Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

mrsteinberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 328 posts

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#31

Post by jimhi »

MiroF wrote: post #26
warning26 wrote: post #14

Really interesting article! On a related note, one oddity I often see online (and, once, in person) are the die-hard groups of westerners who insist that North Korea is actually a paradise on earth and any claim to the contrary is some kind of evil capitalist propaganda. Utterly baffling, when there are so many sources like this article indicating otherwise.

I definitely lean skeptical of Western sources on things like this, but life in NK is obviously pretty awful. That said, there is essentially no information in this article that makes me believe that they actually talked to this person as opposed to making up a caricature of how they imagine life in NK to be.

I talked to several people (not just 1) and am still friends with some to this day.

This was an event held by LINK (https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/) which I already wrote in both the article and this thread. You can go to their site or the several talks I linked in this thread to hear their stories directly.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#32

Post by thechao »

FredPret wrote: post #27
germandiago wrote: post #22

This is the sad truth of places like Cuba or North Korea. Everything is forbidden to the point that eating is difficult. So people get corrupted and the guards, etc. just want their part. None of those things should be illegal. It is really annoying to see how a leader class kills people of hunger and make everything illegal so that now everyone is a criminal for trying to survive.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#33

Post by stickfigure »

aspenmayer wrote: post #21
FpUser wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to imply they were the same? Make a wild guess. While not a shining citadel of freedom USSR in the 80s was infinitely better than North Korea. Their words, not mine.

No implication at all, I was simply curious. I think in the West we assume that the communist experience was bad, but I have no frame of reference for this, as I wasn’t there at the time. Then comes comparing between communist regimes, which is farther removed from my experience. I wish the CIA would’ve let democratically elected communist regimes alone, like Vietnam or certain Latin American countries. It just grind…

We have modern Venezuela as a ripe example.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#34

Post by germandiago »

MiroF wrote: post #30
germandiago wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People tend to value different things. If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some are illegal (NK in this case). Or you have to be treated like an animal in the customs to even make medicines or food in. I have seen this elsewhere, believe me. Those people that live from that deserve... I will not say what they deserve, bu…

> If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some are illegal Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US. Lumping Cuba and North Korea together is silly & misguided.

> Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US.

That is plainly false. There are lots of cheating in how they count that, for example, if a kid is going to have any kind of problem, they suggest and try to abort it and it does not appear in the count, to give you just one single example about how they count life expectation. There is lots more that is only make up, such as the health care myth and others.

They do have lots of doctors they send abroad and the regime gets 70% of their income. When you land abroad, if you work like that, they take away your passport so that you cannot escape. They do campaigns to donate blood and they sell that blood (over 21 million dollars in sales for blood that was supposed to be, most of it, an altruist action by cuban people in one year). They are literally treated as slaves.

Did you see what happened last July? There were riots in the streets. They did not have even medicines or food and they (the regime and its propaganda) started to talk about the embargo (incorrectly called blockage) as the problem, when the problem is that those people in that odious regime do not let even the food or medicines go through without taking a part.

I mean, they take advantage of the anguish of relatives that are outside and they smash them. After that I saw president Diaz Canel promoting violence against people for the protests from his very own words, not a translation or similar (I can speak spanish).

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#35

Post by germandiago »

thechao wrote: post #32
FredPret wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

He is talking about the history of communism or socialism towards a communism system anywhere it has been applied.

That system you define there just exists in your head. It is not possible. It is like pretending the existence of unicorns. The real one every time ends up in an authoritarian regime.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#36

Post by 908B64B197 »

germandiago wrote: post #22

This is the sad truth of places like Cuba or North Korea. Everything is forbidden to the point that eating is difficult. So people get corrupted and the guards, etc. just want their part. None of those things should be illegal. It is really annoying to see how a leader class kills people of hunger and make everything illegal so that now everyone is a criminal for trying to survive.

It's the reason it's harder to work in a resort or operate a taxi in Cuba than it is to become a "doctor".

The former has access to foreign currency with a real value. The later can hope to maybe get an exit visa (the government will loan it's "doctors" to foreign regimes in exchange for real currencies).

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#37

Post by [deleted] »

germandiago wrote: post #34
MiroF wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you value hunger and corruption, go to Cuba or North Korea where you have to ask permission even to have the hair cut you want and some are illegal Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US. Lumping Cuba and North Korea together is silly & misguided.

> Cuba does not have a major hunger problem at all and has a higher life expectancy than the US. That is plainly false. There are lots of cheating in how they count that, for example, if a kid is going to have any kind of problem, they suggest and try to abort it and it does not appear in the count, to give you just one single example about how they count life expectation. There is lots more that is only make up, suc…

[deleted]

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#38

Post by photochemsyn »

Interestingly this article could serve as a template for 'Tips to grow your illicit drug business in the USA' with very few changes:

- you may get shot but police may simply take some of the goods;

- remove any labels of origin to reduce potential charges;

- contemplate various smuggling strategies;

- don't work with people you care about (friends and family);

- be careful where you store your money;

Banned economic activity is similar everywhere, it seems.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#39

Post by lisper »

MiroF wrote: post #29
lisper wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never met a DPRK supporter, but I have met Cuba supporters. They were white, non-Cuban, and leaning so far left I was surprised they could remain upright. (And I'm pretty far left myself by contemporary U.S. standards.)

I'm not a Cuba "supporter" but I do think that the quality of life in Cuba is not terrible, Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba, and that if we were serious about our opposition to authoritarianism internationally - Cuba would not be towards the top of our list compared to autocracies like Saudi Arabia. This is very different from the DPRK.

I did not mean to draw a parallel between Cuba and NK with respect to the facts on the ground, merely with respect to the arguments that are advanced for them, which in both cases are based on the premise that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Everyone I have ever met who advanced that argument with respect to Cuba was on the political left. The political right has their own version of this argument, except that they focus their skepticism on "the mainstream media" rather than "Western sources" (but IMHO both of these phrases are clearly dog whistles without an actual referent other than, "any source that disagrees with my position.")

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#40

Post by MiroF »

lisper wrote: post #39
MiroF wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Cuba "supporter" but I do think that the quality of life in Cuba is not terrible, Western sources are not to be particularly trusted when it comes to Cuba, and that if we were serious about our opposition to authoritarianism internationally - Cuba would not be towards the top of our list compared to autocracies like Saudi Arabia. This is very different from the DPRK.

I did not mean to draw a parallel between Cuba and NK with respect to the facts on the ground, merely with respect to the arguments that are advanced for them, which in both cases are based on the premise that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Everyone I have ever met who advanced that argument with respect to Cuba was on the political left. The political right has their own version of this argument, except that they…

I feel like the "West" [0] is a pretty clear referent and is not synonymous with "any source that disagrees with my position." What is it a dog whistle for?

> conventional wisdom

Talk about unclear referents! I question the existence of a universal "conventional wisdom" on political issues like these.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

Post reply on HN