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Comment by chajath | Hacker News Reader

It's about time Korea moves away from this oligarchical bs and embrace a true liberal democracy and market economy

Right, they should follow our lead in the west where we recognize that campaign donations are speech and end up with the CEO of a major corporation as the next Sec. of State. We don't just do bribery, we've legalized it.

To be fair, that's mostly an American thing.

compaign donations are tightly controlled in almost all the rest of the West.

Straight up illegal in Poland.

Can't both things be bad?

Both are indeed bad, but the original comment was an exhortion to "[move] away from this oligarchical bs and embrace a true liberal democracy and market economy." It's almost as if it's implicit there is some model "true liberal democracy and market economy," an instantiation of a noble ideal in the real world to look to...but it can't be us. Unless they to embrace an ideal that we ourselves haven't been able to achieve, which if they could, would be great.

Not that it isn't noble to strive for liberal democracy, but market based, liberal democracy in our case, has of late merely had the vestiges of a free market and democracy but is more and more like an oligarchy, not too unlike what we see here in SK.

Given the choices, I'd much rather see legalized, but fully transparent political donations. That way, voters will at least know which of the parties are more prone to Chaebol influences.

>legalized, but fully transparent political donations

Shell companies easily allow for "legal" circumvention of transparency.

Strange; are you suggesting that being a CEO of a major corporation is bad work experience for secretary of state? Why?

They are very different. Most CEOs come from a business background and possess related skills. Secretary of State on the other hand needs to have a deep understanding of history, world affairs and international politics.

CEO of an international company needs to know exactly these things. To me it seems like a much closer fit than a politician who's campaigning all the time, or a university professor.

The problem isn't that it's oligarchical, the problem is corruption. You don't need to look far to see that democracy and free markets aren't exactly free of corruption either.

Tying the two is nothing but a red herring.

By oligarchy I mean it's gotten to the point where they have such an influence as kicking an MP out [1] for exposing their connections with the prosecutors office.

Sure modern democracy and free market aren't free of problems, but Korea can use some Rule of Law.

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/15/3991338/samsung-x-file-tap...

That's corruption for you. No matter what form of power structure is employed, if you don't have good laws that are uniformly enforced, you'll get corruption, be the structure oligarchical or democratic.

Of course by "oligarchy" I only mean it figuratively. Formally Korea is democracy _de jure_. But the situation is so bad that I'm calling out as an oligarchy _de facto_.

What I'm attempting to get across is that oligarchies by themselves aren't inherently any worse than other forms of rule. Corruption is what makes them and other forms bad.

Debatable. First, moral and ethical arguments for democracy: fairness, pursuit of happiness etc. Second, empirical argument: in this modern age, democracy tends to fare pretty well in comparison to other forms of government.

You mean Switzerland of course? Elsewhere is a republic. They fare as differently as there are countries that employ it. And each has a different flavour.

Switzerland is a republic too. Most democracies are either republics or constitutional monarchies.

There is no contradiction between being a republic and a democracy unless one unreasonably restricts the definition of democracy to direct democracy. Reasonable definitions of democracy include representative democracy, which is practiced in many republics.

Democracy and Republic aren't mutually exclusive. I'd call rule of law with a democratic constitution (written or unwritten), political representation (direct or indirect), respect of human rights and civil rights to be the elements of modern liberal democracy.

but the argument is that oligarchies are more prone to corruption because power corrupts.

And democracies have attempted to abridge power via separation, rule of law and representation principles.

As we see, many republics face problems with all of the above. Including US. Technicalities such as non-majority presidents and strict bipartisan systems...

In certain countries like UK, where apparently ruling party was against the strict referendum results.

In Poland, where the ruling party is changing the judicial branch to their benefit.

Those are not third world banana republics.

Plutocracy is probably a better word to use here.

> The problem isn't that it's oligarchical, the problem is corruption.

Those two go hand-in-hand. One leads to the other and neither are good for the economy or the citizens as a whole.

Why? The model has worked for Korea in many ways. Korea was an absolute disaster in the 1950s and unprecedented cooperation between private enterprise and government was one of the primary reasons why a tiny half-peninsula with no natural resources is now a very significant player in the world economy.

Very few of the problems Korea is facing would be solved by a shift to "a true liberal democracy", whatever that means.

Ethics and morality aside (Can you really divorce them from the political economy, though), what worked at a particular context at a particular time doesn't necessary entail that such arrangement will work forever. Different stage in social and economic development calls for a different model.

I recommend Jonathan Tepperman's book "The Fix" [1]. His chapter on Korea is, in my point of view, fair, forgiving and sympathetic towards Chaebol system.

He divides the development in Korea into three periods: Dictatorial development (which I think what you call cooperation b/w private enterprise and government) 1962~1987 and democratization 1987~1997 and liberalization 1997~. I think he presents a case of what would've worked in a cheap labor export economy wouldn't work well in a post-industrial advanced economy, and how the country should move on.

[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/press/2016-09-20/fix-how-nati...

It's not clear that the approach used to lift the Korean economy out of the poverty of the 50s to today's levels is the approach that needs to continue. The population, resources and global connection Korea has now has radically transformed the kinds of economic approaches the country needs to try.

For example, in the 50s through the 70s, an important economic initiative was getting shoes for people. It both created jobs (making the shoes) and enabled people to get to work cheaply. Thus the gomusin was created.

It would be crazy today to have the same initiative in place. Times are different.

Is this satire?

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