Re: Cuba

Alejandro Dubrovsky (e9328940@student.uq.edu.au)
Tue, 17 Mar 1998 03:27:42 +1000 (GMT+1000)


On Sun, 15 Mar 1998, John K Clark wrote:

> So let's look at how people vote with their feet, it's exclusively one way,
> all out of Cuba. A strange thing to happen in a wealthy happy land.
> Since Castro took power millions of people, close to 25% of the population,
> have abandoned Cuba, and the didn't go to the USSR, they went to a
> capitalistic country. Think about it, they abandoned everything they had and
> made a very risky voyage across the open sea in a flimsy raft to a country
> with different customs and a different language. They wouldn't do that unless
> they were desperate, they wouldn't do that unless they hated Castro with an
> intensity I can hardly imagine.

I don't think this is due to just hating castro, but more to do with the
fact that the (perceived, at least) standard of living of the US is much
better than Cuba's, or any other place in latinamerica. The fact that
they go to the US is because the US let them, and so would 25% of the rest
of latinamerica go if they would let them. Open the border to mexico and
see how many move north. Even when this is quite a dangerous and heavily
guarded border, millions go through. In other words, if they would be
going because they hate Castro, they could just go in a much safer way to
a country where they speak the same language, but very few do. They go
instead, to a country which doesn't give them entry VISA's so that the
only way left to go is sneak in in small boats or rafts.

>
> did not inherit a poor country, in 1959 it had the third highest standard of
> living in the western hemisphere, only the USA and Canada were higher.

I would love to see some reference for that interesting bit of
information, or preferably ten.

> The
> fact that for a few days in 1962 Castro brought the human race closer to
> the brink of extinction than anytime in the last ten thousand years does not
> increase my admiration of him.
>
I never really understood the problem in there. Didn't (or doesn't) the
US have nuclear weapons pointed at Cuba? (my question is real, even though
i'm guessing an answer)

>

>
> Anarcho-socialists, is that anything like jumbo shrimp? "We want no
> government and we want the government to take your money so it can
> distribute it fairly, we want no government but we want the government to
> decide what is fair and what is not."

Not a government but an entity which is designated by some method by the
voluntary members of the group or commune which the entity is going to
direct. This is a very broad definition, and this is due to the fact that
anarchism in general is very ambiguous and broad. Anarcho-capitalism is
just a special case of this by setting group is equal to each indivual.
In the common case, the commune is a group of people that choose to live
together, and the entity that directs them are the people themselves, and
usually they don't do any enforcing since there is nothing to enforce cos
most private property is abolished. (Usually means in most of the cases
i've read of village setups during the spanish revolution)

>
>