All else being equal, government restrictions of automobile ownership improves Cuban life expectancy by reducing accidents but also by forcing the population to increase their reliance on more physically demanding forms of transportation (e.g. cycling and walking)
Wait, how is this a bad thing? lol
The hatred against Cuba or Venezuela is fucking bizarre when you consider what life is like in the rest of Latin America.
I cannot imagine how you would get worse than.... this:
CW: not graphic, but seriously depressing shit, NSFL
https://youtu.be/-Qr4CmC1wjA
Like maybe I am more immune to this because I speak Spanish and have relatives in Mexico so I know vaguely what life is like and while there is a lot of alarmism.....it's really, really fucking bad in Latin America. One of my moms friends is from El Salvador and she lived through part of the civil war and the stories she would tell my mom are fucking horrifying...hell, one of my uncles has been kidnapped by the the cartel THREE fuckin' times.
Yeah Cuba is poor, but I prefer the problems Cuba has over being literally turned into fucking soup by some methed out paramilitary freak and displayed in the town square because I said something about maybe trying to organize a drive for better wages at the maquiladora that I work at
like when my mom visited Michoacan to see her mom the locals were talking about how just a few days ago there mutilated bodies strung upside down from the bridge they were currently crossing under
My dad is from Culiacan and look at this fucking shit: https://youtu.be/G4rRYEi2iT4
This is what people have to live through in a capitalist utopia like Mexico. Show me this shit happening in Cuba. You won't find it.
edit: Even with the gore banned, browsing through the NarcoFootage subreddit will just make you SO FUCKING ANGRY with these dishonest shitheads. You have literal 12 year olds posing with machine guns and shit who likely won't even make it to their 15th birthday. You'll see shit like the government rending a neighborhood with a minigun barrage from a helicopter to execute a cartel leader who got too out of line. It's just so fucked. Even if everything about Cuba is true, it's still better than WHAT WE KNOW TO BE REALITY in Mexico
An economy with centralized economic planning by government like that of Cuba can force more resources into an industry than its population might desire in order to achieve improved outcomes in that industry at the expense of other goods and services the population might more highly desire.
oh no :( i wanted less healthcare
car ownership is heavily restricted in Cuba and as a result the country’s car ownership rate is far below the Latin American average (55.8 per 1000 persons as opposed to 267 per 1000) (Road Safety, 2016). A low rate of automobile ownership results in little traffic congestion and few auto fatalities. […] In fact, local physicians attribute a strong role to the massive introduction of bicycles in order to explain the decrease in traffic accidents mortality
imagine calling this "repression".
that first quote, lmao
"an authoritarian government might not have its priorities straight, and choose to invest in quality healthcare rather than treats for its population"
That's unironically petty bourgeois/PMC brainworms that eventually at least partially caused the counterrevolutions of 1989.
Sure, you had access to a new Škoda 742 in five years, had the possibility to go to Bulgaria or Yugoslavia on vacation in the summer, and buy Belarusian fridges that will work for decades to come. (and
But the young and other oppositionists wanted a BMW, go to Vacation to the swiss Alps and buy American appliances instead, and admittedly, some of them did get that.
Those that didn't though, and didn't live in countries whose economies were flooded by low quality goods from the west (either used or just shitty) like Poland, were shit out of luck and also hit by different problems like the return of organized crime, and compared to other eastern europeans who nowadays just lick boot, often would not mind having back the benefits of socialism, but are often too high on the opium of nationalism and religion or embrace social democracy out of fear of the return of aggressive imperialism.
The more I read about the eastern bloc, the more I realize how much the petite bourgeoisie and labor aristocrats (or more specifically, the people who thought they would be in the labor aristocracy under capitalism) were instrumental in destroying things.
Well, Trotsky/Bukharin (on the end of the class struggle in the USSR) and the Corn Man ("State of all the people" instead of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat) were certainly wrong on this.
Cuba is just propping their life expectancy up by promoting safer, healthier lifestyles. Good thing I live in the US where I'll never have to worry about that :amerikkka-clap:
The author doesn't mean people actually want less healthcare. What he really means is under free market capitalism, Cubans would definitely have less healthcare overall, which is true. Because lots of people would be priced out of getting any. So in aggregate, less is being spent on healthcare but that's because only those who can afford it have it. The "iT's bAsIC eCoNoNicS!" crowd conflates the people's will with what the aggregate market demands under capitalism.
"Cuba can't possibly have a lower infant mortality rate than other Latin American countries. They are clearly lying so we westerners, the only trustworthy people, adjusted the numbers to reflect their true values. Also, the fact that their country isn't a car-centric hellscape is proof of communist repression and we can't even deny the health benefits that come with that so we'll just say they don't count."
https://mobile.twitter.com/VincentGeloso here's the twitter of one of the authors
there really isn't much to it, hes just a standard issue lib dork. likes Chicago school of economics type loser
however
one of the other authors has written a book called Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World
Do We Have to Say It Again? Socialism Sucks! Apparently we do. Because today millions of Americans—young and old—are flocking to the socialist banner and chanting, “What do we want? Socialism—the economic system that has impoverished people everywhere and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions! And when do we want it? Now!”
:screm-a:
the economic system that has impoverished people everywhere and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions!
But enough about capitalism.
impoverished people everywhere
The adoption of communism in Russia and China alone led to the largest improvement in quality of life and reduction of poverty in human history. If Cuba never had a revolution then living conditions for the working class there would certainly be much worse than they are today. Western anti-communists tend to be part of the labor aristocracy or petite bourgeoisie. For those classes, improvement in material conditions for the poor, oppressed, and working classes is entirely irrelevant. They only care about how their own classes were impacted because fundamentally they think they are the only people that matter. And for them, they only see a lack of consumer choices and not being able to live in a level of personal wealth that lets them feel like they're better than most. In fact, they see poverty reduction as a bad thing as those resources could have instead been used on themselves.
where is this socialist banner, by the way? would like to get my hands on one
"But nazism is good ackyually. Just one more chance. Sure it didn't last long, but it was really really FUNNY!"
What the hell is wrong with westerners? Do they have a genetic error that leads them to be more likely to have a dark core personality?
These communists BRUTALLY forcing people to adhere to this mortal coil. I'd rather have the freedom to work until I die of something I don't have the money to get treated.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I’m not a socialist. I’ve never read a Karl Marx book and I don’t know anything about the ideology, but it’s obviously happening because… well, those people are obviously socialists. Why else would they be doing all of these things?”
“Because I’m from a western country, I have to have access to better information than the average person in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. I can’t possibly be mistaken about what I think is happening in other parts of the world. I know better than they do!”
“I’m an expert on the Third World because I’ve read a couple of books with some pretty pictures in them. I’ve also got a few friends who’ve been to Africa… they’re really nice people, by the way. Anyway, I’ve got the best information about how people in other parts of the world think and act, so it’s obvious that I’m right.”
“If Cuba’s infant mortality rate is lower than the United States, it means that the only reason our infant mortality rate is higher is because of a communist conspiracy. If it were really a capitalist country, our infant mortality rate would be lower. After all, we’re the best country ever, so the only reason it isn’t is because of a capitalist conspiracy.”
Laughably bad work here. Cuba has higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality than capitalist countries of similar GDP per capita. Therefore the Cubans must be lying so we came up with a formula that adjusts these metrics down to what they must be based on one factor.
Usually when you make a claim like this, you'd back it up with evidence.
