Also, Korea went through a lot of social upheaval in the 20th century, which acted as a huge social mixer. The capitalist rulers of 2022 are not necessarily the descendants of old aristocrats of 1890s. Hyundai's founder was famously born to a dirt-poor farmer.
[0] https://www.insider.com/thailand-says-us-mans-seasteading-ho...
I just don't understand what I'm supposed to do with these "capitalism is the ruling class" drive-by comments. Like.. so what? I like my iPhone and getting bread from the grocery store. I like that in America as flawed as it is I can post funny pictures of the most powerful person we elect. Many people hold up capitalist countries like Sweden or Norway as examples of good governance, yet they also serve their "capitalist masters". What am I supposed to do here? Not vote? Demand that we dissolve the government?
I think many who post comments alluding to this nebulous capitalist ruling elite would say that education of lower classes is tainted by capitalist dogma and therefore would be invalid. Who writes the textbooks? Capitalist businesses seeking to make a profit. Who approves the textbooks? Oh the capitalist ruling elite. Etc.
The reason I am asking these questions is because I keep seeing drive-by comments about "capitalism" and "ruling elites", and I'm trying to understand what other countries out there have different ruling elites (or none) and what the call to action is. Some complain that the "people" aren't in charge and instead it is these capitalist masters/elites. Are there any countries where the people are actually in charge? What does that mean for the people to be in charge?
Or are people just trolling and trying to aggravate others with these types of comments?
Because your other comments were rather light in content, you know? It's hard to piece together a full picture of what you mean without you taking the time to actually write it down... :)
To be perfectly honest, I can't help you here - I have no idea what does it matter whether the ruling class is capitalist, aristocratic, teocratic, military, or whatever other ways of getting power there are. Maybe people think that some ways of getting power are... I don't know, inherently better in the moral sense? Is that really important?
I think what matters is how the ruling elite behaves. The drive-by comments about how it's capitalism that makes workers in SK miserable are severely misguided, in my opinion. Reading - as a hobby - about history of East Asia, I would say it's the opposite: the ruling class became capitalist, without really changing their behavior, or (the most important part) the reasons underlying their behavior and acceptance of it by society at large.
I thought you're missing that bit, because you focused heavily on the ruling elite being this or that, while I think the topic here is not about what it is, but what it does, and how the other people view and react to what the elites do. You mentioned America/USA, so I wanted to point out the huge difference between the thinking of the majority in the "land of the free" on their minority elites vs. in South Korea and some other Asian countries.
Because I don't see a huge difference between capitalists or other kinds of elites, I missed the reason why you focused on that part of the argument. At best, I thought the comments about evil capitalists were a kind of virtue signalling (look, that's what capitalism wants for all of us! we need to do something! or something like that). I don't think anyone did that to aggravate anyone or you personally, it's just that people often don't have the 2 cents to add to the discussion, but still want to do it, so they borrow a talking point (a dime a dozen) and throw that in.
You asked this: "Who is the ruling class in non-capitalist countries? "
I answered this: "For any country, ask yourself whose interest the government/military/media/etc exists to serve. I'll give you a hint. It's never 'the people'. In capitalist countries, it's to serve the interest of capital. In monarchies, it's to serve the interest of the monarch. In communist countries, it's the serve the interest of the party. God knows what north korea is. A communist monarchy?"
My response wasn't about capitalists or capitalism. My response was about the ruling class for any country. You are so agenda driven you only see what you want. You asked a question, I answered and you are crying about what other people wrote. Not what I wrote.
Like as in have I considered actually doing it? No not really. As far as I know there's no new land in the world where anyone can lay a claim to. All of the world's governments have claimed all land in the world, so to found a new nation you have to create a new monopoly on violence for a given geographic area, and that's hard to do.
> Or perhaps abandoning preferences so that your likes/dislikes aren't so determined by capitalism?
So I don't see how this is connected to your other sentence. If you replaced capitalism with government then I think that would make sense. Bringing capitalism into this doesn't make any sense to me.
If you want to create your own county, there is one place where you can. There is an unclaimed area between Egypt and Sudan.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/02/bir-tawil-land-no-coun...
Seoul has a population of eight million. In the five years between 2015 and 2020, it added two hundred thousand housing units, and that rate is only going up.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290699/south-korea-numb...