Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations • Hacker News Board

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#231

Post by baddox » Wed, Dec 17, 2014, 11:59 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #154

pdeuchler wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing statistics from small, homogeneous populations to statistics from larger, heterogeneous populations is fraught with peril. Doubly so for metrics on education and health. (I like to call this the Scandinavian Fallacy) As engineers we would never compare uptime statistics from a small, niche startup serving a couple thousand people to uptime statistics from, say, Google. Why do we immediately ignore these pri…

What does the heterogeneous populations of the US have to do with it? Maybe when it comes to life expectancy you're right, because genetics is a large factor in that. But when it comes to literacy rate and the proportion of physicians that's entirely down to government policy. Do you really think the US couldn't beat Cuba on those metrics if they decided spending money on those topics was more important than spending…

Government policy is heavily affected by cultural heterogeneity.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#232

Post by baddox » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:04 AM UTC

ghayes wrote: post #57

glup wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agriculture, including tobacco production, accounts for only approximately 4% of Cuban GDP--after heavyweights like tourism (embargo just prevents Americans from going there), gas export, industrial production, and the medical sector. Of greater interest to HN readers than the implications for one trivial luxury good, Cuba has one of the greatest mismatches between literacy (~97%) and telecom development and accessib…

Note: Americans could previously go there; you just couldn't go directly from America.

As I understand it, the only way for an American citizen to legally travel to Cuba is through specially designated cultural exchange programs.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#233

Post by caente » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:05 AM UTC

hcentelles wrote: post #202

I'm from Cuba, living in Spain right now. The Cuban government is reluctant to open internet access to the people, despite of they already have the needed bandwith through a submarine cable from Venezuela. Is really fascinating how the Cubans have developed a higly optimized offline distribution channel to share dowloaded content like websites, software, video games, tv shows, movies, with almost the same comsuption…

You started revolico!? That's awesome man, I think that project "opened" the mind of a lot of cuban entrepreneurs. I know a few cool projects over there, I also know a lot of plastic artists trying to start projects that connect the "exile" with the people of the island. As you might know, even among those oppose to the regime, there is a lot of bias against cubans from America(unless they are family/friends). I'm also cuban, living in NY, I'd like to help out with whatever I can. You'll find my email on my profile.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#234

Post by baddox » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:07 AM UTC

eCa wrote: post #117

hughw wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally?

Webster's: "Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary." [1] [1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally

Using the word that way, in parentheses, is not something I have ever encountered when intending to express hyperbole.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#235

Post by adventured » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:08 AM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #187

refurb wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cuba is a success story for socialism, and that is why US policy has sought to punish it, and to make it fail. I don't think your argument is supported by any of the facts.[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#Contempora...

He was making an economic argument, not a political rights argument. How come nobody hit the ceiling when we didn't close our embassy with China today?

His economic argument is just as wrong as a political argument would have been: Cuba is a complete failure economically and has been for the last 50 years.

Cuba is third world poor. A country where the average person earns $300 to $500 per month, is a slave pen. State sponsored slavery is the only way you can repress people to such an extreme extent as to hold their standard of living that low for 50 years.

Given there has never been an economically successful Socialist nation in world history, it makes perfect sense that Cuba would be a failure just like all the rest.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#236

Post by mudil » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:12 AM UTC

mistermumble wrote: post #203

mudil wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am an anesthesiologist. I worked in some of the best hospitals in the country in residency (UCSF and Harvard's BWH), and I worked in Detroit and I work now in a small Catholic hospital. And I can tell you that quality of care poor get is the same as rich ones get. Then I also grew up in Soviet Union, where supposedly great healthcare was developed. And I can tell you they had a horrible health care like they have i…

What does getting basic primary care to the population (vaccinations, preventive care, well baby care) have to do with how many research papers get written? I have worked in one of the top medical schools in the US, with world-class researchers, and know that there is very little there that is directly applicable to a population of rural farmers and impoverished city dwellers.

The greatness of Cuban health care system is an urban myth, just like Jackalope.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#237

Post by adventured » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:13 AM UTC

mudil wrote: post #116

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my point is that significant trade doesn't necessarily trickle down to the poorest Nothing trickles down to the poorest, spontaneously, almost anywhere in the world.

That's absolutely not true. People live better across the world today than they lived 50 or even 20 years ago. I read statistics somewhere that people in some obscure African country today (can't recall the name) have a living standards of Finland of 20 years ago. Think about this: the major health issue nowadays across the world is obesity, not hunger.

That's practically impossible.

Finland in 1994 had a very high standard of living. Their GDP per capita in '94 was equivalent to roughly $40,000 in today's dollar.

Maybe Finland of 1914. Nigeria's GDP per capita today, for example, is $3,000.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#238

Post by toomuchtodo » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:22 AM UTC

mudil wrote: post #236

mistermumble wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does getting basic primary care to the population (vaccinations, preventive care, well baby care) have to do with how many research papers get written? I have worked in one of the top medical schools in the US, with world-class researchers, and know that there is very little there that is directly applicable to a population of rural farmers and impoverished city dwellers.

The greatness of Cuban health care system is an urban myth, just like Jackalope.

Why repeat your comment from above word for word, when the facts clearly do not support your conclusion?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8764077

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#239

Post by MichaelGG » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:24 AM UTC

JSeymourATL wrote: post #62

> The changes follow a rare private intercession by Pope Francis, the Catholic Church’s first Latin-American pontiff, secret meetings between Cuban and American delegations at the Vatican. *Hit-tip to Pope Francis...bien hecho.

I found that the most odd thing here. Obama personally needed a Pope to remind him about Cuba? I mean, it's good a church is doing something beneficial but it sounds strange.

Re: Cuba and the U.S. will begin to normalize relations

#240

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, Dec 18, 2014, 12:27 AM UTC

WildUtah wrote: post #181

xyahoo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand: - average life expectancy in Cuba is almost the same as the USA (and higher than Mexico, Belize, Bahamas, Brazil, etc.). - literacy rate in Cuba is higher than that in the USA - Physicians per 10,000 people: Cuba has 67, USA has 24 In the Ebola crisis, Cuba has been leading from the front.

Physicians per capita figures are misleading. The US figure reflects very long careers; late retirements; investment in large teams of trauma specialists due to high war, car crash, and gunshot wound rates; a high percentage of women physicians working part time; and a high concentration of expensive specialists with no documentation that they improve outcomes and paid for by large federal government subsidies. The a…

> It's not an accident; medical societies have blocked medical school expansion for decades until recently as the population grew.

Sort of. There are a lot of very common misconceptions around this.

The AAMC (not AMA!) limited the number of medical school students until about ten years ago, at which point they announced an explicit goal of expanding the number of graduates from medical school.

However, this doesn't mean anything in practice[0], because the bottleneck isn't the medical school graduates - it's the residency programs. As a medical school graduate, you have an MD, but you are not actually qualified to practice medicine. That requires usually four years of training (minimum), plus several more for various specialties.

These programs are costly to run, and so hospitals that offer residency programs are funded by the federal government to do so (through Medicare). The only way to expand the number of practicing physicians in the US is to skimp on quality during training (which nobody wants to do), or to increase funding through Medicare (which nobody wants to do.

> US doctors are fewer and have more responsibilities and thus must be paid extraordinarily to work very long hours and not retire at the usual ages

They also have to be paid a hefty amount to pay off massive debt. If you see an attending physician in his 30s (or even 40s), even if he's making a respectable amount of money, there's a good chance he still has a negative net worth. The level of debt of course varies by location, specialty, and quality of education, but it's rather misleading to look at an e.g. $200K/year income for a physician and compare that to the equivalent amount in the tech industry.

[0] pun not intended, but very a propos!