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> The corollary to random consumer goods being in constant shortages is that other things are much more “affordable” than they’d be in a market economy. No way

> The corollary to random consumer goods being in constant shortages is that other things are much more “affordable” than they’d be in a market economy. No way for their wealth, to begin with, and why you should choose how people choose? They are animals? Everything that is cheaper than its possible price is literally being paid by someone, with their labour or by others. Free things, literally, do not exist. And things below real price, do not exist. For that to exist someone along the way has to pay it with time or money or forced by slavery. Please keep in mind this every time someone talks about free. Free means "someone else pays". And someone else pays is as selfish and inconsiderate as if I went to you and I demanded from you an arbitrary effort on the basis that you owe me something for nothing.

opportune 5y ago
Lots of things in the US are subsidized too. We still have taxes that pay for “free” things like using public roads. I am just describing the structure of the Cuban economy where market forces are less involved in how many of something gets produced for consumption. I don’t think it’s great either because it leads to food shortages. Just pointing out (having been to Cuba myself) they aren’t in abject poverty and in some ways punch above their weight for their economic reality (and what someone might think knowing how often they have goods shortages) due to some activites being prioritized over others.
- germandiago 5y ago
  The market is the will of people. Any alternative thing is going to be more incorrectly adapted to the demand from people.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    The market is one-dollar-one-vote. If you start with an equitable distribution of wealth, then sure, it's the will of the people. But if you start with wealth being disproportionally skewed towards a very small class - as is the case in every real-world developed economy today - the result is oligarchy, not democracy. The problem with mainstream economic right is that it ignores that, or assumes that markets will eventually equalize naturally somehow. The problem with mainstream economic left is that it wants to strangle the market instead of freeing it from oligarchy.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      There is no mainstream economic left.
      - int_19h 5y ago
        "Left" and "right" are relative terms, not absolute. Mainstream economic left is whatever the majority of people who are left of center hold to.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        The economic left isn't allowed into the mainstream of politics.
        int_19h 5y ago
        "Left" is not a synonym for "socialism". Socialism is a word that can be defined in absolute terms. But left/right is defined relative to society as a whole. Whoever is left of center in political mainstream is the economic left, by definition.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        Seems like you're trying to define words in a way that makes the actual state of affairs in the USA impossible to describe. No matter if all leftists are removed from society, leftism must still be said to be half of what remains. Nothing in mainstream USA politics should be described as "economic left."
    - germandiago 5y ago
      An oligarchy serves itself from the regulators to keep its power. In a free market they would not be able to abuse that power to get privileges. So the problem you see there is mostly a regulation problem, not a wealth inequality problem.
wahnfrieden 5y ago
please look up dollar amounts on corporate welfare in US
throwaway2331 5y ago
That exists everywhere in the world. The only difference is that Cuba doesn't have the opportunity to exploit foreign nations to enrich itself (and get even fatter on taxes).
- germandiago 5y ago
  I am really interested in knowing what "exploiting foreign nations" means for you. Exploiting is what Cuba does with its doctors when they send them abroad and take 70% and kidnap their passports as if they were animals, or when you are assigned an arbitrary government salary for the sake of it without any possibility of alternatives. Please explain to me what exploiting is: paying less than what you think they deserve? Note that those exploited foreign countries get investment from outside to improve lives of people there, not to worsen them, otherwise those people would not take a foreigner company job in the first play.They usually pay more than local companies except a few exceptions FYI. At least in Vietnam. In Vietnam working for an american, korean, japanese company means you are mostly blessed. I know the factories topic well from Vietnam. If you want we can talk about why that is not exploiting but what Cuba does to its citizens is indeed. There is a big difference.
  - throwaway2331 5y ago
    I'm referring to the influence a master nation exerts spiritually, psychologically, and materially on another, and its peoples, for the purpose of enriching itself materially. Cuba's exploitation of its doctor is a piece (one I do not have a full-understanding of, nor the care) of a greater whole. Slavery and exerting power on a select group of people is obvious, and clear to see -- but the boundaries are clear and isolated. Colonialism and exerting power on a whole peoples is less obvious, and harder to see -- because its boundaries are muddy and the things it affects are innumerable. We can go even more high-level, but I do not know yet how to describe it. I am uninterested in isolated "pieces" of the greater puzzle. In my view, they are ever-changing and indicative of greater causes; ones that are systemic, all-encroaching, and much more valuable to identify and root out---if I want the isolated incidents to stop fractaling, and reappearing. Isolated injustices, like Cuba's, are of little concern to me. This is not my battle; it is the battle of the Cuban peoples. My battle is against the Rube Goldberg machine of my humanity, and the rest.
DarylZero 5y ago
> Free things, literally, do not exist If free things don't exist, what are for-sale things made of?
- germandiago 5y ago
  I do not understand your question. But my point is that things are not done by magic. Someone works on them, someone gets the material (if it is a product). Someone spends time. If a machine does it, someone created the machine (it is usually many people for a single industrial machine) and someone bought it. There is literally always, someone, at some point in time that paid with time and/or money to trade something. Even if someone gives away something for free from her effort, it is the person who did the effort who"paid" in that case. There is no such thing as free and coming from nowhwere. Someone pays the price. Voluntarily or not is another matter. That is why I criticize a lot when someone says that we can get xyz for free. No. There will still be work involved. The manufacturing, the delivery, the service... whatever. So if we want something for free we should think who is paying that. I guess most of us do not want to work for free. In general terms, I do not want, I could do an exception... but not in general. So when we ask for others to do things for free what we are saying is that someone should not get its part of reward or that someone else has to pay it for us, making those people a means to our ends. I would not call that social cooperation.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    > There is literally always, someone, at some point in time that paid with time and/or money to trade something. But how did the trade get started? Does it go back into an infinite past? An infinite series of trades, with neither an end, nor even beginning? Otherwise it would seem something must be free. Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_nihilo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_nihilo
    - germandiago 5y ago
      It has always existed. When men collected food and survived they shared. If there is an surplus of something you do not need, what do you do with it? Eventually, I guess, they started bartering. Bartering is a primitive way of trading. That trading is possible accumulating enough, otherwise you would need it all for yourself. I do not think it is difficult to see the beginning of these patterns, they seem relatively natural to me: if I can plant a big field of potatoes and you can hunt well, we assess the cost of each activity and x kg of potatoes equal y kg of meat. I think you are mixing the fact of something being free as in "no money involved" with the fact that time is "money" or that spending time doing something is also money: it is consuming time, which is also a kind of capital. So you could pay in coins, in sheep, in yarn, with your time or in whatever. That is not important, it is still an exchange and equivalent to trading.
dgut 5y ago
This is something people here either choose to ignore or can't understand. "Cuba has free healthcare" -- at a very high human cost. When the government controls all resources and gets to make all decisions, it's easy to put all that into a free mega med school for the world. The USSR had an impressive space program but people were dirt-poor and oppressed. That said, the famous healthcare system was built during the time the country was being heavily subsidized by the USSR. Today the country is so decapitalized hospitals are in ruins and there is corruption at every level because doctors earn so little.

opportune 5y ago

Lots of things in the US are subsidized too. We still have taxes that pay for “free” things like using public roads. I am just describing the structure of the Cuban economy where market forces are less involved in how many of something gets produced for consumption. I don’t think it’s great either because it leads to food shortages. Just pointing out (having been to Cuba myself) they aren’t in abject poverty and in some ways punch above their weight for their economic reality (and what someone might think knowing how often they have goods shortages) due to some activites being prioritized over others.

germandiago 5y ago
The market is the will of people. Any alternative thing is going to be more incorrectly adapted to the demand from people.
- int_19h 5y ago
  The market is one-dollar-one-vote. If you start with an equitable distribution of wealth, then sure, it's the will of the people. But if you start with wealth being disproportionally skewed towards a very small class - as is the case in every real-world developed economy today - the result is oligarchy, not democracy. The problem with mainstream economic right is that it ignores that, or assumes that markets will eventually equalize naturally somehow. The problem with mainstream economic left is that it wants to strangle the market instead of freeing it from oligarchy.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    There is no mainstream economic left.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      "Left" and "right" are relative terms, not absolute. Mainstream economic left is whatever the majority of people who are left of center hold to.
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        The economic left isn't allowed into the mainstream of politics.
        int_19h 5y ago
        "Left" is not a synonym for "socialism". Socialism is a word that can be defined in absolute terms. But left/right is defined relative to society as a whole. Whoever is left of center in political mainstream is the economic left, by definition.
        DarylZero 5y ago
        Seems like you're trying to define words in a way that makes the actual state of affairs in the USA impossible to describe. No matter if all leftists are removed from society, leftism must still be said to be half of what remains. Nothing in mainstream USA politics should be described as "economic left."
  - germandiago 5y ago
    An oligarchy serves itself from the regulators to keep its power. In a free market they would not be able to abuse that power to get privileges. So the problem you see there is mostly a regulation problem, not a wealth inequality problem.

wahnfrieden 5y ago

please look up dollar amounts on corporate welfare in US

throwaway2331 5y ago

That exists everywhere in the world. The only difference is that Cuba doesn't have the opportunity to exploit foreign nations to enrich itself (and get even fatter on taxes).

germandiago 5y ago
I am really interested in knowing what "exploiting foreign nations" means for you. Exploiting is what Cuba does with its doctors when they send them abroad and take 70% and kidnap their passports as if they were animals, or when you are assigned an arbitrary government salary for the sake of it without any possibility of alternatives. Please explain to me what exploiting is: paying less than what you think they deserve? Note that those exploited foreign countries get investment from outside to improve lives of people there, not to worsen them, otherwise those people would not take a foreigner company job in the first play.They usually pay more than local companies except a few exceptions FYI. At least in Vietnam. In Vietnam working for an american, korean, japanese company means you are mostly blessed. I know the factories topic well from Vietnam. If you want we can talk about why that is not exploiting but what Cuba does to its citizens is indeed. There is a big difference.
- throwaway2331 5y ago
  I'm referring to the influence a master nation exerts spiritually, psychologically, and materially on another, and its peoples, for the purpose of enriching itself materially. Cuba's exploitation of its doctor is a piece (one I do not have a full-understanding of, nor the care) of a greater whole. Slavery and exerting power on a select group of people is obvious, and clear to see -- but the boundaries are clear and isolated. Colonialism and exerting power on a whole peoples is less obvious, and harder to see -- because its boundaries are muddy and the things it affects are innumerable. We can go even more high-level, but I do not know yet how to describe it. I am uninterested in isolated "pieces" of the greater puzzle. In my view, they are ever-changing and indicative of greater causes; ones that are systemic, all-encroaching, and much more valuable to identify and root out---if I want the isolated incidents to stop fractaling, and reappearing. Isolated injustices, like Cuba's, are of little concern to me. This is not my battle; it is the battle of the Cuban peoples. My battle is against the Rube Goldberg machine of my humanity, and the rest.

DarylZero 5y ago

> Free things, literally, do not exist If free things don't exist, what are for-sale things made of?

germandiago 5y ago
I do not understand your question. But my point is that things are not done by magic. Someone works on them, someone gets the material (if it is a product). Someone spends time. If a machine does it, someone created the machine (it is usually many people for a single industrial machine) and someone bought it. There is literally always, someone, at some point in time that paid with time and/or money to trade something. Even if someone gives away something for free from her effort, it is the person who did the effort who"paid" in that case. There is no such thing as free and coming from nowhwere. Someone pays the price. Voluntarily or not is another matter. That is why I criticize a lot when someone says that we can get xyz for free. No. There will still be work involved. The manufacturing, the delivery, the service... whatever. So if we want something for free we should think who is paying that. I guess most of us do not want to work for free. In general terms, I do not want, I could do an exception... but not in general. So when we ask for others to do things for free what we are saying is that someone should not get its part of reward or that someone else has to pay it for us, making those people a means to our ends. I would not call that social cooperation.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  > There is literally always, someone, at some point in time that paid with time and/or money to trade something. But how did the trade get started? Does it go back into an infinite past? An infinite series of trades, with neither an end, nor even beginning? Otherwise it would seem something must be free. Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_nihilo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatio_ex_nihilo
  - germandiago 5y ago
    It has always existed. When men collected food and survived they shared. If there is an surplus of something you do not need, what do you do with it? Eventually, I guess, they started bartering. Bartering is a primitive way of trading. That trading is possible accumulating enough, otherwise you would need it all for yourself. I do not think it is difficult to see the beginning of these patterns, they seem relatively natural to me: if I can plant a big field of potatoes and you can hunt well, we assess the cost of each activity and x kg of potatoes equal y kg of meat. I think you are mixing the fact of something being free as in "no money involved" with the fact that time is "money" or that spending time doing something is also money: it is consuming time, which is also a kind of capital. So you could pay in coins, in sheep, in yarn, with your time or in whatever. That is not important, it is still an exchange and equivalent to trading.

dgut 5y ago

This is something people here either choose to ignore or can't understand. "Cuba has free healthcare" -- at a very high human cost. When the government controls all resources and gets to make all decisions, it's easy to put all that into a free mega med school for the world. The USSR had an impressive space program but people were dirt-poor and oppressed. That said, the famous healthcare system was built during the time the country was being heavily subsidized by the USSR. Today the country is so decapitalized hospitals are in ruins and there is corruption at every level because doctors earn so little.