This Tiny Country Built the Laziest Economy in the World

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"No taxation without representation" The Sultan: 👌

I don't think it was really mentioned, but the Brunei dollar is pegged to the Singapore dollar which is considered quite stable. Might also be a point to consider.

I was actually flown out to Brunei by the tourism board to film some travel vlogs, and though it was super beautiful... the lack of freedom of speech is really apparent. I had read that the sultan shut down a long running newspaper because it dared to question Saudi Arabia increasing the cost of visiting Mecca. I was taken to lunch and I asked the restaurant owner what his thoughts were on the shutdown of the newspaper and such.  He froze up and looked scared asking me to please not ask him that question and that he loves his job. He then turned and left the room. It felt really bizarre. Couple that with the fact that every business has to have a framed portrait of the sultan on the wall for all to see, and you can understand the vibe of the country a bit better. That and Christmas is illegal

I was born and raised in Brunei until the age of 17. Then, I went to Australia for university because my dad thought Brunei's future outcome was poor and too dependent on oil and gas, and the government officials were too passive to try anything new. Development is so slow that I would say nothing ever happened in Brunei. I have gotten my Aussie citizenship years ago. No regret in leaving Brunei.

It would be very interesting to see how much tax Australians pay proportional to GDP and in terms of how much we get back for the tax that we pay, say free education, public transport? Also how we rate with other countries. Another interesting aspect would be how many politicians, public servants we have and how much these people cost us, including the resources they use such us the buildings they occupy etc. Great videos!

This is an uncomfortable truth about my country. Our government been pushing for diversification but the lack of entrepreneur mindset amongst the my generation as well as the lack of investment opportunities made it super difficult to kick start diversification. I do fear that we are stuck in the middle income trap

Norwegian here. You should probably have mentioned that the official unemployment rate for Norway does not really reflect how many people who are NOT in a full-time job and paying actual taxes. There are many things hiding the fact that not enough people are in the workforce, and more and more people are actually dropping out of it permanently, especially among young people. Also, a lot of the unskilled jobs, probably most of them, are given to migrants from the EU in various professions, such as service and labour et cetera. Norway is not necessarily the success story that you might give the impression of, and the signs are there for the situation to become much worse.

I grew up in Brunei as the child of an expat worker, there was a large number of people like us considering how small the population was. It was a known fact among all of us that Brunei's economy was far too dependant on oil and that one day it was going to run out and crash.

As a Norwegian I can confess that Norway is in fact not a great place to live in. High taxes, high household debt levels, lackluster healthcare and unreasonably high university requirements for STEM studies is one of the key points. Norway is also one of the least innovative developed countries in Europe since COVID due to loss of migrant workers from Poland, Lituania etc. It’s an above average country that every economist from outside of Norway loves for some pecuiliar reason.

Worth pointing out that the assets of the Brunei investment fund is actually the personal property of the sultan, it is not the property of the state.

Considering Brunei has a population smaller than any US state while being smaller than US state apart from Rhode Island their sovereign wealth fund needs relatively small returns to keep the country running. It's not like they have a rapidly growing population either and instead are close to seeing an aging and shrinking population within 30 years just like all developed nations today.

Reading the comments, I would like to say that the people are not oblivious to the limited oil reserves. There have been many initiatives on encouraging entreprenuership and diversifying the economy. Also, unlike Nauru, Brunei is not destroying forests to get oil. From the video, oil was 62% of the gdp, so the other 38% is non oil unlike nauru which had 90% of the gdp from phosphates. So nauru past econs is a bad comparison from brunei So its not as doom-ish as people speculate it to be.

Could you do an episode on Land Value Taxes, and different countries and cities that implemented it?

smaller countries with a decent sized population get some good benefits on economies of scale for building out infrastructure etc....and easier from a overall planning perspective. main challenge is importing resources (water / power/ food) and defense

Ahh yes, Drew Binsky’s least favorite country

Ive been to Brunei Nice little country Peaceful good food not expensive I liked it ❤

yaaay, a new episode of Norway Explained! Thanks for doing what you do, it's always an interesting watch ❤

As a resident of the USA, what are these "job security" and "extensive vacation time" you speak of? Do you have a pamphlet or a website I could visit to find out more?

That trope about lottery winners is heavily influenced by selection bias. Lottery winners are by definition people financially illiterate enough to be playing the lottery.