Pants-of-dog wrote:The argument that someone has to live in a certain place before their argument can be taken seriously is not a good argument.
If I were to say, for example, that the USA has a higher rate of incarceration per capita than Cuba, this is true even if I refuse to move to either place.
No one is going to move from a developed country to a developing country just to prove a point on a forum.
And if you are going to argue that Cuba is a Bad Place because so many people move from Cuba to developed countries, then please note that the number of people immigrating to developed countries from capitalist developing countries is far, far higher. By the logic of the Bad Place argument, Mexico and other capitalist countries in Central America are even worse Bad Places.
There is a difference between taking cues about something and formulating an abstract idea and/or inspiration vs what many members are doing here which comes down to frank ideolization.
It is true the world is full of nuance. We are taught that WW2 Germany was evil, and certainly, the "famous" (or infamous) examples are in fact evil, however this denies the opportunity to analyze the nuance. It prevents us from reconciling that many of the people that helped rebuild the country after the terrible war were not in fact evil. Same shit with Japan, and Vietnam, and every other country.
Cuba is not an exemption. Nuance does exist and you can make abstractions and even take inspiration of how to approach problems.
Statistics alone don't say anything. First of all, you would have to trust that the actual statistics are accurate. Something that can be esily questioned.
There is also the issue of interpretation. For instance, many of these statistic that some of you are trying to push as "proof" that Cuba is some sort of success were favorable even before the Castro revolution. Cuba had very low infant mortality that rivaled the "rich, first world countries" long before it became a "socialist" country. And then you are left with the other "cofounding variables" problem. How do you know that the low infant mortality is a result of "excellent" heath care vs a more liberal approach to abortions of non viable fetuses and lowers mortality compared to other countries were abortion is prohibited and/or taboo? Same deal with mother mortality. How do you know that a better overall life expentacy is the result of such health policies vs having less deaths due to coronary artery disease due to fast food or fewer accidental deaths due to less vehicles on the roads. Even if you believe the numbers... which again I'd be very skeptical given the source... you are still left with the paradigm of what works and what doesn't or why/how this got to be the way it is.
No, the conclusions and propaganda of the most fierce defenders of this nonsense are laughable at best, dangerous at worse. And they themselves don't believe it, if they did... they would be doing everything in their power to move there.
Take it for what is worth, I doubt any of you has a more intimate knowledge of Cuba than I do ( I am open to be proven wrong...), if for nothing else because I actually lived there for 2 decades and born to cuban parents. My actions are congruent with my beliefs about cuba, it is a shithole, and I got out of there are soon as I could and have not tried to go back for any reason. On the other hand you have a couple of people that might have drop down as tourists, with $$ for a short vacation and that don't seem to want to make Cuba their permanent residence
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- By wat0n
- By JohnRawls