Hotels of Pyongyang | Hacker News Reader

Hotels of Pyongyang

hotelsofnorthkorea.com

116 pointsgscott116 comments

Years ago some danes (incl two adopted south koreans) went to north korea to film a satire documentary called "the Red Chapel" (trailer https://youtu.be/1aQRC_4LheY)

One of the members was a handicapped danish comedian, the other another very legendary satire comedian (now chef) and the director has later made many dox afterwards.

During their trip they participated in a military march. One of them wheel-chaired in a country known for "magically having no handicapped people".

Its equally incredible what they did in their visit as it is they got out alive.

Here is an interview with the director: https://youtu.be/gWkPKlmptFo

holy shit that's the same person [Mads Brügger] who over months impersonated a corrupt diplomat in africa in the documentary The Ambassador (must-watch). So he's been up to other dangerous (and mischievous in the best way) reporting (well, wikipedia tells me this was before the ambassador). Stunning.

I can recommend "cold case hamarskjold" from same director too

I haven't watched this, but the documentary about Laibach's visit to North Korea was very revealing: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/dec/08/storyvi...

I just watched the trailer again. Damn its an impressive portrait of the torment of resisting your urge to scream and the actual panic in the small group of keeping eachothers face and reactions in the narrow strip of "acceptaple" while being in the dystopic nightmare

What happened to the North Korean people portrayed in the movie, after the movie came out?

Nobody knows i guess but i think the team acted responsibly to not bring people into "bad standing"

If I remember correctly the handicapped was asked by North Korea to pretent he was an able person acting as a handicapped.

It’s a very weird documentary.

Yeah and also sometimes introduced as a drunk. Incredible courage they all had. But dont underestimate their intelligence: each person in the group have incredible comedic talent as well and are incredible in a multitude of other fields too

I have no opinion on the movie as a whole, but couple things that stood out from the trailer

"North Korea - the most evil dictatorship known to mankind" - uhmmmm, really? More evil than(just in the last 100 years) dictatorships of Mao, of Stalin, of Pol Pot? By what measure?

"art in a country that does not tolerate art" - well that's just simply not true at all. North Korea both has and values art - just not the same way other countries do. One of the most internationally known facts about North Korea is the Arirang Festival - and what is that, if not art? Even its propaganda is art.

I think paying attention to taglines as means of content is false. The dox is what is is. Marketing is what it is. I agree with your points though but when you say "evilest by what messure?" I could for example say "by still being around for so long" Also does it make sense to discuss minima/maxima in terms of human rights? I guess we all want maximum! :-)

That being said, while I think the DPRK is probably the worst, I believe the longest running dictatorship is probably Saudi Arabia or some other kingdom.

There's a hilarious map projection on the lobby TV in the 8th image. Massive unified red Korean peninsula (practically the size of Australia on the map), tiny sliver for the Japanese islands, and places Korea at the absolute center with all the other continents warped around it. Brilliant.

It’s common for countries to put themselves in the centre. U.K. does it for English maps, America does it, so does Russia and Australia. And it makes sense too because it allows you to give context to the other land masses (though it’s usually don’t for vanity reasons).

America follows the European convention of putting America on the far left of the world map.

In that case, you should read about this hilarious map called the Mercator projection...

Japan and Korea are more or less on the same latitude and near each other and Japan has slightly more area than Korea. I doubt this is an issue about projection distortion.

That wasn't really my point, but go off I guess

The mercator projection is a projection...a mathematically consistent way of displaying the surface of a sphere as a two dimensional image.

This map is something else entirely. Not even sure what to call it, but it isn't a projection. The korean peninsula is bigger than India. It's a fantasy at best.

I don't see any problem with that map, the ratios are mostly correct.

>I don't see any problem with that map, the ratios are mostly correct.

Whaaaaat?

You see the island off the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula, colored red? That's Jeju.

The Japanese island chain is almost unrecognizable; but the largest southern island ought to be Kyushu. In the real world, Kyushu extends significantly south of Jeju and is about twenty times the land area.

The small green island near to and west-south-west of Jeju is Taiwan. In the real world, that distance is more like 700 miles and more like south-south-west. Taiwan is also much larger than Jeju.

At the northern end of Japan, the NK map has Hokkaido as a tiny cross-shaped island on about same latitude as Pyongyang. In fact, it's 75% the size of North Korea and extends significantly past the northernmost extent of the country.

In the real world, Sakhalin - the long, thin island north of Japan - doesn't overlap at all with North Korea's latitudes.

On that map the Korean peninsula (~220.000 km2) is bigger than Spain (~500.000 km2).

Why shouldn't it? Or should it put the United States at the center of the map, as usual?

I don't think I've ever seen a map that places United States in the center. Is that really a thing?

If you were schooled in the US, you would absolutely have seen such a map nearly every day.

Edit: Sorry I offended someone! If you were educated in the US and had another experience, I'm not invalidating that. I was in HS a few decades back, and I think they've probably reformed those maps these days

The map of America, sure. World maps have the Atlantic in the center. How would you even make a world map with the US in the center, split up Asia?

The upstream reply asked "I don't think I've ever seen a map that places United States in the center. Is that really a thing?"

So, your question is different.

But yes, to answer your question, in school we also had global maps that centered the Americas and split Asia so that China was on the left and Europe and Africa was to the right

I think it was split somewhere to the west of India, as I recall. The projection may have been over the US, but Im not positive. It was awhile ago

Edit: here you go: https://crosscultcomm.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/compart_wo...

As far as I recall, that map was never used in my American education. I'm guessing it's decided by state education boards, so either you always had it or never had it.

Yes, that is how it 'works', splitting up Russia/Asia.

I was downvoted simply for suggesting another poster who hadn't seen it before, and was it really a thing, do a search so they could see different examples it.

Other people here are downvoted simply for giving their (American) experience, that maps showed the US at the centre.

Is it supposed to be a secret or something?

I had an American experience in several different schools, and our maps had the Atlantic in the middle. I think that's more common, so people are down voting the posts stating the bizarre America in the center map is a staple of US schools.

It's probably something decided by state education boards, so whichever map your state decided was all you saw for twelve years. Leading you to think the entire US had the same.

Yes, you could be right with that. I guess not enough kids are playing Risk.

Although it can seem pettily nationalistic (and probably is to some extent), for quickly illustrating "You Are Here", and the relative positions of other countries to your own, centring maybe makes more sense than having some far away country at the centre.

It seems pretty common/natural in different countries too. I wondered if a 'most accurate map' exists, and found Authagraph:

https://ourplnt.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/AuthaGraph-wo...

https://ourplnt.com/authagraph-probably-the-most-accurate-wo...

It's not difficult to find the origin country of the map, Japan.

I went to public school in San Francisco; Fairfax County, VA; and Springfield, MA. These US-centric maps were all that I saw.

As an aside, I also had 6 years of American Revolution, all told. Every time we moved, the new district would be starting that unit. So annoying

I’m an American who was in high school in the late ‘90s, and I can’t recall ever having seen such a map before this discussion (though obviously they exist). Perhaps it was changed somewhere in that time span? Or a regional difference?

Edit: perhaps more relevant that I went to private schools, so we wouldn’t necessarily have had the same materials as were chosen by the state.

(I wonder if in Australian schools the maps are upside-down. That would be sublime)

New Zealand often complain they are left off maps of the world (it happens more than you think). I do wonder if NZ maps leave off other countries (say the UK) in response.

Drawings of the globe used to, quite frequently, show the Americas.

I've noticed a lot printing it with UK /Europe at the centre I guess it depends on what sphere of influence you live in.

Now there's a map printing shop idea, centering the map on any country you choose.

Centring on GMT is conventional and probably makes more sense than anywhere else. Australians may beg to differ though:

http://img.memecdn.com/australian-world-map_o_1081710.jpg

(I quite like that map, actually.)

I love it as well so interesting to see the world 'upside down',ales everything so unrecognisable.

But GMT is still Eurocentric and unimportant from the perspective of an individual looking at a map, I do wonder if that will ever change?

It still dilates the northern hemisphere and squashes the southern hemisphere though.

Everyone country puts themselves in the center. If you live in America, then the maps you see have America in the center of the globe

My point (and probably my parent's too) is that America has dominated the shared culture for the past 100+ years (in good part thanks to Hollywood). Most people experience world maps and globes in two places: in schools, where they will be local-oriented, and in movies, which will be predominantly American.

(And if you're into science fiction, you've likely internalized the American view of Earth from space without even realizing it.)

I'm not passing judgement here - just saying that cultural influence isn't equal.

Eh, I'm not sure how much influence movies have over maps. I live in the UK which has a very significant cultural influence from the US, but the vast majority of maps I see are centered on the UK.

The movies won't affect your printed maps, or maps you see in serious contexts (like in classroom, or in a BBC article). But I'm willing to bet that in your day-to-day experience, you see a roughly equivalent number of maps in movies and videogames. Which, unless you have non-average watching habits, will most likely be US-made.

I probably do see a fair number of those maps, but the context matters. Such maps are usually in the background and not what I'm paying attention to. If I'm actively using a map then it's a UK centered one 99% of the time.

True. And I inferred the context is about seeing maps in general - which includes movies, games, advertisements, company logos, computer icons, etc. I.e. the situations in which you see depictions of the world (and mentally recognize them as such), not necessarily use them to find your way.

Search map with United States in the center.

> practically the size of Australia on the map

Not really

> tiny sliver for the Japanese islands

As in any map

> places Korea at the absolute center

TBH, that sounds more practical.

Maybe not the size of Australia, but compare it to this map I generated (Winkel-Tripel projection) [1] where Korea is correctly sized, and you can see it's easily 2-3 times as big as it should be (in terms of scale).

[1] http://worldmapgenerator.com/maps/20200926110400_map_5f6f040...

Like Russia on any US made map.

Maybe I suffer from a mental illness or something but I can not think about anything NC related without also thinking about the unimaginable torture of prisoners that is happening right now.

> I can not think about anything NC related without also thinking about the unimaginable torture of prisoners that is happening right now.

Yep, I Agree, Guantanamo is a terrible place.

Don't get me wrong, Guantanamo is a terrible place where human rights are blatantly violated and prisoners routinely abused, many times even tortured. Waterboarding is an insanely cruel torture technique. But it does not compare to NC prison camps, neither in scale nor in sheer horor.

Why? What's happening in north carolina?

If you're looking for communist styling in your hotel but don't want to travel to an actual dictatorship, I can recommend the Hotel Continental in Brno, CZ. https://continental-brno.hotel.cz/photos/accommodation/

What's the communist styling? I also looked through https://www.rferl.org/a/communist-era-hotels-central-eastern... but they all just say 1960's to me, nowhere near as whacked out as, say, Googie.

TBH I was trying to find a good photo of the reception area - the link I chose doesn't show it properly. This photo is better: http://www.uj.fme.vutbr.cz/lspct/images/continental2.jpg (Fun fact: The triangular motif on the ceiling is a "protected cultural monument")

This is not really communist style - they poured a lot of money into it post revolution. Search Hotel Černigov in Hradec Králové for a truly communist one.

What is that brassy track they play in the video? Gotta hunt that one down.

I prefer the CNC song. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24554093

Also, anyone recognise the map projection (centred on a unified korea) in the front desk photo?

Is it bad to say that the Pictures look like a long forgotten but still cool MMO? No Players but the NPC are still active..

Looks good.

Did anyone of you visited NK ? If possible, can you share the experience ?

I find the project somewhat confusing.

When I went there, a few years ago, visitors were allowed to stay only in one hotel. Also, infamously, one of the presumed hotels is essentially a façade, which is not mentioned (but the hotel is in the cover!).

Since the population is poor, and there is little mobility across the country, I doubt that they have six hotels in a functional sense.

However, this a photography book, right? Well, they did an obscene amount of photoretouching (pretty much like all the modern photography); the saturation is cranked up to 11. I remember a couple of the locations depicted, and they were completely unremarkable in real life.

So, my suspicion is that this book is more of a "staged hotels of Pyongyang" rather than something substantial.

Regarding your question. IMO, it's worth visiting NK (which is Pyongyang, essentially, with brief tours outside the city) for no more than around three days. There's virtually nothing to see after that, especially considering that you must follow the plan.

What I find interesting in NK is to be present in an authoritarian regime. I can't say "to experience", because the experience itself is staged. But even knowing that, I find it interesting. It's also unsettling to know that you're in their hands.

Despite what they say, the atmosphere is not heavy. My theory about Otto Warmbier is that he got drunk and did something stupid. Imagine going to NK as being in a church; if you don't scream and misbehave, nothing happens. I can imagine, on large scale, people doing stupid things, and that likely will happen. But that's speculation on my part.

Definitely don't go with the Young Pioneer Tours (they were Warmbier's tour operator, and NK is not anymore in their destinations). They're a bunch of irresponsible, incompetent and dishonest people (I had my own misadventure with them). People like that should never be in charge of such delicate jobs.

edit: corrected the name of the travel agency

Haven't traveled to that particular authoritarian jurisdiction, but I've been in others, followed the "in church"[1] guideline above, and departed without memorable incident.

However, I do have a "when in Rome" story from the US[2]:

I went to school in a large city, and my cheap student car gave me trouble on the freeway, so I pulled off into a very poor neighbourhood. I had the hood up and was poking around in the engine to diagnose, when I heard a gruff voice behind me: "Boy, you are wearing the wrong colour for this neighborhood."

Adrenalin dumped. It suddenly occurred to me that the existence of the "gang colour" concept, which up until then had always been an abstract thing mentioned on the news, might suddenly be of concrete importance.

I slowly stood up and turned around, to see a huge guy, dressed in a manner very much unlike people from my university.

... who then smiled (he'd probably caught the look on my face), adding, "... but I guess it doesn't count if your shirt has a collar" and walked away, laughing to himself.

[1] Rory Miller would call it the "drinking in strange bars" guideline.

[2] at that time, I think public nudity would have been more likely to get one in trouble in the US than in the DDR. In a recent trade deal with S'pore, the US managed to get them to legalise chewing gum: well, as long as it is for medicinal purposes only!

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMqAKw8vlWc (one of my countrymen failed to stand for this several years ago and had to get bailed out by our diplomatic service.)

The Ryugyong Hotel was indeed a shell for a long time and has not yet opened as a hotel, but all indications in 2019 were that it was actually going to open soon-ish. Of course, that too has been put on hold by COVID.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryugyong_Hotel

For the time being, it's a giant billboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7SFTm7IebU

Kind of strange to see such a large LED display running nothing but eyecatch and PSA's. JCDecaux or Clear Channel Outdoor would be using it in a much more efficient manner.

I think it's actually nice to have something looking good to look good (for propaganda) compared to displaying ads for Coca-Cola.

>more efficient

For what? Brainwashing people to buying another Coke? Sure they are better at that at least.

Hotel Potemkin? :)

Interesting story behind that hotel going back 30+ years.

I always thought it looked like a place Darth Vader would call home.

> It's also unsettling to know that you're in their hands.

I wonder how dangerous would it be to visit there after posting practically any statement about NK on a public forum. Upon arrival, if they did their homework on every visitor, it's possible there might be some uncomfortable questions.

Although they knew my basic data, which they've referenced incidentally, I think NK is too much a poor country to have monitoring in a western sense.

I can't prove that there weren't, say, hidden cameras, but based on the technological and economic level of the country, I strongly suspect that there wasn't any. For the same reason, I doubt that they have the resources to perform anything other than a basic investigation on incoming tourists.

I'm a bit confused as to why you need a theory. He took down photos / pictures at the hotel - and for that they effectively ended his life.

Or do you mean you have a theory as to how he ended up in a vegetative state under their care?

Given the authoritian regime, nobody outside of the involved authorities will ever know what exactly happened and why. Therefore, we can only speculate (that is, produce theories).

It's not clear if the person depicted in the video is him. I personally think it's not.

Some think that they killed him purely to spite the USA government, which implies that they decided to kill an american and fabricate evidence. So, that's another theory, with different premises.

I don't agree with it. I think that:

  - he did something stupid (e.g. got drunk and yelled something against the leader);
  - they decided to punish him, but didn't have evidence;
  - they fabricated evidence;
  - they punished him.

I always figured it was more along the lines of

1. He committed a legitimate (by their laws) offense and was punished. The claimed offense (I think it was stealing a regime poster) was the sort of thing where it should be obvious that they have (by our standards) disproportionate enforcement on. He knew he was teasing the bull by trying it. 2. At some point in captivity, he had an actual health emergency. This could have been inadvertently triggered by abuse or the conditions, or it could have legitimately been something like an infection or food poisoning. As I recall, the autopsy didn't show obvious signs of abuse. 3. The health crisis may have been handled improperly, due to limited health care resources or just bad luck, and he ends up in a coma. 4. They toss him back in that state in a clunky attempt to both score political points and avoid the far greater blowback if he died in the DPRK.

There's very little for them to gain by having him die in their custody, and they aren't stupid about that fact. That makes me expect incompetence and bad luck more than outright malice.

I read an article that suggested he was tortured:

https://www.voanews.com/usa/court-papers-hint-warmbiers-trea...

What are the Pioneers?

Also your critique of how it looks in real life is very interesting and very real. It’s like seeing the locations of movie sets as it’s being filmed or afterwards. It never has the same feel or atmosphere. So much of that can be careful crafted with selective visuals and editing.

It doesn’t make the end product any less interesting though. I love this sort of Soviet modernism in the photos.

It’s what socialist dream of for their perfectly planned states when everyone knows what it’s like underneath. No matter how badly it failed in real life the underlying ideas and ambitions are still interesting, even if it’s merely for historical value, entertainment, or inspiration. And the ideals can often still be important even if they didn’t work out at all in prior forms and methods on a wider scale.

The emotional value of design is too often undervalued compared to its practical value in real life. Much like romantic concepts in art vs pure functional realism. Both have their uses and value.

It looks like the Pioneers refers to Young Pioneer Tours, a travel agency based in China.

> Young Pioneer Tours are the leading travel operator to “destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from”.

https://www.youngpioneertours.com/international-tours/

I was in NK for 14 days in April 2012 coinciding with Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday celebrations. It was only a few months since Kim Jong Un had taken power. If memory serves it was the first tour permitted since he came to power.

It went as a ‘see it for myself’ experience, albeit on a guided tour across much of the country and about 7 or 8 hotels. I’ve not looked at this photo essay, but memories include a mud bath hotel, hotel staff opening up an Egypt themed disco for a dozen of us, and a missing hotel floor.

Although confined to a set tour and hotel grounds, we were free to mix with and chat with locals on site. The guides were somewhat oblivious that us tourists lived for those moments, not the target sites.

Experiences ranged from the heartwarming (boozy unscheduled picnic with locals), the creepy (mass children’s song performance), the worrying (military parade), the beautiful (flower show), the surreal (subway ride), the bizarre (innuendo filled cave tour), the thought provoking (locals appetite for iPod western music), the embarrassing (tour eating dog), and much more.

I’m very glad for the experience.

Although I haven’t clicked the photo link (I read HN for the comments), it’s made me consider posting my photos to a website.

> it’s made me consider posting my photos to a website.

Please do, I’d certainly be curious to see them.

I went twice. I posted a bunch of videos http://joshuaspodek.com/summary-of-north-korea-videos. That post also links to the top ten of many posts I wrote on the experience. I studied strategy so wrote a book describing my view on why North Korea remains so stable for so long and why there seems no way out no matter how powerful someone attempting change may be, though I suggested a few ideas https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006PMDXTM (self-published, not scholarly, but I think I shared a few meaningful insights).

It's like walking into 1984 the book. Nobody who visits believes we're seeing the country as people there live it. You go where they let you, though we did take a detour when a road was blocked and saw parts of Pyongyang outsiders don't get to which felt like seeing the back of a movie set where you see behind the facades. Everyone in the group wanted to take pictures but we all agreed not to for the sake of our guides.

Since I tend to look for similarities, not differences, I was more curious to see how people lived under such a different culture, so disconnected. My two biggest takeaways

1. A greater sense of empathy for all people for seeing how similar people were under the most disconnected culture I've come across

2. Culture shock hits you when you return, seeing things that used to seem normal from a new perspective. Seeing Times Square after seeing their giant statues of their semi-divine Great Leaders. I still can't shake seeing Times Square as a bigger sanctuary that we kneel to, representing a comparable submission, devotion, subjection, and permiation into our lives and minds.

Reflecting on (2): instead of getting off the bicycle and taking a moment to salute Dear Leader on my daily commute, instead youtube intermittently makes[1] me wait a few seconds until I am allowed to click the "skip" button?

[1] yes, yes, I know about youtube-dl, but I've been lazy lately.

Edit: https://joshuaspodek.com/north-korea-strategy-half-baked-hel... sounds good to me, but then I'm someone who has witnessed that paying troublesome tenants to move out is much less hassle than evicting them.

Edit2: On further reflection, the troublesome tenant will remain a troublesome tenant, where this proposal suggests a former national cadre would become a relatively powerless exile.

History seems to say most who grab for the brass ring view the utility of being "top, or nearly top, dog" as far outweighing the disutility of the sword of damocles.

Yes, I went on a CYTS tour (all in Chinese) in 2010. It's a fascinating country. Everything I love is illegal! (Jesus and technology). At the time, there wasn't even anything on Google Maps for NK.

It was actually my most luxurious holiday. Usually I'm a very low-budget traveller, so having to stay in a 4 star hotel (Yanggakdo) in Pyongyang was luxurious. The Arirang mass games was also very impressive: a 400x50 pixel display, made of children.

We could talk for hours about NK labour camps in Siberia (I went to the entry gate for one of them and almost got arrested), NK refugees in China and South Korea (some of the happiest people I ever met), Liberty in North Korea movie screenings of Seoul Train, Crossing, The Hiding ... get in touch if you'd like to chat more about this fascinating country!

Here is the Instagram account of the now sadly deceased Eric Talmadge that during his travels to North Korea would share photos. While normal SIM cards in North Korea do not provide internet access visitors can get a 3G SIM card with internet access. And bear in mind that he was an American doing work in North Korea so he was probably under greater scrutiny compared to the average tourist.

https://www.instagram.com/erictalmadge/

I read a blog diary by someone that took the train from Vienna thru Russia, then the closed (in 2008) border town of Tumangan, and then to Pyongyang. They spent multiple days touring Pyongyang and thereabouts in what appeared to be a strictly guided tour. Fascinating read.

http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/

I bought my Trans-Siberian train ticket from that guy, Helmut Uttenthaler! He's a great person to chat to, and didn't worry about me trying to go to visit a North Korean labour camp in Siberia, he just worked out how to get the tickets. Flying is cheaper, but if you ever want a while offline to de-stress from computers, it can be a great experience. My first time CouchSurfing was in Irkutsk on that trip!

Vice journalists did, many times. They have made many stories. All on Youtube.

Also Deutsch Welle's english documentary channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW39zufHfsuGgpLviKh297Q

http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com hacked the border crossing, but that hole has almost certainly been secured since.

I've found a propaganda site which purports to be DPRK and is unabashedly old-style second world: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23738281

(Incidentally, YIL St. Benedict out Marx'ed Marx: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24588118 footnote 2)

Dennis Rodman did

looks like Prypiat

Both communism and capitalism do a good job at draining resources from the masses and giving them to a relatively small number of elite. The main difference is that capitalism is better at hiding its shortcomings.

Also because capitalism has a much broader global reach, it can hide poverty away in other countries.

I grew up in Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

The fundamental problem was unproductivity, which resulted in shortages of consumer goods and queuing for things such as sports shoes.

The system boasted enormous production of coal and steel, but was much worse in producing "less interesting" items such as "glue that worked", "washing machine that would not vibrate like hell" or even enough toilet paper. At one point, we had a shortage of sanitary towels.

Dissatisfaction with those elementary things contributed to the Velvet Revolution much more than lack of political freedoms. Plenty of people can live with their mouths shut, but they start getting really resentful if their new shoes leak.

Děkuji. You've given me more context for the sport shoe factory scene in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StjIv33zJ9c&t=1833

(wait until 30:51 for shoes being glued. Anyone know what the machine at 31:13 is?)

My head-canon for ex-ussr 90's includes "jawa" cycles, "abibas" shoes, and "USA california" caps: what was it like for ex-warsaw pact?

Q. Why were Adam and Eve the first communists?

A. They have no clothes, no shelter, only an apple to eat, and are being told this is paradise.

My wife grew up around Moscow during the last phase of the USSR and she said that although there wasn't that much stuff, there was enough for everyone. People complemented any minor shortcomings by growing stuff in their gardens.

I have no doubt that countries in the periphery of major communist states had it worse... Just like countries in the periphery of capitalist states have it worse today.

If you ask members of the communist elite how communism was, they would probably tell you it was amazing. If you ask the lowest class of capitalists, they will tell you that capitalism is horrible - These days even many members of the middle class will tell you that capitalism is horrible; unfortunately the US capitalist system can't drain China so much anymore (now that China has become an economic superpower) so now it has to drain its own citizens locally.

Why do you think democrats are so keen on increasing immigration? You think they actually want more Elon Musks and Sudar Pichais to compete with them? They want more wage slaves to drain from! Elon and Sundar are immigrant bait!

Americans are going to find out for the first time what capitalism is really about.

> I have no doubt that countries in the periphery of major communist states had it worse...

Not really, satellite states like czechoslovakia had it comparably better to the countries in the union.

The situation is more complex than that. There was a past before Communism and that past determined the relative wealth of individual countries in the Soviet bloc.

Czech part of Czechoslovakia was one of the industrial centers of Europe since the early 19th century and it was mostly spared from the bombing campaigns of WWII. As such, we had much better living standards than ordinary Russians. When the Soviet-led task force occupied us in 1968 to prevent our split from the Soviet Bloc, the obviously better living standard demoralized the Soviet soldiers who genuinely believed that they were coming to our rescue. The first wave was recalled back to the USSR and their replacements were closed off in remote barracks, not to come into contact with our civilian life.

But rural countries like Bulgaria had very shitty living standards in Communism. My father's family is from Bulgaria, even today the country does not look anywhere near as good as the West and may never catch up.

> I have no doubt that countries in the periphery of major communist states had it worse... Just like countries in the periphery of capitalist states have it worse today.

When the Russians came to "liberate" certain Eastern European countries, they said: "We have it better than the oppressed people of the USA, and your country is even richer than Russia, so give me that watch!". Fwiw, I think they truly believed they were doing better than the US.

My point is that both communism and capitalism have problems. Both systems have shown themselves to be corruptible. The 'ideal form' of either system can never be achieved because of corruption.

People voted with their feet, statistically speaking, and a theory that doesn't explain it isn't usable.

If there is a lesson here for followers of Marx, the ability to make jeans or coca-cola (i.e. whatever fad the lowest-denominator consumers want this month) is a very important characteristic of a system.

This leaves out the very violent wars (sometimes bordering on something like genocide [0]) that have been waged by the capitalist world against communism.

[0]: E.g., a CIA backed government killed ~1 million people with connections to the communist party in Indonesia.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/05/18/how-jakarta-became-...

Rubbish.

Look at the most pure capitalist systems in the world and you will see more corruption and 1%'ers than in the way less "pure". Like Scandinavia vs the US. It isn't rubbish at all.

Tautology, if you ask me - it's a meaningless statement that misses the point because corruptible is not binary, communism has a much worse track record re corruption than most capitalist countries. Sure, just like anything ever involving human elements, both are corruptible, but what's important is how bad does it get?

The implementations of communism we've seen have always been authoritarian.

On the contrary, capitalist system tend to have freedoms (like speech). These freedoms makes a difference wrt. corruption.

I think the argument is that systems with personal freedoms, like free speech, are better at correcting their shortcomings.

I don't know if you can make a communist system with personal freedoms. Maybe.. but classically we've associated communism with planned economies. In my mind, planned economy sounds ideal, until you realize that it's the same as waterfall software development :D

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