Let's Ruin Cuba!

A look at Cuba's failed communist experiment.

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(Peter Bagge)

This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Let's Ruin Cuba!".

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Peter Bagge is a contributing editor and cartoonist at Reason.

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  1. Jerryskids

    Wait, Jeff Flake complained about people smoking Cuban cigars in a Havana nightclub? Are you kidding me? Please tell me he was making some kind of sarcastic joke. Even if he doesn’t personally care for smoking, he should celebrate the freedom of people to allow smoking in their establishment if they want to – and, c’mon, it’s Cuba! At least he only threatened to leave over the smoking he didn’t like rather than threaten to call the cops – but I have to wonder if he had been in a Miami nightclub if he’d have been so tolerant. (I know, he’s a politician so he’s probably got at least a touch of that disease where they start to confuse suggestions with commands, “should” for “shall”, – they think a law that allows men with guns to lock you in a cage if you do a certain thing is merely an expresssion of disapproval, an “incentive” to not do that thing.)

    1. Pompey

      Be respectful of the Senator’s Mormonism , shitlord. Check your privilege! (that reads so strangely)

    2. The Senator draw a lot of water in this town. You don’t draw shit Bagge.

  2. Once I saw the draft of 2500 bucks, I admit that my sister was like really generating cash in his free time with his COM. My aunt has done this for only 6 months and by now repaid the loan on their home and bought a new BMW..J1.

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  3. Overt

    Is that the Jacket making an appearance on the third page?

    1. Lord Rollingpin

      There’s more than one page!
      Thanks for the tip, I hadn’t noticed. I could have missed the Jacket!

      1. I was missing the front p. until now!

    2. Aloysious

      Is that the Jacket making an appearance on the third page?

      I think it might be Lou Reed.

      1. SIV

        I think you’re right

    3. CharlesWT

      And Welch bringing up the rear…

    4. Brochettaward

      It pretty much confirms every cosmo conspiracy theory I have about Reason.

  4. sarcasmic

    But poverty is so romantic!

  5. Illocust

    Good comic essay. Very enjoyable, and very sad how many people were forced to grow up in that country.

  6. sloopyinTEXAS

    Needs moar labelz.

  7. Jerryskids

    Still a little sad to see the “epiphany” that if the Cubans want a Starbucks maybe it’s not your place to tell them they shouldn’t. It’s the same blindess that I can’t seem to get some people to see when they’re protesting against something that other people want, like Walmart, for example. Oh, if Walmart moves in here it’ll drive all the little Mom-n-Pop’s out of business! It’s not the Walmart moving in that drives the Mom-n-Pop’s out of business – it’s all the people choosing to shop at Walmart instead of the Mom-n-Pop’s that does that. What you’re really against isn’t Walmart, what you’re against is other people having the choice to shop at Walmart if they want. Behind that, the reason you don’t want them to have that choice is because they will choose wrong, because they aren’t as smart and enlightened and morally pure as you. They may prefer $5 shirts to $10 ones, but that’s just because they’re poor and stupid and don’t see how much better for your soul it is to desire less rather than more. I’m sure Father Fidel understands that – and now all those evil capitalists are going to move into Cuba and corrupt the natives.

    1. Suthenboy

      “…the reason you don’t want them to have that choice is because they will choose wrong, because they aren’t as smart and enlightened and morally pure as you.”

      Yeah, so? You are privileged to have me choose for you.

      *I know people who actually believe this. Also, they are dumb as a box of rocks. These are the same people who bought real estate at the height of the bubble, married poorly, and have really fucked up children.

    2. Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer

      Same thing with greasy spoons.

  8. Suthenboy

    The more we ruin it, the better. Also, fuck everyone who laments the loss of ‘authenticity’.

    1. sloopyinTEXAS

      The whole “authentic” argument reminds me of the “home cooked” bit by a comedian. I think it was Carlin.

      Why would you want a restaurant to serve “home cooked” meals when they have access to state of the art equipment and sanitation processes in relation to the typically uneven cooking quality and substandard cleanliness of a home kitchen?

      Authentic means “I want to keep it that way for my week long visit and to hell with the convenience the people that live there desire.”

      1. sloopyinTEXAS

        http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X08upzdwejg

  9. lap83

    We need a better (mocking) word to describe the political ideology of rich people who want the poor to stay poor to preserve the quaintness of shopping centers and tourist destinations.

    1. sloopyinTEXAS

      Oppressitourists.

    2. Condescendistas.

    3. sarcasmic

      Authenticitarians.

    4. sloopyinTEXAS

      Progressives.

      1. The Other Libertarian

        LOL!

    5. Assholes.

    6. thrakkorzog

      Deadkennedistas

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-KTsXHXMkJA

    7. Separados-mas-egalitarios? Pictoresquistas? Comunistas abastados? Dictadores? Republicanos? Turistas sexuales? Al-truristas? Or how about old-fashioned Reconcentradores?

    8. Poverty tourists.

    9. Ascethetitians.

    10. The Other Libertarian

      Tourrorists!

  10. Jefferson's Ghost

    Poor doggies 🙁

  11. Sevo

    “…sugar daddy…”
    I see what he did there…

  12. Sevo

    Related
    Looks like Venezuela has an “Anti Going Out of Business” law:
    “Maduro threatens to seize idle Venezuela plants, jail owners”
    […]
    “He also said that businesspeople who “sabotage the country” by halting production at their plants risk being “put in handcuffs.”
    Last month the country’s largest food and beverage distributor, Empresas Polar, shut down its last operating beer plant. It says it has been unable to access hard currency to buy raw materials.”
    http://www.chron.com/news/worl…..469385.php
    Well, maybe not a law, maybe a tin-pot dictator just a little more dangerous than ours.

    1. Directive 10-285, anyone?

    2. Things in Venezuela could easily be worse. Brazil has been taken over by the Rubio and Cruz wing of the American Republican Party. So with “our” sonafabeetches running things, abortion laws look like 1941 Alabama. In response to the Zika virus outbreak (makes fetuses into pinheads), criminal penalties for self-ownership have increased sharply: rogue women who consent to an abortion or self-abort face between one and three years in prison; doctors can get up to ten years. The death squads of the U.S.-backed dictatorship are not the pro-life-after-death squads of antichoice enforcement.
      At least God’s Own Prohibitionists will have a suitable place to move to after losing again, like the unreconstructed Confederates who moved to Brazil to found the city of Americana.

      1. You have an obsessive illness about abortion. More’s the pity. Seek help.

        1. Gosh, what a brilliantly convincing YAF-manual Republican rejoinder! I am suddenly completely converted to the life-begins-at-erection faith and can’t wait to join a pack of men with guns out looking for Planned Parenthood clinics to strafe. Let’s call it the Robert Lewis Dear platoon of Warriors for the Babies, shall we? You get to be Sergeant, OK Luiz?

          1. Paloma

            Abortion is illegal in Venezuela. Look it up.

      2. Brazil has been taken over by the Rubio and Cruz wing of the American Republican Party. So with “our” sonafabeetches running things, abortion laws look like 1941 Alabama.

        Yes, it has nothing to do with Brazil being the world’s largest Catholic country by population.

        1. Are you suggesting that Italian fascism is being legislated on religious grounds in Brazil?

          1. Pompey

            So, uh, which?

          2. Actually, more closer to Falangism, no?

    3. Shades of Dr. Floyd Ferris in Atlas Shrugged: –In times of crisis, economic service to the nation is just as much of a duty as military service. Anyone who abandons it should be regarded as a deserter. I have recommended that we introduce the death penalty for those men, but Wesley wouldn’t agree to it.”

      I wonder if the Spanish-language “La Rebeli?n de Atlas” is banned in Venezuela?

    4. Suthenboy

      Genuis! Socialists outlaw failure!

      1. Have we finally found that one missing law that will being us utopia?

    5. Aloysious

      Across town, Maduro ally Jorge Rodriguez vowed there would be no recall referendum.

      “They got signatures from dead people, minors and undocumented foreigners,” Rodriguez said

      So… Illinoise Democrats?

      1. Paloma

        “They got signatures from dead people, minors and undocumented foreigners,” Rodriguez said

        In other words, the same people who voted for Maduro.

    6. CatoTheChipper

      A socialist revolution cannot tolerate counter-revolutionary wreckers, capitalist running dogs, and saboteurs.

      They are on the wrong side of history. To the gulag with all them!

      ?Viva la revoluci?n!

    7. Paloma

      They’d be in handcuffs except there’s probably a handcuff shortage.

  13. I’d been missing Peter’s sense of humor–AND National Lampoon…
    So another Berlin wall hast begun tipping and teetering, and that would leave how many communist dictatorships standing?

    1. Just the one in Berkeley, I guess.

  14. TimothyLane

    And if Big Brother Barry gets his way, all that will be exported here.

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  16. Bill Dalasio

    Meh. I think I’ll wait it out until the “authenticity” has been run out along with the Castro regime. I’ve been invited to participate in a flotilla to Cuba this fall. I just don’t think I can bring myself to go to a totalitarian dictatorship to party. If other people feel like they can do it without it bothering them, fine. Who am I to judge? I just don’t think I could ever really get comfortable participating in the matter. Plus, I don’t think I’d particularly like having to deal with the consequences of calling some little apparatchik a “dirty, little, commie rat bastard”.

  17. Ever consider the possibility the Christ stuff wasn’t satire? That its maker actually thought of El Jefe in those terms?

    1. Bill Dalasio

      Or even if he didn’t, that he was able to convince the authorities that he did.

      1. Until Peter let them in on the joke. Good job, Pete!

      2. That’d be covered by “pose”.

  18. Rufus The Monocled Derp Slayer

    Did anyone catch the ‘all libertarian crowd’ being described as being against globalized. I may have misread but the artists seems to have erroneously tagged libertarians as progressives.

  19. Hyperion

    Cuba will never improve unless the progressive in the USA are allowed to social engineer it. Then it will finally be utopia.

    1. Bill Dalasio

      I’d be happy to send them there to do it.

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  21. For those who say they’re going to forego the disaster tourism schtick now that Cuba is open – here’s something to consider.

    When a location is short of something, price signals leave that area and the profit motive encourages entrepreneurs to bring the missing good/service to reduce/eliminate that scarcity.

    Cuba has a scarcity of prosperity. That’s why things are so cheap. The more tourists flock to Cuba, the more prosperity they’ll sell the Cubans, reducing that scarcity. Prices will then rise, making Cuba less attractive for tourism, in pace with the increasing prosperity of Cubans.

    The best thing we could do for the Cubans is to flock down there and gawk at their ‘authenticity’.

    Suck it up and obey the price signals.

    1. Lord at War

      The more tourists flock to Cuba, the more prosperity they’ll sell the Cubans, reducing that scarcity.

      The entire world (less the US) has been touristing there for the last 50 some years and it’s still a shithole- is there something extra special about American dollars?

      1. Nope, they go into Castro’s pocket just as readily as the tourist cash from the rest of the world.

        Agamemnon seems to think the little people will be allowed to operate businesses in defiance of the government monopoly.

        1. *Yes I know they will regardless of authorization.

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  26. Mongo

    your name is peter lol

  27. C. S. P. Schofield

    When it will get REALLY interesting is when the embargo gets dropped. I think we are being prepared for this. I can’t really imagune any other reason for the line of “Raoul isn’t the hardliner that his brother was” drivel I keep running into. Raoul was, for decades, who Fidel sent for when he wanted somebody’s knees broken.

    The thing is, the one product Cuba has for the American market is the iconic Cuban Cigar. And quality control is in the toilet already. The very best cigar I ever smoked was a Cuban, were several of the very worst…and I started on Muriel Air Tips. If the Cubans try to expand into the American market, I fully expect that Cuban cigars will be unsmokable for the nest five to ten years. They’ve been skimping on infrastructure and upkeep for decades, they are already producing as many cigars as their current plant can, and it takes a minimum of three years to go feom seedling to cured leaf. Even if they have foreign money lined up to invest in remediation and expansion, that won’t have any beneficial effect for at least four years…and statist government are slow to admit when they need help.

    By the time they realize they need to look for investors, the legend of the Cuban Cigar may be dead. Even if they are as smart as they can be, outside investirs are going to want a large degree of control. Either way, the Cuban economy is in for an earthquake.

  28. Uncle Jay

    RE: Let’s Ruin Cuba!

    You mean let’s ruin Laurel and Hardy…I mean Fidel and Raul Castro.
    Oh wait.
    The twin tyrants have already ruined Cuba.
    My bad.

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