Quote Originally Posted by Subotan View Post
No, they're not malnourished because of that. Food production in North Korea never dropped below the minimum amount needed to ensure that everybody had the minimum amount of calories in their diet even at the height of the famine in the Nineties. The problem was the distribution of that food was utterly disastrous, as the economic system completely broke down as subsidies and fertiliser (North Korean agriculture was/is very fertiliser intensive) from the USSR/Russia dried up and the guaranteed market in the Eastern Bloc for North Korean goods disappeared. Urban North Koreans (Of which there are many - it is a heavily industrialised country) relied entirely on the "Public Distribution System" for their food, and when that disappeared in all but name, people in the cities just starved. Interestingly, people in rural areas generally did better as they had more ready access to food, so the North Korean famine is probably the only one in history where richer, urban citizens were hit harder than peasants.
Thanks for the education (I'm saying this in a non sarcastic way). Would you agree though if North Korea cut its defense spending it would able to feed its populace? That's would I should have initially said.

Oi! I don't misrepresent your point because I don't represent it! I tried to build on the debate by adding another angle. A government can supress by telling people what they can and can not do. This is the more common focus in at least American debate.

But what of a government which undermines the societal structures of people to organise themselves and learn and share knowledge. This is how many an indeginous society has been destroyed. Neither guns nor germs were necessary. More silent, more effective mechanisms were at work.

'Nobody is telling you what to eat' can be quite sinister...

Imagine, if you will, a four year old. He is handed the keys to a supermarket, has access to every food available. But nobody will ever 'tell him what to eat', as in, will educate him about food and nutrition. Neither parental guidance, nor simply showing by example, nor any formal nutritritional education. Not even television commercials, or the sightof other people eating.

I mean that as a thought experiment, not as a veiled critique. Surely, this boy is hardly free? Quite apart from him dieing pretty soon, surely he can't be said to be more free, receive a better deal, by nobody telling him what to eat? I would say the people who would inflict this on the boy are as twisted as anything North Korea subjects its children to.


On can easily build from this example a government, an educational system, a sytem of parenthood, that fails to protect children only slightly less than the theoretical example.
Haha, I meant misintrept. Opps.

Anyway, I wasn't saying that the government should cease providing quality nutritional information, but simply that people (parents when the kids are young) should be free to chose what kind of food they want to eat. The government should not mandate any specific diet.