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Conservatives providing cover for socialists

Many visit Cuba to see, in part, the vintage cars driving down the road. Given that the vintage cars are there out of necessity due to Cuban economics and the difficulty of importing, is that kind of like gawking at people using polaroid cameras not because they're Zennial hipsters, but because they don't have the means to access digital cameras? // photo by Spencer Everett

In shocking news, Cubans have taken to the streets in a major protest against the Cuban government. It's been called the largest protest since 1956, when the communist Fidel Castro took over, after which, thousands fled to Florida. The cojones it takes to call out repressive governments is immeasurable. The things governments do to people that dare speak out against it are among some of the most evil things humans have done to one another. The Cuban government has been no exception.

One video posted on Facebook showed a Cuban woman shouting "Our children are dying of hunger!"

Another video on Twitter showed a group of protesters chanting "Patria y vida" (Homeland and life), a reference to a song that criticizes and advocates for changing out the government, a reversal of the Cuban communist slogan "Patria o muerte" (Homeland or death). Some protesters were brave enough to shout "down with Communism!"

A video even showed protesters surrounding an overturned police car.

Life had not been easy for Cubans in the past few decades, to say the least, and the past year of even more acute food and medicine shortages have sent people into the streets.

In a country where the vast majority of the economy is controlled by the government, this is nothing surprising. Any country that gravitates toward a centrally planned economy tends to incur massive shortages resulting in an approximately as robust and wealthy economy as my checking account balance. Quick glimpses of the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cambodia, China before they instituted economic free zones, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Somalia would attest to this. Even the sectors within the United States that suffer more government control are the ones that have poor outcomes like education, healthcare, and housing (at least in California). And because I know some Bernie Bros and DSA provocateurs may object, no, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are not centrally planned economies to the extent the above are. Not even close.

While there's not enough space here to go over all of the failures of centrally planned and otherwise socialist policies like the economic calculation problem and that politicians tend to favor cronies over productivity, it has been pretty clear that every foray into socialistic economies, particularly when compared to freer markets, have ended in utter disaster. I would instead direct you to the work of Ludwig von Mises and FA Hayek with a healthy dose of Why Nations Fail.

There has been, however, another argument illustrating Cuba's (and other nations') downfall that spreads among those that are more sympathetic to socialists. That is that the United States has imposed crippling sanctions and embargoes against these countries. The Cuban president tweeted as much. It was common of Castro, as well as other socialist leaders like Mugabe. It's also the claim of domestic socialists like on Jacobin Magazine.

This is not the image of a man
who is starving. // photo by the
Russian Federation (oh, damn,
am I a Russian agent???)
I almost never agree with what's printed in Jacobin, particularly on economics, but you know what? They're right. Sanctions and embargoes do harm these countries and they harm the people of the countries far more than they harm the government. When the United States restricts the trade of goods of a country to a select few, typically other socialist countries, scarcity skyrockets and either costs go up or shortages occur. Since they're socialist countries, it's pretty much always shortages. 

Conservatives that push for sanctions don't hide this. In fact, it's one of their explicitly stated goals of sanctions. To hurt the economies of these countries to get the populace to turn against their government.

So let me get this straight.

Conservatives think socialist and communist countries are committing human rights violations and their citizens are suffering. And their solution to end their suffering...is to impose additional suffering? Huh??? Yeah, that is sure to win hearts and minds. Their human rights violations are bad, but ours are good because we have good intentions. No one could possibly see through this brilliantly laid plan. That sounds exactly like the behavior conservatives love to criticize the left for.

The Heritage article even talks about how communism in Cuba had been an abject failure. That is true. But then their brilliant idea is to help the failure along? Why?? What's the point? Are they just insecure about their claims that socialist economies can't work? The article talks about accelerating the decline of the Castro regime, but the author unironically talks about the embargoes starting to work after 32 years. Thirty-two years!!? It takes an entire generation of human suffering for this tactic to start to work?? This article was written in 1994. With the power of hindsight, we see that this concept was mind-numbingly stupid. Fidel Castro would be the president of Cuba for another 14 years, stepping down only after his health started failing. His brother Raul took over in 2008, and after two terms of five years each, he voluntarily stepped down from the role, instituting term limits.

Yeah, those embargoes and sanctions worked so well, that it took biology to end Fidel Castro's regime. Good job, conservatives. You sure showed him.

Those sanctions did accomplish one thing.

It became a scapegoat that socialists could use to divert attention away from the failures of their own murderous ideology. Did you see any mention or admission that socialist policies held any blame in those Jacobin articles? I didn't. There were plenty of mentions of how the capitalist imperialists were to blame for it all.

It doesn't matter that the claim makes little sense. It doesn't matter that socialism has inherent flaws in its ideology. It doesn't matter that socialist countries are such basket-cases that they can't seem to put together any kind of a semblance of a domestic economy, apart from the sanctions. It doesn't matter that the argument essentially boils down to free markets are so powerful that disconnecting a socialist economy from a free market's trade route would completely destroy it. It doesn't matter that, in the case of Venezuela, sanctions came after their economy went to hell. It doesn't matter that, whenever the means of production are seized, productivity inevitably tanks. All they need to say is that the US instituted sanctions (which is true) and that sanctions are harmful (which is true). The Twitterverse doesn't have an attention span longer than that.

So stop giving them that excuse. Get rid of the sanctions. Let their people have a slightly better fighting chance for a life. Let the socialist economies destroy themselves. Highlight their failures with no scapegoats available. Let the oppressed come to this country to escape tyranny and poverty. Allow charities to help those in need.

Stop giving the socialists cover for their ideology. The communists don't need your help to make their citizens' lives miserable. So maybe stop doing that.

Patria y vida.

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