You seriously believe you are going to buy Greenland with 50k per person and few billions for Denmark?
That's a laughable offer.
Believe it or not, Europeans are not on sale and they do not have that much sympathy or willingness to leave in the US. The few that do, do so for money they would not make in Europe. And money is not an issue for Greenlanders or Danes. They both do much better than people in many US states.
Greenland is in serious need of infrastructure. Denmark has not been a kind colonial master (no such thing exists). However it would be foolish to think that any more infrastructure would be built under the USA’s colonial rule than Denmark’s. And I think the Greenlandic population knows this all too well. Both are their indigenous neighbors to the west in Nunavut and Alaska suffering way more under Canadian and USA’s rule than they are. But also as their autonomy has increased over the years so has their infrastructure, including cultural institutions, as well as their cultural independence.
I’m from Iceland, who also suffered (though much much less; so much less it is not comparable) under danish colonization. And I’m of the opinion that the biggest help Iceland can offer, is cooperate in cultural events and institutions, such as sport competitions (especially football and handball), theater (a collaboration between the two national theaters would be lovely), music (there artists from each country should be constantly performing in the other), etc.
> However it would be foolish to think that any more infrastructure would be built under the USA’s colonial rule than Denmark’s.
As I've noted elsewhere, you're conflating actual honest colonialism (Denmark's) with a hypothetical free choice to join the United States.
By what logic are the people of Iceland free to decide whether or not to join the European Union, but the people of Greenland are not free to decide whether to join the United States?
> And I’m of the opinion that the biggest help Iceland can offer, is cooperate in cultural events and institutions, such as sport competitions (especially football and handball), theater (a collaboration between the two national theaters would be lovely), music (there artists from each country should be constantly performing in the other), etc.
Sounds beautiful. I'm a big fan of this idea. I'd include the inhabitants of the Arctic regions of Canada and the US too.
> By what logic are the people of Iceland free to decide whether or not to join the European Union, but the people of Greenland are not free to decide whether to join the United States?
I think you may be misunderstanding where my argument stems from.
It is off course for the people of Greenland to decide whether or not they will sell their country to the USA. However both their legislator and their people have made it abundantly clear that they are not for sale[1], so the argument here is kind of moot. What I‘m arguing in the other thread is that USA‘s prospects of buying Greenland are of colonialist nature. Those are colonial dreams and nothing else. Expending your territorial control is colonialism, even when you pay to convince your future subjects to fall willingly under your colonial rule, it is still colonialism.
My biggest fear in all of this is actually that Denmark will sell parts of Greenland from under the Greenlandic people in illegal deals with the USA similar to how the UK carved out the Chagos islands from their Mauritius colony just before independence and handed Diego Garcia to USA so they could build their military base there, expelling all the Chagosians that lived there in the meantime. USA and Denmark have already done so in North Greenland. A deal which in 50 years time will be found to be illegal but at that time it is too late to do anything about it. Such a deal would also be colonial behavior, both on the USA, and on Denmark.
Over here I‘m just pointing out that Greenland is lacking in some areas of their economy, and there are prices persuade some Greenlanders (I know some members of the Greenlandic home rule who would love a good old fashioned business deals with USA, both for mining and for their military operation [probably looking at how the martial assistance gave Iceland a bunch of infrastructure in return {wink, wink} for a couple of military bases and joining NATO]).
> Expending your territorial control is colonialism, even when you pay to convince your future subjects to fall willingly under your colonial rule, it is still colonialism.
The EU has many people and offices working on promoting and facilitating 'EU enlargement'. The EU offers tangible economic benefits to countries that join, including direct monetary payments, which it refuses to offer to non-members (as the UK found out the hard way). Is the EU therefore a colonialist power?
I think you're stretching the word colonialism well past its breaking point, and in so doing trying to erase the massive difference between real colonialism - such as Denmark's invasion and annexation of Greenland - and voluntary membership in a democratic union with economic benefits (such as the US, or the EU).
> My biggest fear in all of this is actually that Denmark will sell parts of Greenland from under the Greenlandic people
I agree that would be bad, but your fear is misplaced. The only people with the power to decide on Greenland's future are the Greenlanders. There's nothing wrong - despite your consistent use of words like 'sell' - with the US explaining or promoting the economic benefits of joining the Union (the EU does exactly the same), provided the final decision is made by the Greenlanders.
The EU is a supranational union of independent states, with voluntary membership. The USA is a country which possesses (as of now) 5 colonies. If you don‘t see the difference between joining a political union of independent states and territorial acquisition by a host state, then I don’t know what to say. Joining the European Union is akin to Greenland making a free trade agreement with the USA which includes free movement of people, etc. That is not what USA is talking about here. They are talking about acquiring the territory of Greenland by buying it, i.e. colonizing it.
I think you are being naive if you think the USA is only talking about a bilateral agreement with Greenland which Greenland is free to enter or leave at anytime. The USA has in recent history purchased (or more commonly borrowed) territories with total disregards to the people that live there. They have on numerous occasions broken local laws (or more commonly gotten another colonial power to break their laws) to undermine the sovereignty of other countries. The most recent example is the military bases they keep in Iraq, despite Iraq telling them to leave (military bases the USA got by illegally invading and illegally occupying Iraq). I think it is a mistake to not take the USA at their words when they say they wont to annex new territory, and I think it is a good idea to assume their intentions are just as bad as they sound.
Arguing that the US is more of a colonialist power than Europe is certainly a bold bit of rhetoric. Europe maintains a vast colonial empire to this day.
You can 'but Iraq!' all you want, but you're attempting to make the absolutely absurd argument that the US would somehow be more colonialist than literal, actual, historical colonialism. On the one hand is the US - a country whose greatest crime you can name is that they waged a war you didn't like once - and on the other is Denmark's centuries-long annexation and colonial occupation of the very country you claim to care about, including strenuous attempts to eradicate the local culture / customs and forced sterilisation of the indigenous people.
At the end of the day, the only distinction here is that you like one political union, and you do not like the other, so you blind yourself to the downsides of one and shamelessly slander the other. Unless the US spends two centuries ruthlessly attempting to wipe the Greenlanders out, I'll take 'proven historical fact' over vague aspersions around future hypotheticals vis-à-vis who is more of a 'colonialist'.
I reiterate my overall position: it falls to the people of Greenland to decide on their future, and they are fully capable of making their own decision, despite imperialist tut-tutting from Europe. The economic and security possibilities of joining the US are great, but independence is worthy too. The only horrible outcome here is continued subjugation to colonial European rule.
But where in the world did you get the idea people in Denmark do “much better” than people in even the poorest US state?
Median income in the poorest US state (Mississippi) is slightly higher than median income in Denmark, with much lower taxes even if you consider private health insurance a tax.
A similar analysis of people in the poorest decile, after famously stingy US transfer payments, has disposable income for the poor in Mississippi coming out ahead of being poor in Denmark.
I keep seeing folks make this argument. I would love to live in Denmark, but the reason to live there is not because of higher income. The US is just much, much richer than almost all of Europe (Switzerland and Luxembourg are the exceptions, not Denmark).
It’s totally fine to value things like social cohesion, terrific bike infrastructure, and low income inequality. Those are areas Denmark beats the US.
No. That claim is at best highly misleading and, in most straightforward comparisons, simply false. Once you adjust for cost of living, tax structures, and what you actually “get” for your taxes (e.g., healthcare, education), Denmark’s median disposable income generally exceeds that of Mississippi. Moreover, Mississippi’s nominal median household income—while sometimes quoted in the same ballpark as Denmark’s median after-tax income—does not include the considerable out-of-pocket costs U.S. residents pay for things Danes receive through public services (healthcare, college, childcare, etc.).
I included health insurance in my calculation, and public schools in Mississippi are just as free in the US as they are Denmark.
Cost of living is much higher in Denmark, so making that adjustment isn't going to help your argument.
If you assume Danish university education is comparable to paying full freight at Harvard (which no one with a median Mississippi income would have to do) or some other heavy weighting on things that are private in the US, you might get close.
Certainly one can argue there's a large intangible benefit to not having to think about health insurance, and I for one place a large premium on having the opportunity to bike everywhere. I'm not arguing life in Denmark is bad.
No doubt there are many public services in Denmark that make transfer payments to the bottom quintile difficult to measure, but I just have never seen a credible argument that in terms of disposable consumer surplus, the median adult does better in Denmark than Mississippi, accounting for all reasonable costs.
And, of course, most Americans are richer than the median Mississippian.
It seems great to argue about the value of things Denmark is good at, but having a large consumer surplus just doesn't strike me as being one of those things. It's also not a value I think the median Dane agrees should be weighted that high, which is fine.
That's a laughable offer.
Believe it or not, Europeans are not on sale and they do not have that much sympathy or willingness to leave in the US. The few that do, do so for money they would not make in Europe. And money is not an issue for Greenlanders or Danes. They both do much better than people in many US states.