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Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?
- dang 7y agoA thread from 2017: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16032401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16032401 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10037132 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10037132
- peteretep 7y agoWorth reëxamining in 50 years time when it’s a little warmer I reckon
- rhacker 7y agoIn today's value it's worth -16B according to this. If we're going to base things on how negative they are, then this article should assume that the United States land is worth -10K per acre (22 trillion debt with 2.3 billion acres of land). So negative values aside, the math to consider how much something is worth should never be based on the drain it has on society - otherwise why do we even have 22T of debt? So should we just call it all negative and sell it to china for 5B? I know my math is ridiculous but so is considering selling 535M acres for $1 billion. 50 cents an acre... where I'm trying to buy land it seems it's around 50k/acre.
- adventured 7y agoIt's not just that your math is ridiculous (as you acknowledge), it doesn't make any sense. Greenland has almost no economy, a mere $2.7b in GDP, and few assets. You can't use negative $22 trillion as the basis with the US while ignoring the $110 trillion in household wealth and massive corporate & government assets (stacked against $50t-$55t in total debt between household + corporate + government). That's the part that makes no sense. The asset value of everything in the US is at least $150t in the positive after you remove all debt. That's while ignoring additional value that should be applied to the annual output of the economic activity - and considerations for future gains - within the US territory and any other fringe benefits that go with it all as a package deal (USD global reserve currency, US military, 50 top universities, etc). Greenland has 56,000 people producing a GDP per capita of $48,000. The US has 330 million people producing a GDP per capita of ~$63,500 or so (about 119% higher than Europe's $29,000 per capita). You get the people with the territory in the US, and they're among the most productive on earth in terms of per capita output. A better number would be $65,000+ per acre before you include consideration for annual output and other benefits. If you count everything, it'd be far over $100,000 per acre.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoBut if someone find diamond in the dark side of the moon, would you sell USA or just al to evil communist for money. Would you sell your homeland?
- brighter2morrow 7y ago>But if someone find diamond in the dark side of the moon, would you sell USA or just al to evil communist for money. >Would you sell your homeland? What does it mean for the USA to be my homeland? My family has been here for centuries but the government is working more for "new Americans" than those of us who built the country. In that sense my homeland has been given away without my consent.
- asr 7y agoCongrats on building the country! Oh wait, you didn’t, it was your ancestors. Not sure why you think you deserve something based on your lineage—that’s an unamerican idea if I’ve ever heard one. Your idea that there is some deep conflict between immigrants and people already here is also basically wrong. Immigrants have always been a huge source of strength for America and a net benefit to those already here.
- brighter2morrow 7y agoSo if my ancestors building America means nothing to you then why do you say I should care if we start selling it off in part or in full? Our rulers are importing a new voter base so politicians can continue to target legacy Americans for tax extraction, businesen can suppress our wages while raising the cost of schooling and housing, without giving nearly as much back.
- thefounder 7y agoWhy doesn't US sell Flint to the europeans or even the russians? Preferably in euros or rubles.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y agoThe Europeans would absolutely love to buy a piece of the USA if they could.
- wolco 7y agothey can.. in fact most citizens of most countries can be foreign land holders.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y agoBut that wouldn't make it European land. The interesting part would be to buy a plot of land in the US, declare it EU soil which would be very interesting for airlines for instance due to flight rights.
- wolco 7y agoYou could pretend with a flag and treat yearly taxes as a bribe to protect yourself against a foreign power. I guess you would have to pick a EU country and get them on board. Easier to make your own and try to get EU membership. You would need to sign a treaty for it to be real.
- jakeasmith 7y agoThis sounds like the setup to a bad joke.
- davidw 7y ago"Endowment effect"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
- jessaustin 7y agoDenmark's people and (especially) leaders value what Greenland represents in terms of geopolitics. Greenland is a seat at the table for the Danes. Without it, they'd be like Luxembourg. With it, they're like Norway. This isn't mysterious.
- scythe 7y agoIndeed. Fretting over the possibility that Greenland is easily taken is forgetting that it still must be taken. Denmark is stitched in to various alliances and treaties, and anyone who would take what Denmark has must withstand the ire of its partners. After all, what is power, but a lot of memories of agreeable conversations and the meaning we attach to ink stains on paper?
- madaxe_again 7y agoI think, in hindsight, it will turn out to have been an exceptionally good call to retain Greenland. They have an interesting setup - there is no land ownership other than by the state, and you can only get permission to build by winning a lottery. There are minor exceptions for building small hunting cabins in the fjords, but this is negligible. The reason is to prevent private ownership from hindering possible opportunities for the state in the future. So, why a good call? Climate change. 1) Greenland has vast reserves of fresh water. This resource will become increasingly valuable as clean fresh water grows scarcer globally. 2) agriculture and habitation. If Greenland continues to melt, in centuries to come there will be vast planes of glacial till - good, fertile land. As the climate warms, the arctic waste will potentially become far more hospitable than (dis)temperate latitudes. 3) strategic dominance. The Arctic is going to be exceedingly important as ice clears for both transportation and resource extraction. Greenland has vast untapped mineral reserves, never mind the territorial waters.
- rtkwe 7y agoHow much of that water is glacial though and will be gone when Greenland melts?
- gwern 7y agoForget the melting - how do you even make any use of glacial fresh water? You're not going to start growing wheat in Greenland, that's for sure, so you're not getting much use out of it on the spot. Move it elsewhere? No one's ever accomplished the 'tow an iceberg to sell it' thing before (and icebergs are much more convenient than glaciers), and if they do, it'll be a relatively tiny industry since it has to compete with stuff like reverse osmosis.
- username90 7y ago> You're not going to start growing wheat in Greenland Why not? People grow wheat right now at the same longitude in Finland, all you need is for it to get a bit warmer.
- anbop 7y agoNational territory has a psychological and strategic value that cannot be bought and sold. Countries have gone to war over infinitesimally tiny pieces of land (Gaza, Falklands, Northern Ireland)... we do not need to look to a crystal ball to see why Denmark holds onto a gigantic landmass like Greenland.
- paxys 7y agoBuying and selling of large territories between countries has been very common throughout history, so a blanket statement like this doesn't hold much weight. Much of the United States was bought rather than conquered, and China is doing the same today.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoChina is doing the same today? How so?
- paxys 7y agoWhile there aren't any borders officially being redrawn, China is rapidly buying exclusive rights to territorial waters, ports and agricultural land from countries across SE Asia, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Australia, Africa, Argentina and more, where they operate semi-autonomously.
- elliotec 7y agoAgreed. Greenland is 836,300 mi², while Denmark is 16,577 mi². Imagine the effects of climate change in 200+ years - Greenland could be VERY valuable and important then.
- Mizza 7y agoWild idea: I think we should turn Greenland into an into a new frontier nation with completely open borders for refugees and people who are up for the challenge of settling a new place. Sure, there's nothing there, but if you want to build something and there's nowhere else for you, have at it. EDIT: Out of curiosity, I started looking at Greenland on Google Maps and found this sweet shadow of the buggy they used to street view (dirt-road view) it: https://www.google.com/maps/@67.0111595,-50.7379435,3a,75y,93.3h,37.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sQuSiFK6Vh85JUNgLihWhXQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@67.0111595,-50.7379435,3a,75y,9...
- anbop 7y agoThat could be a solution for the asylum seekers in the US, too... settle them in the Alaskan wild. If you’re willing to go from Honduras to Nome that’s a clear cut sign that what you’re fleeing is a very real danger.
- pyuser583 7y agoThere’s free movement between Alaska and other states. No way to prevent them from moving to, say, New York.
- leke 7y agoYou know it's tough to live or grow anything there now, but I wonder what climate change will do to the summer temperatures in 10 years. Could we see summer temperatures being warm enough to support agricultural crops.
- cozzyd 7y agoKanger has the largest road network in Greenland. I once got to go on the road to the ice edge, which was a wonderful experience. The ice near the edge is so dirty you don't immediately realize you've transitioned from dirt to ice.
- dmurray 7y agoSvalbard, at a similar latitude to Greenland, already has an open-borders policy [0]. It's not particularly attractive to refugees. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Svalbard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Svalbard
- Svip 7y agoIt does make me wonder what it would have been like if Denmark had not sold the US Virgin Islands. Although, I feel the islands might be doing better today than they are now.
- abricot 7y agoAs far as i understand Denmark didn't really have a choice. Either it was sold or it would have been taken. An important detail of the sale was that in the agreement for buying the islands, it was actually written down for the first time that Greenland was part of Danish territory. So if the virgin Islands hadn't been sold Denmark's claim to Greenland probably wouldn't have held until today.
- arendtio 7y agoI heard that some Danes are proud of having the largest country in Europe. Selling Greenland would certainly change that. But as I am not a Dane myself, take it with a grain of salt (and it might not be true either, depending on how you measure other countries e.g. Russia).
- cobbzilla 7y agoI’m sorry to be the classic HN “but wait” guy, but wait: technically isn’t Greenland in America? The tectonic plate separating North America from Europe goes right through Iceland (the only place the Mid-Atlantic ridge is above water), making Iceland a “country on two continents”. If a European country can count off-continent lands in its “biggest country” argument, don’t all overseas territories get that consideration? Are the Danes really the last large “empire” in Europe, if only by land area? If Britain could count Commonwealth countries (they are technically all under the same sovereign), then Canada + Australia would keep GB in the top seat, I’d think.
- marcolussetti 7y agoThe Commonwealth is an association of countries, some of which happen to have the same individual as head of state (not all). However for instance Canada has a Queen of Canada who happens to have lots of othe "jobs" too. I think comparing that link to the Greenland situation is not viable. I think some of the largely self-governing territories are more comparable (Channel islands, Virgin Island etc).
- stormbrew 7y agoCommonwealth countries that have a monarch (which is not all of them) are under different crowns held by the same person. It's a somewhat technical distinction, but it does legally matter. She is the queen of Canada and the queen of the UK, not the queen of Canada and the UK.
- User23 7y agoInterestingly, and somewhat germane to the article, Denmark was once in a similar situation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar_Union
- notatoad 7y agoThe author compares Greenland to Puerto Rico, seeming to make the assumption that if somebody made a good offer, America would happily sell Puerto Rico. Can any other Americans speak to the truth of this? It seems absurd to me that a country would happily sell off a territory and make a whole bunch of citizens non-citizens just for the financial benefit. Are Puerto Ricans not Americans? Do americans really view Puerto Rico as a budget line item that could be cut if necessary?
- ereyes01 7y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/upshot/nearly-half-of-americans-dont-know-people-in-puerto-ricoans-are-fellow-citizens.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/26/upshot/nearly-half-of-ame...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ghoulfarmer 7y agoAfter we sell Puerto Rico Illinois will be next.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoI think you grossly over-estimate how much most Americans care either way. If they want out I'm sure they could have out.
- technothrasher 7y ago> Are Puerto Ricans not Americans? Well... sort of? The short answer is yes, of course they are. But I don't think they quite view themselves as the same as other US citizens exactly. Both US and Puerto Rican courts have repeatedly recognized Puerto Rican citizenship as distinct from US Citizenship, as does the EU. Spain, for an example, allows Puerto Rican citizens to become Spanish citizens after living in Spain only two years (as opposed to ten years for other US citizens). The CIA World Fact Book defines the people of Puerto Rico as "Puerto Rican (US Citizenship)", as opposed to the entry for the US which defines the people as "American". Considering that statehood movements in Puerto Rico have historically been dismal, I suspect they like to be straddling the line of being "American". I'm not sure who would find financial or other benefit from acquiring Puerto Rico from the US, and independence votes there have been even more unpopular than statehood votes. So I don't think they'll be separating from the US any time soon. But after much rhetoric from Trump and other Republican politicians, I'm sure there are plenty of right wing folks that would delight in seeing them go.
- zeristor 7y agoAlthough the Chinese could be interested in it: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46386867 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-46386867
- WalterBright 7y agoNobody wants to sell Alaska or the Louisiana Purchase again.
- Waterluvian 7y agoThis got me thinking about "things that were once okay but today are totally unpalatable." In this case, selling land occupied by citizens. Could you imagine if there was a decision to sell part of Michigan that included Detroit to Canada?
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- wolco 7y agoCanada would gladly take them in but can we get all of northern Michigan?
- mongol 7y agoGood for Denmark. A large arctic territory will be great to have once oil drilling becomes viable in the region. I have no idea what reserves can be found but that is the kind of thing that makes overseas territories valuable.
- jmaa 7y agoHaving lived in Denmark for 20 years, I find this in many ways reprehensible. Cooking down the complex geopolitical problem of whether to sell a large piece of territory (with people!) to exclusively monetary concerns. This is as culturally daft as asking "why is Ireland such a problem for Brexit? Just build a wall!"
- lokimedes 7y agoAs a Dane, I agree. Why don’t the US sell the Rust Belt to China? If people had any idea how much of the danish kingdom is already lost over the centuries, one would understand why the country will cling to the last remnants for no other reason that maintaining national cohesion.
- LeonidasXIV 7y agoWhile I see your point but as a person living in Denmark I can't help but consider the > national cohesion to Greenland and Faroe Islands for that matter to be minimal. It doesn't feel like "proper" Denmark with shipping more expensive, not being part of EU/Schengen, their own respective Kroner-like currencies. I know some Faroese coming to Denmark to study but that's about it. It is not comparable to the rust belt which is more comparable to eastern Germany, more to the Dutch Carribbean which similarly has probably minimal national cohesion with the Netherlands. In a way it is like with Iceland. That ship has sailed and over time both Faroe Islands and Greenland will break away too, to hardly any change for people living in Denmark. I think Denmark will wish them well for their future endeavors and that chapter of colonialism will finally be closed.
- KozmoNau7 7y agoAs a Dane with Faeroese and Greenlandic friends, I consider them all as brother peoples, just like Swedes and Norwegians. Different in some ways, but connected by a common thread.
- goto11 7y agoDenmark did sell the Virgin Islands though, including the population.
- dnprock 7y agoI come from Vietnam. People fight hard for inches of space. The country has dispute with bigger nations about tiny islands. They'd fight to the teeth. It's very irrational. I think land fight is highly related with survival instinct. The more threaten one feels, the more they'll fight for land.
- nottorp 7y agoWithout checking who wrote the article I can see they're from the US because of the tendency to view everything just as profit/loss. Newsflash: there are things money can't buy. Even the credit card companies said so :)
- jonnycomputer 7y agoThat's a big bit of stereotyping you just did there. Newsflash: not all people in the US are the same.
- toyg 7y agoYeah, the whole argument was pretty callous and based on a colonial view of territories. In modern times, once a population is ethnically characterised, selling their land is basically unethical.
- m12k 7y agoI think the answer isn't that Denmark is hanging on to its colonialism, but rather that we've gotten over it more so than most other countries, and feel remorse. I think we feel an obligation to the native Inuit people - we smashed their culture and introduced them to alcohol, which - much like many other indigenous people around the world - they haven't evolved the same tolerance toward as Europeans have, making them much more prone to alcoholism, which is still rampant to this day. Like other old colonial powers we owe a debt to the our colonies for the harm we've caused them, but unlike most we insist on actually paying that debt, because it's the right thing to do. (And don't tell me that's immoral like the article says in item 10 - we support plenty of NGOs in Africa, but Greenland was our colony, so that's the first debt we pay). And I think we know that to the Americans, the Inuit people would have been treated like nothing but a balance sheet like this article does (to me it looks like shareholder primacy raised to the national level, and I find it frankly pretty disgusting - that's no way to think about your fellow citizens). We've already seen how the Americans have treated their native population, and I think we can be pretty damn confident that they're better off with us (what would the Americans have done; let the Inuit build tax exempt casinos? I'm sure that would have worked wonders against the alcoholism...)
- goto11 7y agoDenmark doesn't own Greenland so is not in a position to sell it. Denmark is together with Greenland (and the Faroe Islands) in a union, kind of like England and Scotland is in a union. The union is sometimes called the Kingdom of Denmark and have a shared royal crown, and obviously Denmark is the dominant part having 100 times the population of Greenland. But in theory they are equal parties. At the time the offer was made though, Greenlandic home rule was not established yet, so it was basically a province or colony of Denmark. Native population were forcibly displaced (by Danish authorities) to make space for the American Thule Air Base, so I'm not sure the Danish at the time were morally superior in their treatment of the native population compared to the US. In the post-war the strategy was basically to treat Greenland as a Danish province and turn the Inuit into Danes - one of the approaches was to forcibly take Inuit children from their parents and let them grow up in Denmark. In the 1970'ies the strategy was changed to give Greenland partial independence.
- 7y ago
- olafg 7y agoClick bait. Greenland originally belonged to Norway, which entered a union with Denmark. Denmark then retained it later on. It would have been very problematic to transfer Greenland to a non-Nordic country unless the people living on Greenland strongly requested it. Which is unlikely.
- alexmlamb2 7y ago> Greenland is a poor country. Perhaps Denmark simply wants to help out the many Inuit & Danes & descendants of both. This is ethically reprehensible. Greenland is poor, but compared to many African countries it is fabulously wealthy regardless of whether you take the $20k per capita at face value or discount subsidies etc to get a smaller number like $10k per capita I strongly disagree with this line of reasoning. One's ability to have impact through altruism is closely linked to one's knowledge of where they're intervening. Denmark could easily have more impact in helping Greenland because they know more about what things need to be done in Greenland and can more easily get feedback on whether they've improved things. If you send money to a country that you have no connection to, how do you know that the money is being used effectively? How do you know that you're solving the right problem? How do you make improvements to your spending unless you're getting continual feedback? There are limits to this of course and I think it can be okay to donate to international charity, but I think the impact of a well-targeted and knowledgable charity is much more certain.
- d--b 7y ago> $100m in 1946 dollars is somewhere around $1b in 2011 dollars Greenland is definitely worth a lot more than $1b today. So even the main argument that it doesn’t make financial sense doesn’t hold!
- magwa101 7y agoIt's value is going up, when those icecaps melt it will be very valuable.
- Kenji 7y agoBecause $100,000,000 is an absolutely laughable price for such a large area of land, even back then? How is this even a question? Denmark would have been stupid to sell.
- arcticbull 7y ago> As an American, would I say Puerto Rico is one of the very last things that ought to ever be cut in the federal budget? Heck no! Puerto Rico has repeatedly decided it’d rather not be a state, but at least it’s still genuinely ruled by the USA; if Puerto Rico decided to switch to full home rule, I think I and the average American would care even less about them. Yeah this part is almost entirely wrong. First, Puerto Rico has repeatedly voted to become a state most recently a few months ago (edit: June 2017). Full home rule for anyone is hardly the American way, though I’d speculate the Marshall Islanders and Samoans have fairly significant self determination a la Hong Kong. Further, America would never cede territory to anyone for fiscal reasons either because, well, nationalism. Once you start ceding territory for fiscal reasons I speculate you’re viewed principally through an emperor has no clothes lens and you’re a few steps from being what’s left of the U.K.
- SergeAx 7y ago> holding on to Greenland is a bad idea What do you mean "bad idea"? It's habitable land, there will not be more of it on this planet (except rather small landfills, and Denmark more than others knows the price of it).
- SergeAx 7y agoAs of today, chances are that there will be actually less inhabitable land available due to ocean's rising. And Greenland could be much more useful after it's ice is melted. Update: it's actually as large as Western Europe from Spain to Poland, less UK. See https://thetruesize.com/ https://thetruesize.com/