Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#81

Post by anbop » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:29 AM UTC

m3at wrote: post #63

anbop wrote: post #11

National 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.

Landmass is sometimes valued much lower than we might expect. In the eighteen century, France perceived Guadeloupe (an island in the carribean) as more valuable than Canada [1] and chose to keep the former over the later. Voltaire is often quoted to have dismissed Canada as "Quelques arpents de neige" (a few acres of snow). Granted, France lost a war and had limited saying in what to keep, but the difference in perce…

Very very interesting link. Thank you so much for bringing it to my attention.

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#82

Post by anbop » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:30 AM UTC

ec109685 wrote: post #78

macspoofing wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that if Greenland was valuable, Denmark wouldn't be able to hold it.

Some country would invade it? That seems unlikely these days…

Nobody stopped Russia from invading Crimea... I doubt anyone is going to stop them from invading Greenland.

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#83

Post by lokimedes » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:37 AM UTC

jmaa wrote: post #80

Having 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!"

As 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.

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#84

Post by hnzix » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:43 AM UTC

anbop wrote: post #82

ec109685 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some country would invade it? That seems unlikely these days…

Nobody stopped Russia from invading Crimea... I doubt anyone is going to stop them from invading Greenland.

Denmark is part of NATO. Very different scenario. Invading Greenland would be declaring war with 29 countries.

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#85

Post by DuskStar » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 6:58 AM UTC

hnzix wrote: post #84

anbop wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody stopped Russia from invading Crimea... I doubt anyone is going to stop them from invading Greenland.

Denmark is part of NATO. Very different scenario. Invading Greenland would be declaring war with 29 countries.

That works against non-NATO countries. If the US decided to turn its military basing agreements into ownership, there's not much anyone could really do to stop them. (If I had to do it, I'd follow the general pattern of greatly expanding those bases and the surrounding communities and eventually holding a referendum on whether the island should remain Danish or join the US - a referendum in which all the island's residents could vote, including US military)

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#86

Post by erikpukinskis » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:06 AM UTC

mantap wrote: post #50

madaxe_again wrote: post #10

I 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 oppo…

Fresh water literally falls from the sky unless you live in a desert. I question the value of exporting water from Greenland.

It even falls in the desert some times, there’s just not features to retain it.

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#87

Post by _7fvc » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:09 AM UTC

I 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.

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#88

Post by nottorp » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:23 AM UTC

Without 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 :)

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#89

Post by m12k » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:35 AM UTC

I 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...)

Re: Why Didn’t Denmark Sell Greenland?

#90

Post by username90 » Sat, Jul 06, 2019, 7:49 AM UTC

gwern wrote: post #20

rtkwe wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of that water is glacial though and will be gone when Greenland melts?

Forget 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…

> 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.