Input Junkie

and if Cuba had much worth selling

That's pretty presumptuous. If you don't know what they have, how do you know what it's worth?

From:

What a country has to offer in trade isn't secret.

From:

And what it has under one government may not be the same as what it would have under a different one, which may endorse or support different industries.

Cuba trades in food and many other things with Canada, and has done so for decades, very satisfactorily.

From:

"Very satisfactorily" to whom? To those in power, yes. To the country in general, it's been a pretty miserable state of affairs.

What it needs to be more successful isn't a government that endorses and supports different industries, but one which doesn't pick favorites. It would also benefit if the US did the same. The US sugar industry wouldn't look kindly on free trade with Cuba, but the rest of us would benefit noticeably from unilateral free trade.

From:

By 'satisfactorily', I mean that the products I have run across in Canada were of good quality and offered for a reasonable price, comparable to those from other countries.

What are you considering to be unilateral free trade? Unilateral on whose side?

From:

Brain glitch. Bilateral. I don't know what "unilateral trade" is either.

From:

Okay. :)

From:

avram

"Unilteral trade" would make a good euphemism for looting.

From:

"Unilteral trade" would make a good euphemism for looting.

"The Vikings carried out a "unilateral trade" with the Irish monasteries."

I like that!

From:

I like that! :D

From:

Cuba trades in food and many other things with Canada, and has done so for decades, very satisfactorily.

Under Batista, Cuban agriculture was highly productive, exporting a surplus and feeding the Cuban population. Cuba was the richest country in the Carribean aside from America herself.

Under Castro, Cuba can barely feed itself and produces a tiny surplus at the expense of half-starving the Cuban masses. Cuba is one of the poorer countries in the Carribean.

Castro's policies failed. It's that simple.

From:

avram

Under Batista, Cuban agriculture exported food instead of feeding the Cuban population. Batista sold agricultural goods to American corporations at below-market prices, and his people went hungry.

Cuba has great prospects. I'm sure that if it were ever allowed to follow a policy of true free trade it would do pretty well. But it never has been, even before Castro.

From:

Under Batista, Cuban agriculture exported food instead of feeding the Cuban population. Batista sold agricultural goods to American corporations at below-market prices, and his people went hungry.

It's my understanding that, compared to the 1950's, Cuba is now far less agriculturally productive, and that the Cuban people are today much closer to famine than they were then. In other words, that Castro has diminished his exports and yet still been unable to feed his people, thanks to Communism.

From:

avram

That's my understanding, too. But that doesn't mean that the people who went hungry under Batista suddenly, through the magical rose-colored glasses of anti-Communism, retroactively become not-hungry.

Twistedchick seems to be pursuing some weird argument running perpendicular to Nancy's original statement that Cuba's poverty can't be blamed solely on the US embargo. But that doesn't justify burnishing Batista.

From:

Oh, I'm not a fan of Batista's. However, under Batista the Cuban economy was still growing: under Castro it has been moribund for decades. I never claimed that Cuba was ever wealthy by First World standards.

From:

avram

What does that have to do with the embargo?

From:

cakmpls.livejournal.com

There have always been some people who would take tremendous risks to get out of a place where others were content to stay. No one (AFAIK) has ever had to take a major risk of dying in order to leave the U.S., but certainly some people have given up a great deal to do so. It isn't just the place one is leaving, but the place one is going to, one's own priorities, one's personality...

From:

There have always been some people who would take tremendous risks to get out of a place where others were content to stay.

Do you honestly believe that Cuba is no worse than most other countries, and that the risks that people take to leave Cuba aren't far greater than those they take to leave most places?

From:

avram

According to this Observer human rights index (I can't tell what year it was published), Cuba comes in at #35 on the list of 100 worst countries for human rights. I seem to recall there being 192 countries in the world, so if Cuba is 35th worst, that makes it worse than about 82% of countries.

From:

Their cigars, cigarillos, and other tobacco products are brought in here frequently, by both legal, and illegal, means.

From:

papersky.livejournal.com

And they are openly on sale here, along with their rum, which lots of people seem to like, and their chocolate, which is pretty good.

The chocolate is good enough that the major Swiss chocolate company Lindt chose it as one of their "terroir" chocolates, along with Madagascar, Peru, Ecuador and I Forget (we didn't like that one so much) to make chocolate from just those beans. I guess Lindt don't have much of a US market, or those things are pretty specialised, though I can buy them at the grocery store, so I guess not.

Rum is the sort of thing people smuggle in (actually, so is chocolate, though not in quantity) and I heard a paranoid rumour that the US rum companies lobby to keep up the embargo on Cuba to keep the Cuban rum out. But a lot of things that could perfectly legitimately be traded (wood, software, steel) wouldn't be the kind of things worth smuggling.

The other thing I notice is that lots and lots of Canadians go on holiday to Cuba in February and March. There's a huge poster of a tropical beach advertising it right by my local metro station. The whole of Canada is only 30-odd million people, and we can't all afford a week in Cuba. Europe is a lot further away. Tourism from the larger, closer US would probably do a lot for Cuba's economy.

I agree that people desparate to leave is a bad sign for a country.

From:

Yes, when i'm in Canada, it always surprises me the array of Cuban products available. Our government's embargo is so stupid.

From:

Oh, and by the way, i'm feeling somewhat better today, and look forward to seeing you tomorrow. I'm not 100%, but i'm beyond contagion. Doing some shopping and cleaning today.

From:

fabricdragon.livejournal.com

most of what they have to trade is tobacco products (which do get smuggled in)
the main other thing they have to trade is what they had before the revolution.... a vacation resort spot and harbor.

the main reason people are willing to go through so much to get out isnt the poverty. its the political oppression. if you are part of the "wrong" politics, it can be lethal to stay.
and that includes being the kid of someone on the wrong side of the politics

From:

the main other thing they have to trade is what they had before the revolution.... a vacation resort spot and harbor.

The poverty of Cuba actually helps in this regard, because the Cuban people are desperate to please tourists. Prostitution, for instance, has increased roughly tenfold since the Revolution -- far more than has the Cuban population.

From:

As for whether Castro is a mass murderer, he hasn't played in the same league as Stalin and Hitler, but he's generally considered responsible for the deaths of about 100,000 prisoners around the time he came to power.

From:

Yes, also still a tiny fraction of what the governments of Chile and Argentina killed during the years of the desaparecidos.

From:

ckd

My feeling on the embargo is that while it's not the whole reason Cuba has economic problems, it gives the Cuban government a really good excuse for them. Opening it up would improve things slightly, but also lead to "hey, you said it was all about the embargo, why do things still suck?"

From: