Large Bullfrog

1. The DPRK is built around self-sufficiency as a founding principle, and as such can do whatever they want. Iran is more self-sufficient then most, but still can’t tank sanctions the same way.

2. The DPRK has a defensive alliance with China which of course makes the west more hesitant to bomb them while Iran for the most part is alone.

3. As a poster here from Iran has said, there might be a dangerously high number of liberals in Iran’s government who want to be accepted by the west rather then stand up against them.

It’s the standard co-opting and channeling of left wing sentiment by the liberal establishment towards an inert and ineffective direction.

I’d imagine that China’s foreign policy is severely constrained by it being one of the few socialist states in a world filled mostly by capitalist and reactionary regimes, and that they likely fear that breaking their non-interventionism could cause of chain reaction of countries they need economic partnerships with getting spooked.

People seeing businesses that are treating people like shit supporting socialist politics sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would generate fascists if anything.

Ehh I’m not really sure I’m following the gambling comparison. Common sense for most people is that gambling addictions are bad because it actively drains massive amounts of money out of people’s bank accounts, not because slot machines waste people’s time. Addictions are just problem amplifiers rather then problems in of themselves.

I don’t want no gubbermint taking my guns.

And that’s a good thing thankfully, it would be pretty alarming if there were.

Respectfully, I don’t think telling people that want to generate images of Darth Vader riding a Sloth that they can’t because it doesn’t qualify as true art would be the path forward. AI art will lead to decline a traditional art talent, yes, but I think the massive increase in accessibility and convenience to the masses still easily make it a net positive overall. AI art existing doesn’t totally prevent people from still being to able create art traditionally, while an AI art ban would for the people who enjoy using AI art.

The only major issue I personally see with it are the fakes/deepfakes. The quality is still pretty subpar right now yes but that’s something that will get better over time, just like computer graphics have over the last few decades. Being against AI art just because it’s easy seems like a rather reactionary take to me, Marxists shouldn’t be in favor of intentionally gatekeeping things behind innate ability or years of expensive study.

As for the deal with artists, ideally there should be a fine distinction between personal and commercial use that empowers indie artists while holding large corporations accountable for theft.

The upside is that a McDonalds in China doesn’t sell the same unhealthy garbage as a McDonalds in America does, the downside is that they are still a massive eyesore that I’d rather not see in a socialist country if it can be helped.

One was an Anti-Stalin liberal, the other was a real OG revolutionary.

It’s tricky because higher education is pretty much required to get a job that isn’t mediocre or soul destroying, BUT it’s also not a guarantee either. I had co-workers with degrees working the same retail job and making the same money as me with no college degree, with them still having thousands of student loan debt in their 30s. They were basically forcibly trapped at that job having to deal with the shitty boss due to having to pay their loans while I was able to quit and look for something else at my leisure. So all in all no, I do NOT recommend going to college blindly for it’s own sake, go only if you have a very clear idea of the specific job you actually want, that you actually want the job you think you want, and that you will actually be able to get that job.

1. The US benefited greatly in the 19th and early 20th century from Europe’s brain drain due to the wars and what not. After WW2 that tapered off, and recently the US has becoming far less attractive to educated Asian immigrants as well.

2. Getting high on their own pro-capitalist bullshit they spewed during the Cold war, which resulted in things like Reaganomics and massive corporate deregulation. As we know, corporations tend not to care about what’s good for the people at large.

3. Placing all their attention, money and concern towards playing power games abroad and not giving a shit about smaller domestic issues, which is exactly opposite to the approach China has been taking the last few decades. Examples include Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the amount of money being wasted on programs like the F-35, and all the money going towards USAID for the sake of funding color revolutions, which Trump finally just now cut out of necessity.

Well one reason a lot of the most ideologically dedicated communists were the first to die fighting the Nazis and the USSR was forced to lower their standards of who was let in order to win the war. China today by contrast has a massive population it can easily afford to cherry pick from. Another is the very chaotic manner in which the USSR emerged, trying to remove every impure individual and faction would of meant a longer civil war which couldn’t be afforded with Western powers on the doorstep, things needed to start getting rebuilt asap and to do that you eventually need to make peace and confederate with some less desirables, which there were plenty of given that the USSR had just emerged out of the reactionary remains of the Russian Empire.

Had me going “Oh for fucks sake, another color revolution? Really?” until I searched Laos in the news and didn’t see anything.

I’ll be real, I’m not really sure it’s appropriate to be asking people if their parties are “working to overthrow the government”. A newbie could theoretically come along, start giving out a bunch of specific information about their political party and then go on about how they have bombs stashed in their basements. I’m sure it doesn’t take much thinking to see why that would be a problem.

I’m not an expert on the issue but just from applying common sense I’d imagine that coming out of the wake of WW2 and what the Nazis did to the jews that it just sounded like the morally right thing to do at the time. Similarly, it also seemed morally right at the time when Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev gave territorial concessions to Ukraine after the legitimate oppression they faced under the Russian Empire and couldn’t of known what a mistake that would eventually be.