Reasons of State: Why Didn't Denmark Sell Greenland?
gwern.net
gwern.net
No Danish government would have survived a selling off. In the immidiate aftermath of WW2 and German occupation, you can multiply that with some considerable factor.
Footnote fact: Danes/Norwegians first settled in Greenland about a thousand years ago, at roughly the same time as the present inuit population.
Under this view, it would be an abrogation of the Greenlanders' right of self-determination for them to be passed to the United States without their agreement.
Earlier:
> Much of the Greenland population is Danish, unsurprisingly
I don't see that it's "ethically reprehensible" for Denmark to focus its charitable efforts on Danes. What did I miss? Gwern even calls this out:
> if that is Denmark’s true reason, shame on them for letting [...] ethnicity warp their ethical judgement to such a freakish extreme.
I'm pretty sure it's better for 100,000 Africans to die than for my sister to die. That's not warped judgment.
Now, in many circles, people have adopted a guilt ridden opposite of nationalism. People genuinely believe that helping a countryman is an ethical dilemma so long as there is someone worse off.
* I don't think many people are so extreme as the 'opposite of nationalism'. In fact, I think that nationalism (or more broadly, the basic tribalistic instinct) has such an natural, powerful pull on people that it will never need to be encouraged.
* I think it's great that many people moderate their nationalistic instincts now with reason and compassion. Not only did millions get slaughtered for the nation (or the race, or whatever), but they murdered millions more. The moderation of 'tribalism' with liberal ideas might be one of the most important changes in humanity's history.
* Unfortunately, I see nationalism and other tribalistic ideas as rapidly spreading again. It's promoted by state school boards in Texas and Oklahoma; many national leaders push it, for example in Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea (off the top of my head). Outright religious 'tribalism' is rampant in Europe and, to a degree, the U.S. The EU's unity is under serious strain, Scotland almost succeeded from the UK, and parts of Spain and other countries are discussing the same. Nobody stands up for the value of the liberal ideas and institutions that kept the peace since WWII.
Arguably, there are two kinds of political movements (and leaders), those that bring people together, and those that play on tribalistic instincts and divide them. One kind has much better results for humanity.
There are two kinds of political movements (and leaders), those, like narcissists, forcefully change others into themselves, remove differences between peoples, demolish language and culture, and those that remain resolute in being non-interfering of others, even while being interfered with, allowing other humans to live according to their humanity.
In Firefly - you would be part of the alliance. In Star Wars - you would be part of the empire. In the People's Republic of China, you would be part of the CCCP. In the U.S. you would be part of the Federal government. In Europe you would be part of the Troika.
And I accept that is your nature.
The most prosperous, safest and most peaceful countries in the history of the world, by a long shot, are the freest.
I don't mean to say that there's any reason to think you're lying here, but I think it's worth pointing out that the identical argument fails very badly in different circumstances.
That's the 'tribalism' I'm talking about. People can divide into 'us and them' over nations or states or race or wealth or whatever. I agree with the downsides and your example.
But it's not intractable. We're not living in family units in caves; we've formed societies, nations, companies, bowling leagues, etc. Humans are naturally social, cooperative, even herd-like organisms and they do work together, organize, and build inclusive social structures.
The very divided states of 1776 did form the United States of today, though it took a little work. The Germanic states formed Germany. Europe did make peace and form the EU. Think of the notion of "white" in the U.S.: There used to be violent, hateful divisions between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; between Italians, Irish and Germans (and more); it was a big deal when JFK was elected in 1960 that he was Catholic. Now that all would be absurd; those people are just "white" (and the division is with black and Hispanic peopl, and with Muslims). We had segregation, and now we elected a black President (though we still have a ways to go.) LGBTQ people are now widely accepted as just people.
Pretty sure Europe, the Middle-East, Asia and Russia will all still be here in some form in a few generations.
I don't see warped judgment but it's something we see frequently these days: An attempt to take down liberalism, with its embrace of reason and compassion, by aggressively making illiberal statements - as if to challenge the very ideas. The crazier and more illiberal the better; it almost becomes a contest to see who can say the craziest thing, which also serves as a proof of ideological purity common in such movements. You can see it in the statements of GOP candidates (Trump is on the same continuum they've been on for a long time) and on Fox. The only solution is to letting these hateful ideas dominate our country is to start calling people on it.
Love is not equal, and that is just a fact.
Mohism[1] - where everyone love everyone else equally - is dead. It will die once again.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism#Morality_and_impartiali...
[2] See nursing homes, poor public schools.
Furthermore, the idea that any particular inborn kin affinity implies any particular social structure, falls flat on its face on purely logical grounds: If it is human nature to maximize the utility of one's parents and one's children over other relatives and other human beings, it is still possible that the best way to do so is to create a more egalitarian, free associating society based on large scale cooperation between human beings and compassion for non-kinsmen. The assertion relies on unspoken intuitions which are shaped by the institutions and cultural powers that raise us. Convenient for someone trying to justify their world view, pitiable for anyone trying to understand 'human nature'.
Furthermore: We are all related and the time horizon of this kin favoring behavior has not been established. It is not clear why it is inborn 'human nature' to care for your immediate relatives and not more distant relatives. It is conveniently left implicit as that which makes most sense for the capitalist nuclear family, and maybe a generation or two down. If you care about your offspring into the indefinite future, and if you care about your relatives going back indefinitely, you care about all human beings.
What I truly believe 'human nature' to be, if such a thing could be well defined is our ability to apprehend what lot we have in the common good, what our place in the way of things is. Not just in our communities, but in our species and on our planet.
It's certainly not an excuse to grumble about taxes.
A long time ago all matter originated from the Big Bang, uniform and same in every way. Does that mean that is where we should aim towards? If you care about 'all', why not throw everyone and everything into another giant Big Bang yet again and be done with it? Because that is exactly what globalisation is doing - extinguishing unique cultures, languages and demolishing identity.
I am asking you to consider that if you want more freedom to love your kin, then maybe you ought to abolish the system of coercion that props up capitalism. It's not the taxes at fault. The taxes are there because without them, the system destabilizes. History teaches us that much. If you want private property, you're going to have taxes. The best you can hope for is to be the top of a feudal hierarchy where all the taxes feed into your estate. That does not endure, as we are all aware.
I don't think caring about everything means you want it to be homogeneous. I also reject globalization at a personal level, because I see it as a horribly violent system of interlocking political, social, and economic forces seeking to assimilate more and more of the world into their hierarchy of exploitation.
What I think it means to care about everything, is to not be myopic. It may be your intent to love your children, and even love them more than other children, but it may very well be that the best way to do so is to love all children. Is that unreasonable? It may be that the best way to love your children the most is to care about the entire ecosystem. Is that unreasonable? I think human beings are remarkably good at seeing the connections between things, and even if instinct is what tells us what is important, it is something far more dynamic and intelligent that tells us what is true.
If you want to be an individual, I think, personally, that it means you must find a society that supports the kind of individual you want to be.
I can't imagine being an individual without other human beings around. Realizing that, I see that my individuality is found in my community; my place in my community is part of my individuality.
I can't imagine being an individual without the world I live in. Realizing that, I see that my individuality is also found in my planet; how I treat the Earth is part of how I treat myself.
P.S. If we ever get to the point as a species where we can generate a new universe, I think it would be enormously important for every individual to contemplate what that means about what we are.
The same mindset that creates excessive high taxes for redistribution to everyone else, taken to the extreme, would abandon elderly in elderly homes, prevent children from receiving the love of their parents, take babes from the arms of mothers, and in doing so, tear the fabric of society apart, dissolving the connection between nodes and turning humanity into one giant glob, devoid of uniqueness of individuals, by equalising everything.
And the mindset to do that, as hackuser so fervently advocate, at its core, is narcissism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10038933 The idea that his ideas are all important and others have zero standing, to impose his ideas of how society should be structured on others.
I know nothing. I cannot convince him, and I cannot convince you. Are my ideas the only way people can build societies with? 100% no. What's important is for me to leave others to figure out their own humanity. People will find their own way and from your comment I can see you are already most of the way there. As long as I do nothing to meddle in others, there will be no need for me to meddle.
[1] I'm not entirely sure "compassion" encompasses it, but I'll go with it.
This would explain why they didn't want to sell it, but were happy to allow US bases to be established without payment. The reciprocity the Danes were counting on was ongoing protection by the USA as a valued ally.
This is definitely an American point of view. The US is a) a very large country which b) has been growing in power throughout modern history and c) has a cultural aversion to 'empire' (whether they are an empire or not is a different matter, but it seems they don't want to be).
Compare that to many European countries, which are a) very small, b) have lost a lot of power in the last 200 years and c) have a (admittedly not universal) nostalgic streak for the glorious days of empire, when they were world powers.
For Americans to sympathise, imagine if in 2100 various states have seceded and the US has split into multiple nations, with the remnant USA consisting only of the New England states. Then Canada offers to buy Maine, which is otherwise a burden on the treasury. Can you see why you wouldn't want to sell?
Buying Greenland today would be very risky even if you knew with certainty that the ice cap would be completely gone in 20 years. An ice-free Greenland might be an arid dust bowl devoid of vegetation, minerals, and usable water. Or, with proper care, it might turn into something more like Quebec. No one knows.
Why's that?
However, let's assume for the time being that they suddenly want to sell to the highest bidder for whatever imaginary reason.
I suspect if sovereignty were up for grabs again, the US would be willing to pay a very significant price to keep it out of the hands of a non-NATO country.
$15bn is a small fraction of annual US federal spending. Seems to me paying a slightly larger or even significantly larger figure would be worth it to the US for sovereignty over such a valuable geostrategic location.
Plus as you noted, it's likely that climate change could increase the value of the land. Sure, maybe not enough to turn a profit for the buyer, but it would offset the costs of buying to some degree.
One particularly interesting implication is that if the US owned both Alaska and Greenland, it could bolster its argument for declaring the northwest passage as international waters in opposition to Canada's territorial waters claim.
Actually, the usual belief held by economists is the opposite: that it's almost never true that holding real estate is better in the long view than selling it and investing it, since the value of land as a fraction of industrialized economies has been constantly falling and conversely, labor/capital rising. (There's also the diversification and uncompensated risk issue.)
It was a good piece of business as the defense of it would have cost resources but it still would have been a walkover against a serious opponent. And they would have lost it soon enough, at the latest in 1848 and the upheaval then.
The question of whether the US has made a return is not exactly the same as whether Russia profited off of the transaction (the costs to the US of governing the property may not be representative of what Russia would have paid), but they are related.
First, Pennsylvania is a well-developed and rich state, which was at the heart of American industrialization (names like Carnegie will ring a bell), and had and still has many natural resources: Pennsylvania was the start of American oil drilling and even now is yielding lucrative profits in the form of fracking for natural gas (to the point where my uncle remarks on how many of his patients are suddenly rich off royalties). It's in the top 10 of American states by GDP. The net present value of Pennsylvania is enormous. Note the stark contrast with Denmark & Greenland: where Greenland might have commercially exploitable resources and those resources may be substantially profitable one day and perhaps those profits will redound to the Danish people & government and who knows the share could be large enough to repay all the opportunity cost and risk and subsidies, Pennsylvania has been extremely important to the American economy, is now, and will be for quite some time to come.
Secondly, Pennsylvania is worth far more as part of the USA than as part of any other country & an enclave: countless roadways, railways, and rivers flow through it, it's near the ocean, the people of it speak the same language and have the same culture as the surrounding states, which directly border on it with few or no natural barriers, it needs to import and export heavily with them, and so on. If it were part of another country, subject to entirely different regulations and laws and politics and using a different currency and imposing a border on all movements, it would be much poorer than it is now. In the same way that Greece is not in an optimal currency zone combined with Germany and it makes no sense for the USA to still own Puerto Rico and some other places, Pennsylvania is in an optimal currency zone with the USA.
c'mon you were thinking it too