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Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

nytimes.com

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Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#141

Post by hellothere007 »

seanalltogether wrote: post #27

Am I right in assuming this is very similar to most work abroad agreements? I work for a company AAA that sponsors my visa to work in Brazil. If i want to leave AAA, I must go back to America or find someone else willing to sponsor my work visa? Additionally my company may be charging the client 2x-4x what they pay me.

well, you can find someone willing to sponsor your visa but they can't, they aren't allowed to, and if the leave the "mission" they are considered traitors or deserters and get exiled for 8 years

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#142

Post by k-mcgrady »

selectodude wrote: post #103
k-mcgrady wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military dictatorships are responsible for the atrocities you mention. Not communism. Evil people. Atrocities have also happened in capitalist counties - we're not placing the blame for those on the style of market the government chooses to adapt and it would be idiotic to do so.

There isn't a single communist country that wasn't a dictatorship. There are plenty of capitalist societies that aren't dictatorships. I find these discussions always fly into the "no true scotsman" fallacy.

Are you saying communism cannot exist separately from (evil) dictator? Lots of the ideas do (there are plenty of functioning highly socialist countries). Theoretically at least communism could exist peacefully (although it seems you would need everyone in the country to agree and remain agreed to the principals for that to work).

Also - dictatorships can work. There have been several 'benevolent' dictators who made communism work without introducing any more evil than many democratically elected leaders. A dictatorship doesn't naturally lead to Mao/Stalin etc.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#143

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

wooter wrote: post #130
asdfjklasdfjkl wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more nuanced critiques of either of the predominant systems discussed in this comment section. If you want to throw unfair death totals for what are at best regimes loosely approximating their underlying communist or capitalist ideologies, you can just as easily claim capitalism kills tons. https://i.redd.it/h0l4hqcf5inz.jpg but honestly, I don't think body counts are the right way to judge either. Makes fo…

none of those things have to do with capitalism. those were all acts of government and the antithesis of free enterprise.

Almost like how a totalitarian dictator killing his own people has nothing to do with communism?

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#144

Post by Arcaten »

dpraburaj wrote: post #51
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how they do it after they became doctors and not before.

It's actually weird how many people in capitalist countries look at failed/failing communist states and think of them as utopias, all the while ignoring the plight of millions living there in poverty and with no clear path to a better standard of life. They should put their money where their mouth is and spend at least a few decades in such countries before criticising others who've made a choice to leave(for various…

So you look at the millions of poor people in the United States and think, "Yes, these people have a clear path to a better standard of living"?

Do you know how many children are living on the streets in Havana? Or how many die of starvation or exposure? Maybe they're poor, but they are alive, healthy, fed, and have a roof over their heads. That's a lot more than Americans can say about the at risk in their own country.

I am by no means suggesting that Cuba is a utopia -- my own standard of living is probably quite a lot higher than the average Cuban's. I'm lucky in that way. That's not the case for many, many others.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#145

Post by usrusr »

notyourday wrote: post #32
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #4

You know I can't really feel their plight. Take this: >Hundreds of miles away, in Minas Gerais State, Dr. Jiménez, 34, found the work rewarding, but also began to harbor feelings of resentment. “You are trained in Cuba and our education is free, health care is free, but at what price?” she said. “You wind up paying for it your whole life.” Is that not the point? The communist government allows anybody to attend their…

The love of communism among those that don't live in places that tried to implement it is something that totally baffles me.

It's not that different (it is different, sure, but not that much) from how people who look at capitalism and only think of rich countries, ignoring the ample supply of capitalist countries with completely failed economies. Of course there is also a bit of survivorship bias here, because failed economies are much more likely to try out communism than flourishing ones. After the revolution, one easily blames communism for economic failure that actually happened before.

I'm not saying that we should all turn commie, but just looking at the richest country and acknowledging that they are not communist paints a very incomplete picture. (By that measure, we might also determine that we should ditch democracy, because look at how wealthy a few selected monarchies are!)

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#146

Post by adventured »

etplayer wrote: post #128
adventured wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The very fact that we are talking about student loans, inflation, destroying the dollar and income (wage-labour) means that we are talking about capitalism We're talking about government abuse of and intervention into a former Capitalist economy (which is now a heavily regulated, heavily taxed mixed economy). The US isn't even remotely close to being a free market system and hasn't been for decades. One quick check…

>The US isn't even remotely close to being a free market system and hasn't been for decades. Where exactly did GP claim that it is? And why is regulation incompatible with a capitalist system? You are making the confusion that capitalism means "free market", when it doesn't.

Capitalism is inseparable from a free market system. They are in fact the same thing and have been regarded as such for a century across all the writings of every modern proponent of free market economics. From Hayek to Mises to Friedman.

To the extent you have regulation, is the extent to which you lack a Capitalist economy. All systems opposite to Capitalism make use of extreme State control of the economy through various regulatory means. Whether we're talking rudimentary Socialism or its derivatives, including Fascism and Communism. It's an inversion. You can either have market-based economic levers or you can have State levers, or you can mix them and get a mixed economy to the extent you do so. Regulation is antithesis to Capitalism because it imposes State control over the economy. The more regulation you add, the less market freedom you must inherently have; the regulation removes possible action and decision making by free actors in the economy, it places those decisions into the hands of the State (ie out of the bounds of Capitalism to dictate).

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#147

Post by [deleted] »

hellothere007 wrote: post #138

I had the luck of leaving Cuba 4 years ago and then my family came as well, my mother was a doctor for 25 years and I had asked her a lot of questions about why doctors left to go on a "mission" to any of these countries. One of the incentives the Cuban Government used to use to make doctors go to those "missions" as they call it in Cuba, is that once they have finished it they were allowed to buy a house or car, I s…

[deleted]

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#148

Post by teilo »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #142
selectodude wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a single communist country that wasn't a dictatorship. There are plenty of capitalist societies that aren't dictatorships. I find these discussions always fly into the "no true scotsman" fallacy.

Are you saying communism cannot exist separately from (evil) dictator? Lots of the ideas do (there are plenty of functioning highly socialist countries). Theoretically at least communism could exist peacefully (although it seems you would need everyone in the country to agree and remain agreed to the principals for that to work). Also - dictatorships can work. There have been several 'benevolent' dictators who made c…

This is the same tired argument: "But communism would work if people did it right." This is neither an historical nor a scientific argument. It is pure wide-eyed ideology that ignores the devastation that communism has caused everywhere it has been tried. Communism = oppression, poverty, and starvation.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#149

Post by adventured »

baby wrote: post #68
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #40

Right now Nazism is rightfully consigned to the trash heap of history and mostly people don't talk about it in polite company. Communism should also undergo the same fate. It probably has the highest body count of any ideology (see Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro ) and is the only ideology where a country built a wall, not keep people from coming in, but to keep people from leaving. It has made millions of people misera…

What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it? People are dying because of this shit too.

> What about capitalism America where you don't deserve healthcare if you can't afford it?

Well if you're going to be sensationalist about it. What about Socialism, where your material needs are provided for through extreme violence, via theft; using guns to take from one person against their will, to give to another. The entire foundation of all forms of Socialism, require extreme violence as a means to redistribute and at no time can that violence be relaxed, for it works at all times against human nature and self-interest. It's also why every nation that has ever attempted Socialism has collapsed into perpetual barbaric violence against its people, holding them as State slaves with few rights: Cuba, Cambodia, North Korea, Soviet Russia, East Germany, Mao's China, Venezuela, North Vietnam, National Socialist Germany, Fascist Italy, the numerous Soviet satellites, Socialist Ba'athist Iraq, and so on.

Re: Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’

#150

Post by jules »

curun1r wrote: post #95
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #40

Right now Nazism is rightfully consigned to the trash heap of history and mostly people don't talk about it in polite company. Communism should also undergo the same fate. It probably has the highest body count of any ideology (see Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro ) and is the only ideology where a country built a wall, not keep people from coming in, but to keep people from leaving. It has made millions of people misera…

I somewhat agree, but any connection between Communism and Socialism needs to similarly find its way to that trash heap. Communism's failing is its seemingly inescapable combination with totalitarianism and despotism, which was a significant problem with Nazism as well. It's not the principle that society is responsible for caring for and providing for it's citizens. For too long, we've resisted more socialist polici…

That is not what socialism used to mean. European countries are capitalist with a welfare state. This was first set up in Germany by Bismarck, and the socialists were opposed to it. Socialism used to mean that the means of production were in the hands of the government, and by that standard Europe is certainly not socialist. The capital is privately owned and the decisions about how to use that capital are made by those owners. The wealth that is redistributed in Europe is created by capitalism. Europe does not differ significantly from the US in this regard; the government expenditure as a percentage of GDP in "socialist" Europe is not very different than "capitalist" United States. The US spends 42% whereas France and Sweden (usually considered the two most socialist countries in Europe) it is 56% and 51%, respectively. In Germany it's 45% and in Switzerland 35%.
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