New This Fall: Castrobama

Now and again, I hear news that is so bizarre as to be shocking.  That’s right, folks, Castro is firing 500,000 government workers.  The number could reach 1 million.  He is convinced that the Cuban model was a mistake.


No, wait.  News flash.  It was capitalism that failed.  Or so Castro said a few days after being “interpreted wrongly” by two American journalists.

Double duh.

We all know that Castro changes his mind as often as some people change underwear.  If he follows through, it will be the most significant change of heart since George Wallace renounced segregation.  Cuba is in shambles.  Decades of socialism have left a country that was once the jewel of the Caribbean looking like a broken bottle. Castro will go to his grave saying that the Revolution was right and good.  No matter, though.  Reality has a way of bending even revolutionaries to its will.  Say what he will, Cuba must become a capitalist country to survive.

Like Castro, Obama does not want to be forthright about his real beliefs.  He is hell-bent on increasing the scope and size of government while professing not to be a socialist.  Castro knows free enterprise is the only thing that can save Cuba, but he wants everyone to believe he is no capitalist.  These guys ought to have a sitcom together.


If Terry ever were to get really sick, he would not go to Cuba for treatment.  He doubts Michael Moore would either.

About Terry Noel

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6 Responses to New This Fall: Castrobama

  1. Sally Lacy says:

    Fortunately you would not have to go to Cuba for health care, as I assume you have American health insurance provided for you at a very reasonable cost through your university. Hope you are feeling very blessed today. For the many people (for whom this blog is largely intended by the way–small business folk, entrepeneurs…) working without a net, I wish you similar blessings someday. –Sally


    • Terry Noel says:


      It is true that I have a health insurance package. I base my employment decisions partly on what package is being offered. It is part of my compensation and not a gift. I feel blessed for many reasons, but not that particularly. In the past, I have had to pony up just like those folks you are talking about.

      This is a good example, though, of people agreeing on the outcome while disagreeing on the path to get there. We both want people to be able to get health insurance. You (correct me if I am wrong) favor government-run or at least government-supported health care. I believe that will lead to a degradation of the entire system as bureaucracy chokes out innovation and increases taxes. We will all suffer.

      Consider this idea, even if in the end you don’t agree. Small business owners cannot afford health insurance largely because they have traditionally been prohibited from banding together to negotiate with insurance companies. They also, like individuals, have not been able to buy insurance across state lines. Insurance companies LOVE these restrictions because they increase profits. In my view, these types of profits are illegitimate–they are possible only because the government colludes with big insurance companies to stifle competition. Allow health insurance providers to operate in true free markets and watch how fast prices and options come down.

      Here’s another one. Allow each individual to open a Health Savings Account. Make whatever they put in non-taxable. Further, let them put in as much as they want and use it for themselves or donate it to other people. Allow them to will it tax-free to any individual or group they choose.

      I don’t expect to see that anytime soon, because politicians and large insurance companies have too much to lose. But it would get you and I to the same place–better and cheaper health care for all.


  2. madboy says:

    Cuba is a poor example of a socialist country.

    Professor, with whatever respect is due, I think you have no idea what socialism is.

    I recommend G.D.H. Cole’s “A History of Socialist Thought.”


    • Terry Noel says:


      I have a very good understanding of socialism, thank you. It is the subjugation of the individual to the collective. In reality, that usually means the state. More precisely, it usually means a Castro-like thug at the helm. No amount of window-dressing will ever make socialism anything other than what it is–evil and in opposition to everything that a human being requires to live and prosper.


  3. madboy says:

    Quite a selective definition. You completely ignored the part where workers own the means of production. Many socialists have about the same amount of respect for what passes today as “socialism” as I do for Rand. So now knowing a major tenet of socialism, that workers go to work for themselves and not as industrial serfs, can you make the case that it is “evil and in opposition to everything” that one lives for?


  4. Terry Noel says:

    Absolutely I can, Madboy. No jobs would exist were it not for the people who create businesses. If that happens to be workers, they own the business in question as would any other owner and may run it as they see fit. This also applies if they buy it.

    If, on the other hand, they agree to work in a business owned by someone else, they have no claim to ownership of the “means of production.” They may negotiate for that, as when someone takes stock as part of their compensation. Barring that, they are not serfs, but willing participants in a contract.

    In a true free market economy, you or anyone else would be free to create a company or a community based on socialist principles; you just could not force others to participate. Socialism enforced by the state is evil because it confiscates the rightful property of the people who are capable of and willing to create a business and gives it to others. There is no moral justification for such a policy.


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