Significant chance of arrest and imprisonment for helping them would be my guess

@TheAllMemeingEye Not really, I'd have multiple layers of plausible deniability. Pretty sure a ban for breach of TOS would be the worst case in the vast majority of timelines.

@skibidist you've literally confessed your plans to us, which feds would likely be able to find if you were under investigation

@TheAllMemeingEye Pretty clear that I won't be doing it after making this poll (even though the investigators going through my internet history with a comb fine enough to find this poll seems highly unlikely, so does anyone from here going to the lengths needed to report it from the other side even provided there is any authority that would care).

I think it would be a rational thing to go with the plan. The Koreans tend to be solid performers, and getting a few thousand dollars per month for free would be helpful. But I would almost certainly start to obsess about it like Raskolnikov, and end up with a net negative outcome.

@skibidist would I be correct in inferring from your past comments elsewhere that you are not a huge fan of authoritarian "communist" regimes like North Korea? Or did you choose to bite the bullet in that Scott Alexander post I sent you a while back?

2.7.1: If we could perform a controlled experiment pitting reactionary versus progressive ideals, what would it look like?

Well, assuming you were God and had infinite power and resources, you could take a very homogeneous country and split it in half.

One side gets a hereditary absolute monarch, whose rule is law and who is succeeded by his sons and by his sons’ sons. The population is inculcated with neo-Confucian values of respect for authority, respect for the family, and cultural solidarity, but these values are supplemented by a religious ideal honoring the monarch as a near-god and the country as a specially chosen holy land. American cultural influence is banned on penalty of death; all media must be produced in-country, and missionaries are shot on site. The country’s policies are put in the hands of a group of technocratic nobles hand-picked by the king.

The other side gets flooded with American missionaries preaching weird sects of Protestantism, and at the point of American guns is transformed into a parliamentary democracy. Its economy – again at the behest of American soldiers, who seem to be sticking around a sufficient long time – becomes market capitalism. It institutes a hundred billion dollar project to protect the environment, passes the strictest gun control laws in the world, develops a thriving gay culture, and elects a woman as President.

Turns out this perfect controlled experiment actually happened. Let’s see how it turned out!

Talk about your “Dark Enlightenment”!

From the Reactionary perspective, North Korea has done everything right. They’ve had three generations of absolute rulers. They’ve tried to base their social system on Confucianism. They’ve kept a strong military, resisted American influence, and totally excluded the feelings of the peasant class from any of their decisions.

Reactionaries, behold your god.

South Korea, on the other hand, ought to be a basketcase. It’s replaced its native Confucian traditions with liberal Protestant sects, it’s occupied by US troops, it’s gone through various military coups to what the CIA calls a “fully functioning modern democracy”, and it’s so culturally decadent and degraded that it managed to produce Gangnam Style. Yet I don’t think there’s a single person reading this who doesn’t know which one ze’d rather live in.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-faq/

It's essentially profiting from slave labor.

@asmith I do not think that is the primary concern here!!!!

@Ziddletwix I mean it seems kinda important

@TheAllMemeingEye maybe i don't understand what the comment above is referring to? bc otherwise i don't think it's the primary concern.

it is deeply sad that north koreans live under an authoritarian regime. i do not follow why we would assume that the lives of the "thousands of North Korean IT workers" (i.e. slave labor) would be any better or worse whether or not this scheme existed. if this scheme didn't exist, presumably they would be assigned (or end up doing) other similarly bad work for the regime? (tbh, i would guess the default alternative would be far worse!)

ignoring the utilitarian calculus, there is something to be said for not engaging in a system of oppression on any level, whether or not your engagement makes their lives any worse off. similar arguments can be worked through for e.g. sweatshops with bad conditions & etc.

i am much more persuaded that it is simply bad to do stuff that supports the NK regime. but note that's a separate concern—i don't think it really matters that much whether you profit from their workers, what's bad is that the NK regime is profiting (and in fact, that would be basically equally bad whether or not NK labor was involved in the arrangement, that's not the point here imo). or, to highlight what seems like the primary concern:

On top of the monthly wage, they would also raise funds for the North Korean regime by stealing valuable company information and threatening to leak it unless the employer made an extortion payment.

it is very bad (ethically, and for your own potential legal risk), to aid the north korean regime's corporate espionage so they can fund their regime! i think that concern goes far beyond whether your own personal profits are in some sense derived from workers in bad conditions.