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Cuba's unfinished power plant is the least of their problems. At this point, Cuba's problems are so big that they seem insurmountable. To see what I mean, imag
by dsign 3y ago
Cuba's unfinished power plant is the least of their problems. At this point, Cuba's problems are so big that they seem insurmountable.
To see what I mean, imagine that tomorrow the Communist Party is dissolved, a new democratic constitution is installed, and following that, the country elects a true parliament and a new executive. Is it hard to believe that all of that will ever happen? Yes, it is very unlikely. But that would be but the very beginning of what is needed.
The next step would be for US to lift sanctions against Cuba. Legislation needs to be passed for that, and said legislation would be against the interests of people who used to have properties in Cuba before 1959.
Nationalized properties are not the only litigation targets over anything Cuban, because the government from 1959 to the date took a lot of loans that didn't repay. The international legal system would find ways to ask for that money back to any future government, corporation, or individual living in the island, which in turn would make the cost of living or doing business in Cuba extremely high, even in the absence of the Communist Party.
- _vbnz 3y agoYeah, but if you speak to Cubans they really think it become Miami overnight if they get rid of the Communist Party. Whereas the reality is probably much closer to Haiti. It'd be best if there were a steady transition of ending the blockade, allowing markets in non-natural monopoly industries and services (in practice this largely exists already), multi-party democracy without persecution. Cuba has pretty great education in comparison to similar nations and a relatively large population, so I think there's a lot of opportunities. I can understand why they're so defensive though, the USA has openly admitted to dozens of assassination attempts on the Castro family, etc. - literally no different from Russia poisoning Yushchenko.
- pjc50 3y ago> Nationalized properties are not the only litigation targets over anything Cuban, because the government from 1959 to the date took a lot of loans that didn't repay. The international legal system would find ways to ask for that money back to any future government, corporation, or individual living in the island That would indeed turn it into Haiti, just as Haiti was made to pay for expropriated property (human beings): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy If the world, or more specifically the US, wants a free and democratic Cuba, it's going to have to agree to a blank slate and not try to take back the pound of flesh. "Come back to the international order, we'll impoverish you for generations" is not a tempting offer.
- ahelwer 3y agoIt sounds like all of these problems are completely invented by people who are not Cubans?
- wkat4242 3y agoI don't think such massive political change must happen overnight. A country needs time to learn to deal with democracy. See what happened to Russia for example. It was only a true democracy for a year or two until Jeltsin's coup. And the Cuban regime doesn't seem so bad anymore. They have the second-most doctors per capita in the world (the first is one of the rich oil countries, I forget which). Good education too. I don't know why the US is still sanctioning them so heavily. Other than 'communism bad'. They do seem to be looking after their people. And they haven't been a nuclear threat since the Cuba crisis. Without the sanctions they'd have a much easier time and could transition to a democracy much more gracefully. Take a 10 year timeframe for example to transition instead of doing this big bang.