“How does a white place like Denmark rule a nonwhite place like Greenland in the 21st Century? By being really, really nice to the nonwhites.”
Greenlanders are one of many groups of indigenous Americans found all the way down to Tierra del Fuego.
My impression is that indigenous Americans are not very nationalistic. They tend to become run-of-the-mill citizens of whatever European-founded nation state they end up in. Transitioning from Danish to American hegemony would not be much of a rupture for Greenlanders.
Compare this to Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis who I expect to be still arguing over hills and valleys 500 years hence. Likewise for large parts of Africa.
Only a tiny part of Greenland is inhabited. Having flown over it on a clear day I can see why. If the supposedly valuable parts are uninhabited, why not just buy part of Greenland and let the Danes keep the Eskimos?
Greenland is enormous. No need for the entire thing.
Steve - chasing down and pondering over all the rabbits that Trump dumps on the lawn is what the liberals are supposed to do. Meanwhile, Trump, Vance and the surprisingly much matured and savvy Rubio are normalizing relations with Russia in recognition of an unstoppable multipolar world, and keeping some daylight between them and China. Giving your allies a much needed wake-up call to grow up and move out of mom's basement is part of that. Canada is becoming a chaos agent rivaling Mexico. European governments are filling up their countries with foreigners who don't share your Atlanticist outlook and are not going to enlist in European militaries.
Also, I think it's kind of neat that, as it turns out, you really can drain the Swamp. You don't just have to stand politely behind a podium like Mitt Romney (or insensibly, like Mitch McConnell) and talk about Our Founding Fathers.
We have tried to "normalize" relations with Russia for a hundred years now (look on YouTube for "Yuri Bezmenov normalize" for fun). Trump is doing the same mistake we have done a million times. It is a foreign policy of hubris, not humility, not recognizing historical realities, just like the ignoring the facts regarding Greenland which Mr. Sailer laid out in this entry.
A facile and stupid analysis. If resentment over pogroms were the motivation for hating Russia today I'd say a double fuck you to Ukraine. My most traditionally Jewish friend has been mystified by American liberal support for Ukraine since the war began.
Oh I'm certain it's the Jews in some fashion. You gentile dupes are pretty helpless on foreign policy. I just think if it's memories of uncle Moishe you need to explain why Jews turned it off between the end of WWII and 2015 and why Ukraine would be preferable to Russia. Follow the space lasers.
The vanguard of neo-conservative opposition to Russia is Eastern European emigres and Jews. Old tribal resentments seem as good an explanation as any. I'd also agree there's still a bunch of old WASPs fighting the Cold War.
I doubt he will successfully drain the swamp. I was thinking this AM about all the judges who now have to work overtime to deal with all the firings and other chaos DOGE is working on and I wonder if that isn't the point. First Trump administration he was caught by surprise and the deep state threw so much monkey shit at him he was almost paralyzed. This might just be preemptively returning the favor. If government actually shrinks that would be a nice side benefit. If the deep state 'wins' and most firings are over-ruled or compensated for by later hiring, could be Trump still actually wins.
Depends on what he does with the breathing room this ruckus affords him.
Congress now has a road map for future cuts and sterilizing DOGE against judicial attack. And if the Swamp doesn't get drained, guess whose fault it wasn't.
He doesn't have to successfully drain the whole swamp. The point is, the cat is out of the bag, the animals have the left the barn, the genie is out of the bottle, Pandora's Box is now open, and etc. The Millennials, Gen Z'ers, and the next generation now see unprecedented Federal level fraud, waste, and - likely - some level of criminal corruption. Either way, we are not going back to business as usual, not without some level of civil unrest.
The popular view of Roman Republican history usually focuses on Ceasar crossing the Rubicon as the prelude to Octavian's autocracy. In reality, decades before Ceasar, it was Sulla who actually broke several hundred years precedent and marched an Army to the gates of Rome to overthrow the Marian faction. Ceasar only followed precedent that Sulla had already set.
Are they now seeing unprecedented levels of fraud and waste? I've seen innuendo like the 'dead' field in the social security database, which my brother assumes means 8 million dead people are receiving SS. That strikes me as implausible. What if, when the smoke clears and all the numbers are tabulated it turns out that < 0.1% of government spending is fraud? Will the other side be exorcised enough by that?
My memory of previous times we have had national discussion on this is that it turns out the overwhelming majority of government spending is military, interest on the debt, and social security/medicaire. I was always told you cannot cut the deficit without cutting those. And you can't cut interest payment (or SS).
Is that no longer the case? It does seem like spending has gone outrageously higher since I was told Reagan was spending us into oblivion.
The initial reports on USAID indicate evident fraud. $17 billion, while not much compared to the >$3.5 trillion Fed budget is a hell of a lot of money. I don't mean to imply that all $17 billion of the USAID budget was fraudulently spent, but that is just one organization. What has been uncovered at Social Security so far indicates at minimum a level of incompetence at maintaining accurate and up-to-date records. That is a level of vulnerability in SSA accounting that likely leads to large amounts of lost dollars through private scams and frauds. We'll have to wait and see what the dollar figures are after a more thorough audit. And I fully expect DOGE to comb through the Department of Defense for waste and mismanagement as well. You really believe only 1/10th of 1 percent is waste, fraud, mismanagement? That would be $3.5 billion by the way; so your plausibly entertaining it will only reach $3.5 billion total?
The only social security 'incompetence' I heard so far was the complaint that the SS number is not a unique key in the database (an invalid claim. It should not be) and that there was a data field called something like 'Alive' that had 'FALSE' values for people who were over 120. That one sounds entirely plausible but it's impossible to tell if it's a problem without knowing its use in the system. I seriously doubt that having a value of 'FALSE' in that field automatically sends payments to people. Far more likely the field was added long after the system was up and running, defaulted to FALSE and only flipped to TRUE for people who died after the field was added.
And yes $3.5 billion is a lot of money. I think that is the likely order of magnitude of outright fraud. The level of spending we as individuals might oppose on 'are you fucking kidding me' grounds could well be higher.
But as Michael Kinsley pointed out, everyone is in principle against waste fraud and abuse but there is no line item in the budget for that. You can't just cancel the waste fraud and abuse, you need to look for it.
I'm pretty right wing, but I don't think the government has just been lying down on fraud all these years. I think DOGE will uncover a bunch, but I would be surprised if it makes a dent in the deficit problem. That's all I'm saying.
Guess we should have defined terms up front. I think when you use the term "fraud" you are using the criminal definition, as in, "willfully redirecting taxpayer funds or other acquired assets to one's own account for personal gain". I still think it will be greater than your estimate.
Your specific example within the SSA reinforces my main point. Incompetence manifests itself in several forms, including lack of oversight and attention to detail. Sure, I get tired at work and make mistakes from fatigue, etc. but I have folks who check my work and can/will correct my errors as needed. I think that the SSA which manages trillions in entitlement payouts, should have the best data managers and staff we can get. Maybe deploying AI here will reduce the chances for errors and erroneous payments, we'll see.
Remember the fraud scandals from the teens? I sure do. The Senior Science Advisor at the EPA who was living a separate life in California on the taxpayer's dime to the tune of hundreds of thousands of $$; the GSA executives who flew themselves out to Las Vegas for a good 'ol time on our dime to the tune of tens of thousands. In my own office, I've seen an employee terminated (a retired Army officer no less!) who skipped out of work early every day by 2 hours and claiming he was working those two hours on his submitted timesheet. These are examples that were uncovered; when you multiply this across the entire Federal government, there is likely much more unreported.
Make no mistake, I fault both parties and Congress as well as prior administrations. Congress is clearly failing in its oversight requirement to closely examine how and where appropriations are spent. But, they are incentivized not to. Money appropriated for defense contracts enables Representatives and Senators to go back to their constituents and tout how well they've "brought home the bacon" to their district/state. Same thing for money allocated to HHS, HUD, State, etc. This allows politicians on all sides to flow money to favored interest group NGOs in their districts/states.
Apple TV ran a series a while ago on the Conn fraud case. A lawyer, Eric Conn, ran an operation in Kentucky. His business was getting people on SS Disability. He had a crooked judge and a bunch of crooked doctors. He made his money from legal fees. If the SS Administration denies you disability, they’ll pay for a lawyer for your appeal.
His fraud, had he not been caught, would have subjected the taxpayer to a liability of 550,000,000.00.
The only reason, the ONLY reason SSA launched an investigation is that they got a tip that the Wall Street Journal was about to publish a front page article on the scam. They wanted to be able to say that the matter was already under investigation.
SSA decided to pull disability from all those who had been awarded it by the crooked judge.
They got a call the next day from the senior senator from Kentucky who instructed them to put every one of them back on disability. That part didn’t make the documentary.
Steve, I appreciate your tongue-in-cheek rejoinder to the lowest-common-denominator interwebs chuds. Anti-Gnostic is right; no need to chase rabbits down holes and through the looking glass.
"Instead, countries have tended to get smaller since about 1950." Agree, I would debate your point that "we are about at the upper limit of the number of countries". With a world population continuing to increase, we could clearly continue to carve up the real estate into smaller portions. In fact, I think the U.S. would be an intriguing candidate (along with Russia, China, Brazil and India). When I was a kid, I thought that Alaska and Hawaii just looked odd on our geography maps of the U.S. Unnataural fits.
A couple potential courses come to mind. The country could divide into two; one portion east of the Mississippi, the other west of it. Any territory or possession on either side in the Caribbean or Pacific would be let go to seek glory on their own (including Alaska and Hawaii); allow a grandfather period so that in year X, all persons born in those territories up to year X would continue to enjoy full privileges of U.S. citizenship and could emigrate to one of the two new countries of their choice if desired; all born on or after X would be citizens of their newly independent countries.
Or we could split into four entities; one portion east of the Mississippi and north of the old Mason-Dixon Line; one east and south (Old Dixie, less the states west of the Mississippi). One portion west of the Mississippi and north of, say the Missouri, or Platte or Red River; the other west and South; would likely involve caving a couple of the Western states and California into two.
In any event, as the future generations will be farther and farther in time and memory from the founding and unifying legends of the U.S., these types of ideas will gain more and more traction.
Sheesh. That's just reminding me of another underremarked topic by Steve. Trump actually personifies Steve's American civic nationalism. Anybody can be an American! Canadians, Greenlanders, tacky German transplants-- anybody!
Trump, the most remarkable politician in Steve's lifetime, actually implemented the Sailer Strategy in 2016, which to his credit Steve acknowledged at the time. And in 2024, Trump rolled out Sailer Strategy 2.0, denouncing DIE and LGBTBPD because, as it turns out, Jewish, Latino, and black dads don't like being lectured by fat black women and angry white women either.
Jews of course are a force multiplier as Steve has also pointed out and Trump makes sure to stay out of their crosshairs. (Sailer Strategy 2.0a).
Like I've said, Steve should be sampling vintage champagne and drunkposting everyday as his student, Donald Trump, proves him right over and over again.
I’d like to see more countries, not less. Our most innovative times in history were with many competing and somewhat autonomous city states (athens, renaissance italy, American colonies).
Plus, add in your point that wars of conquest are down or harshly shunned now, and the by far biggest reason incentivizing the existence of bigger countries is gone.
"Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, a rural Minnesota grade-school dropout, was about the least uncucked diplomat imaginable. Why was a chud like him against wars of conquest?"
Do you mean 'most uncucked' or possibly 'least cucked'? As in he was very unlikely to stand by while some other country boned his wife?
Human beings evolved, since chimp days and before, (and yes I know we are not direct descendants of modern chimps) to divide into groups and fight over land. The fact that dividing into groups and fighting over land is counter to logic and cost benefit analysis in almost all cases in the modern world, just shows how deep and strong this instinct is. It explains most wars. The textual rational changes, but the subtext is always monkeys fighting over the right to control territory and other monkeys. That is the sub-sub-sub-basement of the behavior and below is only bedrock.
So of course the Danes didn't want to give up territory even if it made economic sense. It would take a supreme effort of logic to overcome that instinct.
I strongly suspect that in the rare instances in which countries have sold territory, there was a motivation involving maintaining the integrity other territory. For example the Louisiana Purchase occurred because Napoleon needed the dough for his wars of expansion.
"(When oil companies prefer working with tar sands to your oil, you either have very little or very expensive oil!)"
This is not actually so. Tar sands in the Alberta basin have production costs below $30 per barrel. Shale basin costs like Permian, Bakke, etc are almost twice that. Admittedly these numbers are after substantial infrastructure investments but nevertheless.....
The point is well taken that Greenland is economically not worth having, and that Denmark has never stood in America's way strategically. Nevertheless, my sympathies are with the Danes. Greenland makes Denmark a more interesting country, and it has a fairly continuous claim going back via Norway to Erik the Red. Let Denmark respond that it will only sell to Canada, the successor state to Helluland, Markland and Vinland the Good.
By the way, I have seen no discussion on non-British media of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Short version. The Chagos are a British possession hosting a US nuclear submarine base, but our current government, citing a non-binding judgment of some international court, is about to cede them, for no payment, to not-exactly-nearby Mauritius, a country which increasingly plays the west off against China.
gwern's website reminds me of the internet in the 1990s. No pictures, lots of autistic text broken up with footnotes and carets and ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS. I actually kind of miss that.
“How does a white place like Denmark rule a nonwhite place like Greenland in the 21st Century? By being really, really nice to the nonwhites.”
Greenlanders are one of many groups of indigenous Americans found all the way down to Tierra del Fuego.
My impression is that indigenous Americans are not very nationalistic. They tend to become run-of-the-mill citizens of whatever European-founded nation state they end up in. Transitioning from Danish to American hegemony would not be much of a rupture for Greenlanders.
Compare this to Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis who I expect to be still arguing over hills and valleys 500 years hence. Likewise for large parts of Africa.
Actually the Greenlander natives are growing restless and a faction wants independence.
Only the massive lack of economic opportunities in Greenland stops them.
Only a tiny part of Greenland is inhabited. Having flown over it on a clear day I can see why. If the supposedly valuable parts are uninhabited, why not just buy part of Greenland and let the Danes keep the Eskimos?
Greenland is enormous. No need for the entire thing.
Steve - chasing down and pondering over all the rabbits that Trump dumps on the lawn is what the liberals are supposed to do. Meanwhile, Trump, Vance and the surprisingly much matured and savvy Rubio are normalizing relations with Russia in recognition of an unstoppable multipolar world, and keeping some daylight between them and China. Giving your allies a much needed wake-up call to grow up and move out of mom's basement is part of that. Canada is becoming a chaos agent rivaling Mexico. European governments are filling up their countries with foreigners who don't share your Atlanticist outlook and are not going to enlist in European militaries.
Also, I think it's kind of neat that, as it turns out, you really can drain the Swamp. You don't just have to stand politely behind a podium like Mitt Romney (or insensibly, like Mitch McConnell) and talk about Our Founding Fathers.
We have tried to "normalize" relations with Russia for a hundred years now (look on YouTube for "Yuri Bezmenov normalize" for fun). Trump is doing the same mistake we have done a million times. It is a foreign policy of hubris, not humility, not recognizing historical realities, just like the ignoring the facts regarding Greenland which Mr. Sailer laid out in this entry.
The Cold War ended in 1991. I know a lot of people are still angry about the Tsar pogroming Great-great Uncle Moishe but it really is time to move on.
Cool post.
A facile and stupid analysis. If resentment over pogroms were the motivation for hating Russia today I'd say a double fuck you to Ukraine. My most traditionally Jewish friend has been mystified by American liberal support for Ukraine since the war began.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_Ukraine
Okay. What's the real reason for still fighting the Cold War?
Oh I'm certain it's the Jews in some fashion. You gentile dupes are pretty helpless on foreign policy. I just think if it's memories of uncle Moishe you need to explain why Jews turned it off between the end of WWII and 2015 and why Ukraine would be preferable to Russia. Follow the space lasers.
The vanguard of neo-conservative opposition to Russia is Eastern European emigres and Jews. Old tribal resentments seem as good an explanation as any. I'd also agree there's still a bunch of old WASPs fighting the Cold War.
I doubt he will successfully drain the swamp. I was thinking this AM about all the judges who now have to work overtime to deal with all the firings and other chaos DOGE is working on and I wonder if that isn't the point. First Trump administration he was caught by surprise and the deep state threw so much monkey shit at him he was almost paralyzed. This might just be preemptively returning the favor. If government actually shrinks that would be a nice side benefit. If the deep state 'wins' and most firings are over-ruled or compensated for by later hiring, could be Trump still actually wins.
Depends on what he does with the breathing room this ruckus affords him.
Congress now has a road map for future cuts and sterilizing DOGE against judicial attack. And if the Swamp doesn't get drained, guess whose fault it wasn't.
He doesn't have to successfully drain the whole swamp. The point is, the cat is out of the bag, the animals have the left the barn, the genie is out of the bottle, Pandora's Box is now open, and etc. The Millennials, Gen Z'ers, and the next generation now see unprecedented Federal level fraud, waste, and - likely - some level of criminal corruption. Either way, we are not going back to business as usual, not without some level of civil unrest.
The popular view of Roman Republican history usually focuses on Ceasar crossing the Rubicon as the prelude to Octavian's autocracy. In reality, decades before Ceasar, it was Sulla who actually broke several hundred years precedent and marched an Army to the gates of Rome to overthrow the Marian faction. Ceasar only followed precedent that Sulla had already set.
Are they now seeing unprecedented levels of fraud and waste? I've seen innuendo like the 'dead' field in the social security database, which my brother assumes means 8 million dead people are receiving SS. That strikes me as implausible. What if, when the smoke clears and all the numbers are tabulated it turns out that < 0.1% of government spending is fraud? Will the other side be exorcised enough by that?
My memory of previous times we have had national discussion on this is that it turns out the overwhelming majority of government spending is military, interest on the debt, and social security/medicaire. I was always told you cannot cut the deficit without cutting those. And you can't cut interest payment (or SS).
Is that no longer the case? It does seem like spending has gone outrageously higher since I was told Reagan was spending us into oblivion.
The initial reports on USAID indicate evident fraud. $17 billion, while not much compared to the >$3.5 trillion Fed budget is a hell of a lot of money. I don't mean to imply that all $17 billion of the USAID budget was fraudulently spent, but that is just one organization. What has been uncovered at Social Security so far indicates at minimum a level of incompetence at maintaining accurate and up-to-date records. That is a level of vulnerability in SSA accounting that likely leads to large amounts of lost dollars through private scams and frauds. We'll have to wait and see what the dollar figures are after a more thorough audit. And I fully expect DOGE to comb through the Department of Defense for waste and mismanagement as well. You really believe only 1/10th of 1 percent is waste, fraud, mismanagement? That would be $3.5 billion by the way; so your plausibly entertaining it will only reach $3.5 billion total?
The only social security 'incompetence' I heard so far was the complaint that the SS number is not a unique key in the database (an invalid claim. It should not be) and that there was a data field called something like 'Alive' that had 'FALSE' values for people who were over 120. That one sounds entirely plausible but it's impossible to tell if it's a problem without knowing its use in the system. I seriously doubt that having a value of 'FALSE' in that field automatically sends payments to people. Far more likely the field was added long after the system was up and running, defaulted to FALSE and only flipped to TRUE for people who died after the field was added.
And yes $3.5 billion is a lot of money. I think that is the likely order of magnitude of outright fraud. The level of spending we as individuals might oppose on 'are you fucking kidding me' grounds could well be higher.
But as Michael Kinsley pointed out, everyone is in principle against waste fraud and abuse but there is no line item in the budget for that. You can't just cancel the waste fraud and abuse, you need to look for it.
I'm pretty right wing, but I don't think the government has just been lying down on fraud all these years. I think DOGE will uncover a bunch, but I would be surprised if it makes a dent in the deficit problem. That's all I'm saying.
Guess we should have defined terms up front. I think when you use the term "fraud" you are using the criminal definition, as in, "willfully redirecting taxpayer funds or other acquired assets to one's own account for personal gain". I still think it will be greater than your estimate.
Your specific example within the SSA reinforces my main point. Incompetence manifests itself in several forms, including lack of oversight and attention to detail. Sure, I get tired at work and make mistakes from fatigue, etc. but I have folks who check my work and can/will correct my errors as needed. I think that the SSA which manages trillions in entitlement payouts, should have the best data managers and staff we can get. Maybe deploying AI here will reduce the chances for errors and erroneous payments, we'll see.
Remember the fraud scandals from the teens? I sure do. The Senior Science Advisor at the EPA who was living a separate life in California on the taxpayer's dime to the tune of hundreds of thousands of $$; the GSA executives who flew themselves out to Las Vegas for a good 'ol time on our dime to the tune of tens of thousands. In my own office, I've seen an employee terminated (a retired Army officer no less!) who skipped out of work early every day by 2 hours and claiming he was working those two hours on his submitted timesheet. These are examples that were uncovered; when you multiply this across the entire Federal government, there is likely much more unreported.
Make no mistake, I fault both parties and Congress as well as prior administrations. Congress is clearly failing in its oversight requirement to closely examine how and where appropriations are spent. But, they are incentivized not to. Money appropriated for defense contracts enables Representatives and Senators to go back to their constituents and tout how well they've "brought home the bacon" to their district/state. Same thing for money allocated to HHS, HUD, State, etc. This allows politicians on all sides to flow money to favored interest group NGOs in their districts/states.
Apple TV ran a series a while ago on the Conn fraud case. A lawyer, Eric Conn, ran an operation in Kentucky. His business was getting people on SS Disability. He had a crooked judge and a bunch of crooked doctors. He made his money from legal fees. If the SS Administration denies you disability, they’ll pay for a lawyer for your appeal.
His fraud, had he not been caught, would have subjected the taxpayer to a liability of 550,000,000.00.
The only reason, the ONLY reason SSA launched an investigation is that they got a tip that the Wall Street Journal was about to publish a front page article on the scam. They wanted to be able to say that the matter was already under investigation.
SSA decided to pull disability from all those who had been awarded it by the crooked judge.
They got a call the next day from the senior senator from Kentucky who instructed them to put every one of them back on disability. That part didn’t make the documentary.
I'd like to think there is a lot of this kind of thing and that we can balance the budget off it.
I don’t think there’s anywhere near enough fraud to balance the budget. I do think there is a disgusting amount of waste.
Denmark should pay us to take Greenland…or perhaps gift-it to us in exchange for a future draft choice.
Steve, I appreciate your tongue-in-cheek rejoinder to the lowest-common-denominator interwebs chuds. Anti-Gnostic is right; no need to chase rabbits down holes and through the looking glass.
"Instead, countries have tended to get smaller since about 1950." Agree, I would debate your point that "we are about at the upper limit of the number of countries". With a world population continuing to increase, we could clearly continue to carve up the real estate into smaller portions. In fact, I think the U.S. would be an intriguing candidate (along with Russia, China, Brazil and India). When I was a kid, I thought that Alaska and Hawaii just looked odd on our geography maps of the U.S. Unnataural fits.
A couple potential courses come to mind. The country could divide into two; one portion east of the Mississippi, the other west of it. Any territory or possession on either side in the Caribbean or Pacific would be let go to seek glory on their own (including Alaska and Hawaii); allow a grandfather period so that in year X, all persons born in those territories up to year X would continue to enjoy full privileges of U.S. citizenship and could emigrate to one of the two new countries of their choice if desired; all born on or after X would be citizens of their newly independent countries.
Or we could split into four entities; one portion east of the Mississippi and north of the old Mason-Dixon Line; one east and south (Old Dixie, less the states west of the Mississippi). One portion west of the Mississippi and north of, say the Missouri, or Platte or Red River; the other west and South; would likely involve caving a couple of the Western states and California into two.
In any event, as the future generations will be farther and farther in time and memory from the founding and unifying legends of the U.S., these types of ideas will gain more and more traction.
All of this is counter-Trumpian, of course.
"All of this is counter Trumpian of course."
Sheesh. That's just reminding me of another underremarked topic by Steve. Trump actually personifies Steve's American civic nationalism. Anybody can be an American! Canadians, Greenlanders, tacky German transplants-- anybody!
Trump, the most remarkable politician in Steve's lifetime, actually implemented the Sailer Strategy in 2016, which to his credit Steve acknowledged at the time. And in 2024, Trump rolled out Sailer Strategy 2.0, denouncing DIE and LGBTBPD because, as it turns out, Jewish, Latino, and black dads don't like being lectured by fat black women and angry white women either.
Jews of course are a force multiplier as Steve has also pointed out and Trump makes sure to stay out of their crosshairs. (Sailer Strategy 2.0a).
Like I've said, Steve should be sampling vintage champagne and drunkposting everyday as his student, Donald Trump, proves him right over and over again.
"The country could divide into two; one portion east of the Mississippi, the other west of it."
Ach, quatsch. This would mess up college football conferences and that's what really matters.
LOL! I wish Substack would enable emojis for reactions! :-D
Good article. Thank you for sharing.
I’d like to see more countries, not less. Our most innovative times in history were with many competing and somewhat autonomous city states (athens, renaissance italy, American colonies).
Plus, add in your point that wars of conquest are down or harshly shunned now, and the by far biggest reason incentivizing the existence of bigger countries is gone.
"Calvin Coolidge’s Secretary of State, Frank B. Kellogg, a rural Minnesota grade-school dropout, was about the least uncucked diplomat imaginable. Why was a chud like him against wars of conquest?"
Do you mean 'most uncucked' or possibly 'least cucked'? As in he was very unlikely to stand by while some other country boned his wife?
Human beings evolved, since chimp days and before, (and yes I know we are not direct descendants of modern chimps) to divide into groups and fight over land. The fact that dividing into groups and fighting over land is counter to logic and cost benefit analysis in almost all cases in the modern world, just shows how deep and strong this instinct is. It explains most wars. The textual rational changes, but the subtext is always monkeys fighting over the right to control territory and other monkeys. That is the sub-sub-sub-basement of the behavior and below is only bedrock.
So of course the Danes didn't want to give up territory even if it made economic sense. It would take a supreme effort of logic to overcome that instinct.
I strongly suspect that in the rare instances in which countries have sold territory, there was a motivation involving maintaining the integrity other territory. For example the Louisiana Purchase occurred because Napoleon needed the dough for his wars of expansion.
"(When oil companies prefer working with tar sands to your oil, you either have very little or very expensive oil!)"
This is not actually so. Tar sands in the Alberta basin have production costs below $30 per barrel. Shale basin costs like Permian, Bakke, etc are almost twice that. Admittedly these numbers are after substantial infrastructure investments but nevertheless.....
The vanguard of the neoconservative movement is Eastern European emigres, and Jews. Old tribal hatreds seem as good an explanation as any.
The point is well taken that Greenland is economically not worth having, and that Denmark has never stood in America's way strategically. Nevertheless, my sympathies are with the Danes. Greenland makes Denmark a more interesting country, and it has a fairly continuous claim going back via Norway to Erik the Red. Let Denmark respond that it will only sell to Canada, the successor state to Helluland, Markland and Vinland the Good.
By the way, I have seen no discussion on non-British media of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Short version. The Chagos are a British possession hosting a US nuclear submarine base, but our current government, citing a non-binding judgment of some international court, is about to cede them, for no payment, to not-exactly-nearby Mauritius, a country which increasingly plays the west off against China.
gwern's website reminds me of the internet in the 1990s. No pictures, lots of autistic text broken up with footnotes and carets and ALL CAPS FOR EMPHASIS. I actually kind of miss that.