Don’t underestimate the light.
Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic
Reductio ad absurdum is the argumentative technique, beloved by law school professors, of stretching a premise to its breaking point. North Korea has been much in the news. Nighttime satellite photos of the Korean peninsula show well-lit South Korea and North Korea in darkness. That darkness is the reductio ad absurdum of the premise of modern governance: that those who govern must employ force, fraud, and censorship against those they govern. Articles bemoan our lack of knowledge of North Korea’s closed society, but literally and metaphorically, the darkness tells you all you need to know.
Exhume the graveyard of governments and you’ll find that for most of the unlamented departed, censorship had taken hold. Censorship goes hand in hand with failure; indeed, it’s one of failure’s chief causes. Truth, information, and communication are as essential for human survival as food, shelter, and water. That they illegitimately rule by force and fraud is a truth that governments try to stop from achieving general circulation. Propaganda and patriotism will only take a government so far, though, especially among its more honest and intelligent constituents. There will always be those who recognize the truth.
Information is the blood flow of the body politic. For argument’s sake there is probably some information in the hands of governments that is better left secret. Let’s put the number at .0001, or one ten-thousandth, of 1 percent of what governments actually keep secret. North Korea is the reductio, having drawn tourniquets tightly around its neck and limbs. From the few accounts we have of life there the physical poverty of its citizens is surpassed only by the intellectual poverty of official state mythology, ideology, history, and indoctrination—quintessential absurdum.
A nation that says in unison, “Bless you, Dear Leader!” every time Dear Bloodthirsty, Tyrannical Dictator sneezes has come the closest to the supposed Holy Grail of rulers and would-be rulers everywhere: mind control. We’re not sure how the burble of information, dissemination, communication, truth, lies, experimentation, false starts, creativity, enterprise, failure, and innovation actually leads to progress. The Internet adds another layer of mystery. However, it can be asserted confidently that the heat map of a “controlled” mind looks just like a map of North Korea at night. Progress becomes regress, as it has in the Hermit Kingdom. A controlled mind is a dying mind.
The growth in nation-state governance and power has been so consistent and long-running—since the end of the Middle Ages—that most people assume it will continue forever. It’s the bull market in which everybody is fully invested at the top, confident it will never end. Stock market tops have their telltale signs—market divergences, weakening breadth, an increasingly narrowing list of winners—generally acknowledged only after the top.
The coming top in government has its telltale signs as well. Is there a government on the planet that wants the truth of what it does disclosed to its populace? The US government continues to press its battles against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. It’s allies in Silicon Valley, the mainstream media, and academia have been enlisted in its fight against disfavored facts and opinions. Europe’s and Australia’s potentates are fighting the same fight. These are the world’s “liberal” states, with varying traditions of protecting civil liberties. In the rest of the world, for the most part, truth is the enemy governments openly oppose. It will only be recognized after the top, but the mounting effort to repress information flows and the truth marks the apex in governments’ long bull market.
Here is perhaps an open-field run in the one yard and a cloud of dust game the Korean stand-off has become. Offer Kim Jong-un what he has long sought: cessation of the annual joint South Korean-US military exercises. In return, Kim must allow 25,000 of North Korea’s best and brightest young people to visit the US, South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia for at least a year, without minders or surveillance, all expenses paid by the hosts. (For anyone worried about the cost: how much would a war cost?) Kim would most likely refuse, demonstrating for all the world that truth, not hostile foreign powers, is his regime’s ultimate enemy. On the oft chance he accepted (he’s supposedly crazy, after all), the contrasts the hosts—which admittedly have their problems—offer to North Korea would induce acute cognitive dissonance.
A mind on fire is worth at least ten thousand that are not. Send the guests back to North Korea and see what happens. No matter how dutiful their ostensible obsequience, those 25,000 minds would be a fifth column. How do you go back to a rice bowl and sliver of pork after dining at Tokyo’s noodle shops or Los Angeles’s taco stands? Barren, state-run commissaries after shopping at grocery store and shopping mall cornucopias? Urban deserts with a few antiquated autos versus cities where taxis or Ubers whisk you along crowded and exciting avenues? Repeat the guest program until the returnees’ minds on fire reach the critical mass necessary to ignite internal combustion and change.
Truth—it’s power to inspire the imagination or fan the flames of righteous indignation as the case may be—is the ultimate weapon. Recognized or not, stated or not, it always wins. Survey the current scene and there are ample reasons for pessimism. SLL has pointed out its share of clouds. That the truth always wins is a reason for ultimate optimism, and even the current scene has its silver linings.
The Internet—trashy, polluted, and corrupted by governments and the technology giants as some parts of it may be—still yields troves of instantly accessible information, analysis, and subversive entertainment and commentary that were unimaginable a few decades ago. Revolution has not yet come, but to the extent the old order is being undermined, the Internet is leading the way. Neither Brexit nor Trump would have happened without it. Yes, there are still plenty of mainstream blue pill junkies, but the Internet has created a significant and growing red pill subculture that agrees on at least one thing: they’re not getting the truth from the mainstream. Governments can to some extent control it or shut it down, but only at great cost to the information economies on which they depend.
When the Supervolcano arrives, it will be, as much as anything, an eruption of long suppressed truth and logic. Whoever is left will embrace them not out of philosophical insight, but as a matter of survival. In a chaotic world in which mere subsistence becomes problematic, delusion will be unaffordable mental frippery. Believe all you want that governments or gods will drop manna in your lap, but don’t starve yourself waiting for them. You’ll grow too weak to plant, tend, and harvest the crops.
TRUTH IS GREAT, AND EVEN BETTER WHEN IT’S GREAT READING!
“…to the extent the old order is being undermined, the Internet is leading the way. Neither Brexit nor Trump would have happened without it….”
The Nation States (Old Order) was already being usurped by Western Developed countries for the NWO. You can see this with the EU rules on the economic migrants (80% male of military age – these are not refugees); also with the Global Warming Lie – trying to eliminate capitalism and replace with Fascism.
Brexit and Trump is a rebellion against the NWO, not the Old Order.
I would suggest that the nation states and old order are morphing into the NWO, with essentially the same people in control. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
If voting really mattered it would be outlawed first, before even whistleblowing or noticing patterns of (((who))) is gate-keeping the circus of media.
The form changes, but the essence remains: Human farmers, farming human livestock.
Robert ,
You are wrong!! Have you really talked to the young. Informed, aware and able to type on a smartphone with images attached quicker than you can draw a breath. My experience tells me they are very smart.. very very smart. Of my own, they accept no phone with fingerprint opening or facial recognition and now that it is standard they screw up the collection through meta data. They can build a computer from internet sought parts that has not even been thought of by ‘Big Business’ and as for VR they are well in front. My Norton 360 ran out after 12 months and the eldest asked for the disk. He went into the ‘black screen and now it renews every year without cost. They strip smart phones down so that meta data can not be collected, they know the back doors and circumvent them. They are producing your Sony play station V (Virtual reality) as we speak and they are at the same time aware of the lies being told. They are “Whole World” in that if the MSN says something is happening they check with their foreign friends on the ground and share the truth in seconds. You have allies you have never acknowledged. They are your 25+ year old silent Sons and Daughters. and they younger brothers and sisters are learning and will take over. They are a legion and they have understanding beyond your years. Empirical evidence, in what I have seen, suggests we are in very safe and intelligent hands. They are BitTorrent (“+”) and other things that exist but in the deep of the web. They are so smart they laugh at Missiles and Drones.
I’ve seen some of that too. Just not enough to think we’re in safe and intelligent hands as a whole…
I am – I would differ. They are clever, not smart. The “educational system” (credentialism) has made them able to operate devices but they could not make nor invent them. They have been made bereft of the ability to solve problems. What you describe they do as “smart” is really just operating instruction sets.
I work with them every day. Young supposedly smart engineers. They are content to sit at their desks and punch buttons but are frightened of the real blood and bone world with some few exceptions.
The younger people I know and know about,
are bright as buttons, however they don’t seem
to know much about how the world “works.”
Along with the darkness let us not forget a few years ago the North Korean Government issued instructions on how to boil certain tree bark and field grasses so the people do not starve . But now I am to believe they are a nuclear threat to the free world .
If they are obviously the American military budget needs a serious audit regarding defense especially considering we pissed $6trillon in Iraq and Afghanistan with absolutely nothing to show for it .
I feel like my government continues to feed us childish nonsense and I am supposed to respect the combined action and the people involved , BULL SHIT ! When will there actually be American Adults in charge of things so we can stop with the childish foreign policies and domestic policies and start conducting ourselves and our nation like grown ups rather that pretending !
http://www.israeldefense.co.il/en/node/31038
I don’t believe Israeli BS any more than USA
BS.
Boat Guy, I agree 100%. Its absurd that a country that spends as much on defense (lets be honest, its offense) as we do is engaging in this amount of fearmongering over NK. Its something like 670 billion a year, and for what exactly? What do we, the average Americans, have to show for it? As I’ve said on here and elsewhere many times, if the US government can’t keep America safe with what Bush II had when he entered office (something like 300B) then they should all be fired. For the record, that would still be too much, but its a nice start.
What do we have to show for the $ spent
on foreign wars? Huge debt and few jobs,
opiates (less from pharma) imported to
American children, and other people. Heroin.
Deliberate destruction of the people, and a
growing police state, with a mission to
protect their employers. Constant propaganda
meant to stir hatred toward “enemies.”
Fear mongering to foment war, which creates
death, destruction, and deadly chemicals
remaining for eons. The PTB intend to kill
us off, but not before they steal the last money
we hold for our future. Gov is filled with
absolute criminals, and they like to rub our
faces in it. An apparent never ending milky
sky yet people think one is a “nut” for even
mentioning it.
Wow!!! Suzanna very Pithy! What more needs to be said?
Team Goy #1501
About half the voters are stupid beyond belief; they elect politicians almost equally stupid; nothing short of Eugenics can change that. The Useful Idiots are under control by TPTB; all is well and good they’d say regarding Welfare, Public Education, the MSM etc; all the above have the potential to improve the peasants only in the liberal’s imaginations. Whereas the Internet’s potential to educate intelligent voters is being realized and that is the reason for the ZOG’s reflexive targeted censorship (which includes Conservative symbols) that will become the proverbial political pressure cooker without a viable relief valve. When it blows, History will repeat as either another Dark Age of Tyranny or another Forced Exodus of the Tyrants (and a Renaissance for the Liberated People).
Interesting observations, argument(s) and literary prose. A 1984 corporate/technocratic feudalism is being so subtly implemented that the psychologically engineered myopic serfs will not only unwittingly accept but probably DEMAND. What the “Kim dynasty” maintains by despotic, brutal coercion, the billionire/trillionaire one-tenth of one percent will implement with the serf’s eager acceptance.
I assume that 99% of everything we have ever been told about North Korea is false.
Let’s start with the photograph at the top of your article. Most people look at that and think “Those poor Norks, their entire country is in darkness while the rest of the nations on Earth shine like diamonds at night.”
I see a people in tune with the rhythm of day and night, resting when the nocturnal cycle tells them to rest, conserving God knows how many gigawatts of electricity while the rest of the world- ceaselessly intoning the catastrophic horrors of man made global climate change- do everything in their power to waste as much energy and fossil fuel as they can trying to turn nigh time into day. All I see is profligate waste coming from hypocrites while trying to tell me how great they are.
For starters.
Does anyone on this blog speak fluent Korean? No? Me either. After watching this clip this morning-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mdd0uwp3zEk
You’d have to be fifty shades of stupid to trust any official interpretation of what someone is saying if you haven’t heard it yourself, especially if they happen to be enemies of The Narrative.
And why would anyone in their right mind send the best and the brightest of their most valuable assets to the Western World knowing that they’ll get the full Going Amish treatment as soon as they arrive, leaving a trail of heroin addicted corpses and porn clips in their wake as a way of our elites saying “Suckers!” to the NK regime.
I don’t know a lot about North Korea, but I bet I have done about 200 hours more research than anyone in the MSM and I have a gut feeling that there’s a hell of a lot we don’t see and it isn’t all bad. A cohesive, historically connected people who are the victims of Western political policies from the last century have every right to resist our insistence on coming on over to the wild side and drinking a big old cup of degeneracy and turpitude.
Here’s an idea; why don’t we just leave people alone? Why can’t some people just go their own way without us invading and threatening and harassing and demeaning them ad nauseum? And you know who’s going to suffer the most if we do carry through with our threats? The people. Yeah, they are so oppressed that we are going to starve them and bomb them into freedom’s loving arms. Why must everyone adhere to the exact same draconian script that hint-hint hasn’t exactly been a smashing success when you see just how many complaints there are about us from our own citizenry on a day in and day out basis?
I hate this jingoistic drum beating.
I’m glad you made this post. There is a Canadian program on Netflix called “Departures”. It’s about the travels of a couple of millennials as they make a trip around the world. One of the places they go to is North Korea. It’s interesting. Much of what you say in your post is true. It is, however, a bit of a strange place in some ways (watch the program) but strikes me as the sort of place that, if left to its own devices, would likely peacefully coexist if it were allowed to. Of course, you are seeing what the North Koreans want you to see. On the other hand, some of them seem like genuine and nice people. Watch it and decide for yourself.
My feeling is you are probably right.
Bravo!
HSF…thanks,
and FM…you are likely correct. Are we sick of all of
the “enemies” we are told are evil yet?
HSF,
I am going to concede that you know more about North Korea than I do. Here’s what I do and do not know, and things about which I’m not sure.
I do know that during the Korean “Police Action,” (Harry Truman’s designation), the US dropped more napalm on North Korea than it did later on North Vietnam, that it leveled virtually every town and city in North Vietnam, destroyed its agriculture and economy, and killed over three million North Koreans. The US and South Korea are still technically at war with North Korea; no peace treaty has ever been signed.
I know that Fred Reed recently said this: “People get over things they have done to others more easily than they get over things others have done to them.” I know that HSF said this in response: “That can only apply to living beings and current events.” I don’t know if 60 years is too far back to be current events or not, but I believe that many North Koreans fear and loathe the US and Americans. I know I don’t blame them. I know I have posted many articles on SLL that have made all of these points about the Korean “Police Action.”
I know that in 1994 Bill Clinton and Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father, negotiated an “Agreed Framework,” in which North Korea agreed to forego development of nuclear weapons and remain in the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in exchange for 500,000 tons a year of heavy fuel oil and two commercial light-water reactors from the US. The two countries also agreed to move to full diplomatic and economic normalization.
I know that North Korea made no fissible material until 2003. I believe the US delayed its oil shipments and never implemented full normalization. I know that the agreement was effectively abrogated in 2003 when President Bush put North Korea in his axis of evil. I know I posted an article from thenation. com, “Diplomacy With North Korea Has Worked Before, and Can Work Again,” on SLL.
I know I have posted many articles on the current situation, virtually all of which advocate negotiations rather than bellicose belligerence and war, and many of which advocate US withdrawal from the peninsula, letting the Koreans sort out their own problems. I know the primary reason I posted them is because those are my positions as well. I know that is clear from my comments that have accompanied the articles. Rather than linking to all of them, anyone who is interested can go to SLL and hit the North Korea entry under “TAGS,” on the right-hand side.
I know that after 59 years, my body is not “in tune with the rhythm of day and night,” if it ever was. I know I often wake up well before sunrise, and stay up far after sundown. I know I can choose to turn on a light and do something besides sleep. It is dark outside as I type. I believe, judging from the photo, that many North Koreans do not have this choice.
I know that America’s best and brightest can, if they have the inclination and resources, visit any nation that will have them and many choose to do so. I believe that North Korea’s best and brightest do not have that choice. Apparently, North Korea’s best and brightest are “their most valuable asset.” I’m assuming that the “their” refers to the government. In other words, the best and the brightest are the property of the government, their lives disposed of as the government sees fit. I will agree with HSF that the West has abundant “degeneracy and turpitude,” but I don’t think we’ve reached the point where the lives of the best and brightest or anyone else, at least in the US, are considered government property.
I believe that North Korea’s government has no fundamental recognition of civil liberties and practices censorship. I know when I wrote my article that I wanted a symbol of censorship, repression, and poverty, and I believed that most people would see North Korea as an apt symbol, regardless of any of its other virtues or flaws. I also wanted to tie in censorship to societal regression and government failure. I saw the nighttime darkness in North Korea as symbolic, not to mention a tremendous waste for millions of North Koreans who want to do things other than sleep when it’s dark, things that require light. I used the obvious metaphor of light and truth and applied it to the US and around the world, not just North Korea.
I know one other thing. If I was a North Korean and I posted this in North Korea, I would probably be arrested by now, headed for a show trial and an execution. HSF, you can have North Korea, I’ll stick with the US, warts and all. The best and brightest proposal was to illustrate how powerful the truth could be against Kim, who I believe is a tyrannical dictator. Since it’s not going to happen, it’s my fondest hope that in the near future, the US just leaves the people of North and South Korea alone and lets them sort out their own affairs, which sounds like exactly what you’re advocating. Perhaps you can explain to me how my position is “jingoistic drum beating.”
Nice original post and follow up comment Robert. You have me thinking…
I cringed when I hit the post comment tab because I knew I’d get a response like that.
First, let me say it isn’t often I get schooled by someone these days, especially someone who has as firm a grasp on facts and logic (I finally get the SLL moniker) as you do. I wish we were neighbors.
You said-
-I know that Fred Reed recently said this: “People get over things they have done to others more easily than they get over things others have done to them.” I know that HSF said this in response: “That can only apply to living beings and current events.”
1) fantastic memory 2) even better hoisting on a petard.
Forget sawing up that country like a birthday cake for a party of five year old kids, we continue to this day to isolate, vilify and strangle that country and every last one of it’s inhabitants because we disapprove of its political leadership. As Obama would have said, “that’s not who we are.”
I do not view peoples as possessions of governments, very much the opposite. It is up to the people to determine how much they are willing to accept and if you see a nickle’s worth of difference between the behaviors of the NK government and the USA when it comes to methods used to suppress dissent and marginalize opponents of it’s Narrative, you’re being naive. But I don’t think you are- you get that the US government allow other proxies to do the dirty work- the MSM to smear and destroy oppnents through the use of public shaming, i.e. nazis and white supremacists, and corporations to stifle free speech and pretend their simply exercising their own constitutional rights to private property or even hiring mercenaries like Blackwater to do the kidnapping and torturing so the soldiers don’t get caught again, like at Abu Grahib.
You get the picture. If the USA were somehow cutoff from outside communications with the rest of the world, imagine how we’d be portrayed.
And considering how easy it is to escape North Korea (contrary to the concentration camp style borders that are always shown, there is a veritable army of young women that somehow make it across the border to become part of the South Korean propaganda effort, all dolled up in make-up and miniskirts to lure their male counterparts into the land of milk and selfies. You think the Nork government hasn’t slipped a few or a thousand of their most loyal moles into the mix, knowing they can waltz into the capitals of the western world without so much as a passport or drivers license to identify them? What kinds of trouble do you think they’d be able to get into if the motivation was just so?
I don’t think that’s there’s any place on Earth where the tentacles of power don’t play some role in people’s lives and that in any of those cases it is better to have government than not have it, but no one is asking for my opinion, that’s why I offer it for free in the most obscure places that haven’t had their domain registry revoked for upsetting xe/xer/xizzle. Governments gonna govern and just because I happen to live under this despotic form doesn’t mean I have a special affinity for their snake-oil version of how much they care for and love the proles, I know what the eventual outcome always is. Remember, if nothing else I know a little something about the nature of things because I watch intently, every waking hour.
Thanks for trimming my sails, much respect.
HSF,
If anyone other than you had written what you did, I would have let it go. However, I felt that it wasn’t up to your usual standard (I often agree with you, and I love your writing about your farm and life), and I felt it characterized my position in a way that was the exact opposite of my actual position. But no worries and nothing personal; it’s intellectual battle only and no blood was spilt or prisoners taken. And I certainly agree with this:
I don’t think that’s there’s any place on Earth where the tentacles of power don’t play some role in people’s lives and that in any of those cases it is better to have government than not have it, but no one is asking for my opinion, that’s why I offer it for free in the most obscure places that haven’t had their domain registry revoked for upsetting xe/xer/xizzle. Governments gonna govern and just because I happen to live under this despotic form doesn’t mean I have a special affinity for their snake-oil version of how much they care for and love the proles, I know what the eventual outcome always is.
On to the next battle.
Robert
You’re a good guy Robert. I like the way you think.
Right back at you.
By God, an honest debate, where both participants are intelligent, honest, willing to self-analyze, willing to give ground and are both in it for the sole purpose of expanding their understanding of the truth?
I didn’t know it was still possible. Thank you both, gentlemen.
It shouldn’t be unusual.
Why do they put up sign language interpreters? They used to do it decades ago, then you didn’t see it for a long time, and now you see it again. Why not just put up the closed captions like everyone else? Seems like this dude is just a wasted expense. If you can read sign language, I assume you can read written language, too. It would be less distracting than listening to Navy Hat while watching this guy throwing hand signs. It would be cheaper to just put up a sign reading, “GET THE FUCK OUT, YOU GONNA DIE!”
Sorry, I disagree. While I think it’s likely most of what we hear from mainstream American sources is hysteria to manipulate us, I believe we can find the truth out there. And I believe the famous dark pics of North Korea are proof of poverty, not a nation fast asleep.
I’ve never been to North Korea (did visit Seoul once, tho), but there are a lot of former North Koreans in South Korea who are happy to tell us what it’s really like. There are also smugglers and “activists” (I hate the term, but don’t know what else fits) who sneak information into North Korea (DVDs, laptops, thumbdrives, etc) and sneak out secret video filmed by volunteers. And we have some former employees and associates of the North Korean leadership, including the Kim family’s former chef and Un’s schoolmates and teachers, who can tell us about them and what they’ve said in private.
The picture these sources all paint includes:
1. North Korea is a brutal dictatorship with a cult of personality centered on the Dear Leader.
2. Violence and repression is common and carried out by the government at all levels. Dissidents and comrades under suspicion can be arrested, tried, and sentenced to labor camps or murdered at any time for any reason.
3. The government engages in a campaign of disinformation aimed at the outside world. You can see this exemplified in the fake propaganda city they built on the border with no inhabitants, the show farms, and the fake grocery stores and malls with products on display, but not on sale.
We also know the government is willing to use violence against outsiders at any time and for any reason, such as the random attacks across the border, kidnappings of foreigners from abroad, and potentially the assassination of Un’s brother. You can google that stuff all night long.
That being said, i don’t think it justifies starting a war just because North Korea doesn’t play well with others.
I see them as a Stalinist-style police state more concerned with keeping the outside world out than in conquest. I don’t believe they’re really interested in reunification, because all those South Koreans would wreck their carefully-constructed mythology. I also believe exposure to formerly-free South Koreans would do more damage to the NORK regime than anything we could do to them.
Please reference the videos linked below. I believe these help explain North Korea better than I could. While there is a lot of propaganda and bullshit out there, I don’t believe everything out there about North Korea is fake. I believe these videos are a lot more reliable than CNN or Fox.
Land of Whispers (tourist)
Inside North Korea (interviews folks who know Un)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOzY3U9xIoM North Korea’s Darkest Secrets (on smuggling data in and out of NORK)
(French documentary about life in North Korea)
(homeless in North Korea)
(alleged North Korean secret videos)
(NORK Defectors try BBQ)
(ViceNews on North Korea)
North Korea ain’t great, but South Korea is better only due to the Cold War.
The difference between the two arose from the fact that one got billions of subsidies from the US while the other got embargoed for decades.
I’d suggest looking up how South Korea’s leaders acted in its early years.
Even as recently as 1980 – 600+ students were killed in protests against South Korean dictators, and student protests continue today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%9317_South_Korean_protests
Oh, I agree completely. We were propping up a military dictatorship. Now, however, South Korea has arrived. And yes, they benefited from overwhelming US support. I think they can stand on their own two feet at this point. If we left and just remained a supportive distant ally, I suspect South Korea would be left alone and we could avoid this pointless battle over the Koreas we no longer need to fight. At this point, I figure it’s a self-licking ice cream cone that will never go away. Neither side can afford to let it go on its own.
South Korea received the 5th most military aid – nearly 6% of total military aid spending – spend by the US from 1946 to 2010: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/military-spending/
And while direct military aid has ended, the indirect subsidies resulting from 23500 American troops in 15 bases in South Korea is not insignificant.
I’d say it is premature to declare South Korea “independent”.
But look at their economic success. 4th largest economy in Asia, 11th in the world. They’ve gone from being a poverty-stricken backwater 2 generations ago to being leader in electronics, manufacturing, and ship building and gone from being a global aid recipient to a global aid donor. If you look at their domestic growth, they outperform our “official” growth numbers. One of my friends used to rave about how they had the best internet in the world due to govt subsidy for nation-wide highspeed internet infrastructure. Also, look it up- they have their own domestic arms industry and export weapons around the world. FWIW, I used to buy a lot of ammo made in Korea by PMC and it was great. I think they could stand without us, especially if you subscribe to my idea that North Korea will never actually invade because they couldn’t digest the ROK and survive. The ROK is projected to be one of the leading economies of the next century.
To paraphrase Kemal Attaturk, “Lucky is He who is born a Korean.”
South Korean success is hugely underpinned by American economic subsidies.
For example: while Japan was wrestling with car quotas into America, South Korean companies got a pass. Overall, South Korea netted $27.8 billion in net trade surplus from trade just with the US vs its overall $98b trade surplus in 2016.
I’d also note that South Korea is heavily dependent on food and energy imports.
Or in other words, if South Korea experienced the trade embargoes that North Korea has had for decades, the South Korean economy would be a very different story.
I’d also note that South Korea’s growth had hardly been without hiccups.
As recently as 1999 – during the Asian Financial Crisis – South Korea literally went bankrupt. They got a huge IMF loan, the South Korean people basically zeroed out their currency and reissued, including a mass population contribution of tons of gold, and a large amount of their debts were written off.
Sound familiar? Of course not – because the US did the exact opposite in 2008.
Gil,
good comments, and thanks for the links.
“Here’s an idea; why don’t we just leave people alone? ”
I would like that to extend to my “countrymen” around ME, particularly:
The SJWs
The bankers
Liberals in general
the MIC
anyone else who thinks they know how anybody else should live
I don’t think they listen, to anyone else, though
No way we are stopping the bankers
The Idea that the truth always wins is debatable. Certainly on a long enough time line it’s true, the truth will out, and as you say that is reason for optimism. And yes there are many silver linings in the current scene.
The idea you have about ending the current exercises, and bringing 25000 of NK s best and brightest here is out of the box thinking which at this point is better than our current path of drifting towards war. I think that Kim would probably send 25000 sleepers/hackers to cause mayhem. Why not just cancel the exercises, bring our ground troops home, and let them sort out their own problems. We can leave sky command intact down in Pusan. If the north attacks the south we can do the same damage without the 30000 ground troops.
The real truth is that our little proxy wars that never end are a reminder of the greatness of our past. Imperial overreach is history, as we have no ability to play these games anymore. Americas greatest days are behind us if we don’t focus 1st and foremost on our own problems. If we could find it in our hearts to leave everyone else alone we might be able to turn it around . But alas there are 2 types of people in this world, those who want to be left alone, and those can’t leave well enough alone. As long as our country is captured by those who insist on full spectrum dominance of every living thing on the planet, then I am afraid we are headed for the dustbin of history.
And Ubercynic that is an excellent link, everyone here who works their land might appreciate it.
There are 3 types of people:
Those that work hard and are grateful for
what they have, those that are savage in their
lust for ever moar $$$, and those that are
inclined to insist other people support their
very lives and those of their children.
Other than the government, that dark spot on the earth looks like a paradise to me. It just goes to show you that governments screw up all places, light or dark.
Your reply got me thinking again so I decided to follow my train of thought.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/North+Korea/@37.8178218,126.5238505,460m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x357e02dae64f4337:0x3a0b871c3e1d861c!8m2!3d40.339852!4d127.510093
I went to Goolag Maps and started looking at the border. Odd, there’s a ribbon of blank along the entire border, edited obviously, but it’s goolag, why would they hide what’s in North Korea? maybe if it was just the South side I could see the influence our government might have over them since they’re the ones who actually run it, Goolag that is.
That’s nothing if not curious. So then I notice something, as a farmer, and that’s the number of well tended fields and crop lands along every tributary in all of the flats and well maintained and full grown forests in all of the harder land where the terrain makes crops or grazing difficult. Then I see all of the buildings that support this massive agrarian culture equally maintained, albeit similar in appearance and they have areas devoted to recreation, formal gardens, livestock operations, etc.
All within a 1/4 mile of the very hostile border. Strategically that’s a horrible idea, isn’t it? Having all of your food sources right where the enemy could quickly overrun them or destroy it so you’d be unable to sustain your own people?
So either the stories of people eating tree bark and living on 200 calories a day are wildly exaggerated or the North Koreans have perpetrated a massive fraud on our intelligence agencies, sort of like the Soviet Union did. From a birds eye view they look like they have their proverbial shit together.
If you watch some of those resources above, I believe you learn the famine we hear about was a 1990s event caused by Kim Jong Il. They don’t eat like us, but they do, more or less, eat. If you watch the BBQ video, you learn about some of their diet, like how eating beef is almost illegal, but you can raise and slaughter dog, as long as you give the govt the fur for making military coats.
North Korea had oil imports subsidized for years by China and Russia. They built an agricultural machine heavily dependent on oil as a consequence.
When oil prices rose in the 1980s oil shock, China dropped its subsidy and Russia cut back.
However, when the USSR collapsed, so did the oil imports. And what do you think happens when an embargoed country, heavily dependent on oil to grow food, loses its sole remaining oil gifter?
no problem tree, just don’t use electricity
after dark. Paradise.
Since I have been on this earth our country has been at war. Overtly or by proxy, with American troops and those of our allies, or with CIA/ other mercenaries. At least in my 51 yrs, the truth has been supplied by those whose job it is to hide or twist the truth. That is how they’ve generated ad revenue, viewership and votes. There is opportunity for those who care to find the truth, sadly too few do.
I recall finding information about the “Neocon” plan for regime change in seven countries within five years, beginning just after the turn of the century. Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. They have a good start, but their schedule seems to be slipping and I’m not sure hostilities with North Korea(and all that goes with that) fits in. Proposing there is a “domino effect” of Communism doesn’t work as well now as it did almost seventy years ago, so now we are fed a constant media barrage of nuclear war and “The War on Terror”.
We have a lot of wars to fight, according to the powers that be. The more, the better, to annihilate the Constitution and strip you of your God given rights. It’s been done right before our eyes, in our lifetime. Most readers here know, but for further information see The Patriot Act, and NDAA.
I hope truth does always win, and if not in my lifetime then my children’s.
Thank you for the great article Robert, well done as always.
Robert, given your familiarity with the WP, I know you know that our current mess is a product of maniacally high social mood and the pathologically deep and broad social trust that accompanies it.
To me, social trust is THE key. Today’s insanely over-optimistic citizen trusts that his bank is honest, his money is honest, his politicians are honest, the press is honest, the FDA and other gov’t agencies protect him, etc., etc., etc. His actions are revealed preference, and he clearly trusts the entire system no matter how often he may call the King a Fink. People believe what they’re told, just like they’re little children.
Until interest rates break higher, signaling this long lunatic train of trust has derailed finally, all paths will continue no matter how estranged from sanity they (and we are forced to) become.
At the very peak, people were (are) willing to trust Alien life forms (Spielberg’s E.T.) and my theory of concentric rings of trust suggests that when this finally does go into reverse, eventually the only thing people will trust IS their own hand in front of their face. All other outer circles of “trust” will be no more. People will act on the belief that no one outside of their immediate (hand) can be trusted. It’s going to be a very hard time, for our current cornucopia of Plenitude exists only because of social cooperation that mirrors pathological social trust.
PS: If one is waiting to buy something that has a long or distant supply chain, consider that when this all does finally end:
1) The money supply will likely collapse, and prices for lots of things will fall, and fall hard.
2) Many things available today will not be available at ANY price.
3) People’s indebtedness will not go away, such that even as prices fall, the affordability of goods will probably fall faster. No matter what the nominal price is for a gallon of gasoline, even if it’s $0.50, if you haven’t $5.00 in your pocket (and your credit card stopped working long ago) you STILL won’t be able to buy 10 gal to fill your tank.
As I said on SLL, that’s a brilliant comment.