Cuba Can't Keep the Lights On | Hacker News Reader

Cuba Can't Keep the Lights On

wsj.com

Gift link to NYTimes coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/19/world/americas/cuba-power...

This is a much better link than the one in the submission. The submitted story is an opinion piece from the editorial board of the WSJ that is very light on details and high in rhetoric.

Would anyone familiar with cuba know how much of household solar adoption and infrastructure exists in Cuba?

  While this won't solve a country level problem I am sure, I am thinking was there a natural adoption to such alternative sources and go off-grid and address their immediate power needs as the article says rolling blackouts have been happening for a while.

This seems to be less about Cuba's problems and more about trying to one up their governance model (while, I'll point out, ignoring actual reasons).

It is a miracle they have survived with the US trying to destroy them over the last 60 years with sanctions, blockades, covert destabilisation, etc.

Deflection.

Cuba has an entire world they can trade with, and they do. Russia, China, countries in Europe, Canada, Mexico, etc..

Only US companies are mostly blocked (and there are exceptions there too).

Nothing about the status of Cuba can be attributed to US sanctions unless you think their problems come from a shortage of Bourbon or monster trucks.

That’s not the whole truth. The sanctions ban any ship from stopping at Cuba then coming to America for 90 days. Yes technically you could go from wherever to Cuba and that’s it, but no company would miss out on the massive American market in exchange for a tiny island nation. They can’t import fuel to run their power plants, nor the solar panels to replace them.

I have worked in banking. You have no idea how difficult it is to do financial transactions if you are on sanctions list. It affects not just US companies or banks. Sanctions impact is sweeping. It is like async keyword. If you touch US dollar then you cant deal with sanctioned entities without risking criminal prosecution.

Easier for narcos to do banking (big banks are guilty of it) than Cubans.

Back in the day, people used to emigrate from Spain to Cuba (and Venezuela) in search of a better life.

There is a widespread misconception of Cuba as a poor country that has not been allowed to get off its feet, when it was really a wealthy and successful place run down by a catastrophic ideology.

In that sense, Cuba is not that different from Eastern European countries before the fall of the Berlin Wall: places that had been prosperous for a very long time and which should have remained prosperous if they hadn't been held under poverty and oppression by a terrible economic and political system.

Successful communist revolutions don't happen in wealthy countries. Every single attempt at a revolution in even a moderately wealthy country failed, because people opposed the revolution. They were only successful in countries that were poor to begin with, or where the wealth belonged to the elite and did not benefit the people. Cuba fell in the latter category.

Eastern Europe is a poor comparison. They didn't choose communism, but they were conquered by the USSR.

There were basically two kinds of communist countries. Those where one oppressive ideology replaced another. And those where the communism was imposed by a stronger communist country.

This is totally false. In Indonesia, the communists were winning elections left and right until the CIA installed an anti communist dictator. The same happened in Brazil and Iraq. The CIA has taken major direct action to suppress popular communism across the world

And those would have all been in the "one oppressive ideology replaced another" category. In wealthy countries, the most effective antidotes to communism were social democracy and social liberalism, which gave the working class something worth defending.

No they wouldn’t, communists were winning elections. Indonesia was a democracy. Neoliberalism is built on oppression. Communism was denied the right to exist by violence, not by liberation. It’s ridiculous to call it oppressive in that context.

Indonesia was a democracy in name only. It had no tradition of peaceful transition of power. Sukarno became an increasingly authoritarian strongman, who tried to balance power between various anti-democratic factions.

What communists were winning elections left and right in Brazil?

But also... how are communists winning elections in a bourgeois democracy even remotely similar to a revolution?

Fair, that’s mistaken. But the hint of communism lead to US backed coup in Brazil just like half of the rest of the world. I don’t follow your point about comparison to revolution.

> the hint of communism lead to US backed coup in Brazil

No, the unfounded fear of communism did. All that was happening in Brazil were wildly popular base reforms around worker's rights, land reform and other very needed changes. Nothing that hasn't already happened in most wealthy democracies.

> I don’t follow your point about comparison to revolution.

You replied to jltsiren's comment by saying:

    This is totally false. (...) the communists were winning elections left and right until the CIA installed an anti communist dictator. (...) The CIA has taken major direct action to suppress popular communism across the world

I apologise if I misinterpreted it, but it seemed like you were saying that:

* The CIA suppressed successful communist revolutions

* The CIA has done that by installing anti-communist dictators

* These coups happened in countries where communists were winning elections

Points 1 and 3 are contradictory. A revolution happens when the status quo regime is toppled and replaced with a different one. Communist parties getting to power via elections means they are working within the existing regime.

Both cannot be true.

I see, I guess I read the original reference to revolution loosely, as though gp was talking more about the rise of communism generally, not specifically by means of revolution.

> Back in the day, people used to emigrate from Spain to Cuba (and Venezuela) in search of a better life.

Cuba in 1959 was the wealthiest Caribbean nation.

Well it wasn’t real communism anyway

Is it real communism? Do you actually know anything about communism or Cuba?

He was being sarcastic, obviously, because that's what the proponents of Marxism/Communism say about the hundreds of failed experiments with it.

They "did it wrong" or it was "real communism."

And do you know what real communism is? And who tried and failed at it?

I realise arguing with people on the internet is pointless.

If we've had a whole host of attempts at communism, real or not, and they've all basically trashed the country, it's probably time we put that theory on hold. Either no one knows what "real" is, or they can't get it in place.

The residual risk is too high - likelihood high, consequence fairly catastrophic.

This seems like an easy way to avoid actually having to learn anything about the subject. Perhaps there’s a reason you’d prefer to dismiss the entire subject out of hand, rather than spend a few minutes trying to learn something about it.

Even the Germans didn’t make it work…

Communism must have been a truly extraordinary economic system, to be able to take a place full of Germans and turn it into a developing country...

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