Posted on 03/22/2008 11:10:32 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Cuban President Raul Castro's recently revealed economic "reforms" brought to mind two quite unrelated characters: Lewis Carroll's White Queen, and an old Cuban exile acquaintance of mine named Ignacio.
President Raul, the sprightly 76-year-old who was "elected" to the presidency of Cuba on February 24, thus replacing his ailing octogenarian brother, Fidel, is reportedly planning to grant his enslaved nation access to more consumer goods. Citing "the improved availability of electricity," the new Maximum Leader will offer for sale computers, DVD players, pressure cookers and microwave ovens. However, air conditioners are not to be made available until next year, and electric toasters - those ultimate consumer luxuries -- not until 2010. That's what prompted my thoughts of the White Queen, who famously said to Alice "The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday -- but never jam today." In Cuba, yesterday is 1959.
But what about those computers and DVD players that are suggested to be imminently on sale? Well, it's not quite come-on-down time. They will be available to the average Cuban pretty much to the same degree as a Lamborghini is available to yours truly. It's a matter of "affordability," and part of the price of living under a Communist dictatorship has always been that you are paid with largely worthless paper (whereas I am lacking the wherewithal to purchase a Lamborghini entirely due to my career choices and culpable lack of effort). To buy consumer goods in Cuba, you need to shop at special state stores that take only "convertible pesos." These are linked to the U.S. dollar and trade at the rate of around one to 24, with the pesos paid to the average Cuban, who earns less than the equivalent of a dollar a day.
The promise, meanwhile, of air conditioners tomorrow reminded me of mi amigo Ignacio, and of a deeper perspective on the Cuban "experiment," human nature and the state of socialism.
I met Ignacio, an opinionated, bull-like little man, in Toronto about 20 years ago through a mutual friend. He explained to me how he had escaped Cuba: by appearing to be an exemplary Communist! One of the rewards for being an exemplary Communist was a trip to Lenin's tomb. Ignacio had told party officials that he wanted to share this thrill of a lifetime with his wife. When, on the way to Moscow, their plane had stopped at Gander to refuel, the couple had walked to freedom, and ultimately settled in Toronto.
The summer I met Ignacio, Toronto was blisteringly hot. One evening I went to visit Ignacio and his wife at their apartment. They had spent the entire day looking for an air conditioner, which they had eventually located. Ignacio was visibly annoyed. "Things should be better organized," he told me. "There should be more planning."
I was stunned. Here was a man who had come from an island whose economy had been ruined by central planning, yet because he hadn't immediately found an air conditioner -- which wouldn't have been available in Cuba except through political connections -- he wanted to turn the Canadian economy over to the Cuban system!
Ignacio's attitude brought home to me how people could live in a market economy and take its wonders entirely for granted without any understanding of the uncontrolled processes by which its cornucopia came to be available. Without the slightest bit of central planning (although with a great deal of planning and organization at the level of the individual firm) a stunning array of goods was available, instantly, wherever you looked. Ignacio didn't think much about that astonishing system any more than those who had been brought up within it, because he didn't have to. All he had to do - like them -- was to take his (sound) money to the mall.
In the past 20 years, central planning has fallen almost entirely out of fashion (although governments persist in claiming that they can hatch "competitiveness strategies" to assist their national "champions" in a globalized world).However, anti-capitalism remains at heart based on the endless urge to moralize. Its leading edge has moved on. Specifically, socialism has gone retail within a context of enviro-mania.
We in the West may be "free" to purchase all the DVDs and computers and rice cookers we want, but no purchase is now to be made without fretting about its related "carbon footprint," or the location and costs of its recycling and/or disposal. Not a dollar is to be spent without ensuring that nobody in the supply chain worked in a "sweatshop." No form of corporate activity in the resource sector can take place without appropriate "licensing" by the NGO-cracy. The Invisible Hand is everywhere being shackled by the new lords of indefinable -- but infinitelymeddlesome-- "sustainability."
In this context, criticizing Raul Castro for mere thuggish oppression is a little old hat. After all, David Suzuki, one of the high priests of environmentalism, regards Cuba's poverty-stricken, oxcart-and-bicycle economy as entirely admirable.
President Raul will almost certainly wind up as his nation's Mikhail Gorbachev. That is, he will preside cluelessly over its collapse. But the passing of the old Cuban regime will be mourned by neo-socialists not because they see a world without air conditioning as a problem, but as a model.
Not precisely on topic, but interesting: La Raza’s (`The Race’) motto.
Fidel and little brother were fond of the saying,
“Outside the revolution, nothing. For the revolution, everything.”
“Roasting commies on an open fire,
Watching their guts split on an open flame, using them to keep home so warm, as not to freeze in this case of global warming”.....
“Roasting commies on an open fire,”
Is this a parody of The Christmas Song?
This will not happen unless Hugo Chavez disappears.
Patience Grasshopper...patience.
Hugo Chavez (a.k.a. Castro's crotch fruit) along with the other filthy criminals in Cuba are waiting for the Nov. elections to provide an ally in either the form of B. Hussein Obama or Hillary R. Clinton.
Chavez and the Cuban Communists know that Obama/Hillary, as fellow travelers, will grant widespread immunity and not allow the Nuremberg style trials of the Communist party.
Chavez and the Cuban Communists are not relishing the thought of Pres. McCain since (as a POW) Sen. McCain was able to experience the wonder of Scientific Communism and the joys of the Workers' Paradise first hand.
"I think it was a mistake to demonize Fidel Castro," he said, saying that early U.S. opposition pushed Castro into the arms of communism.
"I visited Cuba and the Cuban leaders visited our country many times," he said. "Today the Cuban people are well educated. They are healthy and they look good. I believe they have one of the best medical systems."
"I believe Raul Castro will continue in many ways the cause of his brother," he said. "But I do believe there will be changes."
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