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Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

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Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#181

Post by konstmonst »

tivert wrote: post #175
konstmonst wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, removing sanctions will make them stronger when the conflict comes. Also as I see it, all nations don't care much about people's suffering in some other country, they care most about their inner affairs, which is understandable geopolitically. Most of the people also don't care or else they would vote with their money. Are north koreans worth nuclear escalation - I don't think so.

Did you mean to reply to this comment? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39507748 Your reply seems out of place.

yes, I must have made an error

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#182

Post by nemo44x »

gsk22 wrote: post #76
nemo44x wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is the default state. We shouldn’t ask why we have poor people but rather how can more wealth be generated to have fewer poor people. Our system has redefined what it means to be poor. So much that we’ve forgotten that abject poverty is the default state. We dont need less capitalism but rather more and faster.

There's plenty of wealth. The issue is the concentration of wealth at the top. Since the current system is deeply unfair, I'm not sure why adding additional wealth to the system would make it any more fair. The majority of every extra dollar goes to the ultra rich.

> There's plenty of wealth. The issue is the concentration of wealth at the top.

That's just an opinion. What we do know is that as more wealth has been generated via Capitalism more and more people globally (and nationally) have been brought out of poverty to the point where poverty has had to be redefined in certain areas. Capitalism has made starvation a thing of the past and diabetes the new, but better, problem of the poor for example. Poor people can afford to eat meat daily. Not even wealthy could do this in the not so distant past.

So instead of fighting over probably wrong opinions we should look at the data and then continue to do more of the thing that has been generating better outcomes for more people. That means more capitalism because that leads to better outcomes.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#183

Post by tivert »

Despegar wrote: post #98

It's time for the US to end the sanctions on North Korea. The abuse workers face is a straight line result from the fact that virtually all aspects of their economy are under total embargo. North Korea is a nuclear state, and they will never go back to not being one. North Koreans have been working in China for decades and that won't change either because China is not going to let them become a failed state.

> It's time for the US to end the sanctions on North Korea. The abuse workers face is a straight line result from the fact that virtually all aspects of their economy are under total embargo.

Come on. Their workers are abused because North Korea is a totalitarian dictatorship, not because of sanctions.

If sanctions have any contribution, it's pushing the abuse outside of North Korea, which makes it more visible and possible to investigate.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#184

Post by nemo44x »

hackerlight wrote: post #60
nemo44x wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty is the default state. We shouldn’t ask why we have poor people but rather how can more wealth be generated to have fewer poor people. Our system has redefined what it means to be poor. So much that we’ve forgotten that abject poverty is the default state. We dont need less capitalism but rather more and faster.

> We dont need less capitalism but rather more and faster. There is no clean spectrum. We need more good capitalism (free trade, free movement of labor, entrepreneurship) and less bad capitalism (negative externalities, money in politics). Just like we need more good regulations and less bad regulations. We shouldn't force heterogeneous things into a single conceptual basket (called "capitalism") and then conclude mo…

Sure can debate the minor points I guess but the overarching theme needs to be more capitalism (private ownership of things, production, etc), more productivity (automate more, more and better jobs, outsource), and more energy (extract more, better green solutions that are actually competitive and not forced on people). We should continue to do more of what has proven to pull more and more people out of poverty and to even redefine what it means to be poor compared to many years ago.

The goal should be to make today's relatively poor comparatively rich to the poor of generations past.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#185

Post by advisedwang »

Loughla wrote: post #72

Real question; is there any kind of revolutionary force inside NK? It seems like there should be, but we never hear about it. Anybody know?

My bet is when change eventually comes in NK, it will not be some kind of pro-democracy popular movement. It will be a coup during a time of weakness from a group of second-tier elites who think they could have it better if the depose the dictator and replace it with a council.

If we're lucky, that comes along with some reforms. These would be reforms geared towards making those second-tier elites better off, of course. Perhaps just a change to how resources are spent and distributed. Perhaps some de-collectivization and private property. Perhaps secretly negotiated reduction in sanctions in exchange for some liberalization. But that could still be a move in the right direction.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#186

Post by jojobas »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #165
jojobas wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are their ranks increasing? They're not. Both absolute number and percentage in both "extreme poverty" and just "poverty" have been steadily decreasing since the 70s.

Extreme poverty vs plain vanilla poverty? That's funny. You're falling for the ruse. Funny how the First World all but abandobed the rest of the (impoverish) world until it needs that head count to pat itself on the back and sell the ruse Thank you for proving my point. Regardless, the question remains: why so much poverty in so many places? *Especially* in the First World? "Smile and be happy you pathetically poor,…

Yes, it's a reasonable metric of "we're doing better than anyone anytime".

It's very easy to ruin this and very hard to improve upon. Why should I believe whatever anyone suggesting is going to make things better? Every single attempt of destroying capitalism "for the benefit of the proletariat" made it worse for said proletariat, big time, every time.

Also, figuratively speaking, clean your room.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#187

Post by hackerlight »

nemo44x wrote: post #184
hackerlight wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We dont need less capitalism but rather more and faster. There is no clean spectrum. We need more good capitalism (free trade, free movement of labor, entrepreneurship) and less bad capitalism (negative externalities, money in politics). Just like we need more good regulations and less bad regulations. We shouldn't force heterogeneous things into a single conceptual basket (called "capitalism") and then conclude mo…

Sure can debate the minor points I guess but the overarching theme needs to be more capitalism (private ownership of things, production, etc), more productivity (automate more, more and better jobs, outsource), and more energy (extract more, better green solutions that are actually competitive and not forced on people). We should continue to do more of what has proven to pull more and more people out of poverty and t…

Maybe. Some of what you're advocating for sounds more in the category of bad capitalism. The typical libertarian denial of the existence of second order effects and negative externalities. It's hard to tell whether "more private property" is really a euphemism for more inequality or if "better green solutions" is really a euphemism for cancelling renewable and accelerating climate change. Which would be a recipe for social unrest and millions of climate refugees fleeing the equator leading to authoritarianism and lower prosperity. That's bad. There are some interpretations of your words that I'd agree with, though.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#188

Post by chiefalchemist »

jojobas wrote: post #186
chiefalchemist wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme poverty vs plain vanilla poverty? That's funny. You're falling for the ruse. Funny how the First World all but abandobed the rest of the (impoverish) world until it needs that head count to pat itself on the back and sell the ruse Thank you for proving my point. Regardless, the question remains: why so much poverty in so many places? *Especially* in the First World? "Smile and be happy you pathetically poor,…

Yes, it's a reasonable metric of "we're doing better than anyone anytime". It's very easy to ruin this and very hard to improve upon. Why should I believe whatever anyone suggesting is going to make things better? Every single attempt of destroying capitalism "for the benefit of the proletariat" made it worse for said proletariat, big time, every time. Also, figuratively speaking, clean your room.

Reasonable to whom? (Hint: Not the impoverished, and there are a lot of those)

Or simply a twisted rationalization so some can sleep better at night?

I would recommend you read "Broken Money" by Lyn Alden. There's are some serious systemic thumbs on the "globalization" scale, and those thumbs are the same outfits spewing the narrative you're parrotting.

Get the book. We can resume this in a couple weeks.

Re: Inside North Korea's Forced Labor Program

#189

Post by Reubachi »

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #40

There needs to be a law that, for any kind of Chinese seafood to be imported, foreign officials must be allowed to inspect the conditions. They already do it for food safety. When espionage laws make other monitoring impossible, there can be zero trust in these companies to do the right thing. Allow detailed, random inspections, or your imports are blocked and you make no money.

Do you think this does not happen?

Do you think there is any way to make this happen in a more transparent/satisfactory manner? (IE, more batch auditing)

Do you think that, if there was total 100 percent auditing/QA of every single "peice" of seafood, this problem would go away?

IE; this already happens, and is why customs and border patrol exist. There doesn't need to be a law targetting one specificc boogeyman, the policies are frameworks already exist. Most border patrol do not work the southern border for migrants, they work ports to audit and investigate all imports.

Weather that works or not is another question, and you should ask your state reps.

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