Seoul Is Reinventing Itself As a Techno-Utopia (wired.com) 68
mirandakatz writes: Seoul is struggling: Its birth rate is at an all-time low, college graduates are having enormous trouble finding jobs, and trust in government is not high. But South Korea is also, in many ways, cutting edge -- and it wants to use that future-thinking power to build its capital into a techno-utopia. As Susan Crawford details at Backchannel, that begins with a powerful data analysis tool known as the "The Digital Civic Mayor's Office." Crawford writes that "this dashboard seemed like a potential green shoot of democracy -- a city doing what it can to show citizens why government should be trusted and that their quality of life, including the quality of the air they breathe, the prices of the apples they eat, and the traffic jams they face daily, is important."
Oooo...let's make Seoul a bigger target (Score:2)
...the Norks heartily approve of the Seoul government making themselves a bigger hostage in any standoff.
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It's a MAD situation, I think it's fairly comparable to the Cold War in that respect.
The North seems crazy, but under it all they do want to live, and they will NEVER have enough power to take over so much as a child's playground without being immediately obliterated.
In that light, investment in Seoul isn't unwise. The city won't get destroyed because war isn't really all that likely. In fact, giving North Korea a juicier target to threaten kind of stabilizes the situation, since if there was a chance to
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The North seems crazy
Why is nuclear deterrence sensible when America does it, but "crazy" when NK does it?
Re:Oooo...let's make Seoul a bigger target (Score:5, Insightful)
>Why is nuclear deterrence sensible when America does it, but "crazy" when NK does it?
I think being able to ensure any victory over you by your enemies is Pyrrhic at best is perfectly sane.
What makes NK seem crazy is the dictatorship, its methods of controlling the population, and the unnecessary hardship put upon the average North Korean to sustain it. And the loony and obvious propaganda, of course.
Then again, threatening a superpower more or less capable of ending human civilization when all you can do is wipe out a city or two... that's like your average bar scrapper picking a fight with an MMA champ to impress a girl. Most likely you're insignificant enough that it's not worth the trouble to drop you so long as you don't throw the first punch, but there's a risk you're going to get dead very fast.
In that sense, while it's still comparable to MAD, NK vs. USA isn't quite the same as USA vs. USSR in terms of 'sanity'.
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What makes NK seem crazy is the dictatorship, its methods of controlling the population
How are those things "crazy"? The Kim dynasty has been extremely effective at staying in power.
the unnecessary hardship put upon the average North Korean to sustain it.
Why do you think it is unnecessary? You give people prosperity, and soon they will want freedom and democracy. The only other dynastic dictatorship that even comes close to the Kim's longevity is the Castros in Cuba, and they also impose plenty of hardship.
And the loony and obvious propaganda, of course.
Do you read Korean? Or are you judging NK by the English translations that their enemies spoon feed you?
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Because the US is a democracy, integrated into the wider world, and does not have it's citizens living in a god damn panopticon ruled over by a bat-shit crazy lea..
fuck... okay.
At least during the cold war what i was saying was true; but at present it's getting less-so every year.
Seriously though, NK's nuke program is about one thing, and one thing only -- keeping the current dynasty in power. (and maybe leverage when negotiating aid packages)
But, everything in that country is designed to serve that purpos
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My problem with Pakistan and India is that they seem to be a hell of a lot more 'hot' than the US and Russians were in the height of the Cold War... and now we know that at least a couple of times we got really, really close to starting WWIII.
And with Pakistan there's the additional issue of Islamic fundamentalists having support from the intelligence service.
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Why is nuclear deterrence sensible when America does it, but "crazy" when NK does it?
It's not. Simply having nuclear weapons is sensible, a lot of nations have them.
What makes Norks crazy is daily threatening to blow up the capital cities of various nations with nukes. And every year or so making small-scale attacks that kill 100 people, not enough to trigger war but enough to rattle and piss em off. Like the time they shelled a S. Korean island and killed 4 marines, or torpedoing a S. Korean ship and killing 54 people.
Oh and they have a long history of covertly abducting S. Korean and Jap
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Slashdot seems to have stripped the (less than) symbol from my previous post.
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Because HTML tags are accepted, less-than and greater-than signs will always disappear. You have to use < and > (& l t ; or & g t ;). Any attempt to use these symbols directly is going to be parsed as a broken attempt at HTML tagging.
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Because the Americans can win, if they want to.
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Define "win"
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"survive" "dominate"
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If "win" means "survive as an intact nation", then I'm not confident that the US would win. I am very confident that North Korea would lose, though.
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If "win" means "survive as an intact nation", then I'm not confident that the US would win.
Don't be silly, of course they would.
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The North seems crazy
Why is nuclear deterrence sensible when America does it, but "crazy" when NK does it?
Think about this... In the North, they are taught that they won the war on their own and drove the USA to the bargaining table by defeating them. The role that Russia and China played is not discussed, nor is the fact that the whole conflict was a proxy war between Russian, China and the USA. In their mythology, the USA was and is the aggressor which they defeated though the divine intervention of the Kims. They won the war.
That seems crazy to us, but in North Korea it's not seen that way. Of course they
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they are taught that they won the war on their own and drove the USA to the bargaining table by defeating them. The role that Russia and China played is not discussed
Exclude China and change the defeated nation to Germany, and this narrative is not so different than the one Americans are taught about WWII.
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No no, The North seems crazy for a WIDE AND VARIED number of reasons other than the use of nuclear deterrance. He was saying that despite being crazy (for all those other reasons), they're not so crazy that nuclear deterrence doesn't work. Because they want to live.
And that said, YES, nuclear deterrence and MAD is indeed crazy no matter who does it. But it seems to work and it's not like we have any alternatives. At least the world doesn't have as many nukes anymore.
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Why is nuclear deterrence sensible when America does it, but "crazy" when NK does it?
Because what Crazy Fat Kid is doing is not deterrence. He's actively trying to start a war that he is certain to lose. He still thinks it's 1953.
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His "ancestors" were just Koreans - one culture, one country, from the beginning. North Korea only came into existence in 1945, as Stalin grabbed Japanese colonial territory at the end of WW II. North Korea has no more reason to exist as a separate country than East Germany did. Its fate will be the same.
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The North seems crazy,
Not really if you understand that the PR coming from the North is only really for local consumption. Little Kim's PR campaign is about keeping the Kim dynasty in power, not about getting into a war with the USA. I know that's hard to understand, but it actually makes perfect sense if you have an idea what the average North Korean has been taught to believe about the world in general and the USA specifically.
Little Kim is literally in between a rock and a hard place because if his people catch any whiff o
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That's none of your business.
And an overly simplistic view of the situation, to boot.
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That's none of your business.
Which part?
And an overly simplistic view of the situation, to boot.
Do enlighten us.... My guess is that you really don't have much more insight than I do about this, but I'm willing to read what you got to say.
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My guess is you came back to the discussion days later because you couldn't handle people with mod points downvoting you for being an idiot.
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My guess is you came back to the discussion days later because you couldn't handle people with mod points downvoting you for being an idiot.
You guessed wrong, which isn't surprising... I don't do Slashdot from home and I wasn't at work this weekend. Also, I don't slum for mod points, I just post. So do you slum for mod points then? So you've been wrong twice in one post, making confident assertions about stuff you obviously don't know.
So are you this wrong about North Korea? I'm beginning to think so...
Why? Because you now have a history of being wrong and are acting more like a troll than someone with something useful to say... ;)
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> Also, I don't slum for mod points,
No, you just post shit as if it's not shit and you're an authority. But keep going, I'm sure there's a possibility there's somebody out there still following this conversation you believes you.
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Little Kim? Is that you Phat boy? What's wrong? Did Dennis Rodman go home? Run out of cheese? Fresh out of nukes and missiles to set off? No rebels to shoot today? So you are reduced to trolling on Slashdot?
LOL... I guess you little trolls have to eat now and then...
Bye Bye now...
It's over, (Score:2)
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Kim knows he gets one WMD shot. After that it's game on and he's not going to win that game.
I don't think he's going to do anything that stupid. He IS going to push up as close to the line as he can and still have the ability to deny he fired first.
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Either way Seoul is toast.
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He doesn't necessarily need to waste his nukes on it.
One of the reasons the stalemate on the Korean Peninsula has lasted over 60 years is that Seoul is only about ten miles from the DMZ, and North Korea has a huge number of large artillery pieces dug into the hills just on the other side. On paper, North Korea could turn Seoul into what has been called a "sea of fire" in a matter of minutes.
Now there's a big question of how operational those artillery pieces actually are. But it's not something a sane per
Can't learn by example? (Score:3)
Doing everything except solving the problem (Score:3)
So the South Korean government is willing to do anything to show that they're trustworthy except actually doing trustworthy stuff? If they actually had some transparency and you know, trustworthiness, this wouldn't be necessary.
Why not start with a little transparency at the top? Isn't that the corruption mess that started this whole failure?
Why government should be trusted? (Score:1)
Why government should be trusted?
Not a good question.
The real question is "CAN government be trusted?"
And the answer is FUCK NO!!!!
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The quote is from fucking Wired. I expect nothing less from these out of touch assholes. Or Slashdot for that matter, but that's another story altogether.
Unscrupulous (Score:2)
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To get elected generally requires you to convince people you're best for the job. That means, first and foremost, you need to be able to charm people.
To climb your way up the political ladder, you need to learn how to please as many people as possible while not pissing off anyone important. This involves double-speak, backroom dealing, and not getting caught doing anything that will cause public outcry and end your career.
Then you need either a thick skin or to be so self-centered you don't care about all
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>The human race has not evolved much. In fact I'm pretty sure we are slipping backwards.
I understand your meaning, but keep in mind there isn't really a 'backwards' in evolution. We're evolving in response to current selection pressures based on available genetic code plus mutations.
Perhaps we're maintaining more deleterious genes (as defined by humans), but we're also getting greater variety. If anything I would expect increased survival rates and population mixing to be moving us towards a more homog
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Blame the voters. Then blame the press. Then blame the Internet for demonetizing information and undercutting news organizations that used to afford investigative journalism. So.... Slashdot. That's right, slashdot is to blame (in part) for Trump.
I don't buy that absolute power corrupts everyone absolutely,
Yeah, probably not. But we're talking sociology and psychology here, OF COURSE there's variance. But you've got to admit there's an undeniable trend. I think we simply can't trust politicians to BE trustworthy. Ideally, we should have a system of checks and
Trust the South Korean government? (Score:2)
Isn't this the same government that mandates that everyone use Internet Explorer with ActiveX to access government services, do banking, or shopping?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/e... [forbes.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
https://www.reddit.com/r/today... [reddit.com]
The only thing that is expanding in Seoul. (Score:2)
Trust the Government? (Score:2)
No, thanks. In fact, nothing has ever shown me that the government deserves anything but contempt from me.
The only thing I'll willingly give any government is the middle finger.