On a related note, one oddity I often see online (and, once, in person) are the die-hard groups of westerners who insist that North Korea is actually a paradise on earth and any claim to the contrary is some kind of evil capitalist propaganda. Utterly baffling, when there are so many sources like this article indicating otherwise.
What gives?
I can understand different countries have different pros and cons, different people value different things, and something an American might find unpalatable might not be considered so bad somewhere else.
But North Korea seems to stand out as being one of very few countries that has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Odd that anyone who wasn't born there would willingly and voluntarily pledge their allegiance to such a regime.
This is very different from the DPRK.
> conventional wisdom
Talk about unclear referents! I question the existence of a universal "conventional wisdom" on political issues like these.
It is actually very hard to characterize a reliable source in a way that does not exhibit any sort of cultural or political bias.
Nazi Germany (fascist far right) -> totalitarian dictatorship that invades its neighbors and executes dissidents
Soviet Union (communist far left) -> totalitarian dictatorship that invades its neighbors and executes dissidents
I'm sure that, unsurprisingly, if you live in a majority white country, most Cuban supporters would be white and left-leaning. If you were a Cuban that supported the Cuban regime and were happy, why would you leave, taking on so much risk and expense?
I met a Cuban like that. Simply put, to make more money. He knew the nuances of their system and was thankful for the good parts and the opportunities he had, but at the end of the day knew that for him individually it was more convenient to leave when he had the chance. It's just something that doesn't work for everybody by necessity.
I think he had a relative abroad that sponsored some sort of student visa, and he just never went back.
And if you think about it, how much of American culture in the 20th century was a result of things that came out of corporate boards?
Wait, are you saying equity ownership and therefore control, of “US style corporations” isn't inheritable?
Schumpeter said something in the lines of "it's ironic that in democratic free-market countries most economic activity happens under hierarchical top-down organizations".
It’s only even slightly ironic if you ignore that “free-market” is the capitalist euphemism for a society whose structure is top-to-bottom regulated (largely, through the exact shape of the imposed definition of “property rights”) around principals engineered and fought for tooth-and-nail over centuries by the capitalist (née mercantile) class to allow their heirarchical top-down organizations to replace those of the feudal aristocracy as the main driving force in society.