common challenges call for common solutions.

But I will say that our history in Norway shows that it is possible to create and share significant value from natural resources. And it can benefit both business and the people as a whole.

We must learn from our history and joint experience when we tackle these new challenges.

Data is different. While physical natural resources can be taxed nationally by individual countries, the digital world is global.

It needs global cooperation.

I want to ask: Is it fair, for a small number of people or businesses to become super rich from taking all the wealth generated by a natural resource – in this case data, from human thoughts and values?

I don’t think it is.

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