I know that it doesn’t answer your original question (the thing about countries doing better than another country - I personally didn’t any claim here), but I’d like to answer that one question.
North Korea is an authoritarian state with a planned economy with a highly unequal society, in part based on slavery. Its official ideology is juche. Supernatural phenomena is attributed to their leaders. It is in many parts similar to kingdoms of old.
Its miserable state could be taken as an indication of the failing of socialism, as socialism is also based on a planned economy.
There’s a few nuances though.
First, socialism means that workers own the means of production. I’m not aware of any democracy, even local, in North Korea. Authoritarian states are famously wasteful and inefficient. Perhaps one should look to socialist states where democracy and rule of law were in effect for a real indication.
I’m not aware of workers having control of the means of production in any notable auto-ptoclaimed socialist states, apart from USSR for a very short period of time. It seems like socialist revolutions ending in authoritarianism and centralization is a common story, almost inevitable.
Second, there’s some remarkable successes even in those authoritarian planned economy states. Cuba has spend extremly little in healthcare and manages to give its population a good life expectency. There were also good social indicators under USSR, and which went down under capitalist Russia.
Third, North Korea spends an enormous amount on the military. No country not in an active war in the world spends as much as North Korea does on its military as a percentage of its GDP. It’s around 20-25% if I remember correctly.
I know that it doesn’t answer your original question (the thing about countries doing better than another country - I personally didn’t any claim here), but I’d like to answer that one question.
North Korea is an authoritarian state with a planned economy with a highly unequal society, in part based on slavery. Its official ideology is juche. Supernatural phenomena is attributed to their leaders. It is in many parts similar to kingdoms of old.
Its miserable state could be taken as an indication of the failing of socialism, as socialism is also based on a planned economy.
There’s a few nuances though.
First, socialism means that workers own the means of production. I’m not aware of any democracy, even local, in North Korea. Authoritarian states are famously wasteful and inefficient. Perhaps one should look to socialist states where democracy and rule of law were in effect for a real indication.
I’m not aware of workers having control of the means of production in any notable auto-ptoclaimed socialist states, apart from USSR for a very short period of time. It seems like socialist revolutions ending in authoritarianism and centralization is a common story, almost inevitable.
Second, there’s some remarkable successes even in those authoritarian planned economy states. Cuba has spend extremly little in healthcare and manages to give its population a good life expectency. There were also good social indicators under USSR, and which went down under capitalist Russia.
Third, North Korea spends an enormous amount on the military. No country not in an active war in the world spends as much as North Korea does on its military as a percentage of its GDP. It’s around 20-25% if I remember correctly.
Anyway, just wanted to chime on this.