Tips to grow your North Korean Startup • Hacker News Board

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#81

Post by beaconstudios » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #51

thechao wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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How many countries has communism been attempted in? 25? And of those, 4 remain officially communist, but whose economies have either transited to free markets or are moving that way. It is safe to say only the dreamers still believe in communism.m And people keep saying that communism hasn't been tried. But it has. It starts with the state trying to be socialist and then "withering away" to full on communism (accordi…

Yeah, state socialism doesn't work, that much is exceedingly obvious. That doesn't mean that we should just give up and accept capitalism as "the best we can do" as a species. It's just clear that authoritarian means are funnily enough not the route to a less authoritarian future.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#82

Post by beepbooptheory » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:25 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #70

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…

I deny that there is any meaningful or worthwhile theoretical thought behind communism. It was all just made up with zero connection to objective reality.

An extremely bold claim! In your mind, the communist project is one of the greatest and relatively most successful conspiracies to date.

Do you think that all those books people have written about it, both for and critically against, are just filled nonsense, and the writers and thinkers just had to count on the fact that nobody would actually read them? And that I, who have read a small portion, am somehow hypnotized into delusion by them, thinking I have gained knowledge, when in fact there was no knowledge to be gained at all?

I can't of course argue against this, as I am implicitly deluded in general, but I would still question your overall rhetorical strategy here.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#83

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #73

reaperducer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you put the word doctor in quotation marks, as if to imply they are substandard. It was always my understanding that while Cuba lacks a lot of things that many other countries take for granted, that the quality of its doctors was outstanding. I even remember seeing this mentioned in the newspaper at the beginning of the pandemic. Is this not true, or no longer true? Have I been under a false impressio…

> 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…

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Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#84

Post by beaconstudios » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

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.

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".

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#85

Post by mrtksn » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:27 PM UTC

darkwater wrote: post #76

mrtksn wrote: 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,…

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 think there was a special kind of a restaurant that is intended to be fancy but also for the locals. I was having a proper fish meal and a beer for about equivalent of 5$ in CUP at one of those). However I was told that I can't take any other bus than Viazul(the fancy tourist buses) for travelling between cities. Not that I would want to travel in one of those anyway, definitely not comfortable or safe to travel.

Here is one of the buses that the regular Cubans were traveling: https://imgur.com/a/jIynZMZ

For some reason, communists suck at automobile making.

OH! By the way, apparently CUC was discontinued a year ago in 1st of January 2021.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_convertible_peso

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#86

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #33

aspenmayer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No implication at all, I was simply curious. I think in the West we assume that the communist experience was bad, but I have no frame of reference for this, as I wasn’t there at the time. Then comes comparing between communist regimes, which is farther removed from my experience. I wish the CIA would’ve let democratically elected communist regimes alone, like Vietnam or certain Latin American countries. It just grind…

We have modern Venezuela as a ripe example.

Modern day Venezuela has a larger amount of private, for profit economic activity and employement than France.

It's meaningfully a socialist economy, just an insanely corrupt mixed-market economy with a government pretending to be socialist to keep power.

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#87

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #24

madeofpalk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine these people are on a left-right scale. They seem to be perpendicular.

I've never met a DPRK supporter, but I have met Cuba supporters. They were white, non-Cuban, and leaning so far left I was surprised they could remain upright. (And I'm pretty far left myself by contemporary U.S. standards.)

There are massive amounts of Cuba supporters outside of the Western world. From our point of view Cuba sucks, but for a lot of people the basic guarantees that Cuba gives and the lifestyle is actually not so bad at all. Their government also isn't much more corrupt than in the rest of the world.

I'm sure that, unsurprisingly, if you live in a majority white country, most Cuban supporters would be white and left-leaning. If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense?

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#88

Post by beaconstudios » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #45

thechao wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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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?

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#89

Post by sudosysgen » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #56

trasz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is North Korea left? It's an absolute monarchy, pretty much exactly the other side of the political compass.

That is, empirically, where forms of government commonly labelled as "left" ends up when taken to extremes. North Korea is just the most extreme example.

Yeah, bullshit. What other "left" government ended up with a hereditary monarchy?

Re: Tips to grow your North Korean Startup

#90

Post by hunterb123 » Thu, Jan 06, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

photochemsyn wrote: post #38

Interestingly this article could serve as a template for 'Tips to grow your illicit drug business in the USA' with very few changes: - you may get shot but police may simply take some of the goods; - remove any labels of origin to reduce potential charges; - contemplate various smuggling strategies; - don't work with people you care about (friends and family); - be careful where you store your money; Banned economic…

I guess it's thematically close enough for you to cast whataboutism, but no further.

In NK you have to worry about those closest to you monitoring you, you also have to worry about if being caught your entire family being labeled as bad blood. Some punishments go multiple generations deep.

Conducting 'illicit activity' in an authoritarian country vs a judicial one is a very different experience, in both the activities banned (almost everything in NK, even thinking), the risks, the punishments, and the enemies.

Doesn't really set in until you hear stories from NK defectors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTEDYEwfiwk