I never said the Cuban system was any good.
Just that equating freedom and the capablities to own a 60 inch flat screen dosesn't mean happiness.
Just look at the Cuba before the revolution to see what I mean.
Massive Cuban Layoffs
- Thread starter EagleSmack
- Start date
I never said the Cuban system was any good.
Just that equating freedom and the capablities to own a 60 inch flat screen dosesn't mean happiness.
Just look at the Cuba before the revolution to see what I mean.
Do you realize how hypocritical you sound when you state that Cuban's are happy without money then you comment that people who visit Cuba do so because they're cheap?
And who is equating happiness to owning a 60" flat screen?
Is that what you think Cubans are in jail for? The right to have new TV's?
No, they are there for political reasons.
All I stated was that Cubans from my experience were very happy with what they had.
I wasn't equating happiness with owning a 60 inch flat screen, I was saying the opposite.
Not sure how that's hypocritical.
Maybe from your experience but I think your experience is somewhat biased.
Where do TV's even fit into this?
Perhaps condescending would have been a better choice of words. Your personal playground has been spoiled by the commoners now, better take your dollars to unspoiled poverty, like Haiti perhaps. I'm sure they're happy with what they got as well...
This is what I believe the real stick in the eye is for the folks that wanted Cuba to continue as is. Reality has finally caught up to the Cuban Govt.
I never said Capitalism is freedom, did I? Where did I state that shopping is freedom? If a big tv is freedom then I'm screwed, because I don't own anything near a 60".
But, I can come and go from my country as I please. I can vote in an election where it is counted. I can choose my job. THAT to me is a big difference.
Not just a corrupt US backed government, the real kicker is that the old regime was in the pockets of the mafia, so there's no way the US establishment can accept Castro. He had the nerve to kick out the mafia! The nerve of him.
Yup, back then the Italian Mafia was strong and powerful. Now they are a joke and a shadow of what they once were.
Was there an Italian Mob up in Canada?
I never said it was spoiled by commoners, I just said it's for people who take cheap vacations.
Haiti is an entirely different story.
Then return to my original comment about exploitation....it had little to do with so called freedoms.
The people who wanted Cuba to stay as it is are those that still grasp to the notion that communism is the way to go....it's not and it fails in every case in history.
:roll: Their Revolution was *over* 50 years ago, just like how the cold war was over 20 years ago, yet you're still talking with wold war rhetoric.
They've always had a private sector, and they never had a problem with Free Enterprise. Free Enterprise is good. Free Enterprise is where the innovation and job creation happens.
Their issue was Capitalists. Capitalists are the guys who just sit there, watching for successful Free Enterprise operations created by risk-takers, and when they see one, they swoop in, buy it out, hammer it into ISO 9001 compliance, and lay off as many people as they can in order to maximize (their) shareholder profitability, whereupon they've turned another operation created by someone who was an innovative risk-taker into another sprocket in their money-making machine adding more cash to their reserves so they'll have more to spend on swooping in to take over whatever new and successful Free Enterprise come along in the future, and 'round and 'round it goes, until finally one guy ends up owning everything while everyone else is behooven to him.
Capitalists are also the guys who don't even bother to buy out a Free Enterprise that actually produces something. The Goldman's Sack group just play with the dollars, creating fictional investment vehicles like derivatives resulting in financial devastation when allowed to operate without regulation, like the recent mega-recession that would have turned into a full-blown depression had it not been for mind-numbingly huge amounts of government-backed stimulus spending, which ultimatly amounts to an interest-bearing tax on our children.
Reforms? REFORMS?!? They *were* "reformed". What you *mean* to say is, they should go RETRO in how they manage their economy. Things like let the gangsters back in to set up casinos like in the good 'ol days is what you're thinking, right?
Open up? OPEN UP?!? They were NEVER CLOSED! The only people they were *closed* to were Americans... by rules coming from WASHINGTON!
Which was good for us, because we could go take vacations in Cuba, and find President's Choice products on their store shelves... brands we are familiar with.
Oh yeah, there *was* ONE group whom the Cubans did exclude. It was people who would sit on their lard arses collecting a percentage of other people's work by virtue of a concept called "ownership"... aka Capitalists (which are still under the thumb of the Chinese communist government, in case you hadn't noticed... the only thing Bejing did after Mao was to drop the Cultural Revolution, start building a bunch of infrastructure, and then tell the people that the Cultural Revolution was over, so go back to being the entrepreneurs that Chinese always were, and here's some infrastructure to work with).
So... given that Cuba never had a problem with Free Enterprise in so long as it was owner-operated, I guess by "freedom" you mean the freedom for someone to make a one-time payment (aka buy, aka "invest") to get an on-going percentage of someone else's efforts, right?
Is it, how so? No media outlet told me this, it's what I saw. Many people I know who have traveled there have said similar things, my Dad became a pen pal of a doctor in Cuba.
Maybe your views are somewhat biased.
It was a comment about poverty, things and money don't equal happiness but Westerners always link the two.
Sure I have. I just didn't know how powerful they are up there.
I know down here they have been driven to near extiction. At least the Italian Mob has been. The other ethnic mobs are doing better as they simply prey on their own kind. For example the Russian mob extorts its own immigrants, the Asian Mob extorts Asians. Back in the day the Italians were into everything, gambling, labor unions, etc. The FBI put the smack down on them.
*Sustain* it's "Revolution"?!? It's Revolution ended 50 years ago. After that they just managed things, and compared to all other nations in central America, they were doing quite alright. They definitely had better health care than Guatemala and El Salvador and the Dominican Republic and that quintessentially-capitalist central American nation Haiti.
What they weren't able to "sustain" was low sugar prices because they grow all their sugar naturally from crops, instead of manufacture it using a chemical synthesis method invented by an Illinois chemist back in the 70's enabling conversion of corn to super-cheep high-fructose liquid sugar.
Toss in government-subsidizing the cost of corn production, and it becomes even cheaper.
In other words, if the US government were to stop meddling with the free market by subsidizing corn production with taxes off the back of a struggling American middle-class, then high-fructose liquid sugar would not be so cheep, which means manufacturers of high-fructose sugar would have to compete on a free market against those who grow sugar naturally, in which case Cuba would not be so cash-strapped.
Lem'me guess... you're going to say that using taxpayer money to subsidize corn production to make super-cheep high-fructose liquid sugar was all part of the war on communism and was necessary to bankrupt nations like Cuba who were growing sugar naturally.
They always talked about it...even after 50 years.
World War rhetoric? Say whaaaat?
Well over the next year they will have 500,000 more folks in the private sector.
Capitalism... coming to an island near you!
Well near us anyways.
Now they are going to have to reform again.
Nope. The old mob is gone. I doubt that can happen again.
Reforms like... oh I don't know. The Cuban people having a voice? Scary thought I know.
Indeed. Maybe that will change.
Which is the part that makes me laugh a little bit. Soon you will be rubbing elbows with Yanks down in Cuba. I find humor in that.
By freedom I mean not being jailed for speaking out against the government. The ability to dissent. To chose their own destiny and not leave it in the hands of one man.
That type of freedom.
Castro was forever talking about the Revolution. He never stopped.
Oh well. Yankee innovation.
You guessed wrong. Try again!
For the same reason the North Vietnamese went to Russia for help. They were being oppressed by the US, they wanted out from under it, and *only* the Soviets would give them any help, on condition that they comply to a few Soviet standards (as if the US never has strings attached when it gives aid).
Like the North Vietnamese they were fundamentally nationalists who didn't like foreign control, and what happened was that the Soviets offered them a degree of autonomy that was more than what they were experiencing under US big-business and gangster control.
He didn't "boot" them out. He *bought* them out, using evaluations *as declared by the American owners*!
For example, AT&T had built Cuba's telephone network, and they were declaring the value of that phone network as $14 million to the Batista regime at tax-time.
Now in fact, it was worth ten times that, but by declaring it at $14 million, it kept their Batista taxes down, so Castro took their books, and said, "Okay... here's $14 million. Thanks for the phone network."
They had a private sector. They allowed Free Enterprise. They just didn't allow Capitalism.
Why do Americans have such a problem seeing the difference between Free Enterprise versus Capitalism?
Oh joy... I'm sure they're delighted at the prospect. All those other Carribean nations are doing so well, aren't they?
I bet the Domincans, who's cigar industry survives only because the US has been un-free-marketedly banning Cuban cigars, are delighted.
With what?!? Doritos?
I bet you're thinking of a land-rush.
Anyway, thanks for the heads up, because Canadians have been doing business with Cuba this whole time, and if selling land is going to be their only way to survive against US government subsidized corn chemically processed into high fructose liquid sugar, then we can do land-rushes too, and we'll be nicer about it, because having lived our lives in a harsh, cold climate, we'll develop it into family-friendly vacation resorts and peaceful retirement communities and will *appreciate* the nicer weather, whereas you won't be able to imagine doing anything with it other than build cheep casinos patroled by gold-toothed pimps.
Last edited: