BTW, it's probably a good idea for Cuba to avoid importing new cars. It's better to use busses, bicycles, etc., wherever possible.
I don't know where this accusation of "blaming a single factor" comes from. Not from me. It's like the accusation that the fellow (whose name I've forgotten) who said that hunter/gatherers didn't get a lot of infectious diseases saw their life as "idyllic": if you don't agree with the perceived truth completely, you must agree with the opposite of that truth. There's something about these discussions which provokes an "if you're not with me, you're against me" perspective.
JD
I wrote:
> The US blockade -- and Cuba's limited resources -- seem relevant to
this anecdote and
> shouldn't be ignored.
WS writes: I think the purported US blockade effect is a ruse - Cuba is free to trade with Western Europe, Canada, Mexico, China, etc. - not exactly subsistence economies.
Otoh, blaming "socialism" on Cuba's problem is also a ruse, at least to a point. Cuba's problem is that it does not make much that the world would buy, except perhaps for sugar (which comes cheaply nowadays) and cigars (not exactly a high tech industry).
One can, of course, argue that the lack of export Asian-tiger-style economy in Cuba is an effect of "socialism" - but that can be countered that what made Taiwan (and S. Korea) work was: land-reform, centralized planning and aggressive anti-import policies, all of each are prominent (if not defining) features of socialist economies. In other words, one would need to look beneath ideological labels and explain why the same (or similar) policies work better in one country than in another.
An there is, of course, the notorious work ethics - perhaps not a deciding factor, but not an irrelevant either.
In sum, blaming a country's lack of economic success on- or attributing a success to- a single, most cognitively salient factor may make good ideology but bad science.
Wojtek
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