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
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.
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.
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?”
Sure bro. That’s exactly what this famously propagandized topic is like.
Yes, it’s exactly what the topic is like. There isn’t a goddamn topic in existence that isn’t ‘famously propagandized’ to someone.
It’s not any better than the people exercising arbitrary skepticism about the Soviet Union or the PRC.
Okay buddy “anarchist” 👍
Okay buddy “anarchist” 👍
what
You’ve claimed to be an anarchist before.
Having trouble keeping your positions of convenience straight, huh?
While beefing with the idea that you should apply critical thought to claims made by both nations and media. Weird.
Not only did you waste your time reading this nonsense, but you also decided to share it and waste everyone else’s time.
“That’s why I’m here”
yeah I see enough dumb shit on non tankie instances. I don’t need to see dumb tankie shit too, time to unsub from this one
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.
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.
Three instances. ML, Lemmygrad, and Hexbear
I haven’t seen the actual Lemmygrad in my feed in a year, even on this sub.
Lemmygrab gets defederated a lot, your instance admin probably decided they aren’t worth it and blocked them entirely.
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.
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.
Don’t be childish, you must know that going against the circlejerk/hivemind is a guaranteed downvote brigade on any social media site. But depending on the thread/community/server/phase of the moon, the hivemind can believe completely contradictory things.
You just have to read the room, and if you’re going against the general mood in the thread, you have to put in extra effort to get your point across. And sometimes you just wear the downvotes like a badge of honor, because it means you’re not a sheep.
That was my experience in topical sections of reddit. Often the first few comments determined how the entire post would go, and you could get completely different results saying the same thing on different days. Same with replies I guess.
Different time of day and week in smaller communities can contribute as well to pretty big shifts in response.
I guess because Lemmy is getting so many more active users after twitter and Reddit fallouts that some of the qualities that it used to have regarding are being drown out.
It’s not though. Lemmy active userbase hasn’t grown at all in over a year. We need all the users we can get.
Immediately defederating any right-wingers will tend to do that
You mean sh.itjust.works when you say works?
It was on news@lemmy.world, you can see the comment on their profile
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.
I’d say the equivalent in Nork is probably On the Juche Idea
