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A day using money in Cuba

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Re: A day using money in Cuba

#171

Post by WalterBright »

ceejayoz wrote: post #168
WalterBright wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, many times I've seen the same price for cash or credit, asked for a "discount for cash", and got it. The times they won't give a discount, I pay with the credit card and get the "cash back". The proprietor, though, will nearly always give a discount for cash, because it's money ahead for him.

That may be an attribution error. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/515/good-guys > Producer Ben Calhoun tells Ira about a secret move his friend uses all the time — the "good guy discount" — that gets Ben's friend money off all sorts of items when he's shopping. (6 minutes) More often than not, if you ask someone with the power to give one for a discount - for any polite reason - there's a decent chance they'll do it…

You might be right. A cash discount should be 1-3%. But I've often gotten 10% off just by asking. Even at department stores like Macy's.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#172

Post by throwlaplace »

emmelaich wrote: post #126
throwlaplace wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i grew up in the soviet union too. даже если мы согласны с тем что коммунизм не был идеальным это не значит что берёзки доказывают это. so my point still stands.

When were you born? What decade? The most strenuous, impassioned diatribes against the Soviet system come from older people, and from the non-Russian satellite soviet states.

I was born in the 80s in Moldova. Other guy in here is much younger than me.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#173

Post by peter_d_sherman »

>"She discovered that she can use bitcoin to top up people’s phones on bitrefill.com, and she can charge for this. For every 100 dollars she receives in bitcoin, she gets 120 CUC in cash from her friends whose phones she tops up. Ira is quite pleased that she has found to a way to arbitrage the currency exchange. If she got paid via Western Union, she’d lose 15% of what the agency pays her. This way, she makes 20%."

Amazing, because modern economic theory states that arbitrages should not exist, and if they do (for whatever quirky reason), then they will disappear just as quickly as they appeared...

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#174

Post by shadowprofile77 »

worik wrote: post #123
jariel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'Elephant in the Room' is 100% Fidel Castro Inc. and his militarized island empire, and totalitarian suppression of everything and everyone. A more extreme but reasonable comparable would be North Korea. List of dictatorships [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regimes

The dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan are not facing the same problems. Nor the hideous racist regime in Israel. Castro and I would not get along, I am a dissident by nature, so I cannot bring myself to support his regime. But we cannot blame the economic failures on Castro, now dead, RIP. The Cubans have done well to survive more or less intact for this long in the face of the sanctions. It is my belie…

Yes you absolutely can blame Castro and his hypocritical, corrupt, fanatical insistence on Marxist Leninist economic central planning and state control for the misery and poverty of Cuba. Castro ruled for decades, Cuba is only now slowly leaving his shadow. The U.S embargo was a disaster and a very stupid policy with some blame for Cuba's miseries but the majority of their ruin is very much their dictatorship's doing. I'm sorry, but to avoid this blatant causal relationship, shared by many other countries that never fell under major U.S sanctions but which did apply Marxist central planning, is to avoid the extremely obvious.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#175

Post by jariel »

worik wrote: post #123
jariel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'Elephant in the Room' is 100% Fidel Castro Inc. and his militarized island empire, and totalitarian suppression of everything and everyone. A more extreme but reasonable comparable would be North Korea. List of dictatorships [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regimes

The dictatorial regimes in Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan are not facing the same problems. Nor the hideous racist regime in Israel. Castro and I would not get along, I am a dissident by nature, so I cannot bring myself to support his regime. But we cannot blame the economic failures on Castro, now dead, RIP. The Cubans have done well to survive more or less intact for this long in the face of the sanctions. It is my belie…

Castro Inc. is the source of the problem in Cuba.

To look anywhere else really is to legitimize his corruption.

The fact is Saudi has Oil, meaning they can keep their population fed, also, their version of 'totalitarian' is cultural, not ideological. They've had similar rules for 1200 years. If it were not House of Saud it would be House of X, same thing.

And Israel is racist? But not the surrounding regimes who want to wipe them off the face of the planet, and have tried to do so on a few occasions?

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#176

Post by zxcv1975 »

graeme wrote: post #21
lordnacho wrote: post #11

I actually went to Cuba on holiday, and I used the tourist dollars. It's incredible how this separates society into haves and have-nots. Basically everyone wants to be near the tourists. They'll invite you into their homes for food, they'll offer to take you around town, sell you some cigars, and so on. Since you have tourist bucks, you also have access to the tourist nightclubs, where you run into some regional cele…

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…

> And the government goes a long way to try to separate tourists from the real society, though you can still get to it if you care to.

It's not like that anymore. There are many Cubans who rent a room in their houses, so foreigners live with them and share with the family.

> The police arrest those who spend too much time with foreigners

It is possible, but I don't think it is very likely. I think those who can be arrested are doing some illegal activity, like selling tobacco or lobster. Generally these products are from the black market. In the city where I live there are always foreigners all year round and they coexist with Cubans normally.

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#178

Post by alentist »

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.

Not at all [1][2][3]. Why do you think the surrounding tributary city-states allied with the Spanish? Though human sacrifice was common in Mesoamerica at the time, under the Aztecs it took place at an unprecedented scale.

I'm curious, though, about why you'd make such an implausible claim without backing it up with any evidence.

[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/feeding-gods-hundred...

[2] https://www.history.com/news/aztec-human-sacrifice-religion

[3] https://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Sacrifice/

Re: A day using money in Cuba

#180

Post by m0zg »

082349872349872 wrote: post #167
m0zg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in the Soviet Union though. As they say in Russia, "не учи отца ебаться". My parents have never been inside a Beriozka, nor any of my relatives. Shopping there presented an economic impossibility: you either had to have foreign currency (outright illegal for Soviet citizens, with severe punishment for possession, so that meant you'd be a foreigner) or convertible rubles ("invalutny ruble", not illegal, but…

Out of curiosity, ребята, three questions about Иван Васильевич меняет профессию: (a) which currency would Shurik have used when buying transistors (~45 minutes)? I'm assuming he would've used regular rubles if he'd managed to find them in a shop, but since he was buying from a dubious looking source (Бери шинель?) would he have needed other currency? (b) when Иван Грозный discovers the elevator (~24 minutes), is his…

Haven't watched it in decades, so thanks for time references. The currency question is easy: in the USSR there was nothing other than Soviet Rubles. There was no other currency, dubious source or not, especially for a ботаник from a НИИ like Shurik. The thief scene here (https://youtu.be/a50qT9bW2Qo?t=856) shows what I assume are government bonds, not currency. My parents never had those and I've never seen them in person. Showing any kind of illegal currency manipulation was out of the question in a movie like this.

Sign of the blessing cross does not look too authentic to me, but orthodox blessing _is_ given with three closed fingers IIRC (I'm not a person of faith myself), to signify Trinity, as far as I understand.

The pen was likely brought from abroad, as were some other stolen items. Soviet government would not allow such a frivolity to be manufactured.

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