14 ms·
A day using money in Cuba
- m0zg 6y agoThis is what the Soviet Union had, except, of course, all prices were quoted in "internal" rubles. The dollar was always 70 "foreign" kopecks, but you couldn't get dollars, or convertible rubles unless you were a party apparatchik who could shop in "Beryozka": a network of stores that sold Western goods to those who imposed socialism on others, but did not live in it themselves, which it how it usually works. Foreign currency was illegal, and you'd land in prison if you had it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryozka_(Russian_retail_store) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryozka_(Russian_retail_store...
- danlugo92 6y ago>to those who imposed socialism on others, but did not live in it themselves I'll violate the rule but I'll comment you were probably downvoted because of this part of your comment.
- kmonsen 6y agoI don’t really see why though? I’m a socialist (the Scandinavian kind), but that seems a petty good description of what happened back then.
- throwlaplace 6y agobecause what the fuck do two department stores have to do with state owned means of production? somehow anything that's the slightest bit off shows that sOcialISm iS eViL but the same kind of bad faith reading of any of the structures of capitalism is explicitly forbidden.
- derrick_jensen 6y agoHe is just stating it matter-of-fact, since they could use USD to purchase things at a (free) market price.
- throwlaplace 6y agodo you know what socialism means? also what he/she claims isn't in fact true. one of the two chains did allow normal people to shop there >One chain belonged to the Vneshposyltorg (Foreign Mail Order Trade) and was intended for Soviet citizens who received some income in foreign currency. Some of them were forced to sell their currency for ruble-denominated Vneshposyltorg checks, while others never laid their hands on foreign currency, receiving their pay from Western sources in Vneshposyltorg checks via Soviet intermediaries (which, again, allowed the foreign currency to stay in Soviet government hands). The checks were to be used to purchase goods in the Vneshposyltorg Beriozkas. but like i said feel free to keep perpetuating these bad faith interpretations
- derrick_jensen 6y agoState owned production and distribution. The things these markets sold were (most likely) not state produced or distributed, since they were Western goods.
- throwlaplace 6y ago>The things these markets sold were (most likely) not state produced or distributed, since they were Western goods. wonderful! so then you must understand why these stores were orthogonal to communism right?
- derrick_jensen 6y agoGoogle's definition of socialism "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." Private enterprise isn't the community. I'll admit that the state isn't the only way these things can organize, but it is probably the most common (excluding groups like the Mennonites)
- vinay427 6y ago> socialist (the Scandinavian kind) Surely there exists better terminology for this than a highly regionally contextual qualifier. Perhaps democratic socialist, or social democrat, or something involving welfare? Overloading the word with other meanings just adds fuel to the fire of inaccuracy and hyperbole in political discourse, perhaps recently most often in the US.
- nsajko 6y agoThat is not overloading, rather you are the one who is using the term overly specifically. Maybe it would be better to say Leninism or something.
- vinay427 6y agoThat's a fair point actually, thanks.
- Taniwha 6y agoI think the word you wanted to describe the USSR was "communist", there west is full of countries with socialist social welfare systems that genuinely care for their citizens
- vinay427 6y agoYep, I replied to the other comment but I'll concede that I was using this term too specifically and inaccurately. In any case, my point wasn't in opposition to the social welfare systems in Scandinavian countries, for instance, as I'm at least reasonably familiar with the services they provide to citizens which generally seem to genuinely work as you said.
- kmonsen 6y agoI totally agree with you, but it is not useful when talking in the US today. Socialist/socialism means communist here and is mostly just a swear word. The distinction between capitalist socialism and authoritarian communism is often ignored although the systems really have nothing in common.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Yetanfou 6y agoIt would be... unfortunate... if the truth leads to downvotes. If it is really the case that people downvoted for that reason I would really like to know the reason why as it would indicate either a failure of their history teachers or an ideological stance.
- bawolff 6y agoBecause its an irrelavent inflamatory political dig. How true it is is beside the point. As an example with a different context, if someone was talking about the efforts of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to eliminate malaria, and then in the middle randomly added a dig about how MS had mean bussiness practises in the 90s, i would also downvote them, regardless of how true that might be.
- new2628 6y agoSeriously, the fact that this informative comment is downvoted for no good reason shows how toxic HN has become. It seems that many have become so bitter during lockdown that they either randomly downvote whatever they see or they leave comments that trigger downvotes from others.
- tonywastaken 6y ago> those who imposed socialism on others, but did not live in it themselves I wouldn't be able to describe it any better way than this.
- vkou 6y agoCan't our current economic system be described as rule by those who impose dog-eat-dog capitalism on others, but do not live in it themselves? I think the common factor is that elites always find a way to insulate themselves from the problems of the plebs, including the ones that they have created.
- m0zg 6y agoI suppose you could. The difference is, you can't find yourself in a labor camp in Siberia for the crime of having some foreign currency on you.
- throwlaplace 6y agohttps://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-labor-in-america/406177/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/prison-... edit: denial
- onemoresoop 6y agoBut you find yourself in jail if you’re blacker. Really, whats the point of these comparisons? Bad things are bad things no matter what economic system the said country uses
- vkou 6y agoNo, just for doing business with an embargoed country. There's a few other differences too, but why are we changing the subject? This subthread was after all, talking about elite hypocrisy.
- tonywastaken 6y agoSounds like you've never lived a day of Cuban/Russian/Venezuelan communism in your life
- enitihas 6y agoIf only I could upvote this multiple times.
- car 6y agoA similar system existed in Soviet occupied East Germany, the oxymorinically named ‘German Democratic Republic’, or GDR (DDR in German). The chain of stores was named “Intershop” (later famously adopted by the first German online shopping software provider). There, western goods were available for cold hard West German Mark’s, sent from relatives on the other side of the iron curtain, as many families had been separated when the wall went up. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intershop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intershop
- sremani 6y agoChina also has dual currency CNY-CNH system. https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/cnh-vs-cny-differences-between-two-yuan-2018-09-12 https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/cnh-vs-cny-differences-betwe...
- 4cao 6y agoChina used to have a similar system with Foreign Exchange Certificates until the 1990s [1] but nowadays it's not really the same. CNH/CNT/NDFs are an artefact of foreign-exchange controls but as a visitor to China you're unlikely to even know they exist. 1. https://www.china-briefing.com/news/15-years-in-china-foreign-exchange-certificates/ https://www.china-briefing.com/news/15-years-in-china-foreig...
- Aperocky 6y agoThat's not really the same as you don't really spend CNH except use it to exchange currencies outside of China. That is, non of the locals or expats in China spend CNH - and their value is almost exactly the same because there is not an oversupply of either and both is anchored on the massive USD reserve China has.
- TMWNN 6y agoReminiscent of Argentina's Blue Dollar, the real exchange rate between the peso and the US dollar and usually very different from the official rate.
- asciimike 6y agoI thought the Blue Dollar was mostly phased out when they let the peso float at the end of 2015?
- TMWNN 6y agoI did too, but reading recent news reports, it still exists.[1] I presume that the spread grows when the country is in times of crisis (inb4 "When is Argentina ever not in crisis?"), such as the recent default. [1] https://www.explica.co/dollar-today-the-blue-dollar-rises-to-120-while-the-trickle-of-deposits-and-reserves-continues/ https://www.explica.co/dollar-today-the-blue-dollar-rises-to...
- maxilevi 6y agoThe currency restrictions were reinstated at the end of 2019.
- WalterBright 6y agoThe US had an official dual currency from 1914 to 1933. There were gold dollars, and fiat (inflated) dollars. There was an official, fixed exchange rate between the two. The two started out at parity in 1914, but things diverged steadily until in 1929 a gold dollar was worth 85% more than a fiat dollar. Like all such systems where the relative values float but there's an official exchange rate, this eventually collapses with runs on the banks, as people try to profit by buying the higher valued currency at the discount guaranteed by the exchange rate. This persisted until Roosevelt suspended all those exchanges. Then we had a fiction of a gold exchange rate until Nixon finally dispensed with it. We have a dual currency today - when you pay a "convenience fee" for using a credit card instead of check or cash, that's what is going on (as the credit card taker gets charged 3% for those transactions, and passes it on to the credit card user).
- ceejayoz 6y ago> We have a dual currency today - when you pay a "convenience fee" for using a credit card instead of check or cash, that's what is going on (as the credit card taker gets charged 3% for those transactions, and passes it on to the credit card user). Barring a few gas stations that give a cash discount, that's very much not the way it works. It's the cash users getting screwed; they pay the same price as credit card users, but they don't get the rewards you'd get as a credit card user (I get 2-5% cash back on virtually any purchase, for example).
- WalterBright 6y agoOh, many times I've seen the same price for cash or credit, asked for a "discount for cash", and got it. The times they won't give a discount, I pay with the credit card and get the "cash back". The proprietor, though, will nearly always give a discount for cash, because it's money ahead for him.
- ceejayoz 6y agoThat may be an attribution error. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/515/good-guys https://www.thisamericanlife.org/515/good-guys > Producer Ben Calhoun tells Ira about a secret move his friend uses all the time — the "good guy discount" — that gets Ben's friend money off all sorts of items when he's shopping. (6 minutes) More often than not, if you ask someone with the power to give one for a discount - for any polite reason - there's a decent chance they'll do it.
- Dahoon 6y agoGood lord, look at the size of those pictures.
- coldtea 6y agoNot that arcane. Tons of places have a de-facto dual-currency system... (any country with big inflation, for one)
- lordnacho 6y agoI actually went to Cuba on holiday, and I used the tourist dollars. It's incredible how this separates society into haves and have-nots. Basically everyone wants to be near the tourists. They'll invite you into their homes for food, they'll offer to take you around town, sell you some cigars, and so on. Since you have tourist bucks, you also have access to the tourist nightclubs, where you run into some regional celebrities. Or you can find some nice rooftop bars to lounge in. But walk around a bit, and you realise most of town is not like this. There's a lot of run-down places and a fair bit of desperation. Women will come offer themselves up. Driving around it was apparent that most of the island is mired in poverty, with only a few places that are like a mediterranean club or hotel. Everywhere else is empty shelves and rudimentary technology. You'll see industrial trucks used as buses, for instance. And famously the cars tend to be really, really old.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoThese buses are called Guagua. There's a simple reason why [0]. [0]: https://www.thecubanhistory.com/2016/09/origin-of-the-cuban-use-of-the-word-guagua-procedencia-cubana-de-la-palabra-guagua/ https://www.thecubanhistory.com/2016/09/origin-of-the-cuban-...
- graeme 6y agoNote that this separation is more due to the fact that you’re rich, than any formal currency arrangement. Foreigners in the 1990s got the same treatment, before any formal dollarization or dual currency system existed. Cubans who make their money only from official sources are desperately poor. Those with connections abroad, connections to tourism or to the black market are richer. The money difference merely makes it tangible. And the government goes a long way to try to separate tourists from the real society, though you can still get to it if you care to. Source: worked there for an ngo for a year >basically everyone wants to be near tourists This is actually just the surface veneer. Anyone who approaches you speaking english is a hustler and does it professionally. Cubans in wider society are interested, but also wary. The police arrest those who spend too much time with foreigners. The typical cuban keeps to themselves, but the typical tourist will meet endless, non-typical hustlers.
- ken 6y agoAs an American, this doesn't seem any stranger than our dual-units-of-measure system. One is defined in terms of the other. One is what we (mostly) use locally, and the other is what we use with anyone from any other country in the world. People living here know from experience and context which system is implicitly attached to a bare number.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoThey are in no way equivalent. Countries generally do not modify the conversion between metric and imperial for the purpose of obfuscating measurements of things,
- smallstepforman 6y agoAnd as a tourist, you’d always get change back in the wrong currency (worth 1/25 the original). And to make matters worse, the change will also be wrong in their favour. Hated being assumed that I’m a dumb foreigner.
- boudin 6y agoIt's not something to take personally. Having those 2 economical systems running in parallel creates a big split, some things being available only in tourist shops. People have to find ways to access some goods, some will take a scammy route. At some point though I found it quite good to get outside of the touristic areas to get a break from people wanting to sell you something, but other than that i didn't find it that annoying.
- quesera 6y ago> Hated being assumed that I’m a dumb foreigner. I believe they assumed you were not dumb, but that you were willing. That's what I told myself, at least. And since the prices were about about half of what I would pay at home, I was totally OK with that. Some markets are only open to foreign currency, and if that currency is worth 25x more to someone else than it is to me, and they're selling a product to me at what feels like a 50% discount, then I am a willing participant in that economy!
- dade_ 6y agoI did not experience that once on 3 trips to Cuba, all different parts. Hmm, are you American?
- fennecfoxen 6y agoWent to Cuba with my girl. (She really wanted to go; I was the skeptic.) Walking around the ruins of the Centrum, and someone invites her in to get a haircut. Sure, she says, why not? $5 (convertible), but all we had on hand was a $20. Little Cuban girl heads out running through the neighborhood to scrounge up change for a $20 because that’s almost a month’s salary.
- stevenjohns 6y agoSimilar situation, although not as intense. I bought a skewer of grilled meat from a poor elderly woman in central Colombia. The skewer was 5,000 COP and all I had was a 50,000 note (which I discovered when the food was ready) which is about a day’s wage. She had to leave the grill and go out in the search for change. Felt terrible.
- guythedudebro 6y agoGod forbid either of you let them keep the change
- fennecfoxen 6y agoRandom over-generosity is not a particularly effective charity pattern. If you feel that Hacker News denizens like ourselves happen to have too much money, there are a variety of organizations which can transmit sums of money to those in need: not just a one-time $15 at random with a special tax diverted to prop up the Cuban government, but on a recurring basis, every month, as part of a program to help eliminate worldwide poverty in a targeted manner, and sensitive to the dislocations that can come about as a result of carelessly deployed aid. I use WorldVision to do this, personally (some of their non-evangelizing programs) as I appreciate their efficient organization, but there are other ones out there too. I can supply links to https://www.worldvision.org/donate https://www.worldvision.org/donate and suggest interested parties consider a $40/mo sponsorship of a child's health and education at https://www.worldvision.org/sponsor-a-child https://www.worldvision.org/sponsor-a-child
- 0x8BADF00D 6y agoThere is a huge opportunity here for cryptocurrency and mobile payments. The issue is, their socialist government will never allow it. They will even kill someone to keep the current system as inefficient as it is.
- circlevvaves 6y agoFrom what i've gathered, there isn't much internet infrastructure throughout the majority of Cuba.
- ryanbrunner 6y agoIt's significantly better than it used to be even in the relatively recent past. Data-capable cell connections are ubiquitous throughout Havana, although you have to be fairly well off to be able to afford a plan that can use them. Wifi connectivity is more widely available, and there's tons of parks where there's official government wifi signals available (you have to buy a card for time). It doesn't even begin to approach the connectivity of the U.S., but the internet isn't a totally foreign concept. (I can only speak for Havana though, no idea what's it like outside of the cities)
- mannanj 6y agoThey can ban it and censor internet, similar to how currently more internet developed nations like India and Pakistan have. Currently bitcoin is illegal there and even banks are in on it. Correction: India unbanned in in March 2020, however some nations do still keep it banned particularly other middle eastern countries and some latin ones. Full list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country_or_territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country... My question is who will fight the law and be the ones to take the risk of going to jail in order to save a few bucks when inflation happens so slowly you don't have time to react?
- Mengkudulangsat 6y agoAs I'm reading through this I'm fascinated about the character's "write russian articles for Bitcoin gig". Perhaps internet infrastructure isn't that good yet in Cuba, but with Starlink and other LEO internet projects underway, that might change in the medium term. Once basic ingredients are there, we might see an explosion of, for lack of a better term... "digital sweatshops". Things like data annotation / game grinding / SocMed content moderation etc.
- sneak 6y agoStarlink’s first version will require ground relay stations within the overlapping spot beams (the inter-spacecraft relay lasers aren’t until later) and also likely intends to comply with local laws in all places it is offered for sale. I had high hopes here too, initially.
- teruakohatu 6y agoI think they have outright said that they will only operate through local resellers and local ground stations, so all laws will need to be complied with. Even then I think US-hostile nations would ban starlink on suspicious of eavesdropping, or simply because they don't want everyone connected to the internet.
- Mengkudulangsat 6y agoWhat about resellers on a boat? You can set up the business in Panama, sign the the Starlink contract, dock in Havana and just share your wifi password.
- teruakohatu 6y agoI suspect Starlink modems upload their coordinates. The modem would also need to know its correct GPS location to operate, they mechanically orientate themselves, so faking a GPS signal would not be enough. You would need to modify the firmware. And even if this was possible, I am sure the Cuban government would not be happy with you providing ISP services at the local dock. I am sure there are alphabet soup agencies that will get "unlocked" starlinks, but the rest of us will need a local groundstation.
- hogFeast 6y agoAh, I live in the UK and it is still fairly common to hear people enviously tell you how successful Cuba is (this is people of a certain age, the same people usually think China was a great success under Mao because much of the Cultural Revolution didn't become apparent until the 90s)...people are weird.
- pmiller2 6y agoNorth Korea actually has 3 versions of their currency: one for North Koreans, one for “socialist” visitors, and one for “capitalist” visitors. They’re distinguished by having either 0, 1, or 2 stars on the coins, or different color seals on the notes. I don’t know how this has affected the economy of North Korea, but it sure is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_won https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_won
- maniatico 6y agoAs a Venezuelan, it is interesting to see how the Castro's used the CUC to save face from the defacto dollarization they had. Also, it's interesting to see the parallels with the Petro. I'm thankful that it mostly failed, minus some money laundering by the government and pensions (this is Maquiavelian, they pay part of the pension and bonuses in a controlled electronic currency to elderly people who mostly don't have access to the internet and maybe even electricity, but good for propaganda). From the last quarter of 2018 we went from talking about dollars being illegal to a heavy push towards defacto dollarization where a lot of party and army people opened bodegones (mostly imported good stores, they pay 0% taxes by presidential decree) where they mainly accept USD (sometimes EUR) and sometimes Bolívares (the official currency). The government tried to push the Petro to them, but failed to convince even it's own people who want hard currency and not useless monopoly money. And now even some state run stuff is marking prices in USD (some elite government places stopped accepting Bolívares)
- unnouinceput 6y agoQuote (end of article): "The question is: can Cuba avoid this, and if not, will Cubans stoically accept another Special Period?" 1 - No. 2 - Hopefully not, and hopefully they'll finally get rid of Communism.
- ajuc 6y agoCommunism tends to create these patterns. It was the same in pre-1989 Poland. Owning USD was illegal, you were supposed to turn them to authorities and get "Polish issued USD" instead. It was a separate kind of currency different from the regular (worthless) Polish currency. But the official exchange rate was order of magnitude worse than the real USD-Polish złoty exchange rate, so nobody did that if they could avoid it. There were special shops "Pewex" that had all the foreign goods and the best Polish export products - you could only buy that stuff there for Polish USD. It was a way for the state to extract hard currencies from the population. There was a whole class of people that exchanged USD to Polish currency on the black market (with the real exchange rate). They were called cink-ciarz because they stood in touristy places and whispered "ex-change" in broken English to tourists. It sounded like cink-ciarz to Poles. Lots of fortunes were made that way, and people were in prison because of that.
- fit2rule 6y agoThe situation with Cuba is where I find myself widely differing with the viewpoints of my American colleagues - I just cannot see any justification for the way that the USA treats Cuba. It is inhumane and un-just, and I think Americans suffer more for having to live in a repressive system that does not have their best interests at heart. What does the American people get out of the restrictions placed on Cuba by their government, other than cheap sex tourism and a medical haven not offered within their own borders? I really have to wonder if we'll ever see relations normalised .. so many problems in the world, if only Americans would change their state policies, quit arguing about scary orange puppets, and start paying attention to exactly who is running the CFR ...
- peter_d_sherman 6y ago>"She discovered that she can use bitcoin to top up people’s phones on bitrefill.com, and she can charge for this. For every 100 dollars she receives in bitcoin, she gets 120 CUC in cash from her friends whose phones she tops up. Ira is quite pleased that she has found to a way to arbitrage the currency exchange. If she got paid via Western Union, she’d lose 15% of what the agency pays her. This way, she makes 20%." Amazing, because modern economic theory states that arbitrages should not exist, and if they do (for whatever quirky reason), then they will disappear just as quickly as they appeared...
- sm4rk0 6y agoIsn't 10k with a 15-20% premium 11.5-12k? Bitcoin trades at a 15–20% premium (e.g. if the Bitcoin spot price is 10k USD, Cubans will pay 15k–20k CUC for it).