Socialism On Display

For those of you (studying at Virginia Tech in particular) who toy with the notion that socialism is a swell idea because it holds those evil corporations in check, controls the flow of wealth to that class of citizens that doesn't need it, and provides for greater egalitarianism than does capitalism, I invite you to go to Cuba (I'll not be snide and say something like, "and stay there...") and see how your whimsy plays out in the real world.

The rice cooker saga referenced below is the perfect microcosm of the problem with the whole attempt at government control of economic activity.

Read and learn.

Cooking Fidel
By THERESA BOND, Wall Street Journal

On March 8, Fidel Castro received a standing ovation after announcing that rice cookers will now be included in the Cuban rationing system. It's hard to imagine a better illustration of this island dystopia's bizarre ways, more telling than any list of political prisoners or of human rights violations -- which, after all, are typical of any dictatorship, totalitarian or not.

First consider the surrealistic aspect of announcing the distribution at subsidized prices of an appliance that, in order to function properly, needs two things: rice and electricity. Yet rice is rationed at less then three kilos per person each month, hardly enough, considering that it's a staple for two meals a day with often hardly anything else to cook. As for electricity, planned blackouts were recently six hours a day. It is almost like subsidizing the distribution of forks for foie gras and champagne glasses among the homeless.

... the Comandante's gesture becomes genuinely magnanimous even if there isn't much to cook. The Communist Party daily, Granma, urged readers to "look at the faces of the Cuban women: joyful and smiling, happy, grateful and perhaps, yes, in a little hurry to reach home and prepare the first lunch or dinner with the recently acquired rice cooker." (link)

Cuban women are joyous because they are able to obtain - at great expense even though the price of the product is "subsidized by the government" - a common household appliance. Jesus.

For those of you who are unable to control your envy/hatred/resentment of the rich and want to recreate a worker's paradise here in the USA, try to look realistically at the alternative to the system we've created.

With all it's faults, capitalism has benefitted all Americans to a far greater degree than any Cuban will be able to experience under socialism.