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Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

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Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#121

Post by mathverse »

imtringued wrote: post #109
mathverse wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korea frequently tries to decentralize and build new districts and cities from scratch.It just does not work because of korean culture.

I am wondering if a super super block model would work. You take a 3x3 block of houses and label it a super block. Then you build a 5x5 block of super blocks and then put commercial zoning in the middle.

It's not about building it.It's about having a plan what to do with it.Koreans are incredible and efficient builders.

Korean culture favors one time hit wonders instead of gradual development and continuous improvements.It's the nature of korean culture to just try new things because that is deemed to be better than trying to go with existing ones.

So you build a city and just because you built it you expect everyone to just go there.And it has to succeed or it is deemed to be an irrepairable failure.

Koreans dream of grandiose big projects that will put them on the world stage like Chaebols once did and they dont see the local opportunities or challenges.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#122

Post by mathverse »

beaconstudios wrote: post #120
mathverse wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> isn't this strike people saying they don't want a hyper-capitalist society? That's for a longer discussion. >This is /almost/ a systemic analysis. Consider the implications of having no time due to overwork and thus demanding 24/7 services, requiring overwork from others. They all require overwork from each other.That's the thing.

> They all require overwork from each other.That's the thing. Exactly - so they can't just all collectively agree to stop; that's an impossible level of coordination, akin to a General Strike (hey wait a minute!) We coordinate on what's allowed and what's not via the government. Large groups pressure said government to legislate in their interest because bosses aren't just going to agree to let people stop overworkin…

Koreans are the most collectivist people I know.They can collectively stop being harsh on each other.

Government can help but it is not a silver bullet.This has been proven many times in the history when the gov tried to do something about it.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#123

Post by imtringued »

beaconstudios wrote: post #108
bumbada wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luxury and communism are opposites. Compatible words with communism are miserable, corrupt, genocidal or tyrannical. You can pick whatever you want.

fully automated luxury communism is the ideal of a post- or late-scarcity society where goods are distributed equally (or universally accessible, a la Star Trek). You're thinking of Marxism-Leninism, which is just a dictatorship with extra steps.

Yes, ignore Marx, there is absolutely nothing to be learned from him. Just solve the work piling prisoners dilemma and you get the "utopia" part of communism (fair involvement of workers) for free.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#124

Post by beaconstudios »

imtringued wrote: post #123
beaconstudios wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fully automated luxury communism is the ideal of a post- or late-scarcity society where goods are distributed equally (or universally accessible, a la Star Trek). You're thinking of Marxism-Leninism, which is just a dictatorship with extra steps.

Yes, ignore Marx, there is absolutely nothing to be learned from him. Just solve the work piling prisoners dilemma and you get the "utopia" part of communism (fair involvement of workers) for free.

Marx only provided the critique of capitalism and said that historical materialism (the analysis of history as being contingent on material conditions, ie resource allocation) led him to believe capitalism would inevitably collapse into socialism and then communism through the proletariat winning class conflict. All the USSR shit is mostly Lenin, AFAIK.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#125

Post by timwaagh »

pell wrote: post #64
timwaagh wrote: post #45

The only reason some countries have public health care in the first place care is so society isn't completely squeezed for every bit of cash by the collective of medical practitioners. If I were a nurse or doctor I'd strike against expansion not for it.

That is not "the only" nor "the" reason.

Indeed the real underlying reason is were all humans, all equal and everyone deserves quality healthcare.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#126

Post by beaconstudios »

mathverse wrote: post #122
beaconstudios wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all require overwork from each other.That's the thing. Exactly - so they can't just all collectively agree to stop; that's an impossible level of coordination, akin to a General Strike (hey wait a minute!) We coordinate on what's allowed and what's not via the government. Large groups pressure said government to legislate in their interest because bosses aren't just going to agree to let people stop overworkin…

Koreans are the most collectivist people I know.They can collectively stop being harsh on each other. Government can help but it is not a silver bullet.This has been proven many times in the history when the gov tried to do something about it.

Being collectivist does not overcome the coordination hurdle; it just means you are more group-oriented than self-oriented. It's not like they have a telepathic link where they can all just agree to simultaneously stop working overtime.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#127

Post by Jcowell »

m0zg wrote: post #91
grecy wrote: post #34

Meanwhile in the US John Deere is cutting off health insurance to strong arm them into ending the strike. Allowing employers to control health care is not a good idea.

> Allowing employers to control health care is not a good idea. Not that I disagree, but I'd like to point out that you're effectively advocating for all other employers to "cut" healthcare as well. As someone who pays my own (and my family's) healthcare to the tune of $16K/yr for a really shitty plan, I'd also say that _who_ pays is probably not the primary concern here. If it cost one third what it does now (which…

Lol no. Before government got involved a lot of people wouldn’t even have health care due to their pre-existing condition. The very nature of insurance makes it unprofitable in every means and no movement of a free market would change such.

Linking Health Care to jobs is barbaric.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#128

Post by LightG »

qaq wrote: post #116
LightG wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take the 3 metres, thanks. I hate this kind of framing. People use it all the time. "It only costs 50p per person of the population to maintain the UK Royal Family" ... Pfft, in total there is the potential to do something more significant, more useful, and .... material.

Sure you will but you will never get it though. Because there will be a class of people who decide who should get that extra 3 meters and as my experience growing up in USSR tells me it's ain't gonna be you.

A class of people? You mean our democratically elected officials? For all their flaws, I would rather they do something productive with "some" of the resources we're talking about here rather than putting it to use on just another bottle of Dom Perignon. Sure, even that generates economic activity, but there are much better economically multiplying activities that can be invested in.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#129

Post by forgotmyoldname »

bserge wrote: post #88
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One wonderful thing about Japan is that houses are as much of an investment as toothbrushes. The minute someone uses it, its value drops immensely. 10 years is old but still somewhat livable and generally cheap. Once you get past 20 years, locals basically see the house as scrap. It's really easy to buy cheap houses or apartments over 20 years old. Some clueless foreigners new to Japan see these prices and think they…

That doesn't quite make sense. You're basically paying for the land in many European cities, too, so how is the price of the building an important factor? It's the land that's very expensive.

Random land outside of the middle of urban centers isn't that valuable, especially when population isn't growing. What is someone going to do, hold onto it for decades and hope someone buys it from them at a 10x markup and be enough to offset the taxes they paid?

In some places (or at least the US), old houses generally gain value. Of course, land is valuable in and of itself, but there's no shame in buying a 100 year old house in the US. There's no worry of earthquake damage, generally no risk of extensive mold due to a drier climate than East Asia, nobody really worries about ghosts infesting the home, etc. Plus, 100 year old American houses are quite honestly probably better than the cardboard and paper mache houses that have been common recently. In my experience, 1920s apartments were much nicer than the post 1970s places I lived in.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#130

Post by LightG »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #114
v-erne wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this sentiment and on the surface its looks right. But I feel that we are missing here some real studies that should be done into impact of life style of the rich on the whole economy. I know few rich people (some of them ungodly rich). And seeing glimpses of their life style I cannot simply ignore cohorts of supporting jobs that make it all possibile (just to mentions few : private guards, house keeps, g…

It creates real jobs and wealth. A friend of mine has 200 people employed in his family office.

"Real jobs and wealth" ... imagine putting them to work into something truly useful and creative, rather than a group of beck and call people.
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