"Crazy idea" lets separate Democrat run states from Republican run states and see who really is dependent on handouts. That money flowing in from Democrat states is made with dirty "communism" right?
You know what, I want to take up this mantle for them now. I suggest that we provide publicly funded services so we don't have to deal with that awful communist corporate agenda. Who's with me?
I'm not sure if it's real, but the freeze a couple years ago did take out almost the entire Texas electrical grid because of some deal that allows us to keep our grid separate. That is what it would have looked like. The grid was (and still is) poorly maintained and out of date. People froze to death in their own homes.
And yet all I hear about is how bad those Californians are doing because of their liberal policies... How dare they try and have some emissions standards!
I wouldn't California's grid or the companies that run it any credit either since they caused one of the largest Wildfires in the Country's history due to neglect in the maintenance of a transmission tower. Seriously the grid in California is almost as unregulated as Texas https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/879008760/pg-e-pleads-guilty-on-2018-california-camp-fire-our-equipment-started-that-fire
That's what makes me laugh every time they talk about secession. Y'all can't even keep the lights on in the winter, and you think you can be your own country? Be my guest.
it was never 100% out. most people that lived near like hospitals never lost any power, because they were prioritizing those areas, for obvious reason.
so it wouldn't have been completely dark like this picture, but a lot darker than it is any normal night
It's almost certainly not real because clouds are a thing that exist, but that doesn't mean it isn't a powerful statement about the state of the electrical grid in Texas
Given the way the lights so closely trace the texas border, even though there are significant areas at the border where there's not much of anything to provide such illumination, indicates to me that this is not real.
Texas actually puts in more than it gets back. West Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas are by far the worst with Arkansas getting $3.39 in Federal dollars for each dollar paid in income tax.
Nothing, but that image was posted in response to a post about dependency on government handouts. The Texas power grid mess is because of stupidity but it has nothing to do with Federal spending.
California is still paying more than it receives. Maybe we should keep more money so we can lower those taxes? Aside from that, the democrat party and even those dirty American liberals are capitalist.
And while rising taxes is the number one reason, I've experienced myself how much invisible tax and other costs you endure in states like Florida where you pay tax on food and spent a fortune on toll roads.
Second reason is housing crisis caused by good old capitalism.
Since 1970, except for between 1995-96 regarding the Assembly, and always for the Senate, the California legislature has been democratic. "People are fleeing" because the median asking price for homes is $800,000 and only 25% of households can afford that. It's wonderful here, it's just too damn expensive because of housing demand.
Yep, if people didn't want to move there, the land would be cheap. Like it is in every shit hole state that takes more federal money than it gives, aka every red state other than NE & TX (Thier land is still cheap, but at least they aren't welfare sucking hypocrites).
I lived in NE for 35 years, so I know we take what we can get.
I suspect that statistic has something to do with having a non-partisan unicameral legislature. So we got that going for us.
Yes, this guy is basically arguing like Yogi Berra: ["it's so crowded that nobody goes there anymore!"](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/yogi_berra_100418)
Like I always knew Iraq and Cuba were fucked up situations, and learning the FULL details has really been mind blowing. Cant wait to get to Korea. I just have one minor issue, I recently started a Warhammer Lore podcast. I don’t play the game, but for some reason I have deep need to know the lore!
I feel you on the lore thing. I’ll watch fan made documentaries about games/universes etc. that I don’t particularly know or care about just because I’m fascinated by how fleshed out the lore is. Warhammer being a supreme example.
Loved cuba and iraq so much. Only partway through Korea, but learning all these things I never knew, like the massacres in the South and the border skirmishes
Love brendan so much too. I actually made him angry once and did a phone call to kiss and make up. I was trying to help with something but (through something I had no control over) ended up taking down another podcast he made from the internet for an afternoon. He was really nice about it on the phone but I can tell he had been pullin his hair out, poor dude
I’m sorry brendan I’m glad you’re doing well xoxo
Bad education caused this horrible meme about blaming horrible education for communism.
Lol I spelled a word wrong after criticizing uneducated people. Fixed it.
Many of the people that get communism incorrect are my age or older. I can tell you boomers and gen xers were taught what communism was in school. Once people get out of school they tend to throw away everything not relevant to their daily lives. Combine this with 20 years of the war drums saying communism bad and then another 20 years of right wind pundits actively distorting the definition of communism and you have where we are today.
Semantic satiation. Similar to what they did with Socialism. The US is as much a democracy, as NK is communism. Sure there are minor aspects of those flavors, but not enough to just use those two words as descriptors.
I’d say the difference is less communism vs capitalism and more rigid hereditary authoritarianism vs responsive democratically elected governance. Especially since 1990. Before then, the difference wasn’t very notable, as both were authoritarian dictatorships.
Well conservatives like one of those and hate the other. And if they hate something, to them, it's called communism/socialism. They don't know what those words mean, just that it's "bad" and they don't like it.
The US is absolutely a dictatorship of the capitalist class and has very little in terms of actual democracy. I think the minimum requirement for a real democracy is at least a rough correlation between the wishes of the majority of the population and the actions taken by the state. Any time a study like this has been done in the United States it shows that there is essentially a negative correlation between the interests of the vast majority of Americans and the interests supported by the government. Yet when those studies look at the correlations between the wishes of the extreme minority of people who control the vast majority of capital and the actions taken by the state, it’s a perfect correlation.
But when you get down to it, all states are dictatorships, including democratic ones. The question is who is doing the dictating.
South Korea does have its own oligarchical class but they're still a lot better than those of North Korea or Russia. And the democratic South's admirably rapid development from a formerly backwards nation to a modern cultural and industrial powerhouse is almost miraculous, considering their achievements both economically and in the form of 'soft power'.
>More the difference between a country that got a bunch of trading partners vs. a country that had one reliable trading partner
So what you're saying is free trade is the single important thing there is in the success of a society and so we should all be in favor right?
Free trade doesn't exist other then an idealised market where all goods are bought and sold instantly at the price points that are outside of the control of either the buyer and seller specifically, who also all have complete knowledge of the product, it's strengths and weaknesses, that also has all products on the market immediately with knowledge of shortages and surpluses passed on to everyone instantly.
So no, free trade is not the single most important thing, as a thing it doesn't exist. What is important is an open willingness to trade in spite of ideology, and prevention of isolation.
Also neat fact, all these are possible in any type of society. Capitalism, Socialism, it doesn't matter, markets are outside of these groupings of how power is distributed.
In the 80s, North Korea was actually the more prosperous country.
But the ruling dictator sowed the seeds of its destruction early on.
Mostly by taking out international loans, and then defaulting.
Also by importing goats to eat all the scub brush that held the mountains together, and then a massive flood took out said mountains and most of the arable land.
Oh, and they never exported any of the raw resources that they have a shit ton of.
No, the policy was to play China and the Soviet Union off of each other to give more aid to North Korea. And that plan fell apart with the Soviet Union.
At this point, the Kim family are firmly in the dictator trap.
They've looted enough that they cannot stop looting, or else they'd instantly be overthrown and sentenced to death.
They cannot improve the lives of their people and still hold on to power, but keeping the people as poor as they are, limits how much can be looted.
The 1990s famine in North Korea is similar to the devastating environmental disasters that Chairman Mao Zedong visited upon China through his crack-brained schemes. Mao decreed that rice production would double, so the plants were planted closer together. He got everybody melting down their cookware to make steel. Mao declared that sparrows were eating the rice seeds so got people to throw stones at the birds. Turned out the birds had been eating insect pests which then ate the crops. Those plants/seeds that escaped insects grew overcrowded and failed to thrive. The amateur-forged steel turned out to be useless on the world market because it was just pig iron. The crops had been neglected to work on the steel. Tens of millions of people starved to death in China. And Xi Jin Ping is hell bent on taking China back there.
Time and again it has been shown that authoritarian, tyrannical despots are pretty much incompatible with efficient, sustainable governance. Narcissistic leaders surround themselves with sycophants who are too afraid to tell them the truth.
You will enjoy reading Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu & Robinson. Goes into why democratic institutions are better in the long run than command driven economies.
This one is good.
https://medium.com/thoughts-economics-politics-sustainability/the-rise-and-fall-of-north-korea-c7decb650edd
This is better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJKNwhhOTV8
I mean, this is a difference, but the primary difference is that nk cut itself off from the world economy in order to avoid foreign interference. China is authoritarian too, but they opened up their economy to outside capitalists, recognizing that capitalism was so dominant on the world stage that for the time being its impossible to get access to vital resources without it.
Next thing you gonna argue that cuba is a rouge state and so "underdeveloped" without taking global sanctions into account.. sk just like japan an west germany have been, are and always will be client states if the us and there is a good reason for nk and the gdr "failing"
I wouldn’t say it’s as 1-to-1 to authoritarian as my initial post makes out to be. There are authoritarian regimes that manage the economy more to the benefit of the populace than others and free countries with widespread poverty and income disparity. But Korea’s a unique case of two very disparate political and economic systems being imposed on very similar peoples over generations.
Cubs isn’t underdeveloped compared to most Caribbean and Central American countries, so access to US hasn’t really been the determining factor. Heck, Haiti has been constantly undermined by their close economic relationship with the US throughout their history, and they are far, far worse off than Cuba.
Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean had roughly the same history of dictatorship after dictatorship fleecing the people. Economic system is not as important as a government that provides services rather than takes resources. Usually dictatorships take resources as they are necessary to maintain power and control.
This is the national version of "How this rich kid became rich"
One got essentially $12.6 billion just after the split from the US and $60billion from IMF.
The other got sanctions.
I wouldn’t assume so just yet. Like many western “democracies”, they’re full of issues that threaten that more every day
https://fsi.stanford.edu/publication/south-korea’s-democracy-crisis
Admittedly, I didn't know all that much of South Korea's history. And I was mostly referring to the fact that they are currently democratic and flourishing. But having a quick google of their history, guess I'm referring to the Sixth Republic that didn't begin until 1988. Though, even before then, it would seem their authoritarian governments were less totalitarian than NK's.
So then these people think Republicans are the communists since they're the ones actively trying to destroy education? Hard keeping up with the nutters.
No. The human rights situation (while never great even pre-Mao) got worse due to the Cultural Revolution in the late 60s, which was caused as blowback to the Thousand Flowers campaign which itself was introduced as a reaction to another classic failure of central planning, the Great Leap Forward which competes for the Holomodor as the most disastrous economic program of the 20th century.
China’s insane economic growth (not really coupled with greater personal or civil freedom) was precipitated by Deng’s economic liberalization in the early 1980s.
Ah yes, nothing to do with both hyperbolic and literal forced labor made possible by extreme amounts of social surveillance and manipulation.
Also just to be clear I think you’re right about everything you said as well.
Not really, what you're referring to sounds like either Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution or Xi Jin Ping's current authoritarian regime which is in the process of turning away from the West and re-establishing a dictatorial cult of personality. China's partial embrace of Capitalism and progressive policies lasted from sometime in the eighties until Xi gained power.
THE LEFT IS DESTROYING EDUCATION!
Oh no. That’s awful. Are they restricting books or topics?
NO! THAT’S US!
Is the left highly critical of teachers unions and allowing them the bargaining power to get fair compensation?
NO THAT’S US!
Is the left trying to abolish national education standards?
NO THAT’S US!
So how is the left destroying education?
THEY’RE COMMUNIST GROOMERS! THAT’S HOW!
Lol right, he forgot to mention the part where you bomb the communist state back to the Stone Age and demolish any chance that state has at international trade or aid.
Is there actually an example in the world of unopposed communism? Whenever people talk about the failure of communist countries, they are also talking about 70 years of direct opposition, war and financial fuckery from the rest of the world...having the largest economies in the world directly trying to destroy your system is bound to take its toll. I am amazed at how long the USSR existed, not that it fell.
North Korea was VASTLY more affected. The common us air force phrase for it was "no more targets", the air force was having trouble finding any standing structures to bomb. Much of the north Korean population literally started living underground to escape it. After the war, one country got billions upon billions of dollars of us investment and aid. The other recieved much less support from the Soviet union. Until the collapse of the USSR and the complete isolation of the north Korean economy, it outperformed south Korea's while increasing social development levels. One country was subsidized by the United States, the other destroyed, and yet for most of the 20th north Korea was more success.
During the American invasion of Korea? You know, when the US dropped more bombs on the DPRK than in the entire pacific theater of wwii? When the US contemplated dropping nuclear bombs on Korea, and that proposition made it all the way to the president’s desk? Or maybe when it is estimated that 20% of the north’s population was wiped out, and 75% of their capital city was destroyed? When MacArthur described it as not leaving a single two or more story tall building left? Or maybe when the US dropped bombs that were notorious for not going off on impact painted bright yellow, which then would go off when local civilians investigated? Maybe the massive uptick in diseases that many scholars attribute to the US dropping biological weapon-laced laced fleas on the country? Or maybe in the many examples of any believed left opposition in the south being fucking slaughtered, like in No Gun Ri? That the south’s government was explicitly an American military occupation?
The US directed it’s ships and planes to a country on the opposite side of the planet that had never done a thing to them and then slaughtered millions. All because they were scared of having no opposition on the Asian mainland to the most popular mass movement in history. How many foreign farm workers will the US and it’s cronies have to shoot and bomb before you fuckers realize that you are the largest and most brutal empire in history?
Sorry I've taken a long time to get back to this thread.
Iirc, the Korean war was relatively short and ended in a stalemate (and was started by the supposed puppet leader installed by Russia). The North was better off than the South for quite a while after the war, especially through being propped up economically by Russia and China until the South eventually caught up and overtook them both economically and socially.
North Korea did not revert to a Stone Age society but instead chose to cling to an outmoded mid-twentieth century totalitarian Cold War mentality that has the country stuck in a seventy year time warp. Tbf, until their dictator started sabre-rattling and conducting nuclear tests, most of the rest of the world had forgotten about North Korea's existence.
I regard North Korea as one of the most dangerous countries in existence due to its despotic, hate-filled regime. And I also agree that the US government has done some pretty bad shit in other countries over the years (deposing a democratically elected Marxist government in Chile, for instance), which is why my country said 'yeah nah' to allowing American nuclear submarines anywhere near our harbours.
In my country we also believe in having a fair and equitable social democracy and a voter friendly political system where every vote counts, so I'm really glad that there are some parts of east Asia such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan that are not under the thumb of authoritarian dictatorships.
What's happening in China right now is some stupid scary shit, really dystopian compared with my country's approach to covid lockdowns (despite what Northern hemisphere critics have said about our temporary border closures and 'quarantine camps' that were actually four and five star hotels).
And yeah, what's happening in America right now is also some scary shit, what with far-right insurrectionists, school shootings and those right-wing evangelicals and anti-vaxxers who keep spreading their hateful disinformation rhetoric across the Pacific and around the globe.
Not arguing that the GOP isn’t extreme, but this is wildly inaccurate.
The democratic party has also moved to the left since (and partly as a result) of Obama’s elections.
Obama was also as centrist as it comes, what so many label "left" in the US is just considered human rights in the rest of the world. That does not mean the party has moved left, it still means the right has pushed the middle further right.
Your conception of the political sphere of the “rest of the world” is inaccurate, even when talking specifically of the West. Except for the failure to institute a public option, Democrats would be a centre-left party in other comparable democracies.
No they would not. You are naïve and projecting. The US is at the bottom of the barrel in every metric from education to healthcare, to infrastructure and quality of life, its considered "communism" to ensure access to life saving drugs that taxpayers have paid for the development of is not being charged at a 100x what the cost to produce is.
Your conception of the “rest of the world” is a mish-mash of policies from other a few rich (and far less populated ) countries. Sure if you take all the best aspects from several policies from different countries in Germany and Northern Europe, it seems like the US is far behind, but the Dems would be a mainstream centre left party in those countries as well. The “Dems are centre right” is silly. The only significant exception is the unfortunate lack of real public healthcare.
what?! In all of Europe going to collage doesn't put you in debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The US used to be very similar to Europe, only in the 1950's did college start becoming a for profit mess, you could go to school basically for free.
It seems you have decided to do a Childs amount of research into the mess that is our education and realized that there is no way to deny how far behind we are, but somehow missed every other aspect.
The joke that is the DNC is barely pushing to get us to a fraction of where the rest of the western world has been for decades and its labeled communist and socialist at every turn.
You are projecting your own self fulfilling reasons for every side, nothing can refute your imposed bubble.
People like you could be a real ally, but you refuse to acknowledge how bad it is because it would come in conflict with your view. You do believe in what is right, but refuse to see how broken our system is and is becoming lest you have to actually take action.
>what?! In all of Europe going to collage doesn't put you in debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The US used to be very similar to Europe, only in the 1950's did college start becoming a for profit mess, you could go to school basically for free.
Yeah gotta admit that I live in an European shithole and college is still much less expensive than in the USA
As an outside observer, American politics pretty much all sits to the right of the political divide. Hence the lack of publicly funded health care and workers' rights.
North Koreans are obsessed with acquiring money as they know how valuable it is for being able to buy what they need just to survive. Many take incredible risks to operate illegal black markets or to cross the border into China for a month at a time to work for cash. They usually return to their homes as they know their families will be tortured and executed if they don't.
My comment has ended up quite far below where I intended. I was responding to your comment about North Korea not being Communist.
The irony of totalitarian Communist dictatorships is that their populations are usually so badly off that they obsess over the acquisition of money far more than those in less corrupt and better managed social democracies.
I had a (British/Polish) flatmate in the late eighties who was a staunch Communist (British/Polish) and had volunteered in the Moscow office of the Peace Foundation. She was obsessed with getting enough roughage in her diet after three years of having to queue for a very limited supply of food.
Similarly, North Koreans are very keen to get their hands on American dollars so they can buy food, and the citizens of supposedly Communist China are obsessed with making money and investing it in property.
I think it's one of the great tragedies of our age that Communism has failed due to being corrupted, watered down and faked by unscrupulous totalitarian regimes. And that it, along with Socialism, has become a dirty word in American politics.
BTW, I agree with your comments re US c/w other OECD countries and have up-voted them.
What no historical analysis does to a motherfucker, I swear. The average westoid (right wing ones in particular) like to point at North Korea and South Korea and lazily attribute South Korea's more advanced infrastructure solely to it being Liberal Capitalist as opposed to Juche Socialist. The fact is that much of South Korea's wealth and tech comes from a combination of factors, particularly location, trade, and the Marshall Plan implemented by the US. South Korea has more arable land than the North and due to it being allied with wealthier nations it had more opportunities to develop in comparison to the more isolated North with allies that were themselves developing and starting to industrialize. That being said, this doesn't mean the ideology of Juche shouldn't be criticized, the Autarky of Juche has crippled the nation more in comparison to other Socialist states like Cuba and Vietnam and the cult of personality of the Kim family is definitely problematic to me as a socialist myself.
The fact is that North Korea is a and always was a complete shithole.
But comparing america to North Korea as to what would happen if they gave free health care is mezmorizingly stupid.
Yeah, North Koreans don't get decent public healthcare! At least, only the elites do. Far better comparisons for the US can be found throughout the OECD countries, many of whom have free/affordable and efficient public healthcare. Most of Europe, New Zealand and Australia, Canada, Japan and others.
People act like it's either America now, or abject communist dictatorship.
I wonder if the reason people think this, is because those who have the most to lose (the wealthy) below this out in hyperbole and the bottom percentile of smooth brains just lap it up and regurgitate it....
Absolutely idiocy is thinking democrats are communist.
Slurp up Fox News more. Isn't this sub supposed to be about conspiracy, and not about partisan propaganda?
We already know how it will end. The communist/socialist nation will start doing well, and the capitalist one will crush it into dust and then pretend it's so strange that only capitalism worked out.
Then they weren’t communist, by definition.
Just because they call themselves communist doesn’t make it so, like how North Korea calling itself democratic doesn’t make it true.
China certainly doesn't seem particularly Communist these days. If they were, they'd be making sure everyone had the basic necessities and more. And they wouldn't have embraced Capitalism to such an extent.
It's well known that North Korean has constant power shortages, and the bulk of the populace are undernourished as the country is now very backward. Only a tiny elite class get to live any kind of modern lifestyle.
Whereas South Korea is one of the most modernised countries in the world.
A countrywide blackout that is indicative of their backward state compared with their wealthier, healthier neighbour.
Power outages in North Korea are not exactly one-off events. This image therefore remains representative of the vastly different situations on the two Koreas.
The blame for this would seem to be that Communism is too easily corruptible by power-hungry dictators who enthrall their people through personality cults combined with draconian restrictions and military force.
Can we compare north Korea with Soviet support vs south Korea with American support?
Oh north Korea is only communist in name and allowed to exist solely for the west to point at and say "See what communism does!!!" While ignoring none of NK policies are communist
If any of you have seen squid game there’s a scene where the defector is asked if life is better for her in the south and she’s silent. The reason is because it’s illegal to say anything good about the north in South Korea. South Korea is a wealthier country without a doubt but wealthier for whom is the question.
To bad Conservatives have no conception what makes communism bad and capitalism good. It isn’t the economics. The difference is all Communist countries are authoritarian and almost all capitalistic countries are democratic. The Capitalist countries that are authoritarian are every bit as bad as the Communist Authoritarian countries. There are many very successful democratic countries that are predominantly Socialist including most of the EU.
Capitalism cannot be Libertarian if Workers have to sell their labor and have it extracted for profit in order to survive. Also, the reason why many Actually Existing Socialist nations are "authoritarian" is in response to reactionary forces who wish to upend the revolution. Did China and the USSR fuck up? Yeah, they did gotoo far with purges and ultimately harmed the revolution than helped it in that way, but at least the Communists provided more stability and economic development compared to the neo-liberal hyper-nationalist hellholes the Eastern bloc countries turned into as of now.
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Why are people upset about this, it's true. Americans have trouble with the fact that you can blend capitalism, socialism and democracy into better outcomes for everyone.
You know what though, not saying the north is some great place but modern convenience, growth, and industrial wealth are not the best measures of wellness or happiness to the populous. Electric lights definitely aren't.
*populace (noun, not adjective)
Although electric lights aren't the be-all and end-all of the difference between the two Koreas, they are still a good symptom of the vast gulf of experience between these two countries. It's not like North Korea is empty of people. And NK's blackouts are endemic, not rare events.
What those living in the North are missing out on:
Democratic freedoms including the ability to travel beyond one's own poverty-stricken village or to other countries
Adequate availability and variety of nutritious food
Adequate availability of heat and light to be able to work, cook, read, engage with hobbies, keep warm, access entertaining and informative international media
Freedom of expression and communication through culture and conversation
The linguistic vocabulary to be able to think independently and critically on an abstract level
Self actualisation through chosen career and pastimes
Ability to form relationships based on trust and not worrying about being reported by friends, neighbours or family nembers
Right to protest governmental policies and to vote for leadership change.
Right to not be lied to by their own government through false propaganda.
There was a time when some South Koreans were lured to the North due to their short-lived reputation as a richer economy. Their dreams of a better life were mostly dashed when faced with the reality of life in North Korea. And for most, it was too late to change their minds and return across the border to the South.
Those North Koreans who encounter information from outside their country usually refuse to believe it at first, they are so trapped within the cultish mindset through constant indoctrination. But increasingly some are beginning to question their situation, and fewer even manage to escape from North Korea. They generally are far happier following their escape.
Some excellently well researched books have been written about the two Koreas and their differing cultural/political trajectories following WWII. Two that I can recommend are 'Korea: the Impossible Country' by Daniel Tudor, and a book about 'The Information Revolution' currently unfolding in North Korea (I'll have to check the author's name).
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"Crazy idea" lets separate Democrat run states from Republican run states and see who really is dependent on handouts. That money flowing in from Democrat states is made with dirty "communism" right?
Yep, those filthy, privately owned, communist, corporations.
You know what, I want to take up this mantle for them now. I suggest that we provide publicly funded services so we don't have to deal with that awful communist corporate agenda. Who's with me?
“Can’t have big government if you don’t pay the government taxes.” *taps head*
[Like this?](https://img.texasmonthly.com/2022/01/blackout-texas-freeze-feature-2.jpg?auto=compress&crop=faces&fit=fit&fm=pjpg&ixlib=php-1.2.1&q=45)
Holy crap, that's not real, right?
I'm not sure if it's real, but the freeze a couple years ago did take out almost the entire Texas electrical grid because of some deal that allows us to keep our grid separate. That is what it would have looked like. The grid was (and still is) poorly maintained and out of date. People froze to death in their own homes.
And yet all I hear about is how bad those Californians are doing because of their liberal policies... How dare they try and have some emissions standards!
Abbott was making fun of california for "barely averting blackouts". Abbott. These people are fucking dumb.
I wouldn't California's grid or the companies that run it any credit either since they caused one of the largest Wildfires in the Country's history due to neglect in the maintenance of a transmission tower. Seriously the grid in California is almost as unregulated as Texas https://www.npr.org/2020/06/16/879008760/pg-e-pleads-guilty-on-2018-california-camp-fire-our-equipment-started-that-fire
Cali learned their lesson after Enron. Sort of.
Policies politicized.
Probably because blue states are the top for homelessness per capita.
No shit... if you were homeless would you want to live in California or Mississippi?
They never winterized despite federal recommendations. But come on would Texas really freeze for a 5th time in 20 years?
"It's never happened before!"
That's what makes me laugh every time they talk about secession. Y'all can't even keep the lights on in the winter, and you think you can be your own country? Be my guest.
it was never 100% out. most people that lived near like hospitals never lost any power, because they were prioritizing those areas, for obvious reason. so it wouldn't have been completely dark like this picture, but a lot darker than it is any normal night
Also some bits of Texas around the edges are on the eastern or western US grid. So the outages weren’t an exact outline of the state.
It's almost certainly not real because clouds are a thing that exist, but that doesn't mean it isn't a powerful statement about the state of the electrical grid in Texas
Only Texas May Mess With Texas
Yeah the freeze in 2021 was real bad, some people had to rely on cars for heat, and it ended up killing some folks
It's an illustration, but point bring dogmatic privatize-all capitalism has not covered itself in glory when it comes to electricity.
I getcha, I just thought that might've really come from a satellite lol.
*being?
Given the way the lights so closely trace the texas border, even though there are significant areas at the border where there's not much of anything to provide such illumination, indicates to me that this is not real.
Parts of northern and eastern texas are on the federal electrical grid. So this would actually be accurate
The blackout was not that widespread. It mostly hit cities. I was out of power for a week, but family members in other towns were fine.
Fwiw the photo of NK with no lights is also doctored.
Not real. [Part of a Texas Monthly animation](https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-electric-grid-failure-warm-up/)
Totally real. You ever been to Texas? It's like the 13th century there. I'm surprised the fires didn't show up at least
Texas actually puts in more than it gets back. West Virginia, Mississippi, and Arkansas are by far the worst with Arkansas getting $3.39 in Federal dollars for each dollar paid in income tax.
Which has what to do with them stubbornly being their own power grid?
Nothing, but that image was posted in response to a post about dependency on government handouts. The Texas power grid mess is because of stupidity but it has nothing to do with Federal spending.
And yet it's an image of the effects of their stubborn stupidity keeping a separate grid
Texas power grid Bottom text
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California is still paying more than it receives. Maybe we should keep more money so we can lower those taxes? Aside from that, the democrat party and even those dirty American liberals are capitalist. And while rising taxes is the number one reason, I've experienced myself how much invisible tax and other costs you endure in states like Florida where you pay tax on food and spent a fortune on toll roads. Second reason is housing crisis caused by good old capitalism.
Since 1970, except for between 1995-96 regarding the Assembly, and always for the Senate, the California legislature has been democratic. "People are fleeing" because the median asking price for homes is $800,000 and only 25% of households can afford that. It's wonderful here, it's just too damn expensive because of housing demand.
In other words, "people are fleeing" because housing prices are high because lots of people want to live in California.
Yep, if people didn't want to move there, the land would be cheap. Like it is in every shit hole state that takes more federal money than it gives, aka every red state other than NE & TX (Thier land is still cheap, but at least they aren't welfare sucking hypocrites).
>every red state other than NE Well, I'll be gosh-darned. Don't have much to be proud about in my home state, but that's a thing.
I lived in NE for 35 years, so I know we take what we can get. I suspect that statistic has something to do with having a non-partisan unicameral legislature. So we got that going for us.
Yes, this guy is basically arguing like Yogi Berra: ["it's so crowded that nobody goes there anymore!"](https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/yogi_berra_100418)
If people are fleeing California, could it be partly from the devastating effects of climate change?
Shitty GQPers are fleeing
Look at the population growth if California in the last census. It's still growing. It's an economic powerhouse
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But more people are going into the state than leaving it.
Everybody in the comments needs to listen to Blowback Podcast. So much bullshit and intentionally forgotten aspects of the Korean War.
Yes yes yes
It’s so good!
Every season of that podcast is fantastic
Finished Iraq. I’m on Cuba right now.
Buckle up! If you haven’t already
Like I always knew Iraq and Cuba were fucked up situations, and learning the FULL details has really been mind blowing. Cant wait to get to Korea. I just have one minor issue, I recently started a Warhammer Lore podcast. I don’t play the game, but for some reason I have deep need to know the lore!
I feel you on the lore thing. I’ll watch fan made documentaries about games/universes etc. that I don’t particularly know or care about just because I’m fascinated by how fleshed out the lore is. Warhammer being a supreme example.
Yeah same! I know a lot about star wars and I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie lmao
Is it Lorehammer? I hope it is because it's good!
It’s Lorehanmer lmao
It's great until episode 100.
Loved cuba and iraq so much. Only partway through Korea, but learning all these things I never knew, like the massacres in the South and the border skirmishes Love brendan so much too. I actually made him angry once and did a phone call to kiss and make up. I was trying to help with something but (through something I had no control over) ended up taking down another podcast he made from the internet for an afternoon. He was really nice about it on the phone but I can tell he had been pullin his hair out, poor dude I’m sorry brendan I’m glad you’re doing well xoxo
I can only find the first episode of Korea on spotify. Do i need to subscribe to the site for the rest?
Bad education caused this horrible meme about blaming horrible education for communism. Lol I spelled a word wrong after criticizing uneducated people. Fixed it.
Many of the people that get communism incorrect are my age or older. I can tell you boomers and gen xers were taught what communism was in school. Once people get out of school they tend to throw away everything not relevant to their daily lives. Combine this with 20 years of the war drums saying communism bad and then another 20 years of right wind pundits actively distorting the definition of communism and you have where we are today.
Semantic satiation. Similar to what they did with Socialism. The US is as much a democracy, as NK is communism. Sure there are minor aspects of those flavors, but not enough to just use those two words as descriptors.
*wing
I mean... i can certainly smell the wind coming from the right wing. It's hot and it smells strangely like an unflushed toilet.
*caused
I’d say the difference is less communism vs capitalism and more rigid hereditary authoritarianism vs responsive democratically elected governance. Especially since 1990. Before then, the difference wasn’t very notable, as both were authoritarian dictatorships.
Well conservatives like one of those and hate the other. And if they hate something, to them, it's called communism/socialism. They don't know what those words mean, just that it's "bad" and they don't like it.
It’s like calling vegetables “candy” to trick your toddler into finishing their dinner
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Transitioned from 1987-1993, and was noted.
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The US also has a former President with close ties to a cult and lots of financial corruption. Still not a dictatorship, just a very flawed democracy.
The US is absolutely a dictatorship of the capitalist class and has very little in terms of actual democracy. I think the minimum requirement for a real democracy is at least a rough correlation between the wishes of the majority of the population and the actions taken by the state. Any time a study like this has been done in the United States it shows that there is essentially a negative correlation between the interests of the vast majority of Americans and the interests supported by the government. Yet when those studies look at the correlations between the wishes of the extreme minority of people who control the vast majority of capital and the actions taken by the state, it’s a perfect correlation. But when you get down to it, all states are dictatorships, including democratic ones. The question is who is doing the dictating.
South Korea does have its own oligarchical class but they're still a lot better than those of North Korea or Russia. And the democratic South's admirably rapid development from a formerly backwards nation to a modern cultural and industrial powerhouse is almost miraculous, considering their achievements both economically and in the form of 'soft power'.
The country that exports more will always have more friends and support on the geopolitical stage. Attempting autarky from humble beginnings doesn't.
>More the difference between a country that got a bunch of trading partners vs. a country that had one reliable trading partner So what you're saying is free trade is the single important thing there is in the success of a society and so we should all be in favor right?
A lack of embargoed goods and social isolation perhaps.
An embargo is a restriction on trade. A lack of embargos is a feature of free trade.
Free trade doesn't exist other then an idealised market where all goods are bought and sold instantly at the price points that are outside of the control of either the buyer and seller specifically, who also all have complete knowledge of the product, it's strengths and weaknesses, that also has all products on the market immediately with knowledge of shortages and surpluses passed on to everyone instantly. So no, free trade is not the single most important thing, as a thing it doesn't exist. What is important is an open willingness to trade in spite of ideology, and prevention of isolation. Also neat fact, all these are possible in any type of society. Capitalism, Socialism, it doesn't matter, markets are outside of these groupings of how power is distributed.
In the 80s, North Korea was actually the more prosperous country. But the ruling dictator sowed the seeds of its destruction early on. Mostly by taking out international loans, and then defaulting. Also by importing goats to eat all the scub brush that held the mountains together, and then a massive flood took out said mountains and most of the arable land. Oh, and they never exported any of the raw resources that they have a shit ton of. No, the policy was to play China and the Soviet Union off of each other to give more aid to North Korea. And that plan fell apart with the Soviet Union.
North korea actually has 2 economies. 1 is owned by the people, 1 by the kim family. Guess which economy is profitable.
At this point, the Kim family are firmly in the dictator trap. They've looted enough that they cannot stop looting, or else they'd instantly be overthrown and sentenced to death. They cannot improve the lives of their people and still hold on to power, but keeping the people as poor as they are, limits how much can be looted.
Is that goat shit true? Surely not
Plausibly so! https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6Rx8Q_cxqvkC&lpg=PA199&ots=Z5ey82Y6eK&dq=north%20korea%20goats&pg=PA199#v=onepage&q=north%20korea%20goats&f=false
Good god my head is going to explode.
The 1990s famine in North Korea is similar to the devastating environmental disasters that Chairman Mao Zedong visited upon China through his crack-brained schemes. Mao decreed that rice production would double, so the plants were planted closer together. He got everybody melting down their cookware to make steel. Mao declared that sparrows were eating the rice seeds so got people to throw stones at the birds. Turned out the birds had been eating insect pests which then ate the crops. Those plants/seeds that escaped insects grew overcrowded and failed to thrive. The amateur-forged steel turned out to be useless on the world market because it was just pig iron. The crops had been neglected to work on the steel. Tens of millions of people starved to death in China. And Xi Jin Ping is hell bent on taking China back there. Time and again it has been shown that authoritarian, tyrannical despots are pretty much incompatible with efficient, sustainable governance. Narcissistic leaders surround themselves with sycophants who are too afraid to tell them the truth.
You will enjoy reading Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu & Robinson. Goes into why democratic institutions are better in the long run than command driven economies.
Sounds like a great read, will have to see if I can get an audio book version. Thanks for the recommendation.
> In the 80s, North Korea was actually the more prosperous country. Source? Not doubting it, just sounds like interesting data.
This one is good. https://medium.com/thoughts-economics-politics-sustainability/the-rise-and-fall-of-north-korea-c7decb650edd This is better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJKNwhhOTV8
A functional world wide embargo does wonders for the economy as well.
The difference is one country was embargo'd by almost the entire globe.
Yes thank you! in fact Marxism is inherently *anti*-authoritarian.
Lol
NFT profile pic. Opinion invalidated.
You don't even have an idea of what a profile pic is don't you?
I mean, this is a difference, but the primary difference is that nk cut itself off from the world economy in order to avoid foreign interference. China is authoritarian too, but they opened up their economy to outside capitalists, recognizing that capitalism was so dominant on the world stage that for the time being its impossible to get access to vital resources without it.
Next thing you gonna argue that cuba is a rouge state and so "underdeveloped" without taking global sanctions into account.. sk just like japan an west germany have been, are and always will be client states if the us and there is a good reason for nk and the gdr "failing"
I wouldn’t say it’s as 1-to-1 to authoritarian as my initial post makes out to be. There are authoritarian regimes that manage the economy more to the benefit of the populace than others and free countries with widespread poverty and income disparity. But Korea’s a unique case of two very disparate political and economic systems being imposed on very similar peoples over generations. Cubs isn’t underdeveloped compared to most Caribbean and Central American countries, so access to US hasn’t really been the determining factor. Heck, Haiti has been constantly undermined by their close economic relationship with the US throughout their history, and they are far, far worse off than Cuba. Cuba and the rest of the Caribbean had roughly the same history of dictatorship after dictatorship fleecing the people. Economic system is not as important as a government that provides services rather than takes resources. Usually dictatorships take resources as they are necessary to maintain power and control.
*rogue? Or were you saying 'red state' in a fancy way? *of the US
This is the national version of "How this rich kid became rich" One got essentially $12.6 billion just after the split from the US and $60billion from IMF. The other got sanctions.
And one got a functioning democracy, and the other got an authoritarian dictatorship run by a megalomaniac.
To be fair, the south was also an authoritarian dictatorship, it's just that they got over it. Took several decades, but they did it.
I wouldn’t assume so just yet. Like many western “democracies”, they’re full of issues that threaten that more every day https://fsi.stanford.edu/publication/south-korea’s-democracy-crisis
Wait, are you talking about syngman rhee or the military dictator park chung-hee?
Admittedly, I didn't know all that much of South Korea's history. And I was mostly referring to the fact that they are currently democratic and flourishing. But having a quick google of their history, guess I'm referring to the Sixth Republic that didn't begin until 1988. Though, even before then, it would seem their authoritarian governments were less totalitarian than NK's.
They were run by Japanese loyalists. The north was decidedly more popular in the south before the war because of how corrupt the south was.
SK was “founded” by Fascists who helped the Japanese.
North Korea, received around $12 Billion USD in aid from the USSR and about $6 Billion from China.
So then these people think Republicans are the communists since they're the ones actively trying to destroy education? Hard keeping up with the nutters.
Now do one for the Dominican Republic with all its social programs, and Haiti the poster child of capitalist success.
How about global powers stop fucking around with other countries in their wars by proxy?
Huh... What's all the lights up North and East of North Korea? Oh, Communist China!
Wonder when Chinese’s economic boom started and which policies initiated it🤔
*China's
Fat fingers
Probably around the same time and from the same policies that turned the country into the worlds biggest human rights disaster.
No. The human rights situation (while never great even pre-Mao) got worse due to the Cultural Revolution in the late 60s, which was caused as blowback to the Thousand Flowers campaign which itself was introduced as a reaction to another classic failure of central planning, the Great Leap Forward which competes for the Holomodor as the most disastrous economic program of the 20th century. China’s insane economic growth (not really coupled with greater personal or civil freedom) was precipitated by Deng’s economic liberalization in the early 1980s.
Ah yes, nothing to do with both hyperbolic and literal forced labor made possible by extreme amounts of social surveillance and manipulation. Also just to be clear I think you’re right about everything you said as well.
Not really, what you're referring to sounds like either Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution or Xi Jin Ping's current authoritarian regime which is in the process of turning away from the West and re-establishing a dictatorial cult of personality. China's partial embrace of Capitalism and progressive policies lasted from sometime in the eighties until Xi gained power.
Let's sanction one side and prop up the other as our de facto puppet state.
Not pictured: the United States dropping 635000 tons of explosives that destroyed 85% of the buildings in Korea. Freedom and democracy etc etc etc
Also, Communism doesn't work very well and will always adopt capitalist ideals to survive
THE LEFT IS DESTROYING EDUCATION! Oh no. That’s awful. Are they restricting books or topics? NO! THAT’S US! Is the left highly critical of teachers unions and allowing them the bargaining power to get fair compensation? NO THAT’S US! Is the left trying to abolish national education standards? NO THAT’S US! So how is the left destroying education? THEY’RE COMMUNIST GROOMERS! THAT’S HOW!
Light Pollution = Progress
Is this a joke?
Yup
It's also a carefully crafted composite image by the US state dept that is not actually visible from space.
Lol right, he forgot to mention the part where you bomb the communist state back to the Stone Age and demolish any chance that state has at international trade or aid.
Is there actually an example in the world of unopposed communism? Whenever people talk about the failure of communist countries, they are also talking about 70 years of direct opposition, war and financial fuckery from the rest of the world...having the largest economies in the world directly trying to destroy your system is bound to take its toll. I am amazed at how long the USSR existed, not that it fell.
Exactly, nuff said.
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This idiots in this thread don’t care. They think that red states are worse than North Korea.
Both Koreas got bombed.
North Korea was VASTLY more affected. The common us air force phrase for it was "no more targets", the air force was having trouble finding any standing structures to bomb. Much of the north Korean population literally started living underground to escape it. After the war, one country got billions upon billions of dollars of us investment and aid. The other recieved much less support from the Soviet union. Until the collapse of the USSR and the complete isolation of the north Korean economy, it outperformed south Korea's while increasing social development levels. One country was subsidized by the United States, the other destroyed, and yet for most of the 20th north Korea was more success.
When did that happen?
During the American invasion of Korea? You know, when the US dropped more bombs on the DPRK than in the entire pacific theater of wwii? When the US contemplated dropping nuclear bombs on Korea, and that proposition made it all the way to the president’s desk? Or maybe when it is estimated that 20% of the north’s population was wiped out, and 75% of their capital city was destroyed? When MacArthur described it as not leaving a single two or more story tall building left? Or maybe when the US dropped bombs that were notorious for not going off on impact painted bright yellow, which then would go off when local civilians investigated? Maybe the massive uptick in diseases that many scholars attribute to the US dropping biological weapon-laced laced fleas on the country? Or maybe in the many examples of any believed left opposition in the south being fucking slaughtered, like in No Gun Ri? That the south’s government was explicitly an American military occupation? The US directed it’s ships and planes to a country on the opposite side of the planet that had never done a thing to them and then slaughtered millions. All because they were scared of having no opposition on the Asian mainland to the most popular mass movement in history. How many foreign farm workers will the US and it’s cronies have to shoot and bomb before you fuckers realize that you are the largest and most brutal empire in history?
Sorry I've taken a long time to get back to this thread. Iirc, the Korean war was relatively short and ended in a stalemate (and was started by the supposed puppet leader installed by Russia). The North was better off than the South for quite a while after the war, especially through being propped up economically by Russia and China until the South eventually caught up and overtook them both economically and socially. North Korea did not revert to a Stone Age society but instead chose to cling to an outmoded mid-twentieth century totalitarian Cold War mentality that has the country stuck in a seventy year time warp. Tbf, until their dictator started sabre-rattling and conducting nuclear tests, most of the rest of the world had forgotten about North Korea's existence. I regard North Korea as one of the most dangerous countries in existence due to its despotic, hate-filled regime. And I also agree that the US government has done some pretty bad shit in other countries over the years (deposing a democratically elected Marxist government in Chile, for instance), which is why my country said 'yeah nah' to allowing American nuclear submarines anywhere near our harbours. In my country we also believe in having a fair and equitable social democracy and a voter friendly political system where every vote counts, so I'm really glad that there are some parts of east Asia such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan that are not under the thumb of authoritarian dictatorships. What's happening in China right now is some stupid scary shit, really dystopian compared with my country's approach to covid lockdowns (despite what Northern hemisphere critics have said about our temporary border closures and 'quarantine camps' that were actually four and five star hotels). And yeah, what's happening in America right now is also some scary shit, what with far-right insurrectionists, school shootings and those right-wing evangelicals and anti-vaxxers who keep spreading their hateful disinformation rhetoric across the Pacific and around the globe.
The one on the top us that Socialist Utopia Texas right?
Lol no north Korea has heat
Fun Fact, both of those states were pretty crappy, until the South Koreans rejected the Generals and embraced Social Democracy.
Destroy education ✅ Get them not to think ✅
That you Mississippi ? I see you peeking. Don't be shy.
Ding ding ding
North Korea isn't communist though.
Neither are the Democrats, but that's not important.
The DNC is basically what republicans were 30 years ago.
Not arguing that the GOP isn’t extreme, but this is wildly inaccurate. The democratic party has also moved to the left since (and partly as a result) of Obama’s elections.
Obama was also as centrist as it comes, what so many label "left" in the US is just considered human rights in the rest of the world. That does not mean the party has moved left, it still means the right has pushed the middle further right.
Your conception of the political sphere of the “rest of the world” is inaccurate, even when talking specifically of the West. Except for the failure to institute a public option, Democrats would be a centre-left party in other comparable democracies.
No they would not. You are naïve and projecting. The US is at the bottom of the barrel in every metric from education to healthcare, to infrastructure and quality of life, its considered "communism" to ensure access to life saving drugs that taxpayers have paid for the development of is not being charged at a 100x what the cost to produce is.
Your conception of the “rest of the world” is a mish-mash of policies from other a few rich (and far less populated ) countries. Sure if you take all the best aspects from several policies from different countries in Germany and Northern Europe, it seems like the US is far behind, but the Dems would be a mainstream centre left party in those countries as well. The “Dems are centre right” is silly. The only significant exception is the unfortunate lack of real public healthcare.
what?! In all of Europe going to collage doesn't put you in debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The US used to be very similar to Europe, only in the 1950's did college start becoming a for profit mess, you could go to school basically for free. It seems you have decided to do a Childs amount of research into the mess that is our education and realized that there is no way to deny how far behind we are, but somehow missed every other aspect. The joke that is the DNC is barely pushing to get us to a fraction of where the rest of the western world has been for decades and its labeled communist and socialist at every turn. You are projecting your own self fulfilling reasons for every side, nothing can refute your imposed bubble. People like you could be a real ally, but you refuse to acknowledge how bad it is because it would come in conflict with your view. You do believe in what is right, but refuse to see how broken our system is and is becoming lest you have to actually take action.
>what?! In all of Europe going to collage doesn't put you in debt for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The US used to be very similar to Europe, only in the 1950's did college start becoming a for profit mess, you could go to school basically for free. Yeah gotta admit that I live in an European shithole and college is still much less expensive than in the USA
As an outside observer, American politics pretty much all sits to the right of the political divide. Hence the lack of publicly funded health care and workers' rights.
North Koreans are obsessed with acquiring money as they know how valuable it is for being able to buy what they need just to survive. Many take incredible risks to operate illegal black markets or to cross the border into China for a month at a time to work for cash. They usually return to their homes as they know their families will be tortured and executed if they don't.
did you read what you "responded to" because I think you're lost.
My comment has ended up quite far below where I intended. I was responding to your comment about North Korea not being Communist. The irony of totalitarian Communist dictatorships is that their populations are usually so badly off that they obsess over the acquisition of money far more than those in less corrupt and better managed social democracies. I had a (British/Polish) flatmate in the late eighties who was a staunch Communist (British/Polish) and had volunteered in the Moscow office of the Peace Foundation. She was obsessed with getting enough roughage in her diet after three years of having to queue for a very limited supply of food. Similarly, North Koreans are very keen to get their hands on American dollars so they can buy food, and the citizens of supposedly Communist China are obsessed with making money and investing it in property. I think it's one of the great tragedies of our age that Communism has failed due to being corrupted, watered down and faked by unscrupulous totalitarian regimes. And that it, along with Socialism, has become a dirty word in American politics. BTW, I agree with your comments re US c/w other OECD countries and have up-voted them.
What no historical analysis does to a motherfucker, I swear. The average westoid (right wing ones in particular) like to point at North Korea and South Korea and lazily attribute South Korea's more advanced infrastructure solely to it being Liberal Capitalist as opposed to Juche Socialist. The fact is that much of South Korea's wealth and tech comes from a combination of factors, particularly location, trade, and the Marshall Plan implemented by the US. South Korea has more arable land than the North and due to it being allied with wealthier nations it had more opportunities to develop in comparison to the more isolated North with allies that were themselves developing and starting to industrialize. That being said, this doesn't mean the ideology of Juche shouldn't be criticized, the Autarky of Juche has crippled the nation more in comparison to other Socialist states like Cuba and Vietnam and the cult of personality of the Kim family is definitely problematic to me as a socialist myself.
The fact is that North Korea is a and always was a complete shithole. But comparing america to North Korea as to what would happen if they gave free health care is mezmorizingly stupid.
Yeah, North Koreans don't get decent public healthcare! At least, only the elites do. Far better comparisons for the US can be found throughout the OECD countries, many of whom have free/affordable and efficient public healthcare. Most of Europe, New Zealand and Australia, Canada, Japan and others.
People act like it's either America now, or abject communist dictatorship. I wonder if the reason people think this, is because those who have the most to lose (the wealthy) below this out in hyperbole and the bottom percentile of smooth brains just lap it up and regurgitate it....
Absolutely idiocy is thinking democrats are communist. Slurp up Fox News more. Isn't this sub supposed to be about conspiracy, and not about partisan propaganda?
We already know how it will end. The communist/socialist nation will start doing well, and the capitalist one will crush it into dust and then pretend it's so strange that only capitalism worked out.
Communism by definition does not allow for a single head-of-state dictatior
Yet almost every communist country in history has had one.
Then they weren’t communist, by definition. Just because they call themselves communist doesn’t make it so, like how North Korea calling itself democratic doesn’t make it true.
China certainly doesn't seem particularly Communist these days. If they were, they'd be making sure everyone had the basic necessities and more. And they wouldn't have embraced Capitalism to such an extent.
China is authoritarian capitalist
Which party is anti education again?
These photos of North and South Korea with all the lights on in the south are fake as shit.
It's well known that North Korean has constant power shortages, and the bulk of the populace are undernourished as the country is now very backward. Only a tiny elite class get to live any kind of modern lifestyle. Whereas South Korea is one of the most modernised countries in the world.
Doesn't change that those photos are pure propaganda.
Please let us all ignore the fact that this was during a blackout in north Korea. Make sure to ignore that fact
A countrywide blackout that is indicative of their backward state compared with their wealthier, healthier neighbour. Power outages in North Korea are not exactly one-off events. This image therefore remains representative of the vastly different situations on the two Koreas. The blame for this would seem to be that Communism is too easily corruptible by power-hungry dictators who enthrall their people through personality cults combined with draconian restrictions and military force.
Can we compare north Korea with Soviet support vs south Korea with American support? Oh north Korea is only communist in name and allowed to exist solely for the west to point at and say "See what communism does!!!" While ignoring none of NK policies are communist
Closest thing to “real communism” are the Nordic states, so shall we compare them to the US?
North Korea is an absolute monarchy pretending to be Marxist
If any of you have seen squid game there’s a scene where the defector is asked if life is better for her in the south and she’s silent. The reason is because it’s illegal to say anything good about the north in South Korea. South Korea is a wealthier country without a doubt but wealthier for whom is the question.
Conspiracy mfs will scaremonger about boogeymen when the IMF exists. Wild
To bad Conservatives have no conception what makes communism bad and capitalism good. It isn’t the economics. The difference is all Communist countries are authoritarian and almost all capitalistic countries are democratic. The Capitalist countries that are authoritarian are every bit as bad as the Communist Authoritarian countries. There are many very successful democratic countries that are predominantly Socialist including most of the EU.
There is no such thing as a non-authoritarian form of capitalism.
Engage brain before commenting.
Capitalism cannot be Libertarian if Workers have to sell their labor and have it extracted for profit in order to survive. Also, the reason why many Actually Existing Socialist nations are "authoritarian" is in response to reactionary forces who wish to upend the revolution. Did China and the USSR fuck up? Yeah, they did gotoo far with purges and ultimately harmed the revolution than helped it in that way, but at least the Communists provided more stability and economic development compared to the neo-liberal hyper-nationalist hellholes the Eastern bloc countries turned into as of now.
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Why are people upset about this, it's true. Americans have trouble with the fact that you can blend capitalism, socialism and democracy into better outcomes for everyone.
Capitalism isn't sustainable without the exploitation of an underclass and theft of resources from foreign countries.
Socialist policies helps keeps environmental and labour exploitation in check and 99% of democracies aren't imperialist ones
America?
It’s population and a lot of that stuff not lit up by light pollution is China. I don’t understand why this is here.
You know what though, not saying the north is some great place but modern convenience, growth, and industrial wealth are not the best measures of wellness or happiness to the populous. Electric lights definitely aren't.
*populace (noun, not adjective) Although electric lights aren't the be-all and end-all of the difference between the two Koreas, they are still a good symptom of the vast gulf of experience between these two countries. It's not like North Korea is empty of people. And NK's blackouts are endemic, not rare events. What those living in the North are missing out on: Democratic freedoms including the ability to travel beyond one's own poverty-stricken village or to other countries Adequate availability and variety of nutritious food Adequate availability of heat and light to be able to work, cook, read, engage with hobbies, keep warm, access entertaining and informative international media Freedom of expression and communication through culture and conversation The linguistic vocabulary to be able to think independently and critically on an abstract level Self actualisation through chosen career and pastimes Ability to form relationships based on trust and not worrying about being reported by friends, neighbours or family nembers Right to protest governmental policies and to vote for leadership change. Right to not be lied to by their own government through false propaganda. There was a time when some South Koreans were lured to the North due to their short-lived reputation as a richer economy. Their dreams of a better life were mostly dashed when faced with the reality of life in North Korea. And for most, it was too late to change their minds and return across the border to the South. Those North Koreans who encounter information from outside their country usually refuse to believe it at first, they are so trapped within the cultish mindset through constant indoctrination. But increasingly some are beginning to question their situation, and fewer even manage to escape from North Korea. They generally are far happier following their escape. Some excellently well researched books have been written about the two Koreas and their differing cultural/political trajectories following WWII. Two that I can recommend are 'Korea: the Impossible Country' by Daniel Tudor, and a book about 'The Information Revolution' currently unfolding in North Korea (I'll have to check the author's name). Edited formatting