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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

#261

Post by mrtksn »

perl4ever wrote: post #211
mrtksn wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would definitely not want to live under that regime. Cubans are generally happy people with good lives but they lack the opportunities for higher ambitions. Corrupt, planned economy is not something to be excited for nor is the being the lowest class in a “classless” society. They are also missing out about the world outside of their borders due to the restrictions on their communications. It’s just that the wester…

Yes, but since I have never been to London, I am curious about this western consumerist lifestyle. You're being coy, in not describing the things you find so tiresome. Before Brexit, I worked for a company that opened a branch near London, in order to access the European market. I didn't make it my overriding goal to go there, but I probably could've, and a co-worker went there and subsequently got married and stayed…

For Cuba to be fine, UK doesn't need to be bad. I do love the British way of life and the economic and social freedoms in the UK.

My point is that, happiness and life satisfaction are not tied to the abundance of consumer goods. When you are sad you don't have to buy something, it's alright to have a few options and your happiness level doesn't need to change by your next purchase. You can experience that in Cuba.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#262

Post by darkwater »

mrtksn wrote: post #85
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…

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…

oh, didn't know about the CUC going away! TIL

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#263

Post by the-smug-one »

germandiago wrote: post #139
the-smug-one wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuba is equivalent to NK? Doesn't Cuba mostly incarcerate journalists, while in NK people are publicly executed for importing Squid Game?

Yes, choose between jail or death trying to make the former a good thing if you will. None should be allowed.

So then the US is equivalent to the DPRK for wanting to put Julian Assange and Edward Snowden in prison?

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#264

Post by michaelscott »

beaconstudios wrote: post #131
fallingknife wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

joke's on you, I actually would rather my phone wasn't made by child labour. Also a communal system would scale with delegations and councils, not "everybody has to know each other". That's just the local basis.

A concentration of group "power" into any individual/s will introduce a hierarchy to the system, which begets inequality in power, which begets class systems, which begets corruption, etc.

It's why delegations and councils make sense on paper but are, even at the best of times, not perfect in practice. I understand that we may not strive for perfection in our social systems, but this does go against the distribution of power intent behind communal living in the first place. I actually like the idea of communal ownership of means of production, but I don't think it's possible to implement successfully with humans as a species (or likely any species, even ants have hierarchical importance). It might be possible with "sentient" machines at some point in the distant future, but the rest is biologically encoded in our nature.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#265

Post by the_af »

germandiago wrote: post #222
the_af wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only capitalist in Argentina you know is Milei (far right, self-proclaimed "libertarian", worked under a known criminal of our military dictatorship) then you're out of touch. Really, consider how you're shifting the goalposts: you only consider far right libertarians as capitalists. The rest of the world disagrees with you. Anyway, I live in Argentina and you don't. You are wrong. > That is not capitalism. Ca…

Far right is the label you put to degrade Milei. Milei is a libertarian. If that looks to you like "far right" it is your call. For me those are very different things. Apart from this comment: capitalism is free market and low regulations. By that measure, how capitalist is Argentina? As much as this in the economic freedom index, which could be considered an index of "how capitalist" a country is (position 148): htt…

> Far right is the label you put to degrade Milei. Milei is a libertarian. If that looks to you like "far right" it is your call.

Well, he did work with a criminal from our past military dictatorship...

> . Apart from this comment: capitalism is free market and low regulations. By that measure, how capitalist is Argentina?

By that token there are no capitalist countries at all!

A capitalist country with more regulations than you'd like is exactly that: a capitalist country.

Argentina is not communist. You're embarrassing yourself.

> I live in Vietnam

I've seen you claim you live in all sorts of countries, but whatever.

You are wrong. The only people who agree with your strict definition of "capitalism" are libertarians, a tiny minority. I guess all countries in the world -- the US included -- are communist to you.

Good luck with that.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#266

Post by germandiago »

int_19h wrote: post #231
germandiago wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is the will of people. Any alternative thing is going to be more incorrectly adapted to the demand from people.

The market is one-dollar-one-vote. If you start with an equitable distribution of wealth, then sure, it's the will of the people. But if you start with wealth being disproportionally skewed towards a very small class - as is the case in every real-world developed economy today - the result is oligarchy, not democracy. The problem with mainstream economic right is that it ignores that, or assumes that markets will eve…

An oligarchy serves itself from the regulators to keep its power. In a free market they would not be able to abuse that power to get privileges.

So the problem you see there is mostly a regulation problem, not a wealth inequality problem.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#267

Post by germandiago »

the_af wrote: post #199
germandiago wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If the only capitalist in Argentina you know is Milei (far right, self-proclaimed "libertarian", worked under a known criminal of our military dictatorship) then you're out of touch. Really, consider how you're shifting the goalposts: you only consider far right libertarians as capitalists. The rest of the world disagrees with you. Anyway, I live in Argentina and you don't. You are wrong. > That is not capitalism. Ca…

[flagged]

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#268

Post by the_af »

germandiago wrote: post #267
the_af wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only capitalist in Argentina you know is Milei (far right, self-proclaimed "libertarian", worked under a known criminal of our military dictatorship) then you're out of touch. Really, consider how you're shifting the goalposts: you only consider far right libertarians as capitalists. The rest of the world disagrees with you. Anyway, I live in Argentina and you don't. You are wrong. > That is not capitalism. Ca…

[flagged]

[flagged]

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#269

Post by germandiago »

DarylZero wrote: post #249
germandiago wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The corollary to random consumer goods being in constant shortages is that other things are much more “affordable” than they’d be in a market economy. No way for their wealth, to begin with, and why you should choose how people choose? They are animals? Everything that is cheaper than its possible price is literally being paid by someone, with their labour or by others. Free things, literally, do not exist. And thi…

> Free things, literally, do not exist If free things don't exist, what are for-sale things made of?

I do not understand your question. But my point is that things are not done by magic.

Someone works on them, someone gets the material (if it is a product). Someone spends time.

If a machine does it, someone created the machine (it is usually many people for a single industrial machine) and someone bought it.

There is literally always, someone, at some point in time that paid with time and/or money to trade something. Even if someone gives away something for free from her effort, it is the person who did the effort who"paid" in that case.

There is no such thing as free and coming from nowhwere. Someone pays the price. Voluntarily or not is another matter.

That is why I criticize a lot when someone says that we can get xyz for free. No. There will still be work involved. The manufacturing, the delivery, the service... whatever. So if we want something for free we should think who is paying that. I guess most of us do not want to work for free. In general terms, I do not want, I could do an exception... but not in general. So when we ask for others to do things for free what we are saying is that someone should not get its part of reward or that someone else has to pay it for us, making those people a means to our ends. I would not call that social cooperation.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#270

Post by beaconstudios »

int_19h wrote: post #235
beaconstudios wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Free markets allow people to organize the way they like. Other systems don't. Free markets are not absolute freedom, and private property still restricts the action of people without money. Poor people can barely do anything because they're too busy trying not to become homeless. The wealthy, on the other hand, can do what they want. That's not a very free system. More free than some Soviet dictatorship, 100%, but…

Free markets are orthogonal to shared or non-shared ownership of capital; you can have one without the other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-market_anarchism

That's true, if everyone is willing to use labour cost as the limit of price - otherwise profit would recreate the system of capital domination. It seems like a hard bargain to maintain if a currency substitute like labour vouchers are used.
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