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You’re making a very good point here. We’ve always known that malign forces of various varieties will exploit the vulnerable in society, and we’ve definitely ex
by moomin 1y ago
You’re making a very good point here. We’ve always known that malign forces of various varieties will exploit the vulnerable in society, and we’ve definitely experimented with trying to imprison every last one of the vulnerable sucked into criminality. The War of Drugs has pretty definitively demonstrated this strategy doesn’t work. Poverty has been a national security issue for some time.
- tehjoker 1y agoJust wait until you realize that the reason we have “national security” is because they are protecting a system that impoverishes americans and the world. North Korea is targeted because it is a socialist counter example. That’s a crime and it must be slandered. This is why this line of argumentation is at once true and will never be persuasive: the poverty is the point of our economic system. That’s what they’re protecting. If Americans were all relatively equal, the economic royalists would have no throne to sit on.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> North Korea is targeted because it is a socialist You've got to be kidding me. America has a Gini coefficient of about .42 [1]. The last time North Korea's was estimated, it was around .82. To to put that in perspective, the inequality gap between America and North Korea is well more than double that between America and the Netherlands. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_in... 2023
- tehjoker 1y agoYou should read up on the Korean War. Here’s an accessible resource: https://blowback.show/ https://blowback.show/ Did you really think anticommunism disappeared from American elites?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> You should read up on the Korean War To learn that we went to war with North Korea because it's communist? No shit. We also did that with Russia, China, Vietnam and a good fraction of current NATO members, trade partners and allies. > Did you really think anticommunism disappeared from American elites? Elites? Most Americans have unfavourable views of communism [1]. But you didn't say communism. You said socialism. And it's a bit ridiculous to argue (a) North Korea is run as a socialist economy or (b) that we have a beef with Pyongyang, today, because of how it runs its economy. [1] https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2020-annual-poll/ https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2020-annual-poll/
- FooBarWidget 1y agoI don't have a beef in this discussion but I just want to point out that if you want to quote a source, then quoting Victims of Communism may not be your best move. They label all WW2 Nazi casualties by the Soviets as "victims of communism" so not exactly an objective and truthful source.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> quoting Victims of Communism may not be your best move I’m citing the YouGov poll they commissioned, but fair enough.
- WorldPeas 1y agoit is kind of befuddling that they had a working system that gave people the marginal quantity to not rebel and even that was too much for them. Even then don't carry water for NK as some sort of utopia. America is (as clickbaity as I feel saying this) more communist at its worst than NK ever was.
- tehjoker 1y agoWe are capitalist. The fact that you doubt this means you are misinformed on basic facts.
- astrange 1y agoAmerica's homeless population is because of America's land use policy, which is pretty communist. Or rather, it runs on "economic democracy" - no matter how much money you have, you can't do what you want with your land unless all your neighbors agree with it enough to change the local zoning policy. Which means you can't build low-cost multi-family housing on it.
- throwaway7783 1y agoThat's democracy and not communism?
- GauntletWizard 1y agoIt doesn't work, so it must not be communism.
- rangestransform 1y agoA charitable interpretation is that it is a form of democratic control of wealth (neighbours decide what you do with your land) rather than individual control of wealth (building however many stories you want on your own land), and democratic control of wealth is definitely closer to communism than individual control of wealth
- hollerith 1y agoIt's so sad that that the US is such a poor country and that its leaders refuse to learn from North Korea on how to become richer
- tehjoker 1y agoThe US has attacked North Korea constantly economically and killed 20% of its population in the 1950s. It economically supported South Korea. You are complaining about the results of this attack. In the 1970s the DPRK was economically outpacing the south and the US stepped up support to prevent capitalism from looking like shit.
- hollerith 1y agoThe US did support SK, e.g., by giving it "most favorable nation" trading status, but NK had supporters, too, in the USSR and China. >In the 1970s the DPRK was economically outpacing the south -- according to statistics published by the DPRK.
- tehjoker 1y agoThe USSR no longer exists and China has only recently become strong enough to offer similar kinds of supports (which doesn't mean that it does in fact do so). China was an agrarian society until basically the past 25-35 years.
- nkrisc 1y agoI’d rather be poor in the US, than rich in North Korea. And I wouldn’t wish “poor in the US” on my enemies.