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A day using money in Cuba

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Re: A day using money in Cuba

#101

Post by tacon »

smnrchrds wrote: post #24
graeme wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that this separation is more due to the fact that you’re rich, than any formal currency arrangement. Foreigners in the 1990s got the same treatment, before any formal dollarization or dual currency system existed. Cubans who make their money only from official sources are desperately poor. Those with connections abroad, connections to tourism or to the black market are richer. The money difference merely makes i…

> The police arrest those who spend too much time with foreigners. This is news to me. Do you have a source for this claim?

A female Spanish friend and I spent 11 days in Cuba in 2004. The overwhelming presence of security forces (secret police) made me feel the safest I have ever felt while traveling, even while being slightly drunk walking down a back alley at 2am, where two out of three street lights were broken and odd young men were sitting in the doorways of buildings with tons of ancient exposed wiring hanging down visible. There is a police station on every block of the city of Havana, apparently instituted long ago after someone set off a bomb during one of Fidel's hours long speeches. If anyone were to rob you, there is almost nothing they could spend it on without sticking out like a sore thumb. As far as arresting locals for approaching foreigners, back then the issue was with young Cuban women abandoning their $25/mo jobs and turning tricks with tourists ($100/night). I read that the police would never embarrass the tourist, but put the hammer down on the woman once she was away from the man. Those women were nicknamed jineteras[0], from the root jinete (jockey).

[0] https://www.bestcubatravelguide.com/jineteros-and-jineteras/

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#102

Post by xixixao »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #31

Went to Cuba with my girl. (She really wanted to go; I was the skeptic.) Walking around the ruins of the Centrum, and someone invites her in to get a haircut. Sure, she says, why not? $5 (convertible), but all we had on hand was a $20. Little Cuban girl heads out running through the neighborhood to scrounge up change for a $20 because that’s almost a month’s salary.

Hilariously enough, this is just cash at its traditionally best. I got a massage during my layover in Lisbon, but their credit card machine didn't work, so I had to use the ATM, which charged me something like 4 euros (bucks) (the massage was probably 20), on top of which they didn't have the change so the masseuse had to run out to get it... Paying took almost as long as getting the massage and spoiled the whole experience...

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#103

Post by nsajko »

vinay427 wrote: post #40
kmonsen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really see why though? I’m a socialist (the Scandinavian kind), but that seems a petty good description of what happened back then.

> socialist (the Scandinavian kind) Surely there exists better terminology for this than a highly regionally contextual qualifier. Perhaps democratic socialist, or social democrat, or something involving welfare? Overloading the word with other meanings just adds fuel to the fire of inaccuracy and hyperbole in political discourse, perhaps recently most often in the US.

That is not overloading, rather you are the one who is using the term overly specifically. Maybe it would be better to say Leninism or something.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#104

Post by teruakohatu »

sneak wrote: post #71
Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #61

As I'm reading through this I'm fascinated about the character's "write russian articles for Bitcoin gig". Perhaps internet infrastructure isn't that good yet in Cuba, but with Starlink and other LEO internet projects underway, that might change in the medium term. Once basic ingredients are there, we might see an explosion of, for lack of a better term... "digital sweatshops". Things like data annotation / game grin…

Starlink’s first version will require ground relay stations within the overlapping spot beams (the inter-spacecraft relay lasers aren’t until later) and also likely intends to comply with local laws in all places it is offered for sale. I had high hopes here too, initially.

I think they have outright said that they will only operate through local resellers and local ground stations, so all laws will need to be complied with. Even then I think US-hostile nations would ban starlink on suspicious of eavesdropping, or simply because they don't want everyone connected to the internet.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#105

Post by pnako »

throwlaplace wrote: post #60
m0zg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> коммунизм не был идеальным (communism wasn't ideal) Understatement of the century, quite literally.

bruh. is the RF better or worse now? how are those term limits working out for you? was the west better or worse during the years 1932-33 during the famine (the same years that the US hit peak unemployment)? were the pogroms and the gulag better or worse than jim crow and segregation and racism? was state owned means of production better or worse than the gilded age? like you're sitting here glibly dismissing somethi…

There is a pretty simple test one can use to figure out which way to run a country is actually preferred by people:

Some countries put border with barb wires, walls, armed guards, etc. to keep people out. Other countries did that to keep people in.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#106

Post by kragen »

empath75 wrote: post #65
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not politically correct to state the reasons for this. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Aztec_cultu... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice_in_Maya_cultur... Unfortunately, some cultures have this as a part of their history. They need to be taught a different path. Edit: In my other comment I was flagged, so I want to make sure I'm not misunderstood. I am not making a moral…

This is one of the dumbest comments I’ve seen on this site. It’s been 500 years. 500 years ago, the catholic church was burning people at the stake for heresy and vlad tepes was impaling peasants. I’ve spent a lot of time living with the Maya people in Guatemala. I was raised Irish catholic and they’re more catholic than my family is for sure.

The Maya human sacrifices were probably even longer ago than that.

Also, what do the Maya and Aztec atrocities have to do with Cuba and the Caribbean? The Taíno who inhabited Cuba were an Arawakan people — as far as we know totally unrelated to the Aztec and the Maya, who lived 1500 km away. This is like saying that the Lithuanians were a brutal culture because the Romans (about the same distance away) sacrificed Christians to the lions.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#107

Post by kragen »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #99
empath75 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the dumbest comments I’ve seen on this site. It’s been 500 years. 500 years ago, the catholic church was burning people at the stake for heresy and vlad tepes was impaling peasants. I’ve spent a lot of time living with the Maya people in Guatemala. I was raised Irish catholic and they’re more catholic than my family is for sure.

Yep, the Aztec might have been brutal, but its hardly like the Spanish were any less so, and for similar religion fueled reasons even.

The Spanish were, as far as we can tell, dramatically more brutal.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#108

Post by throwlaplace »

pnako wrote: post #105
throwlaplace wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bruh. is the RF better or worse now? how are those term limits working out for you? was the west better or worse during the years 1932-33 during the famine (the same years that the US hit peak unemployment)? were the pogroms and the gulag better or worse than jim crow and segregation and racism? was state owned means of production better or worse than the gilded age? like you're sitting here glibly dismissing somethi…

There is a pretty simple test one can use to figure out which way to run a country is actually preferred by people: Some countries put border with barb wires, walls, armed guards, etc. to keep people out. Other countries did that to keep people in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#109

Post by pnako »

throwlaplace wrote: post #108
pnako wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a pretty simple test one can use to figure out which way to run a country is actually preferred by people: Some countries put border with barb wires, walls, armed guards, etc. to keep people out. Other countries did that to keep people in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

That's not relevant to my argument. You could have pointed out to many other bad things done by the US, or the West.

The fact remains that migration flows tell us where people actually want to live.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#110

Post by pnako »

kragen wrote: post #107
throwaway2048 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the Aztec might have been brutal, but its hardly like the Spanish were any less so, and for similar religion fueled reasons even.

The Spanish were, as far as we can tell, dramatically more brutal.

Than the Aztecs who used human skulls as construction material?
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