ChairmanMeow

That's not how you phrased your comment. Try being clearer in your phrasing.

Also try responding to the rest of the contents of my reply instead of deflecting by saying "reddit dumb" and thinking that's winning an argument. I very clearly demonstrated that a wide variety of developing nations did not show the same stagnation in life expectancy that the SU did.

You said "non-western". I named two. If you want to shift goalposts further that's fine but don't act like you're being all smart or anything.

Even for other developing countries the overall trend is clear: continuous rise in life expectancy, leveling off as it gets closer to 80. The SU plateaud just below 70 and remained there until its fall (after which it rose again). The vast majority of developing nations do not show this pattern of levelling off early.

Take Iran, or the Philippines, or even Vietnam (bar the civil war). All of them didn't level off like the Soviets did. Same thing in other socialist countries like Cuba and the PRC.

It indicates a fairly severe mismanagement that the Soviet Union is one of the very, very few countries that managed to keep their life expectancy at 67-68 for over 20 years, when other countries kept rising and a good number had already surpassed them. Only after the year 2000 did they manage a sustained growth in life expectancy, rising to 73 after dropping to 64 (likely levelling off a little now due to the war in Ukraine).

The argument was that under the Soviet Union life was better. That may have been true when compared directly to the very tumultuous fall that directly followed. But the reality is that growth of life expectancy had completely stagnated in Soviet Union (it was even declining very slightly). It only started rising again after Russia had mostly stabilised post-fall, and is now higher than it's ever been.

I think that's a fairly cynical take of the question that was asked. I'm not sure which peoples are being subjugated and exploited in South Korea. And in the context of North Korea, I'm not sure what your exact point is with regards to oppression, as it seems that issue is much more severe there.

The question remains: what should the question have been then? Population happiness then? Life expectancy? How would you measure which country is doing better, and in which comparison does NK come out on top over SK?

Japan's life expectancy was even higher than most of those in the west.

Sure, plenty of developing capitalist nations had barely caught up at that point (e.g. South Korea). But they did manage to keep a positive trend going, whereas the SU had levelled off and wasn't improving anymore.

Not what I said.

Also, where the Soviet Union fairly quickly seemed to plateau off with their life expectancy, the PRC managed to much more continuously trend upwards. Not necessarily faster than the SU at first (which makes sense), but they did manage to keep the momentum whereas the SU did not.

But what then does it mean, or rather should it mean according to you? So far you've only cast confusion on what the question means, but you haven't provided your view on what it should mean then.

Under which definition of prosperity (whether that being the well-being of the population or "alignment with imperial powers") is North Korea doing better?

You made it sound like the answer depends on the definition of "prosperity" so I'm wondering under which definition the answer would be different.

For those confused: it was the Dutch that placed the display panels about African American soldiers.

It was removed on orders of the Trump administration.

That's not a Christmas celebration, and the Dutch authorities are actually pretty pissed about it, because the Americans had it removed.

Those other absurd laws aren't remotely relevant, hence the lack of acknowledgement. Many are irrelevant or very old. There is a large movement in the US that seeks to demonize trans people in sports, and this law isn't that old, so in the current political climate there's definitely a non-zero chance it gets acted upon.

And that the law allows you to correct your birth certificate does not mean that the law assumes your future to-be-corrected certificate is currently legally valid. I'm sure they'll get it resolved eventually, but at that moment the school felt they had to apply the law.

The law does not provide room for the birth certificate being mistaken I'm afraid.

And yes, there's a chance the state could come after them, or some other parent or activist group could citing this law. Hence them attempting to shut down this potential liability. They can't risk enforcement, so they won't.