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, commiethe 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
I think it’s a mistranslation of literacy rate.
Yeah it is. I think they anglicized the German word. We have the same word in Dutch.
English is most likely not their first language.
Ohh, that would make sense.
It would be funny if they were really talking about alphabetization and the whole country was lined up in A to Z order.
Well not the whole country apparently
New bit of anti-com propaganda dropping
getting married to jump the queue
In several European languages, “alphabetism” is the term used for literacy.
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
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
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.
“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.
Every successful socialist country has a central leadership of a workers’ party. They are more successful than the United States in every metric besides for military spending and adults who believe in angels.
Great! Add voting and it becomes better!
The DPRK has voting as well. 😉 The best part of the voting in the DPRK is that the results are very favorable for their citizens compared to the US.
Can they vote out their supreme leader? I’m not defending the US here, we are headed to a bad place. We may end up looking like the DPRK pretty soon.
Yes, they can and, if you need more information on how the DPRK governance works, you can open a post in c/asklemmygrad for books and sources. Also, if the US ended up like the DPRK, that will actually be the best thing for US citizens because they will no longer have to pay taxes, no longer have to protest for the amount of shenanigans that their rich capitalists constantly do, they will have free housing, cheap food, free healthcare and free education. In other words, they will have a gov’t that is actually working for their people and not for their rich. So… ending like the DPRK is actually the goal for plenty of people and it is not a bad thing as you tried to suggest. A really bad place will be Nazi Germany and that’s where the US is headed(or already is 🤔).
They do vote. Actually, their options within the party are much more diverse and ranging than just two candidates serving the same interest as their ruling class. They represent multiple facets for multiple positions not only within the party but for the country itself and it’s direction for the working class.
When is the last time America made a decision for the working class? Turns out voting doesn’t fill my fridge, make better job opportunities or remove bigoted, mouth-frothing social murderers from power.
Why the fuck should I care about it, you smug dickhead?
Why does everyone think I am defending America, I am not. I.just like democracy. Glad there is voting in this system.
My apologies then, repeating that you love democracy, voting, etc in what could be construed as an antagonistic manner under a informative post about North Korea could be taken as a “baiting” tactic done by most libs common to the spectrum of the West.
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.
So you’re fine with the DPRK then. They have that.
Well I’m not sure you can vote Kim out. I feel like it’s more of a king deal instead of a democracy there. So I see that as a major problem.
if you’re not sure, why make baseless assertions about the DPRK’s political system?
Well, help me out. I’m not a North Korean expert.
The Wikipedia entry for Kim Jong Un currently states that he’s a totalitarian dictatorship and his leadership has followed the same cult of personality as his father and grandfather.
But if there’s a non-violent way to vote Kim out of his totalitarian dictatorship. Please enlighten me.
Why would you assume that a Wikipedia entry of all things is accurate? Have you looked at the sources? The citations in question are from The Independent and some Australian radio program, both of which consist of nothing but hearsay (which you’ll find is true for most bourgeois “journalism”).
Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable for anything geopolitical. The Wikimedia Foundation is completely aligned with US imperial interests – just look at how they describe the CIA World Factbook as a reliable source
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.
I guess I don’t know what you’re trying to say then. Based on your other comment, it sounds like you’re saying you think governance and economy are separate? But in practice, this is absolutely not the case. They are intertwined.
You are correct they are entwined, but you can have a democratic communistic system. Or a Democratic Socialist system. Voting does not create capital inherently.
Have you read State and Revolution by Lenin? I hate to do the “go read something” type of message, but I strongly recommend it if you haven’t. He goes into the concept of a socialist state and what the point of it is. If you have no familiarity with that context, we might just be talking past each other.
I have not, so in this socialist state proposed by Lenin. Is it a Democracy? If not, then it could be improved by Democracy.
It is a dictatorship of the proletariat (working class), which sounds less democratic than it is if you go only by the word “dictatorship” and don’t read it in the context of the monopoly on violence that every state has. It essentially (at risk of oversimplifying) means that the working class has democratic power and doesn’t allow the capitalist class to have it. So in a word, is it a form of democracy? I would say so. But if one’s view of democracy is something more akin to a populist free-for-all, they might not agree; though I’m not sure there is such a thing as a free-for-all democracy in any state or community in history. Whose interests are being represented is a critical question, especially as class and/or caste stratified societies and global systems are concerned.
you do automatically assume countries that aren’t capitalist are authoritarian, though. democracy isn’t just voting between two major parties at election time.
No, the system to distribute goods and services ex capitalism, socialism, communism. Are not the same things as who’s in charge and why. Ex Democracy authoritarian.
A state will usually pick one from column a and one from column b. And you can mix it up however you like.
Fucking shitpost. WTF.
Not really, its all factually true.
Wdym? What about this post isn’t just straight up accurate?
The point where reality has to care about their feelings.
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.
Reply to this post or else you uncritically support DPRK in its struggle against AmeriKKKan fascism
How can it be factually untrue if literally all point are factually true?
Indeed. This has been a low effort factually untrue comment. Which regime do you speak of though?
glorifying an oppressive regime
nah, it’s anti-us
Prove it
Free Elections: ✅ ❌
Why haven’t American elections granted anything on this list?
because they’re free. this is apparently a good thing.
free as in beer
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.
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
oh is that why over 80% of Americans want universal healthcare but it never happens?
And where did those “free” elections get you lol
More like, rigged elections: ✅ ❌
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.
Who’s the current president in North Korea?
me
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.
We can and do predict with 100% accuracy that one of two candidates will win the US election. Both of those candidates represent essentially the same tiny minority of ultrawealthy donor-class elite. The fact that anyone falls for this obvious hoodwinking and thinks they have a “choice” or any say in who rules over them in the US still astounds me. Even when I was a lib I knew US elections were nothing more than a good-cop/bad-cop routine. Nah, we know exactly who will “win” the “free” election in the US every single time with zero deviation: the bourgeoisie.
The reason for this is that the dems can’t drift leftward lest they lose to the republicans, who are backed by the wealthy. Seems like an unfortunate scenario unrelated to the actual electoral process, caused by capitalism and the interference of money in the election. It’d be great if we could prevent money from interfering in the election.
No, more like the dems are also backed by the wealthy and they are both perfect little tools for the capitalist ruling class of the United States whom is also the global hegemon of the world who enacts crimes, interventions and even funds/arms genocide. Biden did that, by the way! Because he was completely lying out of his fucking ass about asking for a cease-fire!
Don’t worry though, they’re both making money off dead kids. We possibly can’t go left-wards though!
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.
Most likely you think that way because you’re so used to the government not doing shit for you that you’re in disbelief at the idea of people wanting to willingly elect the same person over and over.
No. I would think that in such a scenario, other parties should copy more and more from the winning party until (in the limit) they’re indistinguishable. Of course, at some point before that, they’ll get elected. This is IMO the reason why the democrats and republicans are so similar.
But why would they get elected in that scenario? When people in the US talk about elections and different candidate, they aren’t going “I really like the incumbent party, but the other party is saying similar stuff and I’d like to give a shot to somebody who could be similar but hasn’t proven themself.” They are going “I don’t like the incumbent and want different.”
Admittedly, “hasn’t proven themself” is quite a disadvantage. But not everyone cares about if they’ve proven themself if they are offering a change that matters to them.
Everyone has different ways they’d like the current party to change. This is why as another party approaches the incumbent’s platform, some people will jump to vote for the new party. Some people are one-issue voters and if the ruling party wronged them then they will change their vote to the next best party no matter what.
Still, I can’t argue with the idea that the incumbent party might be truly optimal and most everyone likes them. Seems implausible to me as a Canadian but you could be right. Nonetheless, you must surely agree a constantly changing ruling party in the U.S. ought to be sufficient proof of a (relatively) fair election.
Nonetheless, you must surely agree a constantly changing ruling party in the U.S. ought to be sufficient proof of a (relatively) fair election.
This is more or less how I view that: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/7781901/6329586
In particular, this part:
The concept [of US as “free elections”] 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.
In other words, I see it as this:
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.
It might be called “fair” as a contest between rich people if you are wealthy and can lobby sufficiently to sway the outcomes, so that if one party is failing to do what you want, the other might. But since neither represents working class issues well, much less issues of marginalized groups, and there is nothing to hold either party accountable to those groups, the average person isn’t really getting an experience of fairness.
A critical difference you see in a socialist state, like the DPRK (what some call “North Korea”) is the existence of a vanguard party, who represents the working class and works to ensure not only that working class issues are truly represented in policy, but that the capitalist class cannot gain control of the political system. And they do this by force when it comes down to it because if they didn’t, there would be nothing material stopping the capitalists from taking over.
In contrast, a system like the US ensures that the capitalist class is in control, by force, suppressing any attempt at a challenge to the capitalist class’s hold. Some examples of this force in practice being COINTELPRO or the vilification of, and violence, toward the historical Black Panther Party.
You literally just said 4 vibes and nothing else.
You actually can tell exactly who will win basically any election in the US, and it’s whoever spent the most money
this infographic bothers me in how sometimes the % is indicated by yellow, sometimes in purple.
“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.
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.
Do you even know how elections in the DRPK work? No? Then you can not judge if they’re free or not.
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 as in you’re free to choose between 2 curated fascist candidates 😂
