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  • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I mean, this isn’t specific to capitalism. Pretty sure north Korea is similar.

    This is just baseline authoritarianism.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Pretty sure north Korea is similar.

      The NYPD has a bigger budget than the DPRK. And New York hasn’t been under siege by Pennsylvania for the last 80 years.

      • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The NYPD is also not in constant famine, they’re one of the richest cities on the planet.

        That’s like being surprised rent is more expensive in midtown Manhattan than in rural Texas.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          The NYPD is also not in constant famine, they’re one of the richest cities on the planet.

          Because they’re an international trading hub at the central of a global empire.

          North Korea is a bombed out backwater with more economic sanctions on it than Cuba, whose people spent the last 70 years gradually rebuilding after the US literally bombed them back to the stone age.

          Even then, NYers are getting shot over proximity to fare evasion. Korea’s rough, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone executed for failing to pay for a bus ticket.

          • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I’m not the one who made the comparison.

            Also, bombed out? They were a larger economy than sk at first, Kim IL sung did an OK job.

            But the problem with a hereditary monarchy is the fastest sperm is often the dumbest, as evidenced by his 2 moron heirs.

            But no, his hereditary dystopian dictatorship where people are reduced to eating grass and anyone who disagrees ends up in camps is still better than NYC, where we know about incidents like this which everyone agreed was horrific because we have freedom of speech.

            But please, go to North Korea right now and start talking shit about Lil Un, I’m curious how that will go.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              They were a larger economy than sk at first

              They were a larger economy after decades of domestic rebuilding, while SK was left to languish under a brutal right-wing military dictator. Then the US transitioned the SK economy into a tech manufacturing hub and granted a handful of influential families access to the limitless low-interst credit window of the Federal Reserve. The South became a workhouse for the American retail electronics market, where Korean workers got paid pennies to work long hours in dark warehouses to make low-cost bobbles for their western peers. This allowed these six influential families to go on a construction bonanza using the leverage afforded from foreign export revenues. Cheap steel from China combined with the fossil fuels imported from Russia and the Middle East, allowed the SK economy to soar past its heavily sanctioned NK peer… on paper.

              But the real legacy of the Korean economy for its people enormous entrenched personal debts. The South Korean economy is a product of cheap foreign lending. Household indebtedness to gross disposable income ratio in South Korea from 2012 to 2022 has grown from 152% to 203%.

              South Korea’s prosperity is entirely predicated on its continued access to cheap credit and cheap foreign commodities imports. North Korea’s stalled growth is a consequence of its embargo, the continued need to deter a large military presence on its southern border, and its need to build and maintain an economy entirely within one half of a small peninsula.

              But please, go to North Korea right now and start talking shit about Lil Un

              Please go to your local police department and start screaming obscenities at whomever is on duty.