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

236 points by xojoc 5y ago

Markoff 5y ago
So less than 1% South Korean population, that doesn't strike me as very general strike. Also 0.5M (1.8%) out of 28M economically active population doesn't sound much bigger. 98% SoKo workers DGAF
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  2% is huge for a first strike. Absolutely huge. You only need around 3% to shut down an economy.
  - Markoff 5y ago
    except only 0.06% participated in the end
mathematically 5y ago
Related: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-after-the-pandemic-we-can-t-go-back-to-sleep https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-after-.... It's cool to see people waking up and getting organized.
google234123 5y ago
> Nationalize key industries and socialize basic services like education and housing. Yeah, hopefully they don't achieve this.
- consp 5y ago
  Why? Some forms of this work pretty well in lots of countries, it doesn't in others. As with all its in the details but straight out saying no is just ignorant.
  - HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
    Where did it work pretty well?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - barry-cotter 5y ago
    I'm not aware of anywhere that attempts to socialise housing has worked well. As a teacher and someone who has been a student I'm also extremely hesitant to say that the way education is usually provided [1] counts as working well, whether you're looking at purely economic returns on investment or human flourishing. [1] Not a knock on government provision in this case as demand for education with any real freedom seems to be extremely limited
    - ginko 5y ago
      > I'm not aware of anywhere that attempts to socialise housing has worked well. In Vienna about 25% of the total housing stock is public housing[1]. It's the main reason why rental prices are significantly below other European capitals[2]. [1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/503274/average-rental-cost-apartment-europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/503274/average-rental-co...
      - barry-cotter 5y ago
        Your [1] does not imply your [2]. If 200,000 refugees show up in Vienna tomorrow and are allowed to work and be economically productive they'll look for and find housing, bidding up prices. Housing supply does not automatically increase with demand. If the private sector provides 100,000 new dwelling places it'll have a very similar effect to the public sector doing so. Who owns the provider has limited economic effect.
      - dash2 5y ago
        Bold claim about causality there. Have you got a research design to back it up?
- PebblesHD 5y ago
  In some countries with absurdly high house prices, I think some level of nationalisation of housing is an eventual inevitability. Much like Seoul, places like Sydney are so expensive that unless you already own a house, or are eventually going to inherit one, no amount of hard work or education can reliably get you into the market. Entry level prices within 25 miles of the city are around A$1.5m for a detached house, and apartments are predominantly 1 or 2 bedrooms and poorly built, so not really suitable for families. Many people suggest ‘moving west’ to the new suburbs being built, but even 30-40 miles out the prices are still around a million dollars. Given an average full time wage in the range of $50k, saving a deposit after rent is almost impossible. Not totally impossible, but very close to…
  - Guthur 5y ago
    And places like Sydney are expensive in no small part because of issues like negative gearing and zoning controls, all in direct control of the government. Also the government is under no incentive to change the status quo because like any good mafia they take their cut of every transaction with stamp duty "oh you two want to trade, where's mine?".
    - PebblesHD 5y ago
      You’re not wrong, but I would hope that by the time we work ourselves into a situation where there is no unskilled labour within commuting distance of where the work is, the government might finally realise that lack of workers is bad for business, which seems to be the main concern. I’m still wondering if we will reach a point where normal people don’t have any disposable money to spend in shops because it’s all going to landlords and utilities/basics, and if at that point they might go ‘oh wait that’s bad’
      - killtimeatwork 5y ago
        I can't really see politicians allowing the inflated housing market to deflate. So many people will lose years/decades worth of saving this way - that would mean a lot of angry voters, not to mention another potential banking crash, as mortgages would no longer be backed by houses of enough value. I think high housing prices in developed world are going to stay with us for a long time.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  I agree this would be a bad turn. In the US, it is frustrating to see the poor results produced by the public education system and teacher unions, particularly for K-12 education. The lack of competition and union power has led to an empty incentive structure, where teacher unions regularly oppose having their outcomes measured and don't fear needing to compete with better teachers or schools. Beyond that, organizations like the NEA (the largest teacher union and also largest union in the US) are increasingly political and inject their (far left) activism into the schooling system as a means to indoctrinate the next generation. Choice is critical in things like education, and being forced to pay taxes to prop up a one-size-fits-all government-mandated choice is unethical because it is plainly bad for students and society.
  - maeln 5y ago
    Public education work in a lot of country (see for example most European country). Teacher also tend to be heavily unionised in other country, as well as having a tendency to be more left-leaning (but that is a veeeryyy big generalization). The issue is not the public education, teacher or union, it's the U.S government(s?) lack of incentive to actually care about those services.
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      It's the property taxes funding education. Like, if you wanted to reinforce pre-existing class/income divides someplace, you'd fund education with local property taxes.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    Of course it is way better to have decent education available to people with boatloads of money while the rest works 3 low paid jobs to make the ends meet without any hope to ever have anything resembling normal life.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    It's a US problem, not a socialised education problem, same for your social security system, it works in many many other countries
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  One day, hopefully we'll be rich enough to do this and not have it be a mess. Fullly automated luxury space communism is the goal.
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    Don't keep your hopes up, in the US military spending will keep eating most of all surplus, but on the upside you'll have the most genocidal nuclear weapons of all countries on Earth!
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      Most of the tech we have is in some way due to military spending
      - BelenusMordred 5y ago
        US defense R&D is tiny compared to total expenditure. It's also falling dramatically. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/02/us-defense-rd-funding-falls-chinas-keeps-growing/163021/ https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/02/us-defense-rd-...
      - c21h30o2 5y ago
        Maybe spend more on civilian research then. Wouldn't it be cool if the government would spend trillions on researching cool new tech for improving society rather than destroying it?
      - SiempreViernes 5y ago
        Do you have some history of technology sources to back up this claim? Because even radar was first developed for the civilian setting before the military boosted its development tremendously to solve their WW2 related needs. I think a much better theory of technological development is that the military mainly funds engineering development of existing technology and doesn't stumble into truly new inventions faster than anyone else. A corollary to this is that most tech is not related to military spending because most spending is not military spending.
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  Seems very ambitious for such a modest union, 1/36 of the working age population is a bit small if you're going to demand nationalisation. I guess this is one of these framing devices to make their real objective seem more palatable?
  - diordiderot 5y ago
    3.5% Rule. You only need 1/30th of the population to overthrow a government through economic non participation.
    - thorin 5y ago
      Interesting I hadn't heard of that before, but I found a bit more information here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Chenoweth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Chenoweth
- FpUser 5y ago
  Frankly this is none of your business. Their country, their choice.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into flamewar, please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments, and please don't use HN for ideological battle. All of that is against the site guidelines. Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this repeatedly. We ban that sort of account, so if you'd please fix this, we'd be grateful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
0max 5y ago
I wonder if Squid Game has had an impact. Gi-Hun had a flashback to an auto factory strike that was pretty traumatic that led him down the path to sign his life away to the game. https://labornotes.org/blogs/2021/10/real-life-auto-strike-behind-runaway-netflix-hit-squid-game https://labornotes.org/blogs/2021/10/real-life-auto-strike-b...
- dgunay 5y ago
  So many of their recent films with worldwide acclaim are about rampant classism and economic inequality. Even as someone not super in touch with Korean social sentiment, I still get the feeling that Koreans are getting super fed up with their status quo. Might not be "having an effect" so much as "reflecting the way they feel".
  - yodsanklai 5y ago
    It's a chicken and egg problem, or maybe a feedback loop.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Given most people are not super-wealthy, popular shows are much more likely to have been sympathetic to that view. No one wants to watch a show that says "Actually things are pretty good compared to how they were, and still improving, and while there are a few really rich people in the world, it wouldn't change your life for the better if they didn't exist."
    - burnished 5y ago
      Do you have any idea then number of people and the volume of resources that go to servicing the wealthy? Yes, I think we'd be doing better if there were fewer extraordinarily wealthy people. They aren't necessary to work together to achieve economies of scale, but they sure are fucking expensive.
      - qaq 5y ago
        Do you? Do you really think you can magically turn raw materials + work needed to build a super yacht into something of global consequence ? Or a Pollock painting will magically turn into a 1000 homes? Or that 1% consumes significantly more food? Most ultra-rich sh*t is immaterial to struggles of regular people. Even if 1%ers consumes extra 300 square meters of real eastate if you divide it across the 99% you will get an extra 3 square meters. It's immaterial.
mopsy77 5y ago
Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect? Its like all these dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royale movies and shows are just expressing the never ending exploitaion and helplessness around people.
- ogogmad 5y ago
  Which movies?
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    He should have namedropped 'Parasite'. It is a drama though.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      They did… > Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect?
      - smolder 5y ago
        Maybe the comment was edited?
- HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
  > the never ending exploitaion and helplessness I heard recently that we deliver something like 130k people out of poverty each day. Do you know of a measure of human well-being that's decreasing?
- paxys 5y ago
  I’d wager it’s the other way around. Income inequality and worker discontent has been growing worldwide for many years. New movies and shows being produced reflect that social sentiment and get popular because people can relate.
  - 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
This already happened, yesterday.[1] About 16,000 people showed up for a rally in Seoul. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korea-squid-game-labor-union-protest/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korea-squid-game-labor-un...
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  Seems like 16000 was nationwide, which should count as pretty disappointing turnout even though protests are supposed to be banned. In any case, I get the impression this article is mostly about influencing US domestic politics rather than accurately describe what happens in Korea...
- treeman79 5y ago
  Never trust media on counts. Went to some boat rallies that had many thousands of people and hundreds of boat. Highly impressive turnout. Media reports made it out that barely anyone showed up.
  - jstummbillig 5y ago
    Wanted to comment with a snide "QED", then got really sad, because jumping from poor reporting on boat rallies to "never trust the media" feels way too real right now.
    - treeman79 5y ago
      Why on earth would anyone “trust” the media or any other group. That’s like believing Facebook has your best interest in mind. Figure out what a group wants to understand how they are spinning story.
      - krastanov 5y ago
        It is more about having a slightly more sophisticated and realistic view of the world than a binary "they are good/bad". Everyone has biases, everyone is frequently imprecise in "something", and everything is political, but that does not mean you should distrust everyone and assume they are malicious/incompetent.
grecy 5y ago
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.
- m0zg 5y ago
  > 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 is what it cost just 20 years ago, before government got more "involved"), a lot of people would be able to afford it out of pocket without entering de-facto indentured servitude. The primary concern, instead, should be how much this shit costs, as well as the fact that the costs are _still_ rising. And this concern can't be addressed until we force hospitals to publish prices, allow people to buy healthcare across state lines, and force US Big Pharma to treat the United States more favorably than they treat, say, Europe. Note that given the high levels of corruption in our government, and the high cost of doctors and nurses ($300 for a 10 minute consultation? GTFO, not even lawyers charge this much), I do not think that piping another few trillion per year through the government is going to improve matters in any way whatsoever.
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    Do you think healthcare providers could get away with such crazy prices if they had to negotiate with the government, instead of some insurance giant which in turn is bilking some corporation?
    - moduspol 5y ago
      Perhaps a better question for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon? It's not like the US Government has some strong history of excellent price negotiation.
    - m0zg 5y ago
timwaagh 5y ago
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.
- pell 5y ago
  That is not "the only" nor "the" reason.
  - robertlagrant 5y ago
    Having said that, Bevan said this of the way he convinced doctors to join the NHS: "I stuffed their mouths with gold."
    - teamonkey 5y ago
      Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan#Minister_of_Health_(1945%E2%80%931951) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan#Minister_of_Heal...
  - timwaagh 5y ago
    Indeed the real underlying reason is were all humans, all equal and everyone deserves quality healthcare.
mathverse 5y ago
[flagged]
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN into ideological or (especially not) nationalistic flamewar. Usually when people post like this, they have some personal connection to the country they're flaming. That's a different context than outright prejudice but it still doesn't make it ok to post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - mathverse 5y ago
    I dont see anything ideological or flamy. This is my experience with living with and among koreans for a very long time.
    - dang 5y ago
      You may not see anything flamy about "Koreans are the reason for such bullshit culture" but many people on the internet certainly would, and that's what determines flamebait. Please don't post like that to HN. I'm sure you can find other ways to share your experience. Glib, grand generalizations about large groups of people (such as nations) tend to be provocative in general, so if you want to make such comments you should explicitly scope them to your personal experience. We don't want nationalistic flamewars here, and that's what comments like yours in this thread tend to produce. It's great that it didn't burst into flames in this case, but that just was a lucky break.
      - mathverse 5y ago
        Ok noted.
- LurkingPenguin 5y ago
  [Insert any nationality] are the reason for such bullshit culture. It's on them to change it not the government.
lm28469 5y ago
Good for them > Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/kurz-the-discourse-of-voluntary-servitude#preview https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/kurz-the-discourse-of-volu...
noisy_boy 5y ago
Condition of migrant workers in South Korea is even worse: https://indianexpress.com/article/world/squid-game-netflix-south-korea-migrant-workers-7569572/ https://indianexpress.com/article/world/squid-game-netflix-s...
justshowpost 5y ago
This gave me good laugh, the Bolshevist paper unironically named "Pravda". Recommended reading: Robert A. Heinlein - "Pravda" Means "Truth" An urgent message from Truthout Trump or no Trump, the US is still reeling from coordinated right-wing attacks on democracy, human rights, and independent media. We must raise $20K by the end of today to keep publishing the truth
- tim333 5y ago
  Coming soon - the battle of the truths: >“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump said in a statement.
  - justshowpost 5y ago
    Except Donald Trump usually tells the truth and happens to be right, esp. when Clinton News Network is screening their usual "Racist! Conspiracy!".
ekianjo 5y ago
> Nationalize key industries and socialize basic services like education and housing. Oh. Nobody ever told them how bad things go when you do that ?
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  I mean, not so bad. Education is nationalised here in Quebec, and so are key industries such as energy production, while housing is socialized in the form of aggressive rent controls and serviceable (though not expanded enough by recent governments) public housing. We even ran a budget surplus for a fair while with these programs.
treme 5y ago
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions are known for their thuggish ways. They frequently resort to violence, harassment and coerce all those that stand in their agenda. within last year, they harassed a manager of delivery logistics company to commit suicide (specified and detailed harassment he faced on his will), cut off fuel valve of a delivery truck for not participating in their strike, and beat up a strike breaker. The young worker demographic aren't keen to their ways, as exemplified by recent strike & protest of starbucks workers refusing help from KCTU when they volunteered to 'unite' in protest efforts. https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210923195947254 https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210923195947254 https://www.edunctn.com/mobile/article.html?no=16927 https://www.edunctn.com/mobile/article.html?no=16927 https://www.chosun.com/national/labor/2021/09/17/ORHL7BDIABD5NAD22CHYAO6REY/ https://www.chosun.com/national/labor/2021/09/17/ORHL7BDIABD... https://m.khan.co.kr/national/national-general/article/202110091630001 https://m.khan.co.kr/national/national-general/article/20211...
- 0max 5y ago
  So did the teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa back when Nixon debased the gold standard and unions needed a workaround for the Federal monopoly on violence. (see "I Heard You Paint Houses")
- uabstraction 5y ago
  The capitalist class on the other hand is famously innocent of thuggery. It's not like the established socioeconomic relations in Korea were incubated under a military dictatorship or anything.
- throwaway-x123 5y ago
  Imagine anger when you live in poverty, you work 9 hours/day (minimum, from workweek in Korea) manual labor, some people at work die or get disabilities in work accidents. As a worker you know that everyone lives from surplus you produce, the food, etc, programmers do not make food. You can only do programming since they made food for you. So as a worker, you know you do something useful, right? So you deiced to talk with your boss, you told him all this and ask for better working conditions, little less working time, etc. He fires you. On the next job, you try to not make the same mistake, you organize collectively and strike. But this time, government use force to stop the strike and kills someone of your friends. Not surprising that some workers will be very angry.
davmonk 5y ago
A lot of Korean shows depict the different aspects of their economic consciousness. These movies probably impacted the community to become aware and understand the economic system.
audiometry 5y ago
I vividly remember as a kid in the 1980s seeing coverage of strikes in Korea. They seemed absurdly violent. The image that stands out to me was a striker had fashioned some giant burner/flame thrower thing out of (I suppose) an Lpg tank and was driving the cops back with it. Hilarious and exciting to a 10yo boy.

236 points by xojoc 5y ago

So less than 1% South Korean population, that doesn't strike me as very general strike. Also 0.5M (1.8%) out of 28M economically active population doesn't sound much bigger. 98% SoKo workers DGAF

sudosysgen 5y ago
2% is huge for a first strike. Absolutely huge. You only need around 3% to shut down an economy.
- Markoff 5y ago
  except only 0.06% participated in the end

mathematically 5y ago

Related: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-after-the-pandemic-we-can-t-go-back-to-sleep https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-after-.... It's cool to see people waking up and getting organized.

google234123 5y ago

> Nationalize key industries and socialize basic services like education and housing. Yeah, hopefully they don't achieve this.

consp 5y ago
Why? Some forms of this work pretty well in lots of countries, it doesn't in others. As with all its in the details but straight out saying no is just ignorant.
- HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
  Where did it work pretty well?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  I'm not aware of anywhere that attempts to socialise housing has worked well. As a teacher and someone who has been a student I'm also extremely hesitant to say that the way education is usually provided [1] counts as working well, whether you're looking at purely economic returns on investment or human flourishing. [1] Not a knock on government provision in this case as demand for education with any real freedom seems to be extremely limited
  - ginko 5y ago
    > I'm not aware of anywhere that attempts to socialise housing has worked well. In Vienna about 25% of the total housing stock is public housing[1]. It's the main reason why rental prices are significantly below other European capitals[2]. [1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_article_011314.html https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl... [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/503274/average-rental-cost-apartment-europe/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/503274/average-rental-co...
    - barry-cotter 5y ago
      Your [1] does not imply your [2]. If 200,000 refugees show up in Vienna tomorrow and are allowed to work and be economically productive they'll look for and find housing, bidding up prices. Housing supply does not automatically increase with demand. If the private sector provides 100,000 new dwelling places it'll have a very similar effect to the public sector doing so. Who owns the provider has limited economic effect.
    - dash2 5y ago
      Bold claim about causality there. Have you got a research design to back it up?
PebblesHD 5y ago
In some countries with absurdly high house prices, I think some level of nationalisation of housing is an eventual inevitability. Much like Seoul, places like Sydney are so expensive that unless you already own a house, or are eventually going to inherit one, no amount of hard work or education can reliably get you into the market. Entry level prices within 25 miles of the city are around A$1.5m for a detached house, and apartments are predominantly 1 or 2 bedrooms and poorly built, so not really suitable for families. Many people suggest ‘moving west’ to the new suburbs being built, but even 30-40 miles out the prices are still around a million dollars. Given an average full time wage in the range of $50k, saving a deposit after rent is almost impossible. Not totally impossible, but very close to…
- Guthur 5y ago
  And places like Sydney are expensive in no small part because of issues like negative gearing and zoning controls, all in direct control of the government. Also the government is under no incentive to change the status quo because like any good mafia they take their cut of every transaction with stamp duty "oh you two want to trade, where's mine?".
  - PebblesHD 5y ago
    You’re not wrong, but I would hope that by the time we work ourselves into a situation where there is no unskilled labour within commuting distance of where the work is, the government might finally realise that lack of workers is bad for business, which seems to be the main concern. I’m still wondering if we will reach a point where normal people don’t have any disposable money to spend in shops because it’s all going to landlords and utilities/basics, and if at that point they might go ‘oh wait that’s bad’
    - killtimeatwork 5y ago
      I can't really see politicians allowing the inflated housing market to deflate. So many people will lose years/decades worth of saving this way - that would mean a lot of angry voters, not to mention another potential banking crash, as mortgages would no longer be backed by houses of enough value. I think high housing prices in developed world are going to stay with us for a long time.
throwawaysea 5y ago
I agree this would be a bad turn. In the US, it is frustrating to see the poor results produced by the public education system and teacher unions, particularly for K-12 education. The lack of competition and union power has led to an empty incentive structure, where teacher unions regularly oppose having their outcomes measured and don't fear needing to compete with better teachers or schools. Beyond that, organizations like the NEA (the largest teacher union and also largest union in the US) are increasingly political and inject their (far left) activism into the schooling system as a means to indoctrinate the next generation. Choice is critical in things like education, and being forced to pay taxes to prop up a one-size-fits-all government-mandated choice is unethical because it is plainly bad for students and society.
- maeln 5y ago
  Public education work in a lot of country (see for example most European country). Teacher also tend to be heavily unionised in other country, as well as having a tendency to be more left-leaning (but that is a veeeryyy big generalization). The issue is not the public education, teacher or union, it's the U.S government(s?) lack of incentive to actually care about those services.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    It's the property taxes funding education. Like, if you wanted to reinforce pre-existing class/income divides someplace, you'd fund education with local property taxes.
- FpUser 5y ago
  Of course it is way better to have decent education available to people with boatloads of money while the rest works 3 low paid jobs to make the ends meet without any hope to ever have anything resembling normal life.
- lm28469 5y ago
  It's a US problem, not a socialised education problem, same for your social security system, it works in many many other countries
barry-cotter 5y ago
One day, hopefully we'll be rich enough to do this and not have it be a mess. Fullly automated luxury space communism is the goal.
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  Don't keep your hopes up, in the US military spending will keep eating most of all surplus, but on the upside you'll have the most genocidal nuclear weapons of all countries on Earth!
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    Most of the tech we have is in some way due to military spending
    - BelenusMordred 5y ago
      US defense R&D is tiny compared to total expenditure. It's also falling dramatically. https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/02/us-defense-rd-funding-falls-chinas-keeps-growing/163021/ https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/02/us-defense-rd-...
    - c21h30o2 5y ago
      Maybe spend more on civilian research then. Wouldn't it be cool if the government would spend trillions on researching cool new tech for improving society rather than destroying it?
    - SiempreViernes 5y ago
      Do you have some history of technology sources to back up this claim? Because even radar was first developed for the civilian setting before the military boosted its development tremendously to solve their WW2 related needs. I think a much better theory of technological development is that the military mainly funds engineering development of existing technology and doesn't stumble into truly new inventions faster than anyone else. A corollary to this is that most tech is not related to military spending because most spending is not military spending.
SiempreViernes 5y ago
Seems very ambitious for such a modest union, 1/36 of the working age population is a bit small if you're going to demand nationalisation. I guess this is one of these framing devices to make their real objective seem more palatable?
- diordiderot 5y ago
  3.5% Rule. You only need 1/30th of the population to overthrow a government through economic non participation.
  - thorin 5y ago
    Interesting I hadn't heard of that before, but I found a bit more information here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Chenoweth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Chenoweth
FpUser 5y ago
Frankly this is none of your business. Their country, their choice.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads into flamewar, please stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments, and please don't use HN for ideological battle. All of that is against the site guidelines. Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this repeatedly. We ban that sort of account, so if you'd please fix this, we'd be grateful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

0max 5y ago

I wonder if Squid Game has had an impact. Gi-Hun had a flashback to an auto factory strike that was pretty traumatic that led him down the path to sign his life away to the game. https://labornotes.org/blogs/2021/10/real-life-auto-strike-behind-runaway-netflix-hit-squid-game https://labornotes.org/blogs/2021/10/real-life-auto-strike-b...

dgunay 5y ago
So many of their recent films with worldwide acclaim are about rampant classism and economic inequality. Even as someone not super in touch with Korean social sentiment, I still get the feeling that Koreans are getting super fed up with their status quo. Might not be "having an effect" so much as "reflecting the way they feel".
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  It's a chicken and egg problem, or maybe a feedback loop.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Given most people are not super-wealthy, popular shows are much more likely to have been sympathetic to that view. No one wants to watch a show that says "Actually things are pretty good compared to how they were, and still improving, and while there are a few really rich people in the world, it wouldn't change your life for the better if they didn't exist."
  - burnished 5y ago
    Do you have any idea then number of people and the volume of resources that go to servicing the wealthy? Yes, I think we'd be doing better if there were fewer extraordinarily wealthy people. They aren't necessary to work together to achieve economies of scale, but they sure are fucking expensive.
    - qaq 5y ago
      Do you? Do you really think you can magically turn raw materials + work needed to build a super yacht into something of global consequence ? Or a Pollock painting will magically turn into a 1000 homes? Or that 1% consumes significantly more food? Most ultra-rich sh*t is immaterial to struggles of regular people. Even if 1%ers consumes extra 300 square meters of real eastate if you divide it across the 99% you will get an extra 3 square meters. It's immaterial.

mopsy77 5y ago

Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect? Its like all these dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royale movies and shows are just expressing the never ending exploitaion and helplessness around people.

ogogmad 5y ago
Which movies?
- rightbyte 5y ago
  He should have namedropped 'Parasite'. It is a drama though.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    They did… > Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect?
    - smolder 5y ago
      Maybe the comment was edited?
HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
> the never ending exploitaion and helplessness I heard recently that we deliver something like 130k people out of poverty each day. Do you know of a measure of human well-being that's decreasing?
paxys 5y ago
I’d wager it’s the other way around. Income inequality and worker discontent has been growing worldwide for many years. New movies and shows being produced reflect that social sentiment and get popular because people can relate.
- 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

This already happened, yesterday.[1] About 16,000 people showed up for a rally in Seoul. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korea-squid-game-labor-union-protest/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korea-squid-game-labor-un...

SiempreViernes 5y ago
Seems like 16000 was nationwide, which should count as pretty disappointing turnout even though protests are supposed to be banned. In any case, I get the impression this article is mostly about influencing US domestic politics rather than accurately describe what happens in Korea...
treeman79 5y ago
Never trust media on counts. Went to some boat rallies that had many thousands of people and hundreds of boat. Highly impressive turnout. Media reports made it out that barely anyone showed up.
- jstummbillig 5y ago
  Wanted to comment with a snide "QED", then got really sad, because jumping from poor reporting on boat rallies to "never trust the media" feels way too real right now.
  - treeman79 5y ago
    Why on earth would anyone “trust” the media or any other group. That’s like believing Facebook has your best interest in mind. Figure out what a group wants to understand how they are spinning story.
    - krastanov 5y ago
      It is more about having a slightly more sophisticated and realistic view of the world than a binary "they are good/bad". Everyone has biases, everyone is frequently imprecise in "something", and everything is political, but that does not mean you should distrust everyone and assume they are malicious/incompetent.

grecy 5y ago

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.

m0zg 5y ago
> 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 is what it cost just 20 years ago, before government got more "involved"), a lot of people would be able to afford it out of pocket without entering de-facto indentured servitude. The primary concern, instead, should be how much this shit costs, as well as the fact that the costs are _still_ rising. And this concern can't be addressed until we force hospitals to publish prices, allow people to buy healthcare across state lines, and force US Big Pharma to treat the United States more favorably than they treat, say, Europe. Note that given the high levels of corruption in our government, and the high cost of doctors and nurses ($300 for a 10 minute consultation? GTFO, not even lawyers charge this much), I do not think that piping another few trillion per year through the government is going to improve matters in any way whatsoever.
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  Do you think healthcare providers could get away with such crazy prices if they had to negotiate with the government, instead of some insurance giant which in turn is bilking some corporation?
  - moduspol 5y ago
    Perhaps a better question for Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon? It's not like the US Government has some strong history of excellent price negotiation.
  - m0zg 5y ago

timwaagh 5y ago

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.

pell 5y ago
That is not "the only" nor "the" reason.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  Having said that, Bevan said this of the way he convinced doctors to join the NHS: "I stuffed their mouths with gold."
  - teamonkey 5y ago
    Context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan#Minister_of_Health_(1945%E2%80%931951) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneurin_Bevan#Minister_of_Heal...
- timwaagh 5y ago
  Indeed the real underlying reason is were all humans, all equal and everyone deserves quality healthcare.

mathverse 5y ago

[flagged]

dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN into ideological or (especially not) nationalistic flamewar. Usually when people post like this, they have some personal connection to the country they're flaming. That's a different context than outright prejudice but it still doesn't make it ok to post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mathverse 5y ago
  I dont see anything ideological or flamy. This is my experience with living with and among koreans for a very long time.
  - dang 5y ago
    You may not see anything flamy about "Koreans are the reason for such bullshit culture" but many people on the internet certainly would, and that's what determines flamebait. Please don't post like that to HN. I'm sure you can find other ways to share your experience. Glib, grand generalizations about large groups of people (such as nations) tend to be provocative in general, so if you want to make such comments you should explicitly scope them to your personal experience. We don't want nationalistic flamewars here, and that's what comments like yours in this thread tend to produce. It's great that it didn't burst into flames in this case, but that just was a lucky break.
    - mathverse 5y ago
      Ok noted.
LurkingPenguin 5y ago
[Insert any nationality] are the reason for such bullshit culture. It's on them to change it not the government.

lm28469 5y ago

Good for them > Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces. https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/kurz-the-discourse-of-voluntary-servitude#preview https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/kurz-the-discourse-of-volu...

noisy_boy 5y ago

Condition of migrant workers in South Korea is even worse: https://indianexpress.com/article/world/squid-game-netflix-south-korea-migrant-workers-7569572/ https://indianexpress.com/article/world/squid-game-netflix-s...

justshowpost 5y ago

This gave me good laugh, the Bolshevist paper unironically named "Pravda". Recommended reading: Robert A. Heinlein - "Pravda" Means "Truth" An urgent message from Truthout Trump or no Trump, the US is still reeling from coordinated right-wing attacks on democracy, human rights, and independent media. We must raise $20K by the end of today to keep publishing the truth

tim333 5y ago
Coming soon - the battle of the truths: >“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump said in a statement.
- justshowpost 5y ago
  Except Donald Trump usually tells the truth and happens to be right, esp. when Clinton News Network is screening their usual "Racist! Conspiracy!".

ekianjo 5y ago

> Nationalize key industries and socialize basic services like education and housing. Oh. Nobody ever told them how bad things go when you do that ?

sudosysgen 5y ago
I mean, not so bad. Education is nationalised here in Quebec, and so are key industries such as energy production, while housing is socialized in the form of aggressive rent controls and serviceable (though not expanded enough by recent governments) public housing. We even ran a budget surplus for a fair while with these programs.

treme 5y ago

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions are known for their thuggish ways. They frequently resort to violence, harassment and coerce all those that stand in their agenda. within last year, they harassed a manager of delivery logistics company to commit suicide (specified and detailed harassment he faced on his will), cut off fuel valve of a delivery truck for not participating in their strike, and beat up a strike breaker. The young worker demographic aren't keen to their ways, as exemplified by recent strike & protest of starbucks workers refusing help from KCTU when they volunteered to 'unite' in protest efforts. https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210923195947254 https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210923195947254 https://www.edunctn.com/mobile/article.html?no=16927 https://www.edunctn.com/mobile/article.html?no=16927 https://www.chosun.com/national/labor/2021/09/17/ORHL7BDIABD5NAD22CHYAO6REY/ https://www.chosun.com/national/labor/2021/09/17/ORHL7BDIABD... https://m.khan.co.kr/national/national-general/article/202110091630001 https://m.khan.co.kr/national/national-general/article/20211...

0max 5y ago
So did the teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa back when Nixon debased the gold standard and unions needed a workaround for the Federal monopoly on violence. (see "I Heard You Paint Houses")
uabstraction 5y ago
The capitalist class on the other hand is famously innocent of thuggery. It's not like the established socioeconomic relations in Korea were incubated under a military dictatorship or anything.
throwaway-x123 5y ago
Imagine anger when you live in poverty, you work 9 hours/day (minimum, from workweek in Korea) manual labor, some people at work die or get disabilities in work accidents. As a worker you know that everyone lives from surplus you produce, the food, etc, programmers do not make food. You can only do programming since they made food for you. So as a worker, you know you do something useful, right? So you deiced to talk with your boss, you told him all this and ask for better working conditions, little less working time, etc. He fires you. On the next job, you try to not make the same mistake, you organize collectively and strike. But this time, government use force to stop the strike and kills someone of your friends. Not surprising that some workers will be very angry.

davmonk 5y ago

A lot of Korean shows depict the different aspects of their economic consciousness. These movies probably impacted the community to become aware and understand the economic system.

audiometry 5y ago

I vividly remember as a kid in the 1980s seeing coverage of strikes in Korea. They seemed absurdly violent. The image that stands out to me was a striker had fashioned some giant burner/flame thrower thing out of (I suppose) an Lpg tank and was driving the cops back with it. Hilarious and exciting to a 10yo boy.