The number of people in the world who think the entire economy should be in the hands of the government, with things manufactured and distributed according to a plan, is so close to zero as to be its equivalent.
The main problem with a state-run, non-market economy is that it is impossible to fix rational prices for things. This is known as the 'Socialist [sometimes 'Economic'] Calculation Problem'. It is irrefutable, which is why the economics department of universities in the old Soviet Union, generated the first advocates of the market. The same is true for the Economics Department at the University of Havana today. Even Fidel Castro knew that the planned economy doesn't work.
When I visited Cuba about 20 years ago, I was struck by the fact that almost everyone I talked to -- street traders, the owners of the Casas Particulares (private homes) where we stayed -- knew that the system was crap. Cuba is not North Korea, and, so long as you don't try to organize your opposition, you can say pretty much what you like, if you keep it abstract.
And the Cuban leadership knows this as well.
If the stupid people who make American foreign policy would just drop the blockade, flood Cuba with tourists, set up a massive 'cultural exchange' program (sending tens of thousands of American kids to Cuba to learn Spanish, and bringing Cuban kids here), socialism would be gone in five years, if not sooner.
Not through a bloody uprising and the return of the exiles ... but by the Cuban leadership taking the 'Chinese Road'. And once they do that, the end is inevitable.
Cuba is a beautiful country. Send some American speculators down there with fistfulls of dollars... the kind of people who'll drape their arm around the shoulder of a Cuban bureaucrat in charge of a government hotel, and say, "You know, Jose, you and I could make a shitload of dinero in a joint venture here ... I'll modernize this place, with this beaufiful beach, and we'll have more Yanquis queueing up to have a cheap two-week holiday here than you can shake a stick at."
The land is fertile, the countryside and seaside are unspoiled, the people are friendly ... there are taxis which have a little American flag attached to them! ...
And there are LOTs of vintage autos, dating back to before the 1959 revolution. Although most have had their engines replaced, if they were auctioned off to Yanqui collectors, Cuba's GNP would double in a year.
We've got to stop being held hostage to the desire of Cuban exiles for revenge. We need to approach Cuba with love ... the kind of love a lothario has for a beautiful woman. Capitalism, in a few decades, took China from one of the poorest countries in the world, to one that now has a larger economy than the US, and which will, in a decade or so, have a larger per capita income than the US. (Assuming Peter Zeihan is not right and that they don't have a demographic collapse.)
A capitalist Cuba will race into prosperity much faster. Drop the blockade ... bring capitalism to Cuba!!!
jacobin.com
