3w ago

Found on a post about Kim Jon unbanning hot dogs

67 comments

I finally just blocked the entire instance. A lot of those folks aren’t exactly… right.
The hardcore tankies as just as bad as holocaust deniers.
- Tankies and fascists have more in common with each other, and feudalists, than they do with workers/socialists. I'm convinced the horseshoe theory is just narcissism presenting across the political spectrum.
  Only a fucking narcissist could believe authoritarianism, control, and subjugation are desirable. That's why its delusions of grandeur and megalomania all the way down.
  
  Authoritarians gonna auth. Why particular holy book they wave around, the Bible, das Kapital, mein Kampf or whatever they have in North Korea is merely incidental.
  
  Just got majorly downvoted on works for asking why free speech is a bad thing and the only response was a snarky comment saying I’m from 300 years ago.
  I’m about to delete my account after being on here for a year and a half because most popular Lemmy instances are just turning into the worst parts of twitter exiles.
- Pretty sure most of them are holocaust deniers, just not the Holocaust you're thinking of.
- Tankies are just fashists who are exploiting the glitch that makes the ideology behind the largest mass murders in history more socially acceptable in the west.
- Same. I really wanted to be around other leftists but holy fuck the vast majority of them need serious help.
  
  My first account was on .ml, and it took me about half an hour to get completely jumped by a bunch of Stalinists. Ended up deleting my account, and was hesitant to create a new one.
  Thankfully, it seems to be two instances, and I’ve blocked them both. My experience after that has been great.
  
  Wait, is ml supposed to be left leaning? 😂
- How do you do that? I've reached my limit.
  
  I think it depends on your instance and/or app you're using.
  
  I’m using Arctic for iOS, and it has an option to block an instance.
  (Sorry, I’m late responding 🤦🏻‍♂️)

Jesus Christ.
So GDP isn't a good measure to use for this. The price of goods is very different from country to country, and GDP often doesn't translate to living conditions for the average person.
I tried to look up some information, since I don't actually know which is the poorer country, and I had no idea how really bad it was in North Korea. Haiti is a nightmare also. People are starving in both countries, which of course means that things are real real bad. But...
Average annual income in Haiti is $1,760. That's sure not great. Even with PPP, that's bad.
It's hard to tell anything about North Korea. But here's what I found: Average legal annual income in North Korea is from 60,000 to 120,000 won. Guess how much an egg costs?
1,500 won.
A standard legal income in North Korea is from $12 to $36 per year.
80% of people supplement their income with some form of illegal free-market activity, obviously. And there are a certain amount of rations provided by the state in addition to straight wages. Otherwise, everyone would starve. The black market is tolerated to some extent, although it is technically illegal. It's impossible to determine how much income is generated from it, so we have no idea.
Here's more: https://www.nknews.org/2022/02/whats-in-it-for-the-working-man-why-north-koreans-show-up-for-low-wage-jobs/
Honestly, if I had to guess, I think the Haitians probably have it worse off economically. Congratulations NK! You're not worst in the world.
- Get out of here ya fuckin' westoid /s
  
  wtf is a WeStIoD dUfUs???
  /s
  
  I thought it was westeros
- A standard legal income in North Korea is from $12 to $36 per year.
  That seems like it can't possibly be true. Where is this statistic actually coming from? I can find a bunch of other unclearly-sourced estimates like $50/month, which is more more reasonable.
  (Looking for actual papers I find this, which cites an estimate of $1700 purchasing-power-parity-GDP/year/capita. The paper itself estimates per-county wealth via radiance as seen from satellites, and gets "around $790 per capita and 60% poverty rate". It's pretty unclear how this can be price-adjusted but it's not "100 eggs per year" low, at least.)
  
  I have no idea how statistically solid the article's estimate is. It goes into enough detail that I assumed it was reliable, which might have been a bad assumption, and I looked at some other sources more or less at random and they all roughly corroborated what it said. I do think that the published figures for what a normal "official" salary range in North Korea, and roughly what the black-market exchange rate of dollars to won and rough goods prices, are visible enough numbers that it's not crazy to think that someone from the outside could know what they are.
  Actual income levels from illegal free-market activity there is no way to know, so I didn't try to estimate, and none of the sources I looked at made any attempt to claim they knew what the value was, which I counted as a point in their favor.
  I'm not convinced by the paper. I don't think GDP is too useful a metric for estimating poverty in a personal-impact sense, and even that aside, I'm not real convinced that measuring the literal brightness of a country from space is a good way to get anything more than somewhere in the same mega-ballpark distance of the answer. Especially when you're dealing with an exceptional outlier and then applying a calculation you arrived at from measuring non-outliers to it.
- As a general rule I just don't trust what anyone says about North Korea, the whole thing is so propagandized from every angle you might as well be trying to figure out the average yearly income of the people on North Sentinel Island.
  
  Can you show me some propaganda from the anti-North-Korea angle, and why it isn't true?
  I think there is pro-North Korea propaganda, and there is the truth which is horrifying and some people claim is propaganda. I'm not sure that much of the anti-North Korea stuff is propaganda. I'm open to being shown that I am wrong about that, though.
  
  As a general rule I just don’t trust what anyone says about North Korea,
  Ah, it's like arguing with a conservative and then hearing them say, "But who knows what's REALLY true?"

Tbf, North Korea is almost certainly wealthier than Haiti. North Korean GDP figures from western sources are completely made up, their economy is a black box. In fact, many GDP estimates of developing economies are inaccurate at best, if not dead wrong. Turns out that people living at the subsistence level, as well as authoritarian dictators and warlords, aren't particularly interested in reporting their earnings for taxation purposes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_economy
- Everything you said up until the last two words was correct. The inaccuracy isn't primarily caused by North Korean citizens inaccurately reporting, it's the government that doesn't release any information, or cooperate with other nations in activities that could help estimate numbers.
  
  I wasn't just talking about North Korea, but developing economies in general. I understand that the NK government intentionally hides the numbers. I also specified that its not just the common people, but also the authoritarian leaders, such as Kim Jong Un, who would prefer to keep their money off the official books.

That whole thread was a shitshow... That's what you get when posting tabloids ig :/

Tbf, hot dogs aren't exactly a luxury food, Gawaltney (sp) sells packs for (well it used to be 99¢/8dogs, but it's probably risen since covid, prob $2ish now.) Sure those are the worst dogs and they coat your mouth in a weird film when you eat them, but if I was a starving north korean I'm not holding out for Sabrets.
They also have a longer shelf life than you'd likely be comfortable with due to the preservatives, they're fully cooked in the package so if you don't have power you can eat 'em cold, easily and cheaply mass producible, and lets be honest, other than gawaltney they're pretty damn good! I could totally see them being a semi-regular part of their diet, but of course I've never been to NK this is all just based on hot dog knowledge, so of course I could be wrong lol.
- Walmart still sells 8 packs of Bar-S hot dogs for $1

I solute the internet wiener warriors. It's a flaccid fight but someone's got to cover it. Better your buns than mine. Y'all cut the mustard. Katsup later, biiiii!

The up and downvote ratios are disappointing, but it's good to see them getting fact checked.
- It's not strictly a fact check. Due to A) Haiti's governance collapse and B) no reliable estimate of conditions of life across all North Korea

Good to see dufus still in the running. Classic.

Not only did you waste your time reading this nonsense, but you also decided to share it and waste everyone else's time.
- Well, that's the community for exactly that...no?
  
  First day on lemmy, eh? See, you don't have to visit a particular community to see posts from the said community. But if this community is dedicated to nonsense on social media, I guess I can simply block it to exclude it from the main feed. Thanks for the idea.
- "That's why I'm here"
- yeah I see enough dumb shit on non tankie instances, time to unsub from this one

67 comments