Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike
truthout.org
truthout.org
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korea-squid-game-labor-un...
In any case, I get the impression this article is mostly about influencing US domestic politics rather than accurately describe what happens in Korea...
Went to some boat rallies that had many thousands of people and hundreds of boat. Highly impressive turnout.
Media reports made it out that barely anyone showed up.
There absolutely are reporters that do this by always saying things like "it feels like... " Etc.
It's however notoriously hard to estimate these numbers and participants generally overestimate the amount by several orders of magnitude.
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
That’s like believing Facebook has your best interest in mind.
Figure out what a group wants to understand how they are spinning story.
That was not my take on treeman's comment. They didn't say distrust everyone, but that motives are usually far from altruistic and more selfish in nature. That people have selfish reasons for doing what they do is worth recognizing. A corporation offering you something most likely does not have your best interests in mind, but their bottom line.
I'm spending a great deal of time figuring out how to make a game of "spot the hidden subtext" with kiddos. Just to make them hellions down the road.
Don’t get your updates on X from someone trying to sell you some version of X. Get it from someone who has to explain X before selling you on Y.
https://labornotes.org/blogs/2021/10/real-life-auto-strike-b...
No one wants to watch a show that says "Actually things are pretty good compared to how they were, and still improving, and while there are a few really rich people in the world, it wouldn't change your life for the better if they didn't exist."
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_500_reichsten_Deutsc...
This is consuming capital for expenditures, which will in a macro view reduce wages in the long term.
This is still based on two massive misunderstandings:
1. This share is cash, when it is not. It is just evaluated as a cash value for simplicity. Removing these people's shareholding does not make actual money appear.
2. People have to buy shares in order for them to be worth anything. Why would anyone buy shares in your world?
You shouldn't ignore them. They all get paid, which circulates money through the economy.
And yes, they are a means to an end (uplift your family's lot; achieve personal goals through the choices money allows; stay healthy as long as possible; etc etc).
The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations.
Yeah, that's called investment, and rich people also get flak for that.
This is a silly yardstick. There are countless jobs like that. Probably half the people on HN don't have those jobs, and aren't employed by the super rich. If you're choosing who to criticise and then making up criticisms, and don't care if those criticisms also apply to countless other situations, then that's unlikely to be convincing. Except to those looking for a reason to justify their preconceptions.
If I can sell a billion people a widget for $2 that cost me $1 to make and ship, then I become a rich person without "society" being involved or "giving" anything.
The people who have generally perpetrated tragedies have been tied to government rather than commerce. Your examples are all governments or equivalent, and this is where your final analogy is inadequate, I think. The power balance is ultimately that any government at any time can ban any company.
I hate this kind of framing. People use it all the time. "It only costs 50p per person of the population to maintain the UK Royal Family" ...
Pfft, in total there is the potential to do something more significant, more useful, and .... material.
I have no argument against policies which support those at the bottom end. But to pretend that an equitable outcome is possible in the long term ignore thousands of years of human experience.
He's talking about stopping funding for the British Monarchy, not nationalising the means of production. It's not a majority position, but it's hardly hard left.
Sure, it's only 50 cents. That other program is only a dollar. But if you look at the federal budget, there are a lot of programs. They might each one be small. But add them all together and I get the huge amount I'm going to owe in April.
And even if I just pick, say, 30 of them, I could still take that money and have at least a cheap date with my wife. I'd rather have that than those 30 programs.
Straws are light, the horse said, but that doesn't mean I can carry a billion of them...
If you e.g. diluted the S&P 500 by 20% and spread the new shares equally across the global population, it would definitely cause "something of global consequence" to happen, although I have no idea whether it would be world war 3 or a utopia.
I suspect it would look more like the current economic craziness. The vast majority of the newly-wealthy would spend all of their new-found money on stupid shit and within 2 years a new upper-class will have formed.
Maybe the members of the hierarchy gets shuffled around a bit, but the system itself will find a way back.
I was just making a pithy and cynical statement about how wealth distribution in general will just "shuffle the cards" and not change the fact that there are an entire class of people who refuse to acquire genuine wealth.
>It's giving roughly $1000USD worth of shares to people in countries like Somalia, with a GNI per capita of $310USD, e.g. probably about 3x the average yearly wage over there.
Yeah, that could start a war. According to Google the average cost of an AK over there is about US$100.
Also, do you really think so little of boat-builders that you don't think they'd turn their hand to something else than building yatchs, that would be good and profitable for all involved?
do you think so little of boat-builders that you want to tell them what they should do with their lives? I imagine if they're building boats it's because they like building boats, and are more than happy that there are obscenely rich people there to pay them a livelihood designing and building beautiful yachts.
You and one other person in this thread are saying:
- the super rich shouldn't be around because they employ people to do the wrong jobs; those people should do other jobs, and removing the super rich is how we achieve this important aim
- the super rich aren't required to keep those people employed; the same demand will magically appear if we remove the super rich
You are particularly distinguished because you say both at different points, which is funny. But I am commenting at one time or another on either of those points above.
What is really going on is good ol' envy. Historically- primitive egalitarianism, as rational and helpful for building a good society as other aspects the social structure of clans and tribes.
This usually happens in practice, too; but for a large fraction (and maybe a large majority) of leftists it's also the poorly hidden goal - "virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries"
That's not because I don't sympathize with the politics, on the contrary. It's because I feel like I have enough reminders of what kind of world we live in already. I keep coming back to something Thoreau wrote: I didn't come into this world to fix it, but to live in it.
To Pinker’s credit, even he wouldn’t make such a wildly hyperbolic understatement of global inequality. At least not in public, maybe on Epstein’s plane.
Ultimately the movie industry in Korea is made of very wealthy people parading like friends of the poor. very amusing.
[1]: (korean) https://m.hani.co.kr/arti/society/labor/1008768.html#cb
They frequently resort to violence, harassment and coerce all those that stand in their agenda.
within last year, they harassed a manager of delivery logistics company to commit suicide (specified and detailed harassment he faced on his will), cut off fuel valve of a delivery truck for not participating in their strike, and beat up a strike breaker.
The young worker demographic aren't keen to their ways, as exemplified by recent strike & protest of starbucks workers refusing help from KCTU when they volunteered to 'unite' in protest efforts.
https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210923195947254
https://www.edunctn.com/mobile/article.html?no=16927
https://www.chosun.com/national/labor/2021/09/17/ORHL7BDIABD...
https://m.khan.co.kr/national/national-general/article/20211...
I’m trying to understand the point you are making?
I'll name a few shows that come to mind (also recommend them):
Itaewon Class: About a young man fighting the CEO of a mega company after he ruined his life.
Vincenzo: An Italian mafia consigliere/lawyer finds himself fighting against a mega corporation who uses mafia like tactics.
Save Me: A girl who is trapped in a cult is saved by her former classmates. The cult is heavily involved with politicians and other powerful figures (including the police) who keep people who try to go against the cult in check.
The Uncanny Counter: A supernatural show with the main plot involving political corruption that spreads as far as the police, media...
The themes are always very similar, political corruption, corrupted law enforcement and judicial bodies, mega corps getting away with severe crimes by using money, the little people being unable to go after the rich unless they have irrefutable proof and even then... classism and economic inequality.
As far as I can recall, that one also has a rich guy, almost a member of the team, who has been of much help to the cause.
>Abolish “irregular work” (part-time, temporary or contract labor with little or no benefits) and extend labor protections to all workers
Or maybe a fucking tv show told them to do it...
Makes me wonder, what overall tax burden is in Korea. Can they afford raising it to 65-80%?
art imitates life which imitates art. It's a cycle.
When you actively watch for perspective in the movie, you will find it. You will find those 10 minutes that confirm what you want to see.
The lower classes fighting amongst themselves needlessly because they don't see that they can work together is like, class struggle 101.
So many people read the wrong way into that movie and it's disappointing.
It has absolutely nothing to do with "class clashing or class struggling against each other" no matter how much the media wants to make you think that.
I think that movie just dont conform to Hollywood tropes. Hollywood movie would make victims obvious bad guys, perpetrators obvious good guys. It would also made poor people obviously lazy. People used to American production have problem interpret movie like Parasite. They read commentary and make above assumptions.
Parasite went out of way to show the rich family as caring about each other, oblivious and easy to manipulate, but not bad people all in all. And the poor family is caring among themselves, but they are not obvious good guys. And they are in fact hard working, very hard working.
Class conflict is mostly the action of classes conflicting with each other. Otherwise it's just people conflict.
>I think that movie just dont conform to Hollywood tropes.
It's not a Hollywood movie, why would it care about Hollywood tropes? I take it you haven't seen much Korean cinema?
>but they are not obvious good guys.
Yes. That's the most important thing about the movie. Neither side are bad guys, but they're both doing what their class is made to do. Poor guys are made to get their money in any way they can, rich are made to spend it and not work. When poor finds poor trying to get the same rewards, things get ugly.
You point out something very important. You know, in Mother, you see the have nots and the needy clawing at each other and hurting one another. On the other hand, in The Host, you see the solidarity between them, they save each other and they gather their strengths together. And you could say Parasite is closer to Mother, where the weak and have nots are fighting one another. And that's sad, but it's also realistic. And from those moments, you get this element of sadness, but also the comedy, as well"
A direct quote from Bong Joon Ho himself.
https://www.gq.com/story/parasite-director-bong-joon-ho-inte...
Bong Joon Ho would be a fool to write that everyone read the wrong thing into his movie.
The weak and have-nots are definitely not fighting each other in Parasite.
If you want to read his real thoughts, read the interviews surrounding the releases of The Host and Mother. Or possibly something entirely for a Korean audience beyond the release of Parasite.
Edit: Actually, I read it wrong. And I guess so did you. He is saying the same exact thing I am. Your quote from Bong Joon Ho doesn't actually reference any class fighting. It represents the lower class fighting itself.
and in the end it was 16K instead 500K, I can't even count that low - 0.06% of active population ??
The movie is not "dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royale". It is not about how poor are angelic. It is not about how rich are evil. It is not about how poor are lazy and deserve to be poor either. And that confuses people.
I agree. I find that people can't help themselves but think in clichés, labels and phrases. What is actually happening is 2nd to the preconceived notion of what is supposed to happen. Everyone is projecting his inner psyche into an interpretation of the world that makes them feel at ease and morally righteous.
The Kims - mother and father Chung-sook and Ki-taek, and their young adult offspring, son Ki-woo and daughter Ki-jung - are a poor family living in a shabby and cramped half basement apartment in a busy lower working class commercial district of Seoul. Without even knowing it, they, especially Mr. and Mrs. Kim, literally smell of poverty. Often as a collective, they perpetrate minor scams to get by, and even when they have jobs, they do the minimum work required. Ki-woo is the one who has dreams of getting out of poverty by one day going to university. Despite not having that university education, Ki-woo is chosen by his university student friend Min, who is leaving to go to school, to take over his tutoring job to Park Da-hye, who Min plans to date once he returns to Seoul and she herself is in university. The Parks are a wealthy family who for four years have lived in their modernistic house designed by and the former residence of famed architect Namgoong. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are all about status, Mrs. Park has a flighty, simpleminded mentality and temperament, which Min tells Ki-woo to feel comfortable in lying to her about his education to get the job. In getting the job, Ki-woo further learns that Mrs. Park is looking for an art therapist for the Parks' adolescent son, Da-song, Ki-woo quickly recommending his professional art therapist friend "Jessica", really Ki-jung who he knows can pull off the scam in being the easiest liar of the four Kims. In Ki-woo also falling for Da-hye, he begins to envision himself in that house, and thus the Kims as a collective start a plan for all the Kims, like Ki-jung using assumed names, to replace existing servants in the Parks' employ in orchestrating reasons for them to be fired. The most difficult to get rid of may be Moon-gwang, the Parks' housekeeper who literally came with the house - she Namgoong's housekeeper when he lived there - and thus knows all the little nooks and crannies of it better than the Parks themselves. The question then becomes how far the Kims can take this scam in their quest to become their version of the Parks.
This is the whole point of the movie. You'd think that the Kims are the obvious parasites, but if you look further, you realize that the Parks are the ones benefiting the most from other people's hard work.
https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/youngreporter/18401889.p...
> Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect?
> Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/kurz-the-discourse-of-volu...
Also 0.5M (1.8%) out of 28M economically active population doesn't sound much bigger. 98% SoKo workers DGAF
An urgent message from Truthout
Trump or no Trump, the US is still reeling from coordinated right-wing attacks on democracy, human rights, and independent media. We must raise $20K by the end of today to keep publishing the truth
>“I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump said in a statement.
Allowing employers to control health care is not a good idea.
Not that I disagree, but I'd like to point out that you're effectively advocating for all other employers to "cut" healthcare as well.
As someone who pays my own (and my family's) healthcare to the tune of $16K/yr for a really shitty plan, I'd also say that _who_ pays is probably not the primary concern here. If it cost one third what it does now (which is what it cost just 20 years ago, before government got more "involved"), a lot of people would be able to afford it out of pocket without entering de-facto indentured servitude.
The primary concern, instead, should be how much this shit costs, as well as the fact that the costs are _still_ rising.
And this concern can't be addressed until we force hospitals to publish prices, allow people to buy healthcare across state lines, and force US Big Pharma to treat the United States more favorably than they treat, say, Europe.
Note that given the high levels of corruption in our government, and the high cost of doctors and nurses ($300 for a 10 minute consultation? GTFO, not even lawyers charge this much), I do not think that piping another few trillion per year through the government is going to improve matters in any way whatsoever.
Linking Health Care to jobs is barbaric.
Just like the costs skyrocketed when the government got involved in student loans, to the point where some folks now have to pay their loans their entire lives. It used to be that you could fund college through summer jobs. Nowadays even selling a kidney would only cover half a year in some schools.
It is why every other developed country on the planet does.
It is what Hayek advocates for in “the road to serfdom”.
It is publicly funded universal healthcare.
"Allowing employers to control health care is not a good idea."
> Not that I disagree
If you agree that employers controlling health care is bad, what are the alternatives? Either universal coverage, or everyone has to foot the bill for their own health insurance plan. The former has a track record in every developed country in the world, the latter doesn't work at all.
>but I'd like to point out that you're effectively advocating for all other employers to "cut" healthcare as well.
No, universal coverage means that no one's healthcare gets cut. The fact that I even have to state this is strong indication that you're not arguing in good faith.
>The primary concern, instead, should be how much this shit costs, as well as the fact that the costs are _still_ rising.
I don't think that can be the concern without A) understanding why costs are rising AND B) why costs are rising faster here in the US than they are in other developed countries around the world who all have universal coverage for less than what we pay (big hint, it's the profit motive)
>And this concern can't be addressed until we force hospitals to publish prices, allow people to buy healthcare across state lines, and force US Big Pharma to treat the United States more favorably than they treat, say, Europe.
I wonder why Europe is treated more "favorably"? Maybe we just haven't showered "Big Pharma" with enough profits for them to like us? You know what might help with the whole "buying across state lines" thing, some sort of nationwide standard for insurance coverage so you wouldn't worry about the next state over having a completely different set of laws by which insurers have to abide by. And if there's one national standard for insurance coverage, what's the benefit of having one insurer over the other? And why don't you think hospitals publish their prices? Because it's not about what procedures or anything costs, it's about what insurers will pay. So between all the insurers, some won't pay this and others won't pay that, so we'll just charge astronomical prices and let the negotiators sort it all out.
> and the high cost of doctors and nurses ($300 for a 10 minute consultation? GTFO, not even lawyers charge this much),
Doctors charge that much because they have no idea what your insurance will pay. Doctors typically like to focus on practicing medicine and making their patients healthier, rather than navigate crazy insurance mazes. So doctors (like many in the chain) realized they could sit down and figure out exactly what they should charge, bill the insurance company, then fight to get paid OR make up some crazy price, know that the insurance companies are only going to pay anywhere from 40-75%, then just accept it and move on. Don't blame the doctors here when insurance is the issue.
> Note that given the high levels of corruption in our government
A lack of faith in our government is a completely separate issue from health care. Connected, but separate. We COULD have a government that actually was held accountable and did right by the population it's meant to serve. Instead we have corruption, lies, regulatory capture, and mismanagement. We COULD try actually making government better and correcting it's flaws (as our founders intended), but instead many use examples of it not working as evidence that we shouldn't try to improve it.
Don't get me wrong, I too wish the Moon was made of cheese and everyone held hands and sang kumbayah. But I also recognize it won't happen in my lifetime, not with the government as corrupt as ours.
The people that rent members of Congress, OTOH...
Is not providing benefits when you're not working considered "strong arming" now? Is John Deere also "strong arming" workers into ending the strike by not paying their salaries when they're on strike?
Yeah, hopefully they don't achieve this.
Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this repeatedly. We ban that sort of account, so if you'd please fix this, we'd be grateful.
Entry level prices within 25 miles of the city are around A$1.5m for a detached house, and apartments are predominantly 1 or 2 bedrooms and poorly built, so not really suitable for families. Many people suggest ‘moving west’ to the new suburbs being built, but even 30-40 miles out the prices are still around a million dollars. Given an average full time wage in the range of $50k, saving a deposit after rent is almost impossible. Not totally impossible, but very close to…
If it was legal to provide housing in San Francisco in dorms it would be done. If it was legal to build residential skyscrapers in New York Queens would look like Brooklyn if not Manhattan.
Make building housing legal and the market will provide.
I wonder if the following is true?
When you build more apartments you get more density and more inward migration and more concentration of opportunity, until the marginal migrant can't afford or doesn't want to live there. The same sort of people are miserable when there's more density as when there was less, except there's more of them.
[NOTE: I mostly agree with you and this comment is a bit of a non-sequitur but I hadn't thought about the idea that the problem might actually be "moloch" (in slate star codex terms)].
So you will have to build something, somewhere.
Actually, roads and apartments are in counter-balance. More resedential high-rises in semi-walkable distance from business districts and public transit = less roads are needed (but there is still congestion due to bottlenecks). More spread-out houses - more traffic as people will drive tens of miles to work.
Korea is not sufficiently large that you could stick people so far they're not able to come to megapolis and congest it.
Korean culture favors one time hit wonders instead of gradual development and continuous improvements.It's the nature of korean culture to just try new things because that is deemed to be better than trying to go with existing ones.
So you build a city and just because you built it you expect everyone to just go there.And it has to succeed or it is deemed to be an irrepairable failure.
Koreans dream of grandiose big projects that will put them on the world stage like Chaebols once did and they dont see the local opportunities or challenges.
Also, putting any number of buildings in the middle of nowhere is not solving any issues. And near Seoul there's no land.
They like to designate certain areas to specific industries and then wonder why it's not such a good approach.
Look at Songdo or Pangyo Techno Valley.Both rushed and without much thought. As soon as the gov subsidies ran out the companies wanted to move back because it was both as expensive as in Seoul downtown with little of other benefit.
Also 99% of the companies there were korean anyway.
Because roads are practically free to drivers. If you gave me a bigger house for free I would live in it alone even though it was designed for a family of 6.
If you charged a sufficient toll on congested roads the congestion would be gone.
10 years is old but still somewhat livable and generally cheap. Once you get past 20 years, locals basically see the house as scrap. It's really easy to buy cheap houses or apartments over 20 years old. Some clueless foreigners new to Japan see these prices and think they can flip them and resell to get rich, and they're always disappointed to find out it doesn't work that way.
40-50 year old houses can be bought for around car prices if you're willing to live 30 minutes from a smallish city. You're basically just paying for the land at that point.
In some places (or at least the US), old houses generally gain value. Of course, land is valuable in and of itself, but there's no shame in buying a 100 year old house in the US. There's no worry of earthquake damage, generally no risk of extensive mold due to a drier climate than East Asia, nobody really worries about ghosts infesting the home, etc. Plus, 100 year old American houses are quite honestly probably better than the cardboard and paper mache houses that have been common recently. In my experience, 1920s apartments were much nicer than the post 1970s places I lived in.
I’ve spent time in SE Asia and those countries would love to go back in time to avoid have cities with >10M people in them.
It is just amazing that Australia does not good regulations for building apartments. You work hard, you save money, buy an apartment and then you find out there are some major structural issues in the building.
Things you can do are:
-increasing supply by changing laws around zoning, allow building more/higher etc.
-introduce policies that makes it more attractive to live in less populated areas where land is cheaper (hard to say what works but maybe better/faster public transportation, more wfh, preferential tax treatment for companies that move to other areas, if enough of that happens new business/population hubs might start)
What central planning? A more decentralised business district is what happens if you don't make it illegal. People will buy up residential property and turn it into commercial or office if it's not illegal to do so. It's not about planning. It would be more accurate to call it not planning.
> there is infrastructure and transport there to support the intended population.
Again, no one intended this. They didn't decide to make Tokyo this size. They just didn't actively get in the way. They built the infrastructure and transport that they had good reason to believe there was demand for. In contrast the NYC subway system is basically teh same as when it was taken over by the government and public transport is significantly worse than 1940 insofar as there are no street cars.
99 year lease, you don’t own it. Can’t get one unless you’re married or over 35. Most people live with their parents until they move out. Lottery system and severely oversubscribed (can take multiple tries to get allocated a place) and once you “win” up to 5 year wait while it’s built (govt isn’t interested in overbuilding again). Lucky folks get one of the super desirable locations and after owning for 5 years sell it for big profit.
And Singapore is most definitely a welfare state - just not a super generous one. Housing, healthcare, education are all heavily subsidized but also very strongly means tested. If you’re truly destitute in Singapore you will have a place to live, free healthcare and lots of government support.
Which, compared to western states, isn't taken away from you. It's your own private pool of money, just with a restricted use. The government is just aware, people are not great at saving for their future, so they have to be forced to do it properly.
Housing is not really subsidised, it's just build and sold without markup. Singapore's healthcare is also one of the "cheapest" and most efficient in the world.
[1] Not a knock on government provision in this case as demand for education with any real freedom seems to be extremely limited
In Vienna about 25% of the total housing stock is public housing[1]. It's the main reason why rental prices are significantly below other European capitals[2].
[1] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/503274/average-rental-co...
Lots of people left to other cities that were not as bureaucratic looking for opportunities an oversized capital without Empire could not sustain.
BTW, It was not pretty. Lots of families that used to live in Vienna now live in Israel for a reason.
You could say the same thing about Detroit in the US.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35...
Yes? What does that have to do with anything? Did you think that the pandemic-related stimulus package should have gone to defense spending? If yes, please do motivate that - if no, why mention it at all?
Because even radar was first developed for the civilian setting before the military boosted its development tremendously to solve their WW2 related needs.
I think a much better theory of technological development is that the military mainly funds engineering development of existing technology and doesn't stumble into truly new inventions faster than anyone else.
A corollary to this is that most tech is not related to military spending because most spending is not military spending.
Its was only in the late 1970s that wallstreet got their money into silicon valley. Given the channel I did not do any fact checking and just assume the presentation is historically correct.
Turing machine was from WWII to crack Enigma
NASA advances (including CPU chips) were from the Cold War
I love private development such as SpaceX, but we'd be nowhere w/o developments we gained from warfare. Turns out you can really put your mind to something if it's life or death.
Even more fundamentally: the military picked up Turing after the war started, so they had a good idea of what he could so because of work he'd done for others than them.
Granted, without the military we wouldn't have had the specific computers the military built, but in this context that is about as interesting as saying that without the military we wouldn't have had the innovation of the 150 mm high explosive shell.
Likewise, Tsiolkovsky did his theoretical work in a log cabin because he wanted to reason about space travel. Robert H. Goddard invented the liquid fuelled rocket in the interwar years working largely alone and in any case without any military support. Again the military shows up after stuff is very clearly moving.
Like, how is it surprising that an organisation that needs to pay for guns and the training of the people to use them would mostly invest in already existing prototypes?
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2020/02/us-defense-rd-...
For comparison: the US military budget is apparently around 0.7 trillion.
Compatible words with communism are miserable, corrupt, genocidal or tyrannical. You can pick whatever you want.
You're thinking of Marxism-Leninism, which is just a dictatorship with extra steps.
The issue is not the public education, teacher or union, it's the U.S government(s?) lack of incentive to actually care about those services.
Oh. Nobody ever told them how bad things go when you do that ?
We even ran a budget surplus for a fair while with these programs.