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Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

mrsteinberg.com

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Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#121

Post by lobocinza »

camdat wrote: post #98
908B64B197 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Why the quotes around doctor? Cuba has some of the best health outcomes in the LatAm (and arguably the world), it seems like their doctors are of a higher quality than most.

Accordingly to Cuban government or reliable sources?

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#122

Post by ModernMech »

fallingknife wrote: post #63
x3iv130f wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your definition is the correct one for what Communism strives to be. A communal ownership of things. It's unfortunate that such a sensible idea only becomes justification for kleptocratic oligarchies which is what the other poster was going on about.

It's not unfortunate, it's built in. "Communal ownership" requires that you can't freely buy and sell things. A government powerful enough to enforce that is necessarily totalitarian.

This is not true though. Communism isn't about communal ownership of all things, it's specifically about ownership of the means of production. Communism doesn't preclude ownership of personal property. You can still own your toothbrush under communist philosophy. However what you can't own is the steel plant. You can't own the roads. You can't own the Internet. You can't own the school system. You can't own the healthcare system. If it benefits society, society owns it.

You don't need an all-powerful totalitarian government to enforce that kind of ownership; the people can do it on their own. Owners of steel mills need workers to work the steel mills. Without workers, their steel mill is worthless. Without private ownership of a steel mill, the still mill is still valuable as long as it has workers. Under communist philosophy, the government doesn't need to use authoritarian powers to enforce communal ownership of steel mills, because no one wants to own a steel mill that has no steel workers. Therefore, workers have the ultimate power under this philosophy.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#123

Post by Ichthypresbyter »

Sebguer wrote: post #112
mrtksn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are two things being confused here. Cuba wouldn't have an auto industry if it wasn't communist, unless it adopted weird protectionist policies- no comparable countries do. Therefore, it relies on imported vehicles. Partly because of the embargo, supply of these is limited- particularly in the case of personal cars, the government had better things to spend limited hard currency reserves on while people could keep the 50s American cars from before the Revolution running (often with the motors replaced with smaller, more modern imported diesels).

However, that 'bus' seems to be a locally modified truck, probably a Soviet-built ZiL-164. There is definitely an argument to be made that the cars and trucks produced under Communism, both in the USSR itself and in client states like East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland, weren't as good as their contemporary Western equivalents for all sorts of reasons.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#124

Post by marwis »

germandiago wrote: post #47
beepbooptheory wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... if you can't believe in something that hasn't yet existed, how does anything come to be at all? Or do you deny that there is any theoretical thought behind communism at all? Is it just something people suddenly found themselves doing, and it failed and that was that? How does someone dream of things that are better? How can you have faith in anything at all? Is not the love you feel towards your friends and…

Quoted post unavailable.

I think you're confusing socialism with welfare state. Many of the countries you claim to be socialist are free market capitalist democracies, only with more taxes, regulation and welfare than some would like.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#125

Post by mrtksn »

Sebguer wrote: post #112
mrtksn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No I don't think so. Cars made by the Soviets sucked too. Even cars made by East Germany sucked. They made amazing spacecraft and terrible cars.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#126

Post by perl4ever »

pc86 wrote: post #109
darkwater wrote: post #76

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 wrote a comment and then thought "I should really look up where the term consumerism comes from".

Because I didn't know and maybe I should. I spent half my life unaware of the origin of "capitalism".

In the early 20th century, "consumerism" was supposedly used to mean something like "consumer protection".

But in the mid 20th century, it was apparently adopted as a preferred term to "capitalism" in order to contrast Western economies with communism.

Then, by the 60s or so, it morphed into something like the modern sense of "a policy of encouraging consumption".

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#127

Post by fallingknife »

beaconstudios wrote: post #84
fallingknife wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unfortunate, it's built in. "Communal ownership" requires that you can't freely buy and sell things. A government powerful enough to enforce that is necessarily totalitarian.

Or, it requires a community that shares things - like tribes or... Communes. I don't engage in negotiations with my wife or my friends, we cooperate. Maybe I could cooperate with other workers and form some kind of... Cooperative. There's a reason "socialism" starts with "social".

Well most people are not your wife, friend, or neighbor, and since you don't give a single fuck about the kid who made your phone, the system falls apart at scale.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#128

Post by fallingknife »

ModernMech wrote: post #122
fallingknife wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not unfortunate, it's built in. "Communal ownership" requires that you can't freely buy and sell things. A government powerful enough to enforce that is necessarily totalitarian.

This is not true though. Communism isn't about communal ownership of all things, it's specifically about ownership of the means of production . Communism doesn't preclude ownership of personal property. You can still own your toothbrush under communist philosophy. However what you can't own is the steel plant. You can't own the roads. You can't own the Internet. You can't own the school system. You can't own the heal…

But all of that is allowed under our current capitalist system, so then you have to answer the question of why steel mills have owners. Why is it that to have a "workers collective" or whatever, seems to require heavy handed government intervention to prevent competition with privately owned businesses which seem to just spring up and thrive all on their own.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#129

Post by beaconstudios »

thriftwy wrote: post #118
beaconstudios wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OK I'll give you that one - my counter-snark was not well thought out. However, I assume you realise that pension funds do not constitute a worker-controlled economy.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#130

Post by germandiago »

MiroF wrote: post #80
fallingknife wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The life expectancy figures are manipulated: https://www.econlib.org/about-that-cuban-life-expectancy/

I don't know that having a high abortion rate is "manipulation", they are of course going to have a high rate relative to the rest of Latin America. I cannot find a sourcing for the specific rate of abortion they cite. The first "manipulation" identified would not impact Cuba's position as 1st in life expectancy in Latin America, as they concede in their article.

Life in Cuba is miserable for the average person. It is not just life expectancy.
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