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Comment by StillBored | Hacker News Reader

Please, being under economic sanctions for longer than most people on this board have been alive has done more to damage Cuba than any kind of political/economic system could have ever managed. Especially given their main industry was tourism and agriculture. The rich Americans that poured dollars into Havana, were cut off along with the supply of manufactured goods, and being a resource poor island made it hard to build an industrial base.

Compared with their more capitalist neighbors who aren't doing great either, might point you to reasons why a whole region, which includes a resource rich continent have been struggling for the past couple hundred years. I will start you off with the wikipedia page on banana republic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

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Please! :) The Castro regime made the decision to seize any land from anyone with 50 acres or more. What sort of outcome did Fidel, Che, and Cienfuegos expect? Well, they expected to build thriving trade economy with the Soviets... whoops!

My point is Marxism/Socialism trades one form of oppression for another. Marxism fails to identify poor leadership as oppressive. Socialist systems are run by error prone leaders that crave power and fortune... They are the same people that run corporations under a different flag. Che was killed trying to overthrow another nation to put in Cuban friendly socialist leadership... How is that different from your banana example?

At least in capitalism we can vote with our dollars. We can spend our money on things we believe in. Not with socialism. Good luck finding choice or innovation that the state doesn't support. It literally crushes innovation.

Besides these arguments, what great things came from Marxism that we enjoy today?

I sorta think your conflating authoritarian socialism (aka communism) with democratic socialism which is as large a mistake as conflating pure democracy with corrupt representative democracy where a minority of the population is used to rubber stamp an oligarchy.

Similarly, capitalism in its purest forms is basically feudalism because the people won't have any dollars to vote with. And time and time again it seems the benevolent Henry Ford style capitalists are proven to be the minority. So, one might say that without the socialist scare in the late 1800's early 1900's which forced the hands of the capitalists all those quality of live improvements everyone likes to go on about probably wouldn't exist. We might all be working 80 hour weeks and scraping by in company hovels eating whatever gruel the company store gives us. But then again, a large portion of the US population is wildly unaware of how the bottom 30% live, while ignoring their own debt slavery. So enjoy your bread/circuses while the rich take an even larger slice of the economic pie.

edit: How about some George Carlin, RIP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyvxt1svxso

I love Carlin. Thanks

Perhaps you're changing the subject? My original post was in response to an invocation of Karl Marx, the father of Communism... as I understand it, Communism is about as authoritarian as it gets.

I mean an intermediate stage from Capitalism to Communism is called "Dictatorship of the proletariat"...

>At least in capitalism we can vote with our dollars. We can spend our money on things we believe in.

The end state of the current US capitalistic system is a rental economy where "you'll own nothing and be happy"(WEF terminology, not mine). We are seeing this in the loss of the ability to buy real estate but also in the push to move towards a subscription model for everything. Subscription cars vs ownership, subscription services vs ownership, even subscriptions for hardware such that you rent hardware for a monthly fee and "trade up" every other year. Capital has exhausted every other avenue for growth so this is what is left. Combine that with wage stagnation and inflation eating away what little value is left. How is it possible to follow your plan in the world?

The end state of socialism and communism is also "you'll own nothing and be happy". All political/economic systems suffer from corruption and abuse of power at the top. The only difference is the ability for the masses to control their own destiny. Market economies give them a little, control economies give them none.

True, yeah both extremes suck. My optimistic hope is that the US self corrects to something like what the European countries have: a flavor of Democratic Socialism. Right now its not looking good, the US is moving further to extreme capitalism with no real end in sight.

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