North Korea says/does surprising and alarming thing - Page…

On April 12 2013 14:05 aksfjh wrote:
First, communism. The ideas behind communism do work, but have various constraints that cause them to fail. Communism is meant to come about as the ability to produce becomes so cheap that it's harder to find somebody meaningful work than it is to provide for them. Imagine a factory where every car is made by robots and a team of 1 dozen engineers, while the resources and parts are made in the same fashion as the car, with limited labor. At some point, it's stupid to hire enough workers to complete a job, but if most of the population becomes unemployed in this way, nobody can "afford" the products that can be made. At that time, it makes more sense just to give out materials based on the need instead of requiring some useless labor that outputs nothing more to the economy, and there is never an "actual" shortage should demand for a product rise due to the abundance of resources and production.

On April 12 2013 20:08 Amaroq64 wrote:


Communism doesn't work. Even under those conditions, you would need Capitalism to create the conditions you need in the fist place, and you'd need Capitalism to maintain those conditions. (Someone's gotta build the machines and maintain them.)

I think you'll have to define what you mean by Communism though. By my definition, Communism is a form of totalitarianism with a big government dictating everyone's life. But many Communists have the pipe dream that they can achieve universal egalitarianism without having to coerce anyone. That people will just willingly give up everything they have to serve someone else's needs and desires. They think "From those according to ability, to those according to need" can work without coercion.

So are you a Statist-Communist or an Anarcho-Communist?

Anarcho-Communism would have to devolve into Statist-Communism at some point. Why? Because at some point, people are going to wonder why they should give a damn about someone else's needs. If people remain in the system willingly, they'll become lazy nobodies who just milk as much as they can off of those still willing to work. Those who have any pride in themselves and don't give that up will want to keep what they earn. Either way you have to start coercing people to try to force your system to work. And even with Totalitarianism, they haven't been able to make Communism work. They haven't even been able to make people produce wealth when they could force them to.

Why? Because the mind is the tool of human survival, and it is the root of all human value. The liberty to use your mind as you see fit is at the root of Capitalism. America is so wealthy because people are (or were, rather) free to think and act and produce. Full-on Statisms are so piss-poor because unfree people can't act on their judgment, and therefore can't live and create value.

Communism can't work because it contradicts human nature. Even many Communists recognize this fact when they say "If humans weren't selfish, Communism would work.) Well guess what. Humans are generally self-interested, and that's a good thing. Capitalism plays to that and allows self-interest to be an amazing force for creation. People create value and trade it and wealth grows, because people want something better for themselves.

Those of you trying to figure out how Communism could work, you're like a programmer trying to write software for a system that can't run it. Rather than fixing your code, you complain that if the system were better, your beautifully written program would work. Or you're a Starcraft player trying to figure out how to make mass Zerglings work against a gateway-colossus army. If only Protoss didn't have Colossus, your beautiful Mass Zerglings strategy would work.

Well too bad. Humans are as they are, and Capitalism is the only system that works with human nature. (Laissez-Faire capitalism with limited government, whose only role is the protection of inalienable individual rights. Not this mixed economy bullshit we've had for decades.

On April 12 2013 18:35 Shady Sands wrote:

Depends on who you talk to in the Chinese government.

I'm not at liberty to say who my sources are, but I'll just hint that some people very high up the food chain in Beijing have made noises, to their friends and to the media, that they would be fine if the ROK inherited the Korean peninsula so long as they 1) renounced the US-Korea treaty and 2) focused most of their diplomatic energy on Takeshima/Japanese war reparations.

And the fact that these people - all political survivors with decades of experience climbing the lethally greasy pole of Chinese politics - feel confident enough to make these noises tells me that the tip-top levels of Chinese leadership are at least seriously considering such an outcome, if not actually forming a consensus around it.

EDIT: Remember that China doesn't mind having stronger neighbors - see how gently it treated Russia following the USSR's collapse, and how China essentially let Russia have Central Asia back for free without much of a contest in the early- mid-2000s. China hates having neighbors that gang up on it.

This is because China is now big enough to deal with any neighbors on a bilateral basis, but feels vulnerable when its neighbors all get together for a good 'ol fashioned round of Sinophobia.

On April 12 2013 21:32 ImFromPortugal wrote:
North Korea threatens nuclear attack on Tokyo in the event of war, if Japan shoots down missile - KCNA, @YonhapNews

On April 12 2013 21:19 lord_nibbler wrote:
Now THAT would be the surprise of our lifetime. North Korea firing missiles at China?

In all seriousness, I have red somewhere that in the coming weeks NK is probably going to fire short / medium range missiles into the sea. Close enough to SK or Japan to freak everyone out but avoiding land obviously...

On April 12 2013 21:36 jello_biafra wrote:

That seems a pretty stupid threat, "if you shoot down our missile we'll launch another one!...for you to shoot down".

On April 12 2013 21:40 KarlKaliente wrote:


The threat itself makes sense to me - there is a big difference between launching a test missile and launching a missile with a nuclear warhead. There's always a chance their missile interceptors fail the second time, even if its small chance is it worth the risk of getting nuked again (lol)?

The US said earlier that if their test is heading for the ocean they will leave it alone. I wonder if Japan or SK will do the same though.

On April 12 2013 21:36 jello_biafra wrote:

That seems a pretty stupid threat, "if you shoot down our missile we'll launch another one!...for you to shoot down".


Yeah they've been doing this for a while now, every few months it seems they have another missile test into the sea of Japan or over into the Pacific.

On April 12 2013 21:59 ETisME wrote:

yea but there is a huge difference between shooting down a missile and a nuke lol

On April 12 2013 22:10 Shady Sands wrote:

To the radar systems, not really. To the human operators - definitely

On April 12 2013 22:42 Toadesstern wrote:

might be a stupid question, but do they actually know about that beforehand? You can trace it and figure out where it's heading and let's say they do shoot down a missile that was aiming for water which results in the next missile aiming for a target on land (again, assuming it does happen that way). Do they know if it's actually equipped with a nuclear warhead somehow or is the assumption that NK would fire a missile that is targeting land without actually carrying a nuclear warhead just unthinkable and therefore everything heading for landmasses is automatically considered to be a nuke by default?

On April 12 2013 22:42 Toadesstern wrote:

might be a stupid question, but do they actually know about that beforehand? You can trace it and figure out where it's heading and let's say they do shoot down a missile that was aiming for water which results in the next missile aiming for a target on land (again, assuming it does happen that way). Do they know if it's actually equipped with a nuclear warhead somehow or is the assumption that NK would fire a missile that is targeting land without actually carrying a nuclear warhead just unthinkable and therefore everything heading for landmasses is automatically considered to be a nuke by default?

On April 12 2013 22:49 anGe wrote:
I would assume a nuclear nuke would have a huge radioactive track. But again I'm not an expert.

On April 12 2013 23:33 aksfjh wrote:

There's no way to tell, nor is there a way to guarantee a nuke they launch won't be a dud. We just assume there is a nuke attached.

It's not like you can point a sensor at it and take the radioactivity measurements from a distance. The rockets are propelled by "normal" rocket propellent, and just about the only thing you can tell with them is the area they're going to land in (which gets narrower the longer the launch goes on) and maximum payload.

On April 12 2013 14:05 aksfjh wrote:
I like how nobody in this topic knows what they're talking about, not even a little.

First, communism. The ideas behind communism do work, but have various constraints that cause them to fail. Communism is meant to come about as the ability to produce becomes so cheap that it's harder to find somebody meaningful work than it is to provide for them. Imagine a factory where every car is made by robots and a team of 1 dozen engineers, while the resources and parts are made in the same fashion as the car, with limited labor. At some point, it's stupid to hire enough workers to complete a job, but if most of the population becomes unemployed in this way, nobody can "afford" the products that can be made. At that time, it makes more sense just to give out materials based on the need instead of requiring some useless labor that outputs nothing more to the economy, and there is never an "actual" shortage should demand for a product rise due to the abundance of resources and production.

The ideas behind communism do work, but have various constraints that cause them to fail

On April 12 2013 14:05 aksfjh wrote:
Part of communism's philosophy is self-reliance (perfect example is north korea). The basic idea is that the community should be able to produce and share everything on their own. Which means these so-called "external" influences shouldn't even matter in the first place. Which leads to the logical conclusion that communism doesn't work. If it did, we should be able to see real world examples.

On April 12 2013 23:51 white_horse wrote:


This is the common theme behind communism supporters. There are always these "external" factors and "constraints" that prevent communism from being successfully implemented, but they can never give a specific example. I can beat this horse even harder. Part of communism's philosophy is self-reliance (perfect example is north korea). The basic idea is that the community should be able to produce and share everything on their own. Which means these so-called "external" influences shouldn't even matter in the first place. Which leads to the logical conclusion that communism doesn't work. If it did, we should be able to see real world examples.

On April 12 2013 23:33 aksfjh wrote:

It's not like you can point a sensor at it and take the radioactivity measurements from a distance. The rockets are propelled by "normal" rocket propellent, and just about the only thing you can tell with them is the area they're going to land in (which gets narrower the longer the launch goes on) and maximum payload.