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Schmidt, Daughter Talk About North Korea Trip
Eric Schmidt attracted headlines when he visited North Korea, but until now he has said little about the trip. Today he broke his silence with a Google+ post. He says in part: "As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth. It will make it harder for them to catch up economically.
We made that alternative very, very clear. Once the internet starts in any country, citizens in that country can certainly build on top of it, but the government has to do one thing: open up the Internet first. They have to make it possible for people to use the Internet, which the government of North Korea has not yet done. It is their choice now, and in my view, it’s time for them to start, or they will remain behind." His daughter had some interesting things to say as well, "The best description we could come up with: it's like The Truman Show, at country scale."
Eric Schmidt visits a farm and tells the farmer than his cows would be far better off with internet access. The farmer looks at him like he is fucking stupid. Where is the benefit for him in doing that?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
"do I have to post this on google+? I wanted my friends to see it."
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
"Why didn't somebody tell us sooner?"
Eric Schmidt from Google goes to North Korea and tells them the path to prosperity is open up to the Internet? Are you fucking serious? Uh, Eric, you know what you should have told them the path to prosperity was; the North Korean government should completely and radically change from a multi-generational dictatorship to a representative Democracy and Capitalistic System, with the intent of reunification with their southern brothers. Close the Concentration Camps (Yes, I said Concentration Camps), get rid of the failed centralized economy, stop starving your citizens and stop trying to cling to power and accept that the citizens of NK probably would be much better off without the current NK government. Opening up to the Internet is probably about 15th on the list of things they should do.
Flying to NK and trying to convenience them to use Android Smart Phones or Google Applications for Dictatorships is pretty naive and well, fucking selfish. People are really starving and dying and giving them a couple of pointers on how to use the Internet is, well, dumb.
Linux O Muerte!
Is Schmidt really so far out of touch with reality that he seriously thinks the rulers of the North Korean Orwellian police state give even the slightest shit that their pleebs don't have Internet access? Seriously?
For example, China.
In that (quite interesting) post the author frequently wonders "WTF were they thinking?". E.g. did they think we would not notice that the screens on all the computers on both floors were identical? My wife is from China where not so long ago everthing was identical, down to the progaganda art on the wall. Her immediate answer when I asked her was "duh, they don't care what the delegates thought, the whole exercise is to show pictures to the local NK population about how the great foreign technical leaders liked the NK technical office". I think we tend to forget that: it isn't the delegates that Pyongyang is afraid of, its their own people.
___________________ I want to be free()!
Couldn't Schmidt's trip be construed as a violation of the Logan Act?
They seem to go out of the way to try and impress foreigners with how awesome shit is, they just fail badly. I think it may be a case that they've been drinking their own kool aid for so long they forget the outside world doesn't buy the bullshit. They are used to their propaganda defining their reality, they don't have a good understanding of places where it doesn't.
Given how the whole Arab Spring thing played out, I'm guessing the people in power in NK are not going to be inviting the Internet in any time soon.
This is the kind of stuff that they need. Even Iran- or China-level internet access (open by default but filter the crap out of everything & spy on the rest) would be a massive improvement for NK 'net users, which could be more aptly referred to as the "Kimternet". If it ain't on the NK propaganda network, they don't have access to it.
Not that I'm advocating that model of course, but it'd be an improvement over what they have now.
I simply couldn't finish to read the text. Text over images, images over text. Two columns, no visible contuinity. No thanks.
Europeans struggling as the result of neoliberalism (while the top 0.1% do very well for themselves) is a Good Thing(tm), honest ;) ... but if you struggle as a result of the policies of the "Axis of Evil" (while the top 1% do very well for themselves) then that's bad through and through.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
I wonder who Eric Schmidt is preaching to here. Does he expect the people of North Korea to actually hear his words? (They won't). Are the government officials unaware of the impact of the internet? No. Are the people aware of what they are being denied? I don't think so.
I remember when I was watching the 2010 FIFA world cup. During the NK national anthem, several of their players had tears in their eyes. They were proud to be representing their country. And these people are the relatively "better off" residents of NK. If they don't realize/care what a crazy country they represent, why should the majority of the population? I'm sure many people believe their government is a good entity. The ordinary citizens might have no idea that there is a better way to live. All their life, they have been listening to propaganda. And like most people in every other country, they believe the bullshit they are being fed.
So when Schmidt says that NK should open up, does he really think anyone is going to change their behavior? He needs to show a different argument. Maybe start off by showing how technology can help the government. The only way you are going to make any inroads into NK (without actually using brute force) is via the government. Once people working there see the benefits of technology, it might spread to civilian life.
He made a media spectacle about it being a business related trip.
So explain to us, how you can have a business trip without engaging in any sort of negotiation? Even if all you do is talk ... that is considered negotiation.
i think it's pretty bold of google to even allow themselves to be associated with that kind of publicity. any organization -- and especially with size and sophistication of google -- knows the implications of associating themselves with any kind of public affair. so by even ostensibly allowing schmidt to do this while he's is under their employ, they are sending the message that they at the very least, do not mind being associated with politics. but these aren't just any politics. no. these are politics right on the very front edge of the world stage. personally i think it's going to far and these fuckers have no business on that level. but, on top of that, as other people have mentioned, there are far more important things at stake here. at the very least, it cheapens the more important issues by making it look as though google marketing is top priority. okay, granted the internet is becoming an essential modcon. still, why is it google's business to intervene. perhaps they should start their own party? the google party. what ever the real intentions are; it is clear that google are not concerned with peoples' opinion on their or general corporate involvement in politics. it's sick.
Sometimes, one person's culture is different from another. It doesn't make it wrong.
NK has a bunch of other problems, but Internet access is not one of them. Quite frankly, life can be very good by getting away from the Internet. My Grandfather never used the Internet and he didn't have a bad life.
OMG!! A country with 100% Linux desktop deployment rate!
This is Schmidt we're talking about. He didn't go as a business representative. He went as a representative of the clueless.
If Schmidt were considered a representative of US business ... well, let's not go there. You really really really don't want that.
Hint: Read Schmidt's public writings over the last few years. It's like a chicken farmer talking about his chickens. You really don't want this man representing you, unless you accept that your destiny is in chicken pie.
...it's also like a combination of the Truman Show and They Live. One massive reality distortion bubble that nobody is aware of.
And the whole discussion, just as the voting choices, always revolves around two options that are only differing in something entirely beside the point, giving the citizens choices for all aspects of their life, except those that aren't meaningless. Everything is condensed down from picking a fuzzy varying area in a multi-dimensional gradient space to a one-dimensional binary choice. With you being called at least "Hitler" for picking the "wrong" one. Let alone trying to think outside that box.
It's ludicrous.
which country are you talking about ?
From the article: "Ordinary North Koreans [US Citizens?] live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. I can't think of any reaction to that except absolute sympathy. My understanding is that North Koreans [US Americans?] are taught to believe they are lucky to be in North Korea [the USA?], so why would they ever want to leave? They're hostages in their own country, without any real consciousness of it. And the opacity of the country's inner workings--down to the basics of its economy--further serves to reinforce the state's control. The best description we could come up with: it's like The Truman Show, at country scale. "
How true is that for the USA? I still hear people talking about how the USA has the best health care in the world, the healthiest population, the most upward mobility for its population, the best food supply, the highest level of democracy, the lowest taxes, the best education system, the most productive workers, and so on... And many US Americans still believe that creating artificial scarcity through copyrights, patents, and perpetual warfare is the path to abundance, and that draconian drug laws and draconian computer crime laws are the path to security... And many US Americans think there is little relation between what they eat and how they feel... Most US Americans have been taught to be afraid of sunlight when outdoor workers get less melanomas than indoor office workers... Many US Americans think we should reduce the US government debt when that is (unfortunatley) what creates the US money supply... Etc... Etc...
Contrast with what John Taylor Gatto says about schooling:
http://johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates -- these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit? In a great fanfare of moral fervor some years back, the Ford Motor Company opened the world's most productive auto engine plant in Chihuahua, Mexico. It insisted on hiring employees with 50 percent more school training than the Mexican norm of six years, but as time passed Ford removed its requirements and began to hire school dropouts, training them quite well in four to twelve weeks. The hype that education is essential to robot-like work was quietly abandoned. Our economy has no adequate outlet of expression for its artists, dancers, poets, painters, farmers, filmmakers, wildcat business people, handcraft workers, whiskey makers, intellectuals, or a thousand other useful human enterprises -- no outlet except corporate work or fringe slots on the periphery of things. Unless you do "creative" work the company way, you run afoul of a host of laws and regulations put
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Eric Schmidt has become a public embarrassment, a political liability, an ethical and morel black hole, a potential criminal and living joke.
Time for Page et al. to MAN up and dump Schmidt !
Else, Google needs to give US DoJ a few millions to hire a killer from Chicago and do what needs to be done, quick.
Expect push back on stock price until Schmidty leaves to find a nice warm grave.
What did you expect?
At least they can use it, most of it.
Table-ized A.I.
"...it's also like a combination of the Truman Show and They Live. One massive reality distortion bubble that nobody is aware of.
And the whole discussion, just as the voting choices, always revolves around two options that are only differing in something entirely beside the point, giving the citizens choices for all aspects of their life, except those that aren't meaningless. Everything is condensed down from picking a fuzzy varying area in a multi-dimensional gradient space to a one-dimensional binary choice. With you being called at least "Hitler" for picking the "wrong" one. Let alone trying to think outside that box.
It's ludicrous."
See my comment posted earlier above, or also this by Morris Berman:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/18/the-parable-of-the-frogs/
"In the case of the United States, the imposition of rules and limits on individual behavior to protect the commons is not, at present, a realistic prospect; the population is simply not having it. But how much longer before this freedom of choice is regarded as an impossible luxury? In fact, no crystal ball is required to predict the future here. The tragedy of the commons -- what Hardin called "the remorseless working of things" -- is that a society such as that of the United States won't undertake serious changes even when it is sitting on the edge of an abyss. It has to actually be in the abyss before it will entertain such changes; i.e., it has to be faced with no choice at all. It seems unlikely now, but things are probably moving faster than we realize. In terms of population, energy, food, resources, water, social inequality, public health, and environmental degradation, a crunch of the type I am referring to may be only twenty years away."
By that author:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1118061810/
"During the final century of the Roman Empire, it was common for emperors to deny that their civilization was in decline. Only with the perspective of history can we see that the emperors were wrong, that the empire was failing, and that the Roman people were unwilling or unable to change their way of life before it was too late. The same, says Morris Berman, is true of twenty-first century America. The nation and its empire are in decline and nothing can be done to reverse their course. How did this come to be? In Why America Failed, Berman examines the development of American culture from the earliest colonies to the present, shows that the seeds of the nation's "hustler" culture were sown from the very beginning, and reveals how the very tools that enabled the country's expansion have become the instruments of its demise. "
BTW, Germany is a legacy of what the USA used to be: ..."
http://www.salon.com/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010/
"How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place?
The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans.
Yet we in the USA should not lose hope:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
"In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy? I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Before the recent idiocy with people forced to stand there crying.
A theory that makes predictions is a powerful theory indeed.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Leave North Korea if you can. It is very, very strange.
FTFY
God spoke to me
Good point. Or, ten or twenty trillion US$ in paper wealth disappeared as an externality of banking risk that some bankers made billions from and caused suffering for tens of millions of people:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/18/the-parable-of-the-frogs/
"What does it take to produce large-scale social change? Most historians, if you catch them in an honest moment, will admit that the popular levers of social change, such as education or legislation, are bogus; they don't really amount to very much. What does make a difference -- and then only potentially -- is massive systemic breakdown, such as occurred in the United States in the fall of 2008. It was the greatest market crash since 1929, leading to widespread unemployment (something like 18% of the population, in real -- as opposed to official -- statistics*) and the loss of billions of dollars in retirement savings. In fact, the crash wiped out $11.1 trillion in household wealth, and this is not counting the several trillion lost in stock market investments. It had been many decades since the middle class found itself in soup kitchens, and yet there they were. In the face of all this, however, very little seems to have changed. Americans are still committed to the dream of unlimited abundance as a "reasonable" goal, when in reality it is (and always has been) the dream of an addict. President Obama's upwards of $19 trillion bailout and stimulus plan funneled money into the very banking establishment that gave us the disaster; it rescued the wealthy, not those who really needed the money. And while he could have appointed economic advisers such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz (both Nobel laureates), who would have attempted to put the nation on a different economic path, he chose instead two traditional neoliberal ideologues, Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers, who believe in the very policies that led to the crash. "Change we can believe in" never sounded more hollow."
No doubt some of this is spin, but there is some truth in here:
http://www.infowars.com/100-million-poor-people-in-america-and-39-other-facts-about-poverty-that-will-blow-your-mind/
One of the links there goes to:
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/15/9461848-dismal-prospects-1-in-2-americans-are-now-poor-or-low-income
"Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans -- nearly 1 in 2 -- have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income."
I'm not saying the average US citizen is as bad off as most people in North Korea in material ways -- just that there remains a lot of unnecessary suffering in the USA which is being justified by a crazy ideological bubble. For example, if the USA redistributed half of the US GDP equally as a "basic income", then every citizen would have US$2000 a month, and the other half could be competed over. It's only a cultural mythological bubble that keeps most of the USA from seeing this:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120102011454/http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
"That rationalization came in the form of a brand new science known as economics, which included a brand new mythology."
Despite books like this by Moshe Adler:
"Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science that Makes Life Dismal"
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/B007F7WKV8
"Why do contemporary economists consider food subsidies in starving countries, rent control in rich cities, and health insurance every
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Shocking? Not even.
NK hosts a staged visit for a famous US businessperson. It's a prestige move. Cue the Stuart skit from Mad TV -- "Look what I can do!"
US businessperson visits NK. Sees through the eye of his personal reality tunnel, which ignores most everything except how he can profit. What must change so he can profit. How can he use what he's experiencing for PROFIT.
Nothing to see here, move along.
http://www.escapingnorthkorea.com/
"During his time in China, he learned of the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fleeing to China through a 6,000-mile modern-day underground railroad, which runs from Pyongyang to Bangkok, in search of food and freedom."
Why dont; more peopel leave North Korea or revolt? Psychology and culture... (which includes things like "quorum sensing").
See also:
http://anwot.org/
"Mental Wealth is the skillful thinking we require to create a wonderful fantastic lifeâ(TM)s experience. Not everyone can accumulate and give their loved ones a sizeable monetary inheritance. Each of us can accumulate mental wealth and experience the joy of giving it away! The wisdom embodied in mental skills enriches us, even more than the benefits money may provide.
I recommend taking The Short Course to Mental Wealth prior to undertaking the fuller course, A Newer Way of Thinking. The short course provides mental skills that equip us to become our own best friend, lifelong. It introduces the vocabulary that frees our will to act using reason and wisdom, replacing instinct and habit; directing and producing our own destiny rather than remaining a servant to fate and circumstance.
The more complete course, A Newer Way of Thinking, explains why we must upgrade our thinking to survive and thrive in the Nuclear Age. Of greater importance, it offers the practical steps to create global peace through our collective efforts. Learn what others have found works and have gladly shared for our benefit. Help make the world a kinder gentler place. Begin with The Short Course to Mental Wealth."
Or, a top Google search result on mental chains:
http://www.calresco.org/lucas/breaking.htm
"Our world of today creates many barriers, walls built of prejudice, of monetary difference, of national boundaries, of belief systems. All these self-created divisions are arbitrary and abstract ideas which often act to avoid growth, to prevent humanity exploring those areas of state space so far not understood. What is possible in our world is unknown by anyone, despite the arrogant assurances with which pronouncements (e.g. "there are no other options") are made by leaders in all fields. No leader, of any type, can possibly deal with all the available information on any subject, so the centralised (undemocratic!) decision making so beloved of corporate, political and bureaucratic systems alike is fundamentally flawed, and increasingly is becoming destructively unsustainable in both social and planetary terms. Every scientific (or political) assumed certainty is now questionable however within our new science. We need not fear to question, only by so doing can we go beyond the errors of the past, those dogmas of static truth and conformity.
It is far too easy to assume that what we already know is all there is to know. This delusion of perfection, the 'authority knows best' syndrome, is endemic to many of our political leaders, academics and experts. Yet throughout history the bullying 'conform or die' certainty of one time or group has been overturned by the discoveries of the next. Today's reality will become tomorrow's stupidity. Transcending what we believe today may be the essential step in taking humanity onwards into a new millenium based upon a better understanding of complex systems. Our essays and papers further explore these themes."
This extends to the core of "science" as a social entreprise:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Hiding from the world is proof enough that the North Korean and Iranian regimes cannot withstand scrutiny even from their own people -- less they find out that their regimes have completely stifled economic development.
Yet North Korea and Iran could just as easily have excelled economically as well as technologically -- for the greater good of their citizens.
As things stand now, Iran has abandoned all paths to the country's Persian greatness, and daily North Korea has to face the glaring economic disparities with its sister state.
Exactly how long will it take for these regimes to realize that in today's world a country's might is measured in economic terms?
Indeed, even if the North Korean and Iranian regimes on their own somehow managed to amass Russia's military might, neither would be further ahead economically.
So what's the point in trying?
forever remembered as the founding father and national hero of unified Korea if he actually pull this out.
I wish she would have talked more about the weather. From the article, I couldn't really tell if it was cold or not there.
Are you crazy?
His daughter had some interesting things to say as well, "The best description we could come up with: it's like The Truman Show, at country scale."
Close, but not quite.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
During the NK national anthem, several of their players had tears in their eyes
They were probably told to tear up or their parents would be shot. Tears of terror aren't hard to produce.
North Korea is one big religious community. The West has numerous similar communities. They control their members with an iron fist, but they also provide a loving fellowship.
That is evident in mainstream Christianity as well: believers feel genuine happiness and love, but deep down they are afraid of excommunication, God's wrath and hell. Occasionally a minister confronts the seeming contradiction between love and eternal torment. When they point it out and dismiss hell as incompatible with the message, there's an outrage and the miscreant is kicked out.
I have actually visited North Korea in order to see the Arirang Mass Games. Although Truman Show is a good analogy of what it is like there, I feel a better description is like a human safari. While it is heavily locked down there to an amusing extent (my guide genuinely thought Madonna was man but had heard of her), every now and then you saw a glimpse of something that showed you that it wasn't entirely true.
When I was leaving the country and passing through passport control, I was lightly grilled by the border guard. He asked me a few questions and then asked me what my job was.
"Programmer", I replied.
"Which language do you use?"
"Java"
He then leaned forwarded and whispered to me as he gave me my passport back, "Me too".
US tried exactly that with Cuba.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
... the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth. It will make it harder for them to catch up economicallythe North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth. It will make it harder for them to catch up economically.
How could we have ever known this without your keen observation and deep insight?
Thank you! A million times thank you Captain Obvious!
Interesting points, thanks. I replied to another of your replies suggesting it is harder to globally escape the US ideological influence than the NK ideological influence, so I won't repeat that here.
But I am curious, what do people in the USA you know think about your move? Do they understand it? Do they accept that the day-to-day quality of life (overall happiness) is better for most people in Sweden than the USA? When you talk about the Swedish policies about work or health care, do they accept that the USA is messed up in those areas? Or do they just politely not understand what you are talking about (perhaps because they are in a US ideological bubble)? And if, for some reason they do understand what you are saying, what do they think of the prospects for similar proven successful policies in the USA?
Still, there are fundamental demographic differences between Sweden and the USA, so no doubt there are arguments for differences. BTW, look into supplemental vitamin D living so far north of the equator:
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The leaders allow 10's of thousands of their citizens to starve to death because of sanctions and food shortages. Do you think they care if little Kim can access Facebook? Information is a threat that might lead to a revolution that results in the leaders getting executed. A well informed populous and you and your family dead or ignorant/powerless people and you and your family rich in perpetuity which would you chose?
"Lemme guess, you're a HS dropout and you're bitter because nobody will buy your homemade shit, right?"
Ah, if only I had been smarter and more courageous in High School and indeed completely dropped out and focused on making "homemade" stuff. Probably I might indeed have been more successful and happier? But no, instead I left high school early for college and then blew all the money I earned from writing "homemade" computer software on Princeton, graduating the same year as Michelle Obama. And that was even after having read this awesome essay saying why spending money on Princeton was stupid:
"College is a Waste of Time and Money"
http://www.tarleton.edu/Faculty/anewsome/Bird%20Article.pdf
So, just an example of how I was deeply in a bubble back then (and probably still am now in various ways).
But, turning the points around to focus on the presenter generally shows you don't have much to say about the points presented? What is your point? That I am "bitter"? See also:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead. Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias."
See also:
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/
Anyway, compared to what I was told about the USA in public school growing up, yes, I am disappointed with where this country has gone in the last thirty years. But there is not just one specific thing I could point to (although neoliberal economics is perhaps a big part of it, which just continues to get worse as we automate jobs away and wealth continues to concentrate).
And I'm not saying all the changes are for the worse though. There is less air pollution in NYC, for example (reflective of an emerging environmental ethic). There is easy access to a wealth of information via the internet. Example:
"The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization"
http://books.google.com/books?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC
We know a lot more about material science. We know a lot more about the science of nutrition and health. There sure are a lot of people trying to make a positive difference in the world. There is much goodness in the USA and abroad.
There remain reasons for optimism as historian Howard Zinn points out:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
" Looking at this catalog of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience-whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary, and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just. I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), bu
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Well they are just wrong and it's easy to demonstrate that."
Whether it may be easy to demonstrate that, getting people in the USA to change their minds about that is another issue... Otherwise, how do we end up with group think like this?
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-09-06-poll-iraq_x.htm
"Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country. "
When it should have been obvious there was essentially no connection? Something deep is wrong with the USA to have such a survey result. What produced that information bubble which then translated into support for invading Iraq (a country that posed the USA no immediate danger and cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives)?
The fact that there are worse aspects in NK than the USA does not invalidate the point of TFA talking about the NK bubble without considering similar processes in the USA (or any country for that matter). Look at what just happened to Aaron Swartz for trying to make publicly available publicly funded research as a form of civil disobedience by engaging in a form of freedom of speech that has been criminalized in the USA (granted with various other complexities):
http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/01/20/1823256/edward-tuftes-defense-of-aaron-swartz-and-the-marvelously-different
So, there are clear criminal limits to freedom of speech in the USA when commercial interests are involved... And those limits did not exist when Tufte was a boy (back then most copyright violation was a civil issue not a criminal issue). And now Aaron Swartz is dead in part because of them (although I can think he might have gotten caught in US group think about avoiding the sun and so became vitamin D deficient, or perhaps ate the hacker way and became phytonutrient or omega-3 deficient which may have contributed to a depressed mental state, so a couple types of group think may have converged to cause a terrible thing to happen).
BTW, just for contrast: ... As part of their series "Ask a North Korean", NK News asked North Korean Jae-young about the good things about life in the hermit state, and the recent refugee is easily able to find something to miss. Jay-young says that her life in North Korea was "mentally rich -- even if it was materially insufficient" and that affection between neighbors was "very pure and deep". She writes about the joyful side of life in North Korea: "On major holidays, we invited our neighbors (we used to call my mother's friends "aunt"), shared food and stories with them. My mom was really good at making 'Jong-Pyun rice cake' and I can still remember my aunts exclaiming how good they tasted. During nights, we gathered together, turned music on and danced. On days when electricity went out, we used to play the accordion, sing, dance and have fun. I used to have so much fun and danced so hard that my socks had holes when I checked them in morning. My father used to be respected as a gagman (comedian).""
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-good-side-to-life-in-north-korea-2012-10
"One of the most interesting phenomenons about North Korea isn't the extraordinary lengths that some citizens make to escape the country â" it's the extraordinary lengths a minority of refugees make to get back into the country.
Now, the same might be said about many more traditional societies including the Amish. But however they found a life with more community of some sorts and less technological addictions, maybe the good points is still something to be considered against the bad?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
If the people in North Korea are getting smartphone's they will all get the same and it will be Android powered. North Korea will open!
... the freedom for corporations to loot and ravage the resources, whilst treating employees like shit. They should also have a Constitution, which should be just a piece of paper, like the US one. Then they could have Free Speech Zones where citizens could protest the actions of the government, but only from a distance out of camera shot.Like US citizens, they would not need passports, being wither too poor or too unimaginative to desire to travel abroad. Every shopping center should have its Walmart. McDonalds, Safeway, Target, TJMax etc - so every center looks indistinguishably uniform and corporately ordered.
That's a half ass attempt, and they don't even have enough funds and resource to support the invasion.
Have the International Jewish bankers fund it, and have them control the banking industry of unified Korea. Goldman Sachs should become the central bank of Kora.
Maybe his daughter is going to major in sociology and this junket (!?!?) will be written up in the future as a project / thesis sumbmission. OK