I guess we should be praying for Jens-Frederik Nielsen's family now
Don’t worry, he will be bought off and will profit quite nicely with a nice looking pile of dollars, if he hasn’t already accepted.
The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
131–140 of 217 posts
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
All "free market" ideals require no/low barriers to entry in order for the market to be "self regulating". Said absence of barriers to entry almost never exists, hence the idea of completely free markets is completely naive - you need regulation. Markets also cannot account for externalities. If those externalities are something you care about (e.g. the environment you live in) - you need regulation. Economies of sca…
>Markets also cannot account for externalities. If those externalities are something you care about (e.g. the environment you live in) - you need regulation. Markets account for externalities via ownership and torts. This was gutted in the 1800s in the US where a judge ruled people couldn't sue for the impact of environmental pollution, in the name of the "greater good" of industrialization.
Rule of law and precedent are considered quaint and optional now.
But this centuries-old decision not encapsulated as a constutional amendment is binding?
Nope.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#133Per Greenlandic laws, they own the mineral rights. They can license rights to others, and Denmark will also receive a portion of the profits. Unfortunately, this is the model that American conservatives and billionaires hate . The idea that a country is entitled to their own resources is repulsive to them. This is also one of the things fundamental things where American vs Nordic mindsets are worlds apart. It is argu…
Yes, those crazy Americans who are so loyal to America and not any other country at all, really hate it when other people have things that God promised to them instead.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
> unless of course the US also plans to bulldoze Greenland's sovereignty. It's probably not helpful for me to speculate, but surely this? If the US is truly prepared to invade another ally's territory for material gain, I'd assume the idea that they'd honor other existing laws is unlikely.
I don't see how it would actually work in practice. Can Trump really destroy Greenland's democracy via executive order? Surely Congress or the courts would have something to say about it? And even if not, how are you going to deal with all the people there? If Trump is ruling Greenland via executive order, then he is just a dictator, what happens to the people? It would end up as a long running sore and a terrible bl…
Yeah, for what its worth I agree. But I can't see how those arguments would apply to abolishing Greenlands law, but not to invading and claiming ownership in the first place.
If the US doesn't have checks and balances to stop it invading a democratic ally with no cause, then I don't know what checks and balancing meaningfully can be said to exist.
Hopefully we won't find out.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've arrived at the opposite conclusion. The root cause of conflict is decentralized power, which is the prediction of realism. Conflict occurs because of security competition, but security competition is only possible when powers are equally matched and trapped in a Prisoner's Dilemma dynamic. You can sense check this by running through various historic eras. Consider the eras before any nation states, when power wa…
In the last 100 years, we managed to prove that cooperation beats competition. Of course we do have competition, but where it has worked the best, it has been done in the context of cooperation, economic trade that follows norms and laws. Too bad we gave stupid people power.
This is the liberal view of security, yes, but in my opinion it's naive and it lacks explanatory power, for the reasons I gave in my previous post.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
>6. Congress does not authorize Trumps use of military, and Trump must withdraw within 90 days. No US president, regardless of party, has ever recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act. When a president sends reports to Congress of the sort the act mandates, the report typically includes a disclaimer stating as much. >If US economy crashes Any European attempt to "crash" the US economy would result in wo…
The US stock market is being carried by tech companies. Any large-scale sanctions against Europe would hit said tech firms hard, for no other reason than that they need all the customers they can get. Crashing the stock market could in turn induce panic, which in the end will reflect poorly on the president. The whole goal of such a (economic) war would be to make US senators and congressmen take a stand, and decide…
I point out that any European attempt at economic warfare against the US would inevitably affect both sides, and that the US is much less dependent on foreign trade than Europe ... and yet you again speak as if any impact would be solely on the US. "Panic", "Politically devastating", etc., as if only the US has upsettable investors and distressed electorate.
>Now imagine full-blown sanctions.
This would surely result in formal American withdrawal from NATO.
"The US invading Greenland would destroy NATO!", you say. I don't believe that the US would invade Greenland militarily; it will likely buy it, or obtain some sort of ironclad investment rights not dependent on whether Greenland is part of the Kingdom of Denmark or independent. But let's say that the US does, and NATO dissolves.
It comes down to net benefits. Would owning Greenland be more valuable for American national security, than the current NATO status quo of the US being willing to to accept its own cities being nuked if Russia invades Western Europe?
The calculus made more sense (if it ever did) during the Cold War, when NATO ended at Germany's eastern border. Does it make sense now, when Montenegro is a NATO member? I strongly suspect that the answer is not one that the rest of NATO would want to hear, regardless of the Ukraine War.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the last 100 years, we managed to prove that cooperation beats competition. Of course we do have competition, but where it has worked the best, it has been done in the context of cooperation, economic trade that follows norms and laws. Too bad we gave stupid people power.
This is the liberal view of security, yes, but in my opinion it's naive and it lacks explanatory power, for the reasons I gave in my previous post.
But for example, Venezuelan oil is worth very little to China. It's literally stupid to use violence to prevent them from accessing it.
Meanwhile it's sort of becoming very clear that Venezuela is about Cuba.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#138For decades Europe has cheered on, if not actively aided as America bullied smaller nations. Now they’ve come to realise they aren’t so special.
Europe has not just "cheered on". There were demonstrations throughout Europe against the wars in the middle east and both e.g. France and Germany openly opposed the war in Iraq. The Europeans I know (from all over) have generally been opposed to American geopolitics both in the Middle East, South East Asia, and South America. The US has traditionally been seen as an ally, but that doesn't mean we "cheer on" its acti…
It seems a distinction needs to be made between what is being discussed. The ruling class of Europe has cheered it on, even if the peasants complained; but as with so many other things, it’s wholly irrelevant what the peasants want, as you highlight. Americans also were 90%+ opposed to entering WWI and WWII and Vietnam, but that doesn’t change that it was done to serve ruling class objectives.
That’s long been the system; the peasants are manipulated or forced to enter into the meat grinder for the ruling class. See the Ukraine for reference.
But rejoice, soon robots and drones with fight each other instead … or maybe get rid of “useless eaters” more efficiently? It could go either way, or both.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#139Can we please wait till at least Q2 with another historic event? I'm getting tired.
Yeah, I need to catch up on my reading of the Epstein files.
Re: The mineral riches hiding under Greenland's ice
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, there's an entire body of work, starting with Ayn Rand, that vehemently argues that government interference in the economy is what leads to monopolies.
There are entire bodies of work that argue against the heliocentric nature of the solar system - that doesn't make them credible or relevant.
and that the earth is flat.