If North Korea is undemocratic, what is the USA?

98 comments

mr. commie...you should already know by now that if big corpos can treat its workers as they please and you can't be able to demand accountabiliy from them, more free and democratic is a country

Houses are free and a human right
yeah but have you considered in USA i can choose where to live and pay 3k dollarinos in rents monthly
yea didnt think so, commie
- the US is being incredibly kind to korea actually. it hasnt bombed any of their houses since the war went cold. so basically, north koreans only enjoy free housing because of the US's commitment to freedom and democracy.

I love the use of alphabetization instead of literacy
- It's the word used in French and maybe other languages. Probably a translation error.
- no it means alphabetise, obviously the 0.1% not slphabetised was this list.

99.9% alphabetization
- Yeah, that's got me baffled too. I tried a few searches, and all I was getting was results about how the DPRK and ROK differ in alphabetization
  
  In several European languages, "alphabetism" is the term used for literacy.
  
  I think it's a mistranslation of literacy rate.

What does any of this have to do with democracy? You can be in a democratic system and vote against your self interest.
Between a democracy and an authoritarian regime I would rather be in a democracy because 9 times out of 10, it's better for the average citizen.
- Your problem is that you equate "bourgeoise democracy" with "democracy". It is a form of democracy (with a very small demos), not the only one.
  
  No this isn't my problem. I agree with you. I prefer democracy where everyone gets a vote.
- "Between a democracy and an authoritarian regime I would rather be in a democracy because 9 times out of 10, it’s better for the average citizen."
  Cubans have a higher life expectancy, lower infant mortality rate and actual breakthroughs in medical science that make the average citizen's life better in that department compared to the private medical system that the average American citizen pays more for in just bureaucracy and insurance parasitism than any other country with a medical program. All of that under a near-total embargo.
  China's millennials has a higher home-ownership rate than most American and Canadians. I can sense you're gonna argue about "duh state!!" owning everything though when your bank or landlord can evict you within a few months when most Chinese citizens don't have to deal with these issues after the near-total elimination of homelessness. But sure, it's propaganda. Don't believe your eyes and ears when you those traveling, what they say. Only the state when it repeats the Uighur genocide mythos and how China is evil and bad. Oh, they also eat more protein than the average American while rapidly catching up in PPP.
  Oh..and they lead the world in multiple academic journals.
  Wait, where is the part where democracy is somehow better? I'm supposed to appreciate the opportunity to work multiple jobs for a simple apartment I have to share with 2-3 other people despite having multiple trade-skills? Really? Man, at least I have more brands of cereal and toothpaste than I know what to do with! Hopefully, they aren't locked up behind anti-theft systems like the baby formula and toilet-paper.
  
  I think you may be confusing and conflating Democracy witch is a strategy for choosing leadership with Capitalism which is a method to distribute goods and services. You can have one without the other.
- For all the crowing about authority, developed* socialist states would appear to be far more democratic than anything liberal capitalism can muster up. The primary difference is that communists are not generally dishonest about power, nor want to obfuscate it because doing so would make it difficult to actually carry out a project of transitioning away from capitalism -> building socialism -> building communism. So they don't act demure about it and pretend that power is this uwu hard to understand thing that has vexed humans for millennia until something something ancient greece I guess and now we figured out ruling (yeah I know this is a simplified take on liberal views of ruling, but people really do talk about it like it's this incredibly hard thing to understand, while ignoring the specter of the capitalist class staring down on them with police and military pointed in their direction). Anyway, it's not that socialist states are exercising power or force any more than the liberal capitalist regimes; it's that they're using it differently and in the interests of, and by the direction of, the working class. A certain amount of liberal capitalist power is obfuscated through the NDA-ridden mechanics of private entities whereas the processes are made much more transparent in socialist states.
  Or to put it another way, the capitalist class hides much of its "authoritarian" practice behind a corporate process and claims individual causes and plausible deniability. Socialist states force corporate processes to be on something of a leash, at the behest of the working class. And to the anti-communist, this somehow makes socialism "authoritarian" and blackbox corporations with little to no accountability "free". It's a lot of mental gymnastics.
  *side note: when I say developed above, I'm referring essentially to establishing the revolution firmly enough that a process of working class representation has been constructed, something that won't necessarily be immediate right after taking power, since you have to build the mechanisms for it where they didn't formerly exist in a way that is protected by a vanguard party.
  
  It seems like you assume I am a capitalist, I am not. Being pro democracy does not mean one is pro capitalist.

More than two parties ✅ ❌
- Did you mix up the marks?
  DPRK is more pluralistic than the USA, with 5 parties holding seats in parliament
  Workers' Party (607) Social Democratic Party (50) Chondoist Chongu Party (22) Ch'ongryŏn (6) Independents (2)
  
  DPRK is more pluralistic than the USA, with 5 parties holding seats in parliament
  Oh, maybe. You got my meaning though

Free Elections: ✅ ❌
- Free as in you're free to choose between 2 curated fascist candidates 😂
- I forgot free elections is when a rogue elector decides to say "fuck it" to the entire state's voting wishes between two parties. DPRK has more parties than the U.S. What does that tell you?
- "Free" is one of the most abused words in the US lexicon. The US is, at best, "democracy for the rich" and the donor contributions you can find on how much billionaires spend on elections helps show that. The concept of it as free exists primarily in the imaginations of US people and in the myths pushed by the rich, so that people will blame themselves and other working class people for any problems*. The concept doesn't materialize when votes are suppressed, when rich donors spend more on a single election than you've ever seen or will see in your lifetime, when candidate choices are filtered through two parties thoroughly owned by such rich and corporate interests, when the electoral college and the supreme court hangs over any fading remnant of a notion that populist will could take control of the system from within, and so on.
  *Incidentally, it's a common tactic in US propaganda for them to redirect blame to the working class and individuals more generally. Another example of this is the narratives that portray obesity as a kind of individual failing, while ignoring how pervasively unhealthy so much US food is or how for many people, the structure of transportation makes walking non-viable for getting places, and leaves you to sort out exercise as a side hobby.
  So long as you believe in fictions like "free elections in the US", it's harder to understand how systemic so many issues are. But topple one and you might start to see how much like dominoes the narratives fall.
- Except for felons in many states. And then Nixon and his strategists decide to make certain drugs felonies so they can disenfranchise specific segments of the population. And then it's revealed that this is what they did and why they did it. And it's never reversed.
  https://nlihc.org/resource/history-voter-suppression
  VOTER SUPPRESSION IS AN UNFORTUNATE BUT CONSISTENT FEATURE OF THE U.S. POLITICAL SYSTEM.
  And that's the system you KNOW about. You don't know shit about the DPRK system so the idea that you could possibly compare them when you don't even have an accurate understanding of your own system is ridiculous.
  
  I unironically don't really believe in democracy, so I don't mind bad elections so much. But I think you're basically saying there are some flaws with U.S.' elections. But the fact that nobody can predict the outcome of the next election though means in my books that it's pretty close to a free election. In contrast, I can with great certainty predict who will be in charge of NK next year, even though I don't know anything about their electoral system.
  The real problem with U.S.' election system is that both parties suck.
- oh is that why over 80% of Americans want universal healthcare but it never happens?
- In 2000, a judicial coup gave the presidency to George W Bush. Nothing has been done to stop the supreme court from doing so again. Not only are US elections not free or fair, nobody in power seems interested in making them so.
- Why haven't American elections granted anything on this list?
  
  because they're free. this is apparently a good thing.
- The 2024 election was the first one since 1976 without a Bush, Clinton or Biden in the running.
  
  Mr. Clinton Bush-Kennedy would have been god-emperor of the US empire if he existed in the 2000s
- how free was it when gore won the election but didn't become president?
  so free to chose between two genocidal corporatists
  
  you're free to chose but only if you pick the right one.
- And where did those "free" elections get you lol
- More like, rigged elections: ✅ ❌
- Do you even know how elections in the DRPK work? No? Then you can not judge if they're free or not.

Fucking shitpost. WTF.
- While referring to your own comment as a shitpost is admirable, I'd urge you to commit to more constructive discussion in the future, rather than pointless exclamations upon achieving self-awareness.
  
  Get fucked you idiot. This is a low effort, factual untrue post, glorifying an oppressive regime.
- Wdym? What about this post isn't just straight up accurate?
  
  The point where reality has to care about their feelings.
- Not really, its all factually true.

98 comments