None of those things should be illegal. It is really annoying to see how a leader class kills people of hunger and make everything illegal so that now everyone is a criminal for trying to survive.
What I've seen is this: Those who have access to tourists or to the government are rich. Corruption is rampant as I've seen people bribing police right at the airport to have their things sorted out.
The mainstream corruption in society revolves around casa particulars and taxis. Essentially, you have right to rent a room and you have right to ride a taxi but there are strict limits on how much you can do it. So what more entrepreneurial people do? Simply distribute the business ownership to their friends and relatives on paper and keep growing and running their enterprises.
Also, there are two different types of shops and businesses: Locals only shops, locals only restaurants, locals only buses that are at very poor quality and I believe they are free or heavily subsidised and there are better quality versions that have prices similar to the European countries(prices way beyond a person with a salary can afford). So who do you think eats at these expensive restaurants? Yes, tourists - but also people who have access to tourists and people who work for the government.
One day a wandered around my casa particular in Havana and ended up in a place with very nice houses quite close to governmental buildings. I took some photos, enjoyed the place and ate at a restaurant. Then I noticed that the restaurant got very busy with military personel and well dressed people. Those were definitely not tourists, those were people from the nearby governmental buildings having a dinner after work.
Very interesting experience overall. Almost completely positive, full of life lessons about so many things including classes in the society where they are not supposed to exists. I'm also convinced that consumerism is not the only way to a happy life and abundance and excess are not necessarily the answer. The first week was hard, the second week I was completely happy to have only 2 options for beer and 1 option for chocolate.
So, on my first week it was hard. I was working in very central London and I had access to peak consumers options. I like it, I was used to have anything that crossed my mind being readily accessible for me. Except for shorts that week, apparently. My order from Amazon did not arrive and I was trusting Amazon enough to skip going to a high street shop to buy one up until the last day.
So I flew to Cuba with no short pants. Turns out its very hard to buy clothes in Cuba, I didn't know how locals manage to do it and I was out of luck. If you stay at a resort, there are shops in the hotel but I wasn't going to stay in a resort. I found out that there's a shopping mall in Havana and you can even use your credit card to do purchases(I went there with very little cash as my research indicated that ATMs work fine. In reality, not that fine). The mall was nothing like the ones I was used to and the shops sell knock offs at original prices.
Anyway, I was for a rough start so I was forced to improvise and not follow my initial plan. Later the things stabilised, I was able to find an ATM that will let me withdraw cash from my HSBC account but by the time I already befriended a few local people who would give me a glimpse into the actual daily life in Cuba. I went to the places I was planing to go, great beaches and everything but my mind got occupied with the way everything works in Cuba, so I kept paying attention.
First week, I was missing my routine in London. The snacks, the entertainment, even the food. I was feeling like missing out and I had no idea how to enjoy life without those things.
Then I realised that I was feeling bad because I was expecting to spend my time the way I spend it in London but I was not in London. The consumerist lifestyle in London has defined my expectation and I was annoyed because those expectations are not met by Cuba. A nice restaurant would take the edge of it but the core problem persisted.
Then I started looking inside. Do I really need to spend money for enjoyment? Do I really need to taste a different beer every time and judge it? Does my pizza needs to be proper Italian? Do I need advertisements to give me ideas to do or buy something? I found out that no, I don't need ads and I don't need to occupy my mind with the decision making of the kind if lager I should drink tonight. Instead of riding the amusement park of consumerism, I can simply be curios and explore!
My second week was much more chill. I knew which beer I like, I like Cristal and I have no interest in Bucanero or Presidente. Big deal, it's a nice beer and available pretty much everywhere. Maybe Heineken is better but I don't care anymore, that's not something that I would spend time on.
I need something sugary? Well, it's not available on every corner so I will just not have it now and If I still want it I will buy one of the few snacks that are available. It is alright not to have it now.
I found myself to consume much less and be quite content with it and I found out that I was enjoying the stuff I consumed much more. My actions were no longer guided by the consumer infrastructure and the simplest things were giving me more joy than the speciality stuff that I had to buy to out do the regular things I buy. A fish at a local restourant tastes much better when I'm hungry than the fish I would eat at the restaurant that is highly rated and endorsed by influencers.
Don't get me wrong, I do value and enjoy the variety of food, items and entertainment in the western societies however I no longer believe that these things are the main ingredients for a happy life or society. It's nice to have those things, it brings so much culture too but if you think that your life will be less fulfilling without those you will be wrong. These are nice to have but there is a danger to give up on actually fulfilling stuff in order to live a consumerist life. Let's not try to optimize for having ever more food and gadgets and things.
Because I didn't know and maybe I should. I spent half my life unaware of the origin of "capitalism".
In the early 20th century, "consumerism" was supposedly used to mean something like "consumer protection".
But in the mid 20th century, it was apparently adopted as a preferred term to "capitalism" in order to contrast Western economies with communism.
Then, by the 60s or so, it morphed into something like the modern sense of "a policy of encouraging consumption".
In order to raise our lives level there were previous savings that were reinvested in process improvement, which eventually kept raising our life standards. Capitalism is exactly about that: same product at better price or higher quality products.
We humans always try (yes, left wing people also!) to buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest price (in general terms). That is why competition is good, because it does not let business abuse a monopolistic position and the prices drop.
People try to associate excessive consumption to capitalism. I do not think it is a trait of capitalism per se.
Cuba is not really in abject poverty so much as they have a command-control economy (so some things are subsidized to be much cheaper than in our economic system, and others aren’t) that is pretty corrupt. They are definitely not a rich country on average or at p50, just not in abject poverty. According to some sources I found on Google their nominal/PPP GDP is actually pretty middling, which is likely due to what I mentioned about a lot of high-standard-of-living services being available despite low availability of goods.
The shortages of things are definitely bad. But the lack of variety in consumer goods really isn’t, and is probably what the parent comment was pointing out. There are not a million different things to buy as seen on TV/Instagram, but that in itself doesn’t appear to have a huge impact on life.
From what I read, consumerism did not have the negative connotation mid-century, whereas capitalism did.
I don't know how it happened, but seemingly "consumerism" acquired a similarly negative connotation, which is a Sisyphean cycle with euphemisms.
As I understand it, "capitalism" was an invention of the writers of the Communist Manifesto, while ironically "communism" was not. When a concept is developed purely for oppositional purposes, it can and often does attract people to defend it.
But in some sense, I feel like it doesn't really exist due to its origin. It amounts to the status quo, plus a word that lets people feel like they are opposing (or supporting) some one or thing rather than fog.
It’s just that the western lifestyle is not without its own faults. There’s lessons to be learned about being happy without being full blown consumerists.
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.
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.
I'd rather use my money in ways that make a more positive impact. Though I am not rich enough for that I guess.
The only difference is that Cuba doesn't have the opportunity to exploit foreign nations to enrich itself (and get even fatter on taxes).
You're being coy, in not describing the things you find so tiresome.
Before Brexit, I worked for a company that opened a branch near London, in order to access the European market. I didn't make it my overriding goal to go there, but I probably could've, and a co-worker went there and subsequently got married and stayed.
How better? No economic data here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_American_and_Car.... I can say there were riots last July due to a lack of medicines and food.
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.
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.
My point is that, happiness and life satisfaction are not tied to the abundance of consumer goods. When you are sad you don't have to buy something, it's alright to have a few options and your happiness level doesn't need to change by your next purchase. You can experience that in Cuba.
So the problem you see there is mostly a regulation problem, not a wealth inequality problem.
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.
There were some protests in Cuba, of course as usual presented in the western media as anti-government. Unsurprisingly, they were dwarfed by pro-government counter-protests.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Some, but definitely not most. Step out of the touristic areas sometime and you will see. Poverty, poor healthcare, slow, overpriced internet, blackouts, food shortages, very low wages and very high prices, some places only get tap water for a few hours a day (sometimes every few days)... Such good lives they have.
Give me examples of colonialism nowadays. Or what you consider colonialism.
For me exploiting is only one thing: forcing the other part to do something under threat or coaction.
Namely: "we should pay more to x, y, z" is not exploiting. Going to them and forcing them to work for us, it is. When someone does not have alternative and you have something to offer, that is not exploiting, even if it looks like little to us. The solution for these people to get more is to have more people trying to employ them, then salaries get higher. This is a relatively slow process, but it happens (it happened in history).
We go to less developed nations because it is cheaper. True. And they benefit from it. Are they worse than us? No, it is just their countries did not reach the same conditions yet. But you would say: hey, we should pay them more, give them a better place to live, blabla, which I get, it is ok, I am with you in part, but there is a problem: people buy the products that are cheaper for the same kind of product. And it makes sense: you will not pay more than you need for something (I mean a meaningful extra amount that limits what you can do, not one cent more or less, of course), since you have a limited amount of money, which is resources.
So at the end you have a chain of supply where if you raise the prices much, people will stop buying. If people stop buying, people in developing countries go unemployed. It is all a chain. So now you would ask: how do you raise the salaries for these people? Letting many employers, I mean as many as possible, enter the country, because that means that employers start competing for the employees and the salaries get higher. They cut on their profits if they cannot find workers.
This is how it works. Many people do not understand it. I have been there, working there, living there in places where this happens. And the difference between some of these people having an employment that is probably three times and health care insurance (I talk about Vietnam, but this happens in many developing countries in similar ways) is that the sister of one of those guys does not end up doing what you are thinking and instead goes to university with the help of the family.
This is the reason why I cannot call that exploiting. They improve their lives, eventually they will learn and compete with us (they already do in some areas or are starting to).
I find very hypocrite people complaining about better conditions for others (we all want that I guess) when it is not them who pay the bill.
There is no replacement for this way of developing IMHO, and it has been the model of success, with all its problems.
Forced redistribution is awful to make people wealthy, even if it looks counter-intuitive, because we all have a tendency to think that if someone has a lot and someone has too little, then we take away from one and give to another.
But what many people do not take into account is that doing that kills the incentive to create the wealth in the first place.
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.
This is Adam Smith's just-so story, but he was wrong - no society has ever been shown to survive on a barter economy. Anthropologists have shown that what existed before trade was the same as what exists today when trade collapses: informally held debt. Alice knows how to work leather, Bob knows how to work wood; Bob needs a pair of shoes; Alice gives Bob a pair of shoes to satisfy his need and both Alice and Bob remember that; later, when Alice's house needs repairs she knows whose shoulder to tap on.
This is "barter" in the sense that Alice's and Bob's services have been transacted through time, but you'd be moving the goalposts since you just defined barter as Alice and Bob sitting down and determining precisely how much wood-labour equates to a fixed quantity of leather-labour at the point of purchase.
If you'd like to learn more, then David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5,000 Years, is something of a standard reference on the subject. It's on the Internet Archive.
But how do coins, sheep, yarn, or whatever, originally come to be? If nothing is free, there must be an infinite chain of trade, leading back to an infinite past. But cosmology and evolution suggest otherwise.
I've been to NYC a couple of times.
Things I got there (in more than one trip):
a terrible pretzel from a street vendor (cold and *wet*)
a *fantastic* cup of coffee at a cafe where I was meeting someone
a bowl of lentil soup (surprisingly very cheap)
some chicken lo mein, about the same price and exactly the same generic dish as anywhere I've been in the US, except perfectly executed, really fresh and hot
a chicken souvlaki pita, one of the best, although the place (in Queens) smelled kinda like urine
However, I think bartering has always existed for a reason, and when it did not or trading was forbidden, what you end up is with poorer or more violent societies.
This is the same reason why we specialize our labour and we do not do all things: shoes, food, blankets, bridges, roads, trains, planes, computers. Because if we had to self-supply fully, our lives would be much more miserable. From there it follows that trading is a natural choice: I can give something valuable and someone else can give me something valuable in exchange. Of course that gets mixed with debt and other stuff (I did not read your reference yet so I cannot assess how true it is in my very limited opinion) but the alternative to bartering, trading, etc. is violence. Every time.
There is an analysis from a well-known spanish philosopher that died short ago, his name is Antonio Escohotado, well-known for having written a book about the history of drugs that was translated to many languages.
He wrote a 3-volumes book that is called "Los enemigos del comercio" (The enemies of trade).
He researched the topic with unusual passion, since when he was young he used to be a communist. He wanted to explain to himself why he was so communist at some point. He spend around 15 years writing that. One of his main conclusion is that the alternative to trading is trading people (slaves) and the conquer of the other (violence). I really think it is true. He establishes some relationships between the amount of trading and the violence in societies (military vs trade societies). I think it is a nice read, but I am not sure it is translated to other languages as of now. The one for the drugs it is.
Greetings.