Trouble in Cuba

No you didn't. You put a question mark at the end. But you'd already got the "answer" in your head.

Don't think we believe for an instant that you're an inquisitive, questing soul.

Hell, I'm not sure you aren't fungus with delusions of grandeur.

If the liberals get their way, yes.

So you don't think Communism is inevitably doomed to fail any more than any other system?

Nope.

Inevitably.

It will, at some point, be consigned to history.

Just like everything else.

And this is why everyone thinks you’re a child

It’s not that communism failed. It’s that the G8 countries are all capitalist. Trading between countries with different economic policies, I imagine, is difficult. So, those countries adopted capitalistic variances in their economy so as to participate in global trading.

Or, for all we know, the global 1% exerted enough influence in those countries to force the change. But, that’s just speculation.

Well, If you say so, then it must be so.

By the same token did capitalism fail hard, since there are no purely capitalist countries anywhere?

I’m pretty sure capitalism was coined around the time of Adam Smith, not him, but a guy who’s name escapes me wrote a book about economics about a decade earlier.

The word may have been coined around then but the idea was already centuries old.

I am pretty sure this is the case. Let us nbot pretend capitalism is some new concept when we have records of cash and private ownership going back way beyond such people.

There were ten times as many capitalist nations in that time frame - UNTIL all of Eastern Europe was conquered. Hell, China was brought to heel by military force internally as well. No one voted in these regimes, unless they only had 1 option.

There are only 5 communist countries left - and yes, they lost the cold war.

And I'd offer that the scope of western intervention is different. Do you really believe what we left behind in Iraq is a puppet state? How about when we helped depose Gaddaffi, or removed Noriega.

I'm sure that's true. However, we didn't enslave those countries like the Soviets and Chinese did. Probably the worst example of that in US policy is when we deposed Mossadegh in Iran at the request of the UK government because he was threatening to nationalize British Petroleum's resources. In most cases however US attempts to democratize nations, and there are few better examples of that than West Germany and Japan.

And we also have intervened at times to stop these attempts - such as when the US blocked France and the UK's attempt to conduct a military invasion of Egypt when they nationalized the Suez Canal.

Manifest Destiny has absolutely nothing to do with the Great Dying. It happened 300 years later, and as I've repeatedly stated, would not have been possible without the Great Dying.

I understand that your cultural bias prevents you from admitting that, but honestly, you just seem obtuse for not being able to grasp that basic fact.

The Great Dying was overwhelmingly the province of one nation - Spain. Even the precursors of the US, the British colonies, simply weren't around when it happened. 90% of native Americans in North America were gone by 1600. Jamestown was founded in 1607. Plymouth Colony in 1620.

Yes, when the US stated it's destiny was to spread from coast to coast it was a land grab, tens of thousands of natives were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. Yes, that is morally unacceptable.

But it is not in any way, shape or form similar in scale to what happened in the first years of Communism where tens of millions were killed, explicitly due to failed ideologies that were implemented. In the Holodomor they stole grain from starving farmers at gunpoint, and 3.5 million starved to death.

If you want to shame the US, slavery is by far our worst crime.

And if you want to tell me any nation on Earth wouldn't have expanded into what was largely unpopulated territory in the American West in the 19th century, you are simply lying to yourself.

Yes, the European powers that did that have a lot to answer for. You really should get on a multi-trillion dollar reparation for the incalculable harm you guys did there.

But Communism is different only in that those same imperial powers largely stopped them from conquering via military force, while they were at the same time decolonizing.

It's naive beyond reason to think that authoritarian regimes that were willing to kill tens of millions of their own followers would not have done so in conquered lands if necessary. Lenin is on record estimating that they'd need to kill 1% of his population to allow for the reeducation of the rest. The Vietnamese Communist party believed it could do it with only .1% of their population being executed. And of course the numbers ended up far larger over time.

No, I just have historical fact on my side. Yes, the Great Killing happened - it just had absolutely nothing to do with the United States. Feel free to finally acknowledge that historical reality, because I know this isn't the first time I've corrected you guys on this.

Communism was contained and in large part collapsed in on itself. Even Stalin's move to 'Socialism in One Country' was a PR maneuver, as Stalin lead bloody invasions of half a dozen countries prior to the attack by Nazi Germany and ended up totally dominating Eastern Europe.

Certainly capitalist countries have their share of sins. but during the same time the colonial powers were actively divesting themselves of their colonial conquests authoritarian communism was attempting to subject other countries to their own version. Those actions were also horrific, and if they lack the same breadth and scope of colonnialism it is largely because they were opposed and not successful.

One of the reasons that Castro was successful is that when Batista went full dictator the US embargoed Cuba - we stopped Batista from buying arms to fight the rebels. And we were one of the first countries to recognize Castro's new government.

The antagonism didn't happen until he nationalized all US investments and allied with the Soviet Union, who had just put down the Hungary rebellion and had sent thousands of Soviet aviators to fight UN forces trying to protect South Korea from armed invasion.

The US pays more attention to Cuba because it's 90 miles off its coast, it has a large politically active base in an important swing state, and of course allowed nuclear missiles to be based there. A war was started because of a US warship sinking there. And oh yeah, we still have a naval base there.

You paint in very simplistic terms. History is a hell of a lot more complicated than your ideology.

The wild thing is that if the US had opened up more to Cuba it would almost certainly be a hell of a lot more capitalist right now.

What on earth are you on about here Oldfella with tits?

I'm offended by that. Oldfella almost certainly had nice man-tits of his own.

Or he did, before he died.

That doesn't change the fact that it would still be a totalitarian dictatorship.

See: China. The early oughts view that continuing trade relationships with these regimes would make them more captialistic which therefore would open them up internally to reform has been complete bunk.

Capitalism is neither good nor bad. It can lead to good outcomes, such as advances in sciences, medicine and food production. And it has. it can also be used to fuel repression. It depends entirely on what the government channels it into - or if it leaves it alone, it creates monopolies which themselves are authoritarian in nature.

See: the East India Company for how that can lead to catastrophe.

IMO fueling social policies with capitalist engines provides the best outcomes, as we've seen. It allows for democracy to survive, produces strong economies, and channels those into helping the people.

Capitalism doesn't lead to invention.

Necessity leads to invention.

Anyone telling you otherwise, doesn't understand economics or industry.

Nikola Tesla would like a word about capitalism's effects on invention.

Or he would if he hadn't died broke and penniless because a capitalist fucked him six ways til' Sunday.

If anything, capitalism has slowed innovation as the cost to build something new would outweigh the cost of continuing to sell what they already make with the machines they already have.

There is no incentive for corporations to innovate.

Steve Jobs wept.

Plus we are behind in renewables because the fossil fuel industry spent years lobbying for cuts to research into that area.

Lightbulbs can last decades, but you won't see those on the market because otherwise there's no repeat buy.

Do you even live on this planet?