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Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

bitcoinmagazine.com

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Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#51

Post by pineaux »

moonchrome wrote: post #20
arcticbull wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I like the idea of free health care and education, the idea that a brain surgeon gets paid same as a street cleaner is absurd. I personally support wealth and income inequality when coupled with social mobility (and a high standard of living at the low end). With that in mind, why do you think it's absurd for both a street cleaner and a brain surgeon to enjoy a middle class lifestyle? I think we both agree ne…

> I cannot, for one, think of a solid justification. Really ? Any person without a severe physical disabilities can be a street cleaner - you need very low incentives to generate people capable. Surgeons take like a decade of training and a small % of the population is even capable of becoming one and there's a demand for their skills. Software developers create output that potentially has a very non-linear return. F…

actually, statistics prove you wrong. Cuba pays surgeons roughly the same as streetcleaners but they have twice the amount of specualists per 100.000, compared to the united states (1). If you look at countries that have (almost) free education (like cuba), you see that these countries have similar numbers of physicians/specialists per 100.000 people. These facts tend to show that the main factor for having "enough" surgeons has nothing or little to do with pay and mostly with opportunity (free) and capability. As an interesting sidenote, I'd like to point out that the high salaries of surgeons in the US help to prevent people from going into surgery. Another point is that if you go into surgery for the money, I think you have the wrong incentives to be the best surgeon.

(1) https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.SAOP.P5?view=map...

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#52

Post by Mengkudulangsat »

lefrenchy wrote: post #2

I think removing embargos would help more than a volatile cryptocurrency.

That embargo is always such a mystery to me.

Why on earth is it still in place in 2021? Is it because no US politician want to submit a motion for it to be repealed? Or is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there?

So much misery can be lifted with little effort by so few, yet here we are.

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#53

Post by lottin »

dougSF70 wrote: post #9

Bitcoin could be the undoing of the regime. It will allow Cubans to accumulate wealth that the regime cannot seize or convert into another worthless Cuban domestic currency. While I like the idea of free health care and education, the idea that a brain surgeon gets paid same as a street cleaner is absurd. Cuba is a series of failed experiments.

> It will allow Cubans to accumulate wealth

Accumulating wealth has never been a problem in Cuba or anywhere else. The problem is always creating wealth, which is an economic problem, not a currency problem.

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#54

Post by arcticbull »

renewiltord wrote: post #50
arcticbull wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has excellent brain surgeons. The reality is immigration isn't as simple as picking up and wandering across a border. There's nativism, protectionism and of course the ties that keep you bound to your local community. Friends, family, shops, restaurants, a house. If I told you that I would pay you 30% more to move to Kansas, would you? Why, and why not? Further, why isn't every brain surgeon in America located…

My family has medical professionals in Canada. I can assure you your surgeons aren’t being paid anywhere near your rubbish disposal people. If they are, then my family is probably all at the 99th percentile of surgeons and at the 99th percentile of family doctors. So naturally I am unsurprised that Canadian neurosurgeons are good. If they’re anything like other surgical specialties they’re probably also making bank.…

My father is an anesthesiologist in Canada and my mother an audiologist, so my position isn't exactly arms-length [edit] and my father has always been very opinionated about the role of the public service within a civil society - before the Alzheimers anyways. I agree with you that they aren't paid the same, just that the band is tighter than in the US. Canadian doctors get paid a good deal less than American doctors. For instance.

A US anesthesiologist is paid a median of $400K USD (500K CAD). In Canada the median pay is $393K CAD ($300K USD). In real terms anyways. In PPP adjusted terms, it's closer.

> Berkeley alone has as many Nobel Prize winners as Canada entire. That’s the kind of society we build here. Winners. And sometimes there’s a price we will pay for that.

Winners and losers. I'm not passing judgement I'm just saying that the American society isn't full exclusively of winners, it's full of winners and the folks I pass on my way home shooting heroin. At the end of the day we all live in a society.

> EDIT: Pay your doctors what you pay your street cleaners and you’ll see what they do. They won’t stay in Canada for that.

Unless you pay them both an upper middle class wage ;)

Either way, thank you for engaging in my thought exercise!

> Oh and sorry about the edit style responses. I have hit my comment rate limit.

Nothing to apologize for, I appreciate your thoughts! I know this is a bit of a third-rail topic - but that's why I'm extra interested in what the HN community has to say.

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#55

Post by pineaux »

kortilla wrote: post #23
arcticbull wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I like the idea of free health care and education, the idea that a brain surgeon gets paid same as a street cleaner is absurd. I personally support wealth and income inequality when coupled with social mobility (and a high standard of living at the low end). With that in mind, why do you think it's absurd for both a street cleaner and a brain surgeon to enjoy a middle class lifestyle? I think we both agree ne…

> Canada has much lower wealth and income inequality - and it's because there's a much tighter band of compensation. I can’t fathom pointing to a market that cannot compete globally (Canada’s software engineering job market) and somehow thinking it’s impressive. Knocking everyone down to achieve equality is not desirable. I’m more interested in approaches that provide safety nets and mobility upward. Not ones that el…

Canada's engineering market isn't impressive because it doesn't have the American DOD spending behind it. There are countries that are quite impressive for their software engineering compared to the states and population. Sweden comes to mind and the taxes are a lot more steep there than in Canada.

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#56

Post by input_sh »

Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #52
lefrenchy wrote: post #2

I think removing embargos would help more than a volatile cryptocurrency.

That embargo is always such a mystery to me. Why on earth is it still in place in 2021? Is it because no US politician want to submit a motion for it to be repealed? Or is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there? So much misery can be lifted with little effort by so few, yet here we are.

Two months ago the UN voted on ending the embargo on Cuba (though they've been doing that since 1992). 184 countries voted to end the embargo, 3 abstained from voting, and only two countries voted against: US and Israel.

https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#57

Post by choeger »

tdeck wrote: post #42

> In tragic irony, unskilled workers were often far better off financially than highly-educated ones, and many of the latter dropped out of their careers to clean tables or pick people up from the airport to get access to the CUC economy. The dual currency system institutionalized inequality, creating clear classes of haves and have nots. For many people like Lucia, this as much as anything else showed that the revol…

It slowly bleeds the countrie's economy dry. I witnessed the problem first hand when visiting Cuba: Rented a car and a driver for a private tour of Havanna and the driver was absolutely fluent in English. Like, better then me, close to native speaker, with only a slight accent. So I was complimenting him and asked, where he learned it. I was expecting something like really good language courses, because the typical Cuban would not be able to visit English-speaking countries. Turns out, the guy was a former high-level manager in the state-owned tourist company and basically responsible for marketing/sales in Europe. He decided to drive a car when he learned that the lady cleaning his office actually earned more than him. Obviously he became a great guide, to my benefit, but imagine the loss for the Cuban economy as a whole.

Edit: One more point: In Cuba you would typically tip with 1CUC, even for the most trivial of services. Someone pulls a chair onto the beach for you? One CUC. Cleaning of Hotel room? One CUC. Drinks brought by waiter? One CUC. And so on. The average monthly income is equivalent to about 30CUC. Assume you'd live as a programmer in the Bay Area, making some $120k and people start tipping $4k for pretty much everything. How long would you stay a developer?

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#58

Post by enaaem »

Mengkudulangsat wrote: post #52
lefrenchy wrote: post #2

I think removing embargos would help more than a volatile cryptocurrency.

That embargo is always such a mystery to me. Why on earth is it still in place in 2021? Is it because no US politician want to submit a motion for it to be repealed? Or is there a powerful anti-Cuba lobby keeping it there? So much misery can be lifted with little effort by so few, yet here we are.

Cuba can still trade with the rest of the world like the EU, Russia, China and Canada.

Re: Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

#59

Post by Clewza313 »

altacc wrote: post #46

Headline is hyperbolic as the article itself states crypto usage in Cuba is on par with other countries, about 2.5%. There may be some variance in use cases and good future potential in Cuba but it's certainly not yet an active "revolution". There are certainly good use cases (and existing solutions) across the world for alternative banking systems, especially for international remittances. The problem with positing…

I think even 2.5% sounds incredibly optimistic. Cuba's internet system is famously dysfunctional, for a long time the only form of access was to stand around a few overloaded public wifi points. Mobile data is available now, but prohibitively priced unless you're one of the moneyed elite.
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