Response: Cubans have the right to reject western consumerism
Sure, I agree wholeheartedly.
Just as Cubans have the right to embrace western consumerism if they so wish.
Or at least, they would have, in a free society, have such right at an individual level. To embrace consumerism or asceticism, as they wished.
Unfortunately they live in a Marxist dictatorship so there\’s no actually much choice left to them in the matter, is there?
LOL.
Dr Helen Yaffe en las suyas palabras
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/UserFiles/Image/2007/octubre/23/helen.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1604.html&usg=__DRlXGmssOM4yPgFmqaCDfSi-QJE=&h=180&w=200&sz=13&hl=en&start=4&um=1&tbnid=I5XSunsVLMmn8M:&tbnh=94&tbnw=104&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhelen%2Byaffe%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
Clapping
Cubans might only make $20 a month, but they get free opera, so who’s complaining?
I once had a lefty colleague who went to Cuba, looking forward to seeing the socialist paradise. She got terrible foodpoisoning. It took a heart of stone not to laugh.
Jonathan Pearce:
This may seem off-topic but I’ve always thought of Leonard Read’s little piece “I, Pencil,” as one of the most profound though simple explanations (better, in some ways, even, than WEALTH of NATIONS) of the extraordinary
interconnectedness of human economic activity, the dependence of that interconnectedness on individual freedom to maximize satisfaction, and the equally extraordinary likelihood that interference of any kind by authority shall have anything else than prosperity-reducing effect.
However, I cannot share your laugh at your colleague’s discomfiture; it’s far too depressing to realize that, to a large degree, such thinking prevails here and is, to that degree, somewhat ascendant at all times; built-in to prevail even through “conservative” administations and (to only slightly lesser degree) subsumed into their views as well. The most optimistic thing that I can express is that “there’s a lot of ruin in a nation,” and I believe we shall learn something about the extent of “a lot.”
Our nation had the enormous fortune to have started, not perfectly, but very well. And, almost from that beginning, there’s been a race between the forces of innovation, individual actualization, and entrepreneurialism on one hand and, on the other, those of collectivization, bureaucratism, and authoritarianism. The “good guys” have managed to get and stay ahead through all of that time but, at times, only barely; lately, they don’t seem to be keeping up.
Time will tell–it always does.