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Cuba gives a little leeway to it's citizens?

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Mammon

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Cuban state workers make an average of $19 a month. On that salary, it would take nearly two years to earn enough for one night at the Saratoga. Similarly, car rentals in Cuba -- also managed by the military -- are among the most expensive in Latin America, with vehicles typically going for as much as $100 a day.

Being allowed is not anywhere near being able...

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  • 1 year later...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8033102779.html

They can buy cellphones and T.V.s now? And stay in there own hotels? Hell must be freezing over!

Thats nothing really. Cuba is still a totalitarian police state. There are no individual liberties and there is no capitalism. I wish the Bay of Pigs had really resulted in destruction of that evil communist "paradise".
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  • 2 years later...
Cuba announced that -- starting next year -- its citizens will not need exit visas to leave the country. They have not lifted all restrictions, but this is one step forward. Cubans still need a passport and a visa from their destination country. In addition, the government reserves the right to stop anyone leaving for national security reasons and if it would be a brain drain (e.g. to stop doctors from leaving).
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Three Cuban soccer players defected ahead of game in Toronto

Even their official teams cannot keep it together. When the exist Visas are lifted it will be like the old Soviet states after the collapse of Communisim. Everyone who has a grandma, distant cousin, or whatever will rush out of there. Anyone, who can, whether legally or illegally will move out, leaving only those who cannot leave or those who are 'privilaged' enough not to want to leave

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  • 5 years later...

If a government says, "OK, now we let you do X", that does not in any way indicate a respect for the right to do X.  And it says nothing about whether it will change its mind later.

If a government does not respect rights in principle, nothing it does should be regarded as "respecting" rights, and to read current events as evidencing a growth in that nonexistent respect is to profoundly misunderstand those events and their likely consequences.

(The same critique applies to hurrahs when America's government announces that it will no longer violate this or that right.)

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  • 7 months later...
On 7/16/2018 at 5:43 PM, Invictus2017 said:

If a government says, "OK, now we let you do X", that does not in any way indicate a respect for the right to do X.  And it says nothing about whether it will change its mind later.

If a government does not respect rights in principle, nothing it does should be regarded as "respecting" rights, and to read current events as evidencing a growth in that nonexistent respect is to profoundly misunderstand those events and their likely consequences.

(The same critique applies to hurrahs when America's government announces that it will no longer violate this or that right.)

Positive changes don't come out of thin air. Somebody must be acting on principle, to cause them. Probably not anyone actually in the Cuban government (though it wouldn't be impossible), but, clearly, somebody is a rational actor somewhere along the causal chain.

It's important to keep in mind that very few things have a single cause, and the specific statement "the government does not respect X" is technically reification. It suggests either a single actor or a single minded group. They're both wrong. The first factually, the second for an even worse reason.

If you want to be more exact, the source of policies in Cuba is a hierarchy with a variety of different people, on different levels of the hierarchy (some within the government, some outside of it, some exercising legitimate power born out of competence, but, unfortunately for the Cuban people, most not so much) all playing a role in a variety of ways. Some are totally rational, some are totally irrational, most a mix of the two.

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