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Cuba's power grid fails, plunging country into darkness
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChumpGPT 2y agoCuba could be the most prosperous island in the Caribbean, they have a railroad, miles and miles of beautiful beaches, farm land, etc and yet can't make communism work. I friend returned from a short trip and said even the finest resorts have no bread amongst other things. The population is malnourished and live in squalor. Castro's Dream.... My grandfather use to say "80 years of communism and we are still lining up for bread to eat and soap to wash with". Can you believe there are those who still embrace it, think they can do it better and it will be a utopia.
- voidwtf 2y agoIs the problem the tenets of communism? or is the problem the dictators and strongmen who inevitably rise to the top? or the corruption that grows from unchecked power?
- kyleee 2y agoHard to say, but a good governance system must guard against the inevitable abuses of all in power (really at all levels)
- worstspotgain 2y agoIt's primarily the lack of incentives, e.g. China in 1990 compared to 2010. Communism's "time in the sun" was not really about its ideological merits. It was just something fed to the intellectuals to get them to buy into the Russian/Soviet planetary takeover. It made people believe they were fighting for a cause rather than someone else's petty interest.
- blackhawkC17 2y agoCommunism requires a strongman to enforce top-down. Most people would reject communism if they had the freedom, so the freedom is one of the first things to go under communist rule.
- proc0 2y agoAll of the above, and they're linked together. Communism requires centralization of decision making, which creates huge bottlenecks, stunts growth, and also becomes a single point of failure that a corrupt leader can easily takeover. The only reason communism keeps re-emerging is because it takes advantage of people's empathy, promising that it can directly address the needs of the many.
- jrflowers 2y agoI’ve always wondered —- if communism is so inherently flawed that it will by definition go away on its own, why bother punishing or fighting it? The US embargo on Cuba seems kind of silly if communism would evaporate on its own
- proc0 2y agoI literally stated the opposite of that.. it keeps re-emerging because it takes advantage of feelings. People want to fix the problems of the world, communism offers solutions that don't work but sound nice.
- jrflowers 2y agoI see, I misunderstood you. You were saying that there is no issue inherent to the tenets of communism that would make it fail
- graeme 2y agoYou're referring to the govt failing to maintain itself in power, whereas OP is referring to a govt failing as a functional system for the improvement of society.
- yongjik 2y agoI'm no fan of communism but that's a reductive take. China of today is communist in name only, but it's still very centrally managed, and that didn't stop China from becoming a global economic superpower. One could say something similar for Japan of the early 20th century, or, to a lesser extent, South Korea in the 60s when the economy was very much centrally planned under a dictator.
- jaggs 2y ago[flagged]
- throwaway199956 2y agoMay be you should visit Haiti and see which is better.
- ecocentrik 2y agoHaiti has many, many other problems including being severely deforested.
- DebtDeflation 2y agoA "black start" of a power grid is a completely different situation than restoring a partial grid failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w
- legitster 2y agoCuban GDP is actually the highest it's every been, thanks to the opening up of the tourism industry in the early 2000s and the introduction of direct foreign investment in 2018. This isn't a money or embargo issue or even (directly) a communism issue. The current regime is simply incompetent: They don't have any expertise and refused to cooperate with other countries on developing their infrastructure. Venezuela's economy collapsed and Cuba was free loading on them. And Cuba has a bad reputation among other trade partners other countries want to trade with.
- Scoundreller 2y agoI kinda thought tourism would have been in the dumps since the US bans you from the visa waiver program just for visiting Cuba as of Jan 12, 2021 (a last breath by Trump after losing the election but not office). That doesn’t impact Canadians, but Canadians aren’t going to Cuba as often as they used to. There are still some flights to/from Russia, but it has to take the long route. Maybe they get enough to make up for all that from South America.
- Arnt 2y agoWikipedia tells all: Canada, the US, Italy, Germany, Russia, France and the UK are the top sources of tourists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Cuba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Cuba
- Scoundreller 2y agoAs of 2018
- Arnt 2y agoWhat does this mean? AFAICT, it's either a minor detail, hardly worth mentioning, or it implies that there have been notable changes since then. If you did intend to imply that, could you elaborate?
- ein0p 2y ago
- JumpinJack_Cash 2y agoWhat the US is doing to Cuba is nothing sort of criminal. It's been 60 years since the bay of Pigs and Cuban Crisis, it's time to end the embargo. One thing that I was hopeful in the Biden v. Trump 2024 was that whoever won wouldn't have felt the need to win Florida anymore in their lifetime and so they could have gone for the legacy of ending the embargo on Cuba during their Presidency. Instead now with Harris of course she's gonna need Florida twice
- proc0 2y agoUS is doing nothing. No country has the "right" to trade with any other. Maybe Cuba should start admitting their system does not work.
- unethical_ban 2y agoA 60-year-old diplomatic row aside, where is The logic in continuing at embargo on Cuba considering any of the other countries and governments the US allows business and travel with?
- noduerme 2y ago>> considering any of the other countries Precisely. The flaw is not in continuing an embargo againsy Cuba. It's in not putting an embargo on China, Qatar, and other regimes that treat their workers/denizens like slaves.
- noduerme 2y agoSorry, but why is it criminal? I wish the US and Europe would embargo every regime that jails its political adversaries.
- JumpinJack_Cash 2y agoChina ring a bell? Russia until the invasion of Ukraine ring a bell? Saudi Arabia and GCC countries where this happens every 10 years or so (publicly and/or silently)