"sbillings":3o96b89u wrote: Wow. Some people are starving while others turn food into beer. Got to love that communist workers utopia.[/quote:3o96b89u]
What about the "American Dream"? Spending trillions on wars and space exploration while people lie dying in the streets. I've never seen poverty like those living on the streets of San Francisco and I've been to a lot of places.[/quote:3o96b89u]
You won't get an argument from me there. The American system of corporate/sate capitalism results in a lot of injustice and poverty.
I am not a huge fan of the state capitalism we in the west have ended up with. It is quite authoritarian, with government interference in the lives of individuals slowly increasing and never receding. Meanwhile sweetheart deals amount to taxpayer subsidy of big business, while the poor are vilified for taking the pittance they are given by the state to keep them from actually starving.
However, North Korea is a communist "Peoples Republic" and they are in the middle of a famine. The state is authoritarian in the extreme. It has absolute power over the lives of the citizens. The very basic notion of communism is "from each according to his ability to each according to his need". The fact that some people are enjoying craft beer while others starve shows this to be a lie. Some people starve while others have more than enough.
When crop failures or other factors result in a reduction in food supplies, the only people who starve are the powerless, because they are considered irrelevant by their government. This is the case in North Korea now, as it was when there were famines in China and Russia under communism. The same thing happened in the colonial possessions of the British and other European powers and under military and right wing dictatorships the world over.
There has never been a famine in a functioning multi-party democracy.
