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Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

mrsteinberg.com

111–120 of 328 posts

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#111
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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I don't necessarily disagree with your comment overall but there are a lot of problems with your list and your methodology. 1: Why isn't france or china on the former or currently socialist list? There are many others. 2: Consider the volatility and violent turmoil, war, genocide, atrocities from those former and present countries from the timeperiod of german unification under bismarck (somewhat arbitrarily chosen d…

(Really responding to beepbottheory's comment, to which I cannot reply)

The downvoting around here is just weird. I thought downvotes were supposed to indicate comments that were against forum rules or just unhelpful; _maybe_ offtopic? But people seem to downvote stuff they just don't like, regardless of how intelligent it might be.

It's sad, and it's deteriorating HN.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#112
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed to clarify that tourists use pesos convertibles which are artificially tied 1:1 to USD (1USD, 1 convertible) and that are basically what casas and taxi drivers accept. But you can totally go to local restaurants as a tourist (we did it a few times during our 3 weeks stay). And yeah, it can be sad to see how people lives there, and many try to flee but as you said makes you think about the real, deep impact…

Actually that's not entirely correct. There's no rule about who uses what, anyone can convert between CUP(the official currency) and CUC(the pegged one) at an exchange(1:25 exchange rate) and shops would accept both but of course using CUC is more convenient when paying at a place where a meal costs half the salary of doctor. I also went to local restaurants, they were extremely cheap but way too basic IMHO(However I…

> For some reason, communists suck at automobile making.

Do you not think that embargoes have some degree of impact on this?

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#113
post #52

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I don't know about DPRK but I have been to Cuba for a 2 weeks vacation, so I had time to go out of the default tourists spots. What I've seen is this: Those who have access to tourists or to the government are rich. Corruption is rampant as I've seen people bribing police right at the airport to have their things sorted out. The mainstream corruption in society revolves around casa particulars and taxis. Essentially,…

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America has killed far more people in the name of various regimes than Cuba has.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#114
post #69

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.

One thing I find more odd is how American audiences treat the DPRK while also supporting the continued military puppet state that is the ROK. There were also a "lot of sources" supporting WMDs in Iraq. When what you're saying is the state department narrative it's not going to receive pushback. The US killed 20% of Koreans on the peninsula and reduced it all to rubble. Forgive my skepticism at the "humanitarian inten…

South Korea - has elections - has a free press - allows people to leave

etc

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is this not true, or no longer true? Have I been under a false impression for all this time? Annecdotal evidence, but an acquintance of mine (who is an MD) encountered Cuban "doctors" in South America and wasn't impressed at all. > I even remember seeing this mentioned in the newspaper at the beginning of the pandemic. The thing is that Cuba made a lot of claims about their handling of the pandemic, but as with eve…

[flagged]

> Are people being locked down? Is mobility down? No?

Sure isn't.

Food and medicine shortages due to COVID-19 caused the biggest anti Castro regime protests since the 90's [0] [1]. Thanks to the communist regime people are back to starvation. Even the government was forced to acknowledge it because it got so big.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Cuban_protests

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/11/americas/cuba-protests/index....

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#117
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about DPRK but I have been to Cuba for a 2 weeks vacation, so I had time to go out of the default tourists spots. What I've seen is this: Those who have access to tourists or to the government are rich. Corruption is rampant as I've seen people bribing police right at the airport to have their things sorted out. The mainstream corruption in society revolves around casa particulars and taxis. Essentially,…

Quoted post unavailable.

Cuba gives free healthcare to its people and runs the largest medical school in the world [1] for free, with the explicit purpose of training foreign doctors so they can help their underprivileged communities.

Meanwhile, in the US, the richest country in the world, people are dying because they can't afford life-saving insulin. [2]

Life expectancy is higher in Cuba than the US! [3]

It's not all black and white. Every country does good things and bad things. You just choose to ignore the bad things one country does and solely focus on them for another one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELAM_(Latin_American_School_of... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/rise-patients... [3] https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/cuba/usa?sc=XE2...

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then the USA, where the means of production are owned by workers via pension funds, is closer to communism than USSR which basically had everything state owned.

I know this was a snarky comment, but I have to point out - you know pensioners don't work, right?

You know that people invest in their pensions long before they get to stop working, right? At least how it worked in mid-to-late XX century.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Are people being locked down? Is mobility down? No? Sure isn't. Food and medicine shortages due to COVID-19 caused the biggest anti Castro regime protests since the 90's [0] [1]. Thanks to the communist regime people are back to starvation. Even the government was forced to acknowledge it because it got so big. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Cuban_protests [1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/11/americas/cuba-pr…

Food and medicine shortage in Cuba is an unavoidable impact of the pandemic, no matter the measures imposed, for an obvious reason both you and I know - tourism is the only real avenue for Cuba to accumulate foreign currency.

Certainly the economy took a hit, and this is true everywhere in the world, but starvation? I'd like to see a source for that, as you haven't provided any. Typically, what happens in situations where island countries cannot acquire foreign currency, is that they cannot import specialty foods, and have to rely on local, low-quality and repetitive sources of nutrition. But it is very unlikely for actual starvation to happen.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#120
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed to clarify that tourists use pesos convertibles which are artificially tied 1:1 to USD (1USD, 1 convertible) and that are basically what casas and taxi drivers accept. But you can totally go to local restaurants as a tourist (we did it a few times during our 3 weeks stay). And yeah, it can be sad to see how people lives there, and many try to flee but as you said makes you think about the real, deep impact…

Serious question, not trying to start a debate. How does abject poverty in an openly communist country make you think about the "deep impact of consumerism?"

I'm not @darkwater but I will use this question to try to put my thoughts together a bit.

So, on my first week it was hard. I was working in very central London and I had access to peak consumers options. I like it, I was used to have anything that crossed my mind being readily accessible for me. Except for shorts that week, apparently. My order from Amazon did not arrive and I was trusting Amazon enough to skip going to a high street shop to buy one up until the last day.

So I flew to Cuba with no short pants. Turns out its very hard to buy clothes in Cuba, I didn't know how locals manage to do it and I was out of luck. If you stay at a resort, there are shops in the hotel but I wasn't going to stay in a resort. I found out that there's a shopping mall in Havana and you can even use your credit card to do purchases(I went there with very little cash as my research indicated that ATMs work fine. In reality, not that fine). The mall was nothing like the ones I was used to and the shops sell knock offs at original prices.

Anyway, I was for a rough start so I was forced to improvise and not follow my initial plan. Later the things stabilised, I was able to find an ATM that will let me withdraw cash from my HSBC account but by the time I already befriended a few local people who would give me a glimpse into the actual daily life in Cuba. I went to the places I was planing to go, great beaches and everything but my mind got occupied with the way everything works in Cuba, so I kept paying attention.

First week, I was missing my routine in London. The snacks, the entertainment, even the food. I was feeling like missing out and I had no idea how to enjoy life without those things.

Then I realised that I was feeling bad because I was expecting to spend my time the way I spend it in London but I was not in London. The consumerist lifestyle in London has defined my expectation and I was annoyed because those expectations are not met by Cuba. A nice restaurant would take the edge of it but the core problem persisted.

Then I started looking inside. Do I really need to spend money for enjoyment? Do I really need to taste a different beer every time and judge it? Does my pizza needs to be proper Italian? Do I need advertisements to give me ideas to do or buy something? I found out that no, I don't need ads and I don't need to occupy my mind with the decision making of the kind if lager I should drink tonight. Instead of riding the amusement park of consumerism, I can simply be curios and explore!

My second week was much more chill. I knew which beer I like, I like Cristal and I have no interest in Bucanero or Presidente. Big deal, it's a nice beer and available pretty much everywhere. Maybe Heineken is better but I don't care anymore, that's not something that I would spend time on.

I need something sugary? Well, it's not available on every corner so I will just not have it now and If I still want it I will buy one of the few snacks that are available. It is alright not to have it now.

I found myself to consume much less and be quite content with it and I found out that I was enjoying the stuff I consumed much more. My actions were no longer guided by the consumer infrastructure and the simplest things were giving me more joy than the speciality stuff that I had to buy to out do the regular things I buy. A fish at a local restourant tastes much better when I'm hungry than the fish I would eat at the restaurant that is highly rated and endorsed by influencers.

Don't get me wrong, I do value and enjoy the variety of food, items and entertainment in the western societies however I no longer believe that these things are the main ingredients for a happy life or society. It's nice to have those things, it brings so much culture too but if you think that your life will be less fulfilling without those you will be wrong. These are nice to have but there is a danger to give up on actually fulfilling stuff in order to live a consumerist life. Let's not try to optimize for having ever more food and gadgets and things.

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