Welcome to Sidelinja, 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 Nøtnæs.

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

Mikkel Wara 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.

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 Notodden, and they had built

a shopping center on Tuen.

And it's a kilometer and a half from

the center.

And the center of Notodden 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 Notodden 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.

Goodbye.

Thank you for listening to Sidelinja-podcasten.

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