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Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
This Week's Competition

Guardian TV Guide
Nigel Farage Gets His Life Back 10 pm BBC-2
The premise is obviously to recast Farage as a lovable buffoon, but why anybody would want to humanise the poster boy for one of the most heinous ideologies in living memory isn't quite so clear
.

Members are invited to place Nigel Farage in this list of people representing 'the most heinous ideologies in living memory'
Adolf Hitler
Benito Mussolini
Joseph Stalin
Mao Tse-Tung
Kim Il Sung
Colonel Gaddafi
General Pinochet
Pol Pot
Ayatolloah Homeini
Sadam Hussein


I have always had a soft spot for Saparmurat Niyazov, he really deserves a place on the Harper index, Niyazov became president (for life, of course) of Turkmenistan.... not only did he do all the normal stuff like throwing up statues of himself, forcing schoolchildren to read his autobiography (clearly his people would benefit by being more like their leader) etc.... he then proceeded to name basically everything including schools, hospitals a month (why not) and even a meteorite all after number one. He even introduced a better alphabet.

Ever the populist, Niyazov banned the use of lip syncing at public concerts in 2005 and decreed that men should no longer wear beards. Although (to be fair) this backfired somewhat when he was forced to then ban news reporters and anchors from wearing make-up on television as by now.... he found it difficult to distinguish male anchors from female.

It really gives you an indication of what the first 100 days under Farage would look like.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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The Cuban Story Part One

In 1960 Cuba and Ireland had the same GNP per head. Fifty years later Ireland had one of the highest GNP’s per head in the world while Cuba’s was second only to Haiti as the lowest in the Americas. How to account for this remarkable divergence in fortunes?

Ireland does not get much attention from economic theoreticians but at least on chronological correlation her boost coincided with the end of de Valera’s autarkic polices. Accession to the EEC doubtless played its part too but since EEC rules forbid autarkic policies, this amounts to much the same thing. It would seem that ‘modern liberal capitalism’ was Ireland’s saviour.

In Cuba the opposite course was followed, the Castro regime being notoriously autarkic. But this is not the important factor according to people who do not favour ‘modern liberal capitalism’ -- and often by people who do but like one-stop exciting explanations. Cuba’s woes, they explain, are down to US sanctions because before 1960 America had been Cuba’s largest trading partner by far but now refused either to buy Cuban goods or sell her American ones. Let us examine this proposition.
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Mick Harper
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The Cuban Story Part Two

For the whole of her history, Cuba has had only one major export, sugar. Before 1960 the US bought virtually the whole crop under long-term trade deals at roughly world market prices. After 1960, virtually the whole crop was sold to the Soviet Union under long-term trade deals at above world market prices. The Soviet Union itself had a surplus of sugar—beet crops are one of the few things that collective farms grow in abundance—and had to sell Cuba’s sugar on the world market at a loss. This was not all good for Cuba since the rouble was non-convertible and meant that Cuba was obliged to work round this either by using various market solutions--all Comecon trade was ‘non-convertible’ so a minor industry had grown up to service it--or inefficient barter deals.

When it came to imports Cuba could not obtain goods from the USA but could do so from anywhere else in the world including, to America’s vexation, her own allies--Leyland buses from Britain being a famous example at the time. This certainly was to Cuba’s disadvantage since these goods were marginally worse and marginally more expensive than their American equivalents, e.g. Leyland buses. Plus the costs of Leyland taking sugar in payment and having to sell it on the open market.

To an outsider, none of this seems anywhere near to explaining Cuba’s vertiginous decline.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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Caribbean islands mainly depend on the tourist industry don't they? Cuba would have been overtaken by other countries that were cultivating sugar beet but its tourist industry couldn't develop as successfully as other islands (though tourism doesn't necessarily make raise the standard of living)
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Mick Harper
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Has Ireland got a large tourist industry? On the other hand tourism was important in combating (and maybe overthrowing) Franco's autarkic policies. Ironically tourism played a significant part in Castro coming to power because of Mob control in Havana. And America was outraged when their hotels were nationalised!

However, generally speaking the tourist industry is just another aspect of modern liberal capitalism and is not decisive in this account.
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Mick Harper
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The Cuba Story Part Three

But to insiders it is very important. All revolutionary regimes run into economic problems sooner or later. In fact as soon as the spare resources run out. Spare resources being at first all the low hanging fruit--estancias and Mob hotels. Then the slightly harder to get at stuff like middle class assets and Esso oil refineries. Finally pretty much anything within reach. But, it transpires, there are sound reasons why society is organised the way it is. It may not be fair, it may not be nice, but it is efficient. The revolutionary methods are not—otherwise they would have been adopted as standard all round the world.

So living standards start going down not just for the Mob and the middle classes but for everyone. The poor may have lived on bread alone during the ancien regime but now they have to queue for hours to get the bread. There can only be one reason for this disastrous state of affairs. Counter-revolutionaries. And it is true! It turns out the world is bigger than Cuba. Esso is bigger than Cuba. Above all the daddy of the counter-revolution is only ninety miles away. Though the evidence can be seen nearer home on the streets of Havana.
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Ishmael


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"All revolutionary regimes run into economic problems sooner or later"

Pinochet.

Correct: "All leftist revolutionary regimes run into economic problems sooner or later."
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Hatty
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Ireland is, or used to be, involved in tax evasion schemes, part of the 'sandwich' with Luxembourg, that enables money transfers. Not as illegal as money laundering but off-colour, and presumably profitable. Even North Korea manages to get goods including armaments from abroad so wouldn't Cuba have pulled off some similar deals? It always seems to be foreign currency that facilitates business.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
The Cuban Story Part Two

For the whole of her history, Cuba has had only one major export, sugar.


Wiley reckons that tobacco was smoked and traded before the Spanish, if it wasn't significant why did the Spanish try to control it. Havana was always known for its hot girls, gambling, tobacco and drugs, Parisian style counter culture. That's where the action is. That is where the continuity is.
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Mick Harper
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"All leftist revolutionary regimes run into economic problems sooner or later."

This is a more interesting question than either Pinochet or Ishmael would allow and I will deal with it in due course

Ireland is, or used to be, involved in tax evasion schemes, part of the 'sandwich' with Luxembourg, that enables money transfers. Not as illegal as money laundering but off-colour, and presumably profitable. Even North Korea manages to get goods including armaments from abroad so wouldn't Cuba have pulled off some similar deals? It always seems to be foreign currency that facilitates business.

Yes, the revelations about North Korea were certainly startling, though two million dying of starvation would suggest that these methods were not particularly successful, at least in terms of GNP per head. On the same subject the 'Fall of Communism' seems to have come about because the Soviet Union could no longer pay for wheat imports. Equally startling for a country that ought to be the (other) breadbasket of the world.

Oddly, one of the failings of Castro was that he was too idealistic to take advantage of anything particularly nefarious though after the end of Soviet subventions Cuba did get involved with the drug trade. The fall of Noriega seems to have been part of the US/Cuba conflict though it is all still very murky.

Wiley: you must develop your point, if you have one.
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Mick Harper
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The Cuba Story Part Four

Whenever a journalist is doing a colour piece on Cuba, there are the obligatory sequences on the 1950’s Buicks and Chevrolets and the equally obligatory reference to this being the result of the US blockade. It is not. The regime forbids the importation of vehicles for private use and therefore only fifties Buicks and Chevrolets are available for private use. It is true that Cuba could not import more modern Buicks and Chevrolets but no country in the world, after 1960, was importing Buicks and Chevrolets. Cuba was free to import Japanese cars like everyone else.

Whether a modern economy can operate without private ownership of road transport is an interesting one. Ironically it might be possible today with smart phones and hiring apps, just as a command economy might have been possible with computers. It is always a question of whether decision-making can be both centralised and diffused. The UK tried to nationalise commercial road transport after the war but the results were not good for this very reason and the experiment was not proceeded with.

But why then has Castroite Cuba been so relentless in pursuing these and other apparently inefficient policies? This is always a key difficulty facing revolutionary regimes and appears to stem from two considerations:
1) the revolutionaries are True Believers and have the greatest difficulty persuading themselves that this or that plank of their ideology is incorrect
2) the revolution itself will come into question if it is found, too often, that the old ways were better than the new.

But there is a way out.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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China
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Nah, they just gave up on the revolution.
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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But they pretend that they didn't. That paradox keeps the revolutionary state alive.
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Ishmael


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And if giving up on the (leftist) revolution will preserve the state, then there must be something inherent in the (leftist) revolutionary state that makes it untenable.

Most non-intellectuals would consider this kinda obvious.
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