Cuba’s Bitcoin Revolution

> Clearly there's more going on here than somebody is letting on.

> It would make more sense for people affiliated with the government to have a privileged position (perhaps by being able to access foreign currency more directly).

So in communist Central Europe (before 1989) the situation was perhaps similar. Nominally in highest regard were hard blue-collar jobs: miners, workers in metallurgy, mechanical engineering, builders. Many of those jobs also earned much more than doctors, lawyers, managers etc. But the spread between highest and lowest wage was not big. And it was obligatory that everyone has a job.

Because nearly everyone made similar amounts of money, money ceased to be that huge measure of status like it is in 'capitalism'. But that does not mean people stopped measuring and comparing each other: they just found other means to do that. Particularly, connections. There were things money could not buy (at least not legally). But once you knew the right people, much more was possible. So your status was measured with the right connections. And because many basic things were hard to get, particularly valued connections were with people like grocers, butchers, providers of gas pipelines for heating of houses, providers of building materials and building machines (people outside of bigger towns ere mostly building their own houses) etc.

But also good doctors were very valued - not by the offical health system of course, but you were supposed to bring either money or some other valuable gift in return of the favor. The favor being the doctor will see you either at all or do more that the basic necessity mandated by the system.

And of course having a privileged position within the ruling communist party was the best - which is where the concentration of not very nice people was highest.

The result of all this is that now, more than 30 years after the fall of communism, there is still a huge amount of corruption and favoritism in all aspects of the society, but mostly in the state structures.

This seems like whataboutism. Sure, capitalism creates some warped incentive structures - e.g. public schoolteachers being underpaid - but the Cuban government goes out of its way to royally screw anyone who tries to educate themselves or to create anything. Even the fact that we have a choice to create great things or create antipatterns presupposes that the free market draws people to acquire skills in the first place.

Neither…

People don't control the talents with which they were born or the environment in which they're socialised. They also don't control the distribution of talents, technologies and preferences in society that combine to determine the supply and demand curve for different careers. I would say, therefore, that an individual's earning power in the market is overwhelmingly a function of luck.

It is obviously unfair to penalise people for bad luck. It is also unfair for those with good luck to use the talents which fortune has gifted them to extort society, to demand that they receive multiple times more money than the normal citizen lest they deny society their talents and leave. Obviously fairness is not the only relevant value, but it is relevant.

I don't think it is healthy for a society to stream their most talented citizens into high-paying and stable jobs, and to discard the rest as losers that are best forgotten, condemned to low-pay, casualised and insecure work. It is precisely this kind of dual society in which we now live, that is tearing at the social fabric, creating the kind of anger and resentment that produced Trump - and it is profoundly wrong.

I note that the NHS pays doctors markedly less than they would receive in North America, though it is still a considerable amount. Yet we have no real brain drain. The most common reason doctors give for remaining in the UK, besides friends and family, is that they believe in the NHS as a public service provided free at the point of use for the common good. The motives and self-conception of the medical profession has not always been pecuniary. In The Politics, Aristotle is emphatic that medicine is a craft whose end is the good, which is corrupted insofar as it is treated as a means to making money.

> The US does quite well in most patient outcomes. It does not do as well as it could because of the opioid crisis which has singlehandedly reduced average lifespans, and which is more or less independent of access to doctors.

The US has among the worst monthers mortality rate in the entire OECD [1] - and most of the rest of the numbers don't look so hot either [2]. Life expectancy is falling. Generally only cancer 5 year survival is improving - because the US keeps people alive just a bit more than 5 years. They die soon after of the same cancer, because the US prioritizes keeping folks alive a hair longer at all costs - and focuses on earlier detection. Earlier detection does not indicate cure, but sure does boost numbers.

> Remember, 17% of all Canadian scientists already move to the US.

This was true in the past, however the US has a NO VACANCIES sign all over it at this point. The Biden administration is allowing 100,000 green cards (authorized, ready to issue) expire without being given to individuals this year. [3] Mine included - and I've been here since 2010 and paid literally millions of dollars in taxes.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats are interested in permitting any more immigration. The last tightening was Bill Clinton under IIRAIRA and the last amnesty was Reagan. Since then, nobody has done anything to make immigration to America any easier, even when Obama Democrats controlled both the House and Senate. Trump made things slightly more painful, but Biden has not rolled those changes back and all signs point to no plans to do so.

The old numbers no longer matter, America is no longer taking new applicants. Doors closed.

But don't just take my word for it, Canada's getting the bulk of North America's new immigrants. And has been for years. [4] Canada is now offering permanent resident cards to immigrants totaling 1% of its entire population every year. Can you imagine America taking 3 million new immigrants per year?

[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-du...

[2] https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/health-at-a-glance-united-...

[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-100-000-green-cards-at-ris...

[4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/07/15/house...