11 ms·

A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from, folks who had their land and businesses seized during the revolution are holding grudges and won’t let go

A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from, folks who had their land and businesses seized during the revolution are holding grudges and won’t let go of them until they’re given their stuff back or a ton of money, which, this far on, isn’t happening. Florida is important in Presidential elections. US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a relatively small—but loud—and also hopeless interest in a single US state can influence policy and make a whole bunch more lives worse for no good reason. AFAIK that’s basically the story.

zdragnar 2y ago
I think that's really underselling the political persecution that many have suffered in Cuba. It's far and away from just wanting reparations for land grabs. We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to fund what their government is doing, and allying with them gives us little to nothing in return. That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.
- joshlemer 2y ago
  It may not in the short or medium term cause regime change, but sufficiently large sanctions on a country do stop it from growing in influence, wealth and power. Eventually, after some number of generations, Cuba could be so poor in comparison to the rising tide of the rest of the world, that it's not even able to defend itself or maintain government control. At some point, the disparity in power becomes overwhelming and you have super high tech society surrounding stone age cave men.
  - dullcrisp 2y ago
    Can that really happen? Won’t one of the visiting tourists bring news of the wheel or what have you eventually? Seems more likely sanctions would cause a steady state where the sanctioned country is some n months/years behind where it would otherwise be, speaking as a complete geopolitical layman anyway.
    - mrbombastic 2y ago
      Not OP but the problem is not awareness of modern solutions that prevents sanctioned societies from modernizing, the isolation from trade prevents local industry from growing which keeps society living at subsistence levels and when everyone is poor you don’t have a class of people with spare time or the resources necessary to build up local industry that brings about capital that brings about infrastructure modernization etc.
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    The problem is that not enough nations are participating in the sanctions. Multiple generations should have been plenty of time, especially given the harms done to the population in the interim.
- tuxoko 2y ago
  > That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. On the flip side, you have China, where US pretty much helped build up their economy and hoped for a peaceful and democratic outcome. How well did that go?
  - ImJamal 2y ago
    The USSR and China and prime examples of sanctioning vs opening up. One is still around and persucting its people and the other is on the dust bin of history. The problem with the Cuba sanctions is that a large chunk of countries aren't sanctioning Cuba. If everybody got behind the sanctions regime change would happen. Half assing it won't cut it.
    - sumedh 2y ago
      > the other is on the dust bin of history. and yet US is spending taxpayer money to defend Ukraine.
      - arrosenberg 2y ago
        Why wouldn’t we spend a small fraction of our military budget on bleeding an adversary dry?
        jazzyjackson 2y ago
        same reason you don't corner a rabid animal
        stale2002 2y ago
        They aren't corned though. All they have to do is leave. Then they stop losing so many troops and they have their sanctions lifted.
        hunchback_ 2y ago
- thinkcontext 2y ago
  > allying with them gives us little to nothing in return. Recent events have shown that to be very much not the case. Over the past few weeks we've had news of the Russian Navy paying port calls and the Chinese building major signals intelligence capabilities. Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally? It's always interesting to contrast our relationships with Cuba vs Vietnam. We fought a long hot war with Vietnam yet today we have good relations with them. Obviously we can't say we would have a good relationship with Cuba if we had been nicer to them but it certainly makes me think.
  - zdragnar 2y ago
    > Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally? I strongly suspect the possibility of normalizing relations while the Castros held power would have been impossible. I had actually expected some progress on this front after they got new blood in a few years ago, but he's much the same, and given their relations with other sanctioned countries like North Korea, and calling Israel a terrorist state, I don't really see much desire for change from either side.
- slantedview 2y ago
  > We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela Many senior government officials over the years, including then Vice President Cheney, have plainly said that our interest in Venezuela is their oil. The sanctions, as in any country, are about wanting control over their resources.
- refurb 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - defrost 2y ago
    I find it odd when people cast "the left" as some kind of homogeneous singular mass. It seems divorced from reality.
    - refurb 2y ago
      My statement doesn't assume a homogenous singular mass. There are opinions that come from different groups on the political spectrum, that pop up again and again and can be regarded as "common beliefs". My comment is based on that.
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    There is a huge gap between overthrowing regimes to put your own dictator in place, and not putting sanctions toward a neighboring country. Most people are pushing for the latter, to get a more neutral approach to foreign relations.
  - keybored 2y ago
    - Supporting regimes - Working against them with sanctions Don’t you see any other options here?
- ossobuco 2y ago
  > we don't want to fund what their government is doing What is their government doing that is so terrible? Anyway let's suppose Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, even though it really isn't by any metric. Why are there no sanctions on Saudi Arabia? Why no sanctions on Taiwan during the white terror? Why no sanctions on Chile when they threw alive protesters from flying helicopters? I could go on for a while.
  - hyperliner 2y ago
    [dead]
  - hollandheese 2y ago
    >What is their government doing that is so terrible? Surviving while Communist.
  - phyzix5761 2y ago
    My whole family was murdered by the government of Cuba because they verbally disagreed with Fidel and communism. No crimes other than speaking out were committed. That's what they're doing that is so terrible.
    - ossobuco 2y ago
      That's how revolutions work, if you disagree you usually get killed. The thing is that people would get killed for disagreeing even under Batista. If your family was happy with Batista then I don't think they were in a clean line of business.
      - zdragnar 2y ago
        The US did put an arms embargo on Batista's government, though far too late given the violent suppression of the protests towards the end.
        ossobuco 2y ago
        I agree, especially considering that Batista had been sold arms until 1958, when the fights with the rebels had been ongoing for a while already (1956 I believe). The result is that Batista fought the rebels using USA weapons, embargo or not.
brigadier132 2y ago
Do you own anything of value? What about your family? Now let's try practicing some empathy: How would you feel if I just took that from you?
- vundercind 2y ago
  Oh, I get it. It’s just not gonna get them anything. That ship sailed decades ago. On a policy level, all this is doing is causing harm.
- LtWorf 2y ago
  Ah. So uk should sanction the whole USA, on account of that revolution that costed some people something?
  - brigadier132 2y ago
    They did and it took a war and a long time for relations to be reestablished
    - rgbrenner 2y ago
      Not true. After the Treaty of Paris (1783) was signed, trade between the US and UK resumed almost immediately; and diplomatic relations were reestablished in 1785. Shortly after the war (1793), when France and Britain went to war, rather than back up the French, the US signed the Jay Treaty to maintain trade and positive relations with the UK... angering France who helped us gain independence. Other than the revolutionary war from 1776 to 1785, the other break we had was from 1812-1815 during the War of 1812. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93United_States_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93United_...
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - brigadier132 2y ago
        Ah ok so other than the war and the tarrifs and the blockade it isnt true
wordsinaline 2y ago
I would still hold a grudge. I hold historical grudges going back centuries.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  Right. I still want back Constantinople.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  Native Americans called, they want their land back.
  - 1oooqooq 2y ago
    see, that's Castro mistake. he didn't buy scalps from land owner exploiters. imagine if all natives were in Florida today instead of dead. Russians were more aligned with usa tho...
- zappb 2y ago
  Still mad about Amalek.
- Yawrehto 2y ago
  Sometimes I want to but it's hard when every European country has tried to kill you. (Maybe there's one that was good to Jews, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't, for the simple reason that all the Jews would go there then, and the countries all the Jews went to, Spain and then Poland, then tried to kill us.) I don't want to have a grudge against a continent.
  - selimthegrim 2y ago
    Albania? Bulgaria?
    - Yawrehto 2y ago
      1. Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire, which, while better than most of Europe for Jews, was not great; being "better than most of Europe" typically meant "you don't get killed every year" and still allows for significant antisemitism. I am willing to grant that they may not have wanted to be part of the Ottoman Empire, though, and there's little on antisemitic massacres. So I concede that I do not need to hold a grudge against Albania. Thank you, Albania. 2. As for Bulgaria...not deporting Jews to their death for one small period of time != lack of antisemitism in the past few hundred years. According to the USHMM,[1] Bulgaria's actions in World War Two included: Instituting laws that, among other things, forbid Jews from marrying non-Jews and restricted where Jews could live and what jobs they could have. Deporting Jews who were not in Bulgaria pre-war (its borders expanded) to their deaths. Sending Jews to slave labor camps. [1]https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria So, no, Bulgaria was antisemitic in the past few hundred years.
bee_rider 2y ago
Florida was relevant in US elections. When was the last time it was up for grabs? It is actually interesting, a state converting to single-party rule significantly reduces the electoral leverage it has.
- Quarrel 2y ago
  > When was the last time it was up for grabs? Obama won it in 2012. That isn't that long ago in electoral cycles.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Obama did start warming relations, probably due to that shift. Trump reversed it. I expect it’ll continue to, at best, see-saw until Republicans are comfortable enough with their advantage in Florida to ignore the Cuban vote.
  - giancarlostoro 2y ago
    It was reversed since it was a campaign promise. The idea was that all that money from tourism was only helping the Castro regime. A sentiment I'm sure most Cubans are not happy about.
- arrosenberg 2y ago
  DeSantis won by 0.5% in 2018…
chmod775 2y ago
> A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from, folks who had their land and businesses seized during the revolution are holding grudges They should've learned from the French making sure there's nobody left to hold a grudge.
- ImJamal 2y ago
  Killing people who did nothing wrong always puts you on the right side.
- Yawrehto 2y ago
  ...are you seriously arguing for genocide?
  - chmod775 2y ago
    Whenever you have to ask that question, it is often a better idea to sit down with a nice cup of tea, and take some time to reconsider what the person you are replying to was intending to do with their comment. The comment pokes fun at people holding grudges for that long, on behalf of their ancestors, and at the whole situation in general. Ultimately is is meant to make people think whether demanding reparations from a less well-off people is really a better idea than just moving on. If everyone held grudges like that, no two people on earth would have good relations and we'd all sit in our little caves brooding over some slight our neighbor's ancestors inflicted on our family ten generations ago. No, I'm not arguing for genocide. But thanks for the laugh.
epolanski 2y ago
Fun fact, I'm a grandchildren of poles who lived in what was polish land but given to Ukraine after WW2 when Stalin moved Ukraine westwards (and compensated Poland with former German land). I received a compensation 60 years after WW2, but it was few thousand euros (many generations have passed). And by the way it was the polish, not Ukrainian government that compensated us.
jorvi 2y ago
> US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a relatively small—but loud—and also hopeless interest I can tell you, not just the US. See: farmers having an absolute chokehold on the EU despite virtually everyone hating them, and them only being a tiny percentage of population, votes or GDP.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tastyfreeze 2y ago
  Off topic but, I am curious, why would people hate the people that produce their food? Seems like a footgun position to take.
  - reducesuffering 2y ago
    Usually problems vis-a-vis farmers come from farmers being exalted just like you're doing, so politically they've been given a lot of leeway for government subsidies and entitlements. There are many farmers who struggle making a living on limited land, even with subsidies. But in other professions, there wouldn't be those subsidies and that specific job wouldn't be economically viable. But there are also many other farmers with $10m+ properties and paying meager farmhand wages to those doing the actual work, while the farmer landowner gets the million dollar subsidies paying them to dump milk or grow wasteful corn fuel. Essentially, it's because producing food doesn't give you the right to be pampered by everyone else and make economically bad decisions. In Europe specifically, it would be in part because of the "tractor protests" where tractors were mass driven into city centers in protest, especially the Netherlands because they didn't like being restricted on nitrogen pollution. It would be especially irksome when you can get most peoples' votes for bad policy just by saying "support farmers, they grow your food." Except that all that nitrogen in the Netherlands goes to actually growing exported food ($$)... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen-wars-the-dutch-farmers-revolt-that-turned-a-nation-upside-down https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen...
sensanaty 2y ago
Where does this plantation-owner story come from? How many plantation owners do you think existed? And that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, as is evidenced by this very article we're commenting on. What, are these 10% also filthy capitalists somehow? As a Serb whose parents fled an eerily similar situation to Cuba's way back when for greener pastures to the literal other side of the planet, this thing where people blame the citizens rather than the worthless piece of shit government for fleeing these socialist hellholes is always an amusing one for me.
- pvaldes 2y ago
  > that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, Are we sure and can be trust that this numbers are really correct? Alternative hypothese: Maybe a part of this people "left the country" in 2022 by covid 19 and statistics were masked to avoid public embarrassment. I would not bet against it.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  you should really read on Cuba before comparing it to Serbia. completely different situation and the people fleeting it in the last decade is exclusively about the the embargo.

zdragnar 2y ago

I think that's really underselling the political persecution that many have suffered in Cuba. It's far and away from just wanting reparations for land grabs. We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to fund what their government is doing, and allying with them gives us little to nothing in return. That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.

joshlemer 2y ago
It may not in the short or medium term cause regime change, but sufficiently large sanctions on a country do stop it from growing in influence, wealth and power. Eventually, after some number of generations, Cuba could be so poor in comparison to the rising tide of the rest of the world, that it's not even able to defend itself or maintain government control. At some point, the disparity in power becomes overwhelming and you have super high tech society surrounding stone age cave men.
- dullcrisp 2y ago
  Can that really happen? Won’t one of the visiting tourists bring news of the wheel or what have you eventually? Seems more likely sanctions would cause a steady state where the sanctioned country is some n months/years behind where it would otherwise be, speaking as a complete geopolitical layman anyway.
  - mrbombastic 2y ago
    Not OP but the problem is not awareness of modern solutions that prevents sanctioned societies from modernizing, the isolation from trade prevents local industry from growing which keeps society living at subsistence levels and when everyone is poor you don’t have a class of people with spare time or the resources necessary to build up local industry that brings about capital that brings about infrastructure modernization etc.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  The problem is that not enough nations are participating in the sanctions. Multiple generations should have been plenty of time, especially given the harms done to the population in the interim.
tuxoko 2y ago
> That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. On the flip side, you have China, where US pretty much helped build up their economy and hoped for a peaceful and democratic outcome. How well did that go?
- ImJamal 2y ago
  The USSR and China and prime examples of sanctioning vs opening up. One is still around and persucting its people and the other is on the dust bin of history. The problem with the Cuba sanctions is that a large chunk of countries aren't sanctioning Cuba. If everybody got behind the sanctions regime change would happen. Half assing it won't cut it.
  - sumedh 2y ago
    > the other is on the dust bin of history. and yet US is spending taxpayer money to defend Ukraine.
    - arrosenberg 2y ago
      Why wouldn’t we spend a small fraction of our military budget on bleeding an adversary dry?
      - jazzyjackson 2y ago
        same reason you don't corner a rabid animal
        stale2002 2y ago
        They aren't corned though. All they have to do is leave. Then they stop losing so many troops and they have their sanctions lifted.
        hunchback_ 2y ago
thinkcontext 2y ago
> allying with them gives us little to nothing in return. Recent events have shown that to be very much not the case. Over the past few weeks we've had news of the Russian Navy paying port calls and the Chinese building major signals intelligence capabilities. Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally? It's always interesting to contrast our relationships with Cuba vs Vietnam. We fought a long hot war with Vietnam yet today we have good relations with them. Obviously we can't say we would have a good relationship with Cuba if we had been nicer to them but it certainly makes me think.
- zdragnar 2y ago
  > Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally? I strongly suspect the possibility of normalizing relations while the Castros held power would have been impossible. I had actually expected some progress on this front after they got new blood in a few years ago, but he's much the same, and given their relations with other sanctioned countries like North Korea, and calling Israel a terrorist state, I don't really see much desire for change from either side.
slantedview 2y ago
> We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela Many senior government officials over the years, including then Vice President Cheney, have plainly said that our interest in Venezuela is their oil. The sanctions, as in any country, are about wanting control over their resources.
refurb 2y ago
[flagged]
- defrost 2y ago
  I find it odd when people cast "the left" as some kind of homogeneous singular mass. It seems divorced from reality.
  - refurb 2y ago
    My statement doesn't assume a homogenous singular mass. There are opinions that come from different groups on the political spectrum, that pop up again and again and can be regarded as "common beliefs". My comment is based on that.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  There is a huge gap between overthrowing regimes to put your own dictator in place, and not putting sanctions toward a neighboring country. Most people are pushing for the latter, to get a more neutral approach to foreign relations.
- keybored 2y ago
  - Supporting regimes - Working against them with sanctions Don’t you see any other options here?
ossobuco 2y ago
> we don't want to fund what their government is doing What is their government doing that is so terrible? Anyway let's suppose Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, even though it really isn't by any metric. Why are there no sanctions on Saudi Arabia? Why no sanctions on Taiwan during the white terror? Why no sanctions on Chile when they threw alive protesters from flying helicopters? I could go on for a while.
- hyperliner 2y ago
  [dead]
- hollandheese 2y ago
  >What is their government doing that is so terrible? Surviving while Communist.
- phyzix5761 2y ago
  My whole family was murdered by the government of Cuba because they verbally disagreed with Fidel and communism. No crimes other than speaking out were committed. That's what they're doing that is so terrible.
  - ossobuco 2y ago
    That's how revolutions work, if you disagree you usually get killed. The thing is that people would get killed for disagreeing even under Batista. If your family was happy with Batista then I don't think they were in a clean line of business.
    - zdragnar 2y ago
      The US did put an arms embargo on Batista's government, though far too late given the violent suppression of the protests towards the end.
      - ossobuco 2y ago
        I agree, especially considering that Batista had been sold arms until 1958, when the fights with the rebels had been ongoing for a while already (1956 I believe). The result is that Batista fought the rebels using USA weapons, embargo or not.

brigadier132 2y ago

Do you own anything of value? What about your family? Now let's try practicing some empathy: How would you feel if I just took that from you?

vundercind 2y ago
Oh, I get it. It’s just not gonna get them anything. That ship sailed decades ago. On a policy level, all this is doing is causing harm.
LtWorf 2y ago
Ah. So uk should sanction the whole USA, on account of that revolution that costed some people something?
- brigadier132 2y ago
  They did and it took a war and a long time for relations to be reestablished
  - rgbrenner 2y ago
    Not true. After the Treaty of Paris (1783) was signed, trade between the US and UK resumed almost immediately; and diplomatic relations were reestablished in 1785. Shortly after the war (1793), when France and Britain went to war, rather than back up the French, the US signed the Jay Treaty to maintain trade and positive relations with the UK... angering France who helped us gain independence. Other than the revolutionary war from 1776 to 1785, the other break we had was from 1812-1815 during the War of 1812. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93United_States_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93United_...
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - brigadier132 2y ago
      Ah ok so other than the war and the tarrifs and the blockade it isnt true

wordsinaline 2y ago

I would still hold a grudge. I hold historical grudges going back centuries.

bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
Right. I still want back Constantinople.
bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
Native Americans called, they want their land back.
- 1oooqooq 2y ago
  see, that's Castro mistake. he didn't buy scalps from land owner exploiters. imagine if all natives were in Florida today instead of dead. Russians were more aligned with usa tho...
zappb 2y ago
Still mad about Amalek.
Yawrehto 2y ago
Sometimes I want to but it's hard when every European country has tried to kill you. (Maybe there's one that was good to Jews, but I'm pretty sure there wasn't, for the simple reason that all the Jews would go there then, and the countries all the Jews went to, Spain and then Poland, then tried to kill us.) I don't want to have a grudge against a continent.
- selimthegrim 2y ago
  Albania? Bulgaria?
  - Yawrehto 2y ago
    1. Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire, which, while better than most of Europe for Jews, was not great; being "better than most of Europe" typically meant "you don't get killed every year" and still allows for significant antisemitism. I am willing to grant that they may not have wanted to be part of the Ottoman Empire, though, and there's little on antisemitic massacres. So I concede that I do not need to hold a grudge against Albania. Thank you, Albania. 2. As for Bulgaria...not deporting Jews to their death for one small period of time != lack of antisemitism in the past few hundred years. According to the USHMM,[1] Bulgaria's actions in World War Two included: Instituting laws that, among other things, forbid Jews from marrying non-Jews and restricted where Jews could live and what jobs they could have. Deporting Jews who were not in Bulgaria pre-war (its borders expanded) to their deaths. Sending Jews to slave labor camps. [1]https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria So, no, Bulgaria was antisemitic in the past few hundred years.

bee_rider 2y ago

Florida was relevant in US elections. When was the last time it was up for grabs? It is actually interesting, a state converting to single-party rule significantly reduces the electoral leverage it has.

Quarrel 2y ago
> When was the last time it was up for grabs? Obama won it in 2012. That isn't that long ago in electoral cycles.
vundercind 2y ago
Obama did start warming relations, probably due to that shift. Trump reversed it. I expect it’ll continue to, at best, see-saw until Republicans are comfortable enough with their advantage in Florida to ignore the Cuban vote.
- giancarlostoro 2y ago
  It was reversed since it was a campaign promise. The idea was that all that money from tourism was only helping the Castro regime. A sentiment I'm sure most Cubans are not happy about.
arrosenberg 2y ago
DeSantis won by 0.5% in 2018…

chmod775 2y ago

> A bunch of Floridians who are, or are descended from, folks who had their land and businesses seized during the revolution are holding grudges They should've learned from the French making sure there's nobody left to hold a grudge.

ImJamal 2y ago
Killing people who did nothing wrong always puts you on the right side.
Yawrehto 2y ago
...are you seriously arguing for genocide?
- chmod775 2y ago
  Whenever you have to ask that question, it is often a better idea to sit down with a nice cup of tea, and take some time to reconsider what the person you are replying to was intending to do with their comment. The comment pokes fun at people holding grudges for that long, on behalf of their ancestors, and at the whole situation in general. Ultimately is is meant to make people think whether demanding reparations from a less well-off people is really a better idea than just moving on. If everyone held grudges like that, no two people on earth would have good relations and we'd all sit in our little caves brooding over some slight our neighbor's ancestors inflicted on our family ten generations ago. No, I'm not arguing for genocide. But thanks for the laugh.

epolanski 2y ago

Fun fact, I'm a grandchildren of poles who lived in what was polish land but given to Ukraine after WW2 when Stalin moved Ukraine westwards (and compensated Poland with former German land). I received a compensation 60 years after WW2, but it was few thousand euros (many generations have passed). And by the way it was the polish, not Ukrainian government that compensated us.

jorvi 2y ago

> US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a relatively small—but loud—and also hopeless interest I can tell you, not just the US. See: farmers having an absolute chokehold on the EU despite virtually everyone hating them, and them only being a tiny percentage of population, votes or GDP.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tastyfreeze 2y ago
Off topic but, I am curious, why would people hate the people that produce their food? Seems like a footgun position to take.
- reducesuffering 2y ago
  Usually problems vis-a-vis farmers come from farmers being exalted just like you're doing, so politically they've been given a lot of leeway for government subsidies and entitlements. There are many farmers who struggle making a living on limited land, even with subsidies. But in other professions, there wouldn't be those subsidies and that specific job wouldn't be economically viable. But there are also many other farmers with $10m+ properties and paying meager farmhand wages to those doing the actual work, while the farmer landowner gets the million dollar subsidies paying them to dump milk or grow wasteful corn fuel. Essentially, it's because producing food doesn't give you the right to be pampered by everyone else and make economically bad decisions. In Europe specifically, it would be in part because of the "tractor protests" where tractors were mass driven into city centers in protest, especially the Netherlands because they didn't like being restricted on nitrogen pollution. It would be especially irksome when you can get most peoples' votes for bad policy just by saying "support farmers, they grow your food." Except that all that nitrogen in the Netherlands goes to actually growing exported food ($$)... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen-wars-the-dutch-farmers-revolt-that-turned-a-nation-upside-down https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen...

sensanaty 2y ago

Where does this plantation-owner story come from? How many plantation owners do you think existed? And that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, as is evidenced by this very article we're commenting on. What, are these 10% also filthy capitalists somehow? As a Serb whose parents fled an eerily similar situation to Cuba's way back when for greener pastures to the literal other side of the planet, this thing where people blame the citizens rather than the worthless piece of shit government for fleeing these socialist hellholes is always an amusing one for me.

pvaldes 2y ago
> that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, Are we sure and can be trust that this numbers are really correct? Alternative hypothese: Maybe a part of this people "left the country" in 2022 by covid 19 and statistics were masked to avoid public embarrassment. I would not bet against it.
1oooqooq 2y ago
you should really read on Cuba before comparing it to Serbia. completely different situation and the people fleeting it in the last decade is exclusively about the the embargo.