Greenland and the NATO/EU/UN

[kyle]

Be honest did you edit my post?

Nope, would never* do that, and the moderator logs say nobody else did. I occasionally hit "edit" instead of "reply with quote" and notice only after I hit submit... but of course I try to repair that and publish what I did.

* maybe in a non-serious topic, for comedic effect, and only if I can be 100% certain everyone gets it, and even then I probably will leave a "harr" edit note to make sure, and probably only on Word or Lucifer, because they deserve it.

I actually feel bad asking you that, there was literally No edit to it before I made the edit I made, Just the system wanted some humour on it's own from logging me out

kyle wrote: ↑31 Jan 2026 22:40
Not to say some companies will have evil CEO's, take a look into Trevor Milton, that pretty much so eliminated pretty early.

Ah, he is the guy I wanted to bring up at some point, pardoned by Trump presumably as a "thank you" for campaign donations, and he does not even have to give back the money he embezzled. Yep, a scumbag all right.

Yep another things I disagree with Trump in doing

I can and will be angry at both because even moderately wealthy millionaires and industry heads have major influence on the government. Also, no one needs a billion dollars. And I know you like to parrot the propaganda that these ultra-rich CEOs don't aren't really rich because their wealth isn't liquid. The way you describe it, you would think they are driving Toyota Corollas and living in two-flats. No one earns a billion dollars. You can only get it through exploitation, and that is a bug in the system we need to correct.

I agree thee are other billionaire CEO's that do exploit a lot of crap, but Elon just sleeps on the factory floors and sells all of his home (Ok now he does own 1, and rents 1 from SpaceX)

Aside: I have some wealthy friends. One of them isn't comfortable with the corruption in our government even though he benefits from it. I said we should have major wealth taxes and laws that prevent the concentration of wealth. He didn't like the idea. I asked him, "what is the ideal number of oligarchs for our democracy?" He hasn't gotten back to me on that.

We need major spending reform, before looking into adding new taxes, The problem with the wealth gap today is because of government spending, most of it leads to inflation, inflation leads to companies ballooning in valuation. driving up the wealth of people with ownership in them, and those not invested, basically loose money, you have roughly 3% inflation, stock market goes up 10% or so banks pay you at most 3% and that's for a high yield others are tenths of a percent, so your money in banks is almost always loosing money. meaning you are loosing purchasing power every year, Right now we are at break even on HYSA, but if rates fall, HSA yields go much lower, and inflation is supposed to stay around 2 to 3%, that's the feds ideal goals.

Medical costs are all ****** because of obamacare and how the insurance companies "negotiates" rates with places, I was not feeling well the end of last year, so I went in just to make sure I did not have the flu, went to my in-network urgent care my bill, still to be negotiated with them, was $411, this was after the agreed upon price markdowns. for 5 minutes with the Dr, 5 to10 minutes with a nurse, and 3 tests, Flu A, Flu, B and strep, I did have strep, probably could have gotten over it without meds. But with researching a bit, out of network places charge around $200 for the same service

Now you say let's throw more money at healthcare, it's only going to get worse, the innovation in healthcare should make costs trend down, not stay the same or inflate. But the intensives are there to charge more, because the government is going to pay for it.

[sinewav]

...because of obamacare ... Now you say let's throw more money at healthcare, it's only going to get worse...

Just want to point out that the ACA is not socialist health care, it's capitalist. It's literally a law that says you have to buy private insurance. I don't want to throw money at healthcare, I want to abolish private health insurance or make it obsolete for the majority of people. I've said it before but you probably need a reminder: all the "innovations in healthcare" are largely funded by grants at research universities. That is, our tax dollars spur the innovation that a few people then profit from at our expense, and they use those profits to buy politicians in order to keep it that way. You like to blame the government for everything but still keep missing the reason why the government is like this.

[Lucifer]

I skipped the part where Kyle took over the thread with his lunatic rants, but I wanted to point something out from skimming: The Stock Market is the core defining trait of a capitalist system. no Stock Market, no capitalism. The whole idea behind capitalism is that you can slice up a company into pieces (stocks) and sell them on the same free market you sell any other goods. The company becomes the good. You can have a market economy without a stock market and without capitalism. Capitalism is only a couple hundred years old (I think the Dutch invented it in the 18th century). Market economies are the default economy, not capitalism. We can have a free market under a socialist or communist government. It's totally doable. The fact that nobody's done it yet, well, someone had to build the first airplane, right?

Anyway, I think Trump wants Greenland. I also think it's a good idea for us to basically take over Denmark's protector role of Greenland, possibly making it another state. But obviously Trump is doing it wrong. For full disclosure, what I really want is for us to write a new constitution that incorporates the best from canada's and Mexico's constitutions, then put it up to be ratified by any state that wants to. That ratification process is my plan to "conquer" mexico and canada. They'll vote their ways in, if we can give them a government they want.

Anyway, this is all about the northwest passage. Russia doesn't care about Greenland because Russia already has the biggest presence in the Arctic ocean. Canada has the next biggest, and the US is really dependent on Canada and Greenland. The northwest passage is going to both relieve the traffic issues in the Panama Canal, and also compete hugely with it, and when that happens, the US influence on world trade drops off. We have to do something in the Arctic to stay relevant.

So Trump's idea isn't fundamentally bad. We need to get closer to Greenland. It's just what we need to do.

It should go without saying that we should be doing it through our NATO relationship with Greenland, and we'd get pretty much everything we want, Greenland gets everything they want, NATO gets tighter and stronger, and the West generally gets better.

But Trump hates NATO, and as (Word?) someone pointed out here already, Russia gets Ukraine, China gets Taiwan, and Trump gets Greenland, and that's where we're at.

[kyle]

I skipped the part where Kyle took over the thread with his lunatic rants, but I wanted to point something out from skimming: The Stock Market is the core defining trait of a capitalist system. no Stock Market, no capitalism. The whole idea behind capitalism is that you can slice up a company into pieces (stocks) and sell them on the same free market you sell any other goods. The company becomes the good. You can have a market economy without a stock market and without capitalism. Capitalism is only a couple hundred years old (I think the Dutch invented it in the 18th century). Market economies are the default economy, not capitalism. We can have a free market under a socialist or communist government. It's totally doable. The fact that nobody's done it yet, well, someone had to build the first airplane, right?

First of I mostly agree with what all you wrote, but this is the point I wanted to comment on.

I've been thinking about this last point too "We can have a free market under a socialist or communist government." I think before WW1, we mostly had that type of government, small, so did not do a lot for everyone as a socialist economy would, but it did not take away the opportunity from people. once we go into the great depression that's when thing started to really change. and the mindset started to change, when we stopped backing the money system with gold it changed even more. All rules laws, tax codes, create zombie jobs, and when you are paying uncle sam, you expect more, you want more you demand more, and this is where capitalism interjects into the economy, as suddenly the wealthy, want laws that they can take advantage of, laws that protect them and the buy out the members of the parties in power, They create controversy, so they can spend money back and forth to fix the things the last party did. But if you can eliminate the funding of the government, or at least reduce it then that cuts out the bribes and people actually do what's right for people, not what's right to generate a ton of wealth.

I for one don't want the medical system of Canada, it's a big mess, someone I know gashed their arm today, long cut, had to wait 4 hours just to see someone to get stitches in it. But I also really hate the healthcare system in the US today, I understand as Sinewave said it is corporation, not socialism, but there are so many messes with it. I can be very rich on paper if I want to be and get extremely affordable healthcare, so long as my income is next to nothing. again, another way of supporting the rich, This also crosses my mind, I could take loans out against my assets, and potentially that does not count as income. The system is literally made by the rich for the rich.

I think the government has enabled mega corporations, and they get laws their way. Take a look into chicken and egg factories, and what they are able to place on egg labels, they've engineered how to produce darker yolk eggs, without the eggs actually having the same nutrients of a true pasture free range, grass fed chicken, our food is a big mess, and I honestly didn't realize how messed up it was until recently. from my understanding, several products have lowered omega 3''s from what they previously had, and the lack of omega 3's is a big cause of why we are becoming obese and getting diabetes. It might not be everything, but breads are a massive mess too, unfortunately I cannot have real bread(fermented for a day), but when I've taken the risk on it, it actually keeps me full much longer then any of the stuff sold in stores.

Anyway back to a smaller government, I still think is the only way to cut our the system of enabling the rich and get a more socialist society back. it brings competition, and it brings failing back. I think companies doing the wrong things would ultimately fail and much faster since the government sometimes prop up companies doing the wrong things, so long as they get a a kickback.

[sinewav]

We can have a free market under a socialist or communist government. It's totally doable. The fact that nobody's done it yet, well, someone had to build the first airplane, right?

I think the term for this idea is Market Socialism, right? It's pretty much what China switched to after Mao's death and from the influence of Deng Xiaoping. I don't want to come across as a shill for China but they are cooking right now. There are tons of competing businesses but things that are critical to the health and success of the nation are heavily regulated. It seems like a really great system, and from my perspective, I have a better chance of owning a business that has 1000 employees than owning a business that provides regional infrastructure costing billions (which should be the government's job anyway in my opinion).

[Lucifer]

We can have a free market under a socialist or communist government. It's totally doable. The fact that nobody's done it yet, well, someone had to build the first airplane, right?

I think the term for this idea is Market Socialism, right? It's pretty much what China switched to after Mao's death and from the influence of Deng Xiaoping. I don't want to come across as a shill for China but they are cooking right now. There are tons of competing businesses but things that are critical to the health and success of the nation are heavily regulated. It seems like a really great system, and from my perspective, I have a better chance of owning a business that has 1000 employees than owning a business that provides regional infrastructure costing billions (which should be the government's job anyway in my opinion).

Yeah, when you look at where the have-nots are in China and what their lives are like, you don't want to be a shill for China. Of course, we're not too far from our have-nots being in the same shoes. The concentration of wealth in China is pretty extreme, and the government is underwriting a lot of the growth that we're seeing. Combine that with the bills coming due for their one child policy, and I wouldn't take significant market advice from China. Maybe they're doing Market Socialism, maybe not. Their government is calling a few too many shots in their economy for my tastes.

And I'm in favor of heavy regulation. Heavy regulation protects people, the land, the resources, the environment, all at the expense of creating new jobs to handle all the regulations.

I honestly don't think we're going to get a significant breakthrough in economic thought and growth until we get past this idea that everyone has to work or they're completely worthless. We already have a class of people who don't have to work, and many of them don't, and we think that's perfectly fine because they have generational wealth. Why can't we think it's fine for people who don't have generational wealth? If AI really does end up taking away that many jobs, then we'll have achieved a huge milestone in human development, but we'll be too short-sighted to appreciate it while we throw all those unemployed people under the bus.

[sinewav]

...you don't want to be a shill for China.

True, but also I think things are changing their way and lately I'm been thinking the Chinese Century could be a real thing. Several years ago I couldn't tell you the name of a single Chinese company but today I can name ten off the top of my head. I imagine the same thing happened decades ago when people started to take notice of Japanese companies.

And regarding Greenland, I don't understand why the US needs to "acquire" it when we have Alaska.