Worker's "Paradise"

Here is a blog with some pictures from a tour of North Korea. Pretty pictures. But it is eerie. They are of a Potemkin Village of clean vistas of decorous people. Organized, sanitized, picturesque, but inhuman:

The "Arirang"-performance in the Rungrado May Day Stadium, the largest stadium in world

The DMZ and Pyongyang

And this provides info about the tourist who took the pictures and provided the commentary.

I prefer the messy reality of free people who can both achieve great things and break your heart. Their very messiness and unpredictability is what proves that they are free and making their own choices. The above provides pictures of a monstrous regime where there is no individual choice, no ability to make a private mess, and no ability to create private visions. Instead, it is a world where the government tells you when and how and where. Ugh!

I admit that people let me down. I don't enjoy public squalor. But I'm willing to put up with that in order to gain the knowledge that people are free to pursue their own dreams. I don't want to be a cog in a "worker's paradise". I want to be king of my own castle, captain of my own ship, and master of my own fate. I don't mind lending a hand and joining a public cause, but ultimately I want the power to opt out and go my own way.

What are the great strengths of our society?

• democracy


• science


• free economy


• religious tolerance


• a free press
• 
  
• free public education


• a job market based on meritocracy


• public advertising

All of the above are messy because they are based on competition and unfettered access to opportunity. These ideals are so different from the above blog's serene, clutter-free views of a North Korea mandated by a top-down bureaucracy ruling with an iron fist.

These messy institutions have a strength that pays great benefits. Here is my favourite quote from Churchill:

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Having science open to all means that "scientific revolutions" are not simple events dictated by fiat. Generally the older generation has to die out to make way for the new generation that has subscribed to a "paradigm shift", a very special social process of consensus building. Having competing religions and cultures means you can have "culture wars" but it also means that the dead hand of history will not prevent a society responding to new ideas and new technology. Cultural change may be ugly, but it beats the opposite where you build a monolithic society that "changes" only in extremis such as the collapse of Communism.