Re: Chomsky, there’s nothing but quotes from back then? I was expecting a chapter with arguments. These quotes from back then are nothing new. As stated in the OP the Soviet Union did indeed industrialize rapidly in the 1930s/1940s period (Allen says that things went bad in the 1970s, though others talk about the Khrushchev era; I didn’t bother citing Red Plenty) and also there was this kind of exaggeration from Westerners during the Cold War who didn’t know much about the USSR. Partially due to ignorance and exaggeration/fear, but partially due to misleading or false Soviet data. I’ve heard that the same thing is going on again with China today—Westerners think the Chinese government is efficient compared to democracy but really it isn’t. I find nothing here to add to the report.
Re: Cuba. So I mostly read the book, skimmed some of it.
One of the authors was a child in Cuba, went to America, got a BS in econ, did investment banking and private equity, as well as some political activism about Cuba. But the other is a prolific published economist. Parts of the book didn’t have many citations, I wasn’t sure where they were getting the info from. However the book was pretty strongly focused on economics, as well as going back to the island’s colonial roots. It only barely mentioned things like political repression, no mention of gay persecution, and so on, which reassured me that they are writing to answer the economic question rather than making political propaganda. Generally it seemed informed and serious as far as I could tell.
I checked one part for misleading info. The authors use Cuba’s GDP per capita in 1950 and 1957 to emphasize their wealth pre-Castro. So I checked if they cherrypicked the years for this. I looked at 1946-1949 and found that Cuba was similarly wealthy at that time. Then I checked 1955-1958 and found that Cuba’s economy did peak in 1957, but the whole world’s economy was rising in 1955-1957 as well, and Cuba faced some revolutionary violence and US embargoes in 1957-1958, so it seems alright. I also checked for non-economic indicators of quality of life but found that I was getting ahead of myself and the authors were looking at the exact same statistics in the next chapter anyway.
The authors didn’t go over the embargo in detail but they point out some issues which are not affected by it. First, inefficient farming and food shortages arose quickly after the revolution, before the main embargo came into effect. Tobacco export quantity and quality to the US also fell before it was embargoed. The efficiency of the food and sugar farms themselves was poor. Meanwhile the USSR gave large amounts of aid and trade subsidies to Cuba. When this ended circa 1990, Cuba’s economy collapsed, which shows that the USSR support was very important (possibly more important than the US embargo). Additionally, what trade and finance Cuba did have in the 1990s/2000s suffered major retractions caused by government actions, so we know they could be doing noticeably better even with the US embargo. And Cuba gets a very big amount of remittance money, $5 billion per year. The remittances and USSR aid together might easily outweigh the impacts of the US embargo. And the problems for Cuba just seem too great to be explained by any embargo: in some ways Cuba’s standard of living is actually worse than it was before the revolution!
Authors also point out that the non-economic quality of life indicators for Cuba are really not impressive, and the official statistics (like their GDP) are inflated. Not just their opinion: the UN agrees that there is a lack of reliable information about Cuba’s economy and development. Plus, the idea that Cuba would post false/misleading statistics is expected by the research on autocracies that I included in the OP.
Overall, I’m reasonably satisfied by the book, it’s not a slam dunk but it makes a good argument. I think it would be good to spend more time on the standards of living in 1989 before the loss of Soviet support—it still seems like Cuba made a poor showing over 1960-1989, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it has been since then.
But I also found other studies on the topic. Three of them take a general look at Cuba’s economy/development and find that the revolution hurt it:
I also found this article which looks at Cuba’s famous healthcare and finds that it’s overrated. Also it further underscores the idea of Cuban government statistics not being reliable.
Finally, I think if the embargo were really so severe as to be mainly responsible for Cuba’s problems, Cuba would do more to try to undo it. I don’t know the details of the diplomacy here and of course there limits to how well Cuba can reform without risking a coup or revolution, but it still seems like there are small ways they could have tried to improve relations with the US—token liberalization, apologize for shooting down planes in 1996, offer compensation for frozen/confiscated US property, or other things. If there really were so many billions of dollars at stake then I would think they’d have taken some earlier, bigger steps forward. Low confidence on this.
But in summary: it seems well substantiated that Cuba’s economic model has failed. I will add these new studies into the report.
′ Finally, I think if the embargo were really so severe as to be mainly responsible for Cuba’s problems, Cuba would do more to try to undo it. I don’t know the details of the diplomacy here and of course there limits to how well Cuba can reform without risking a coup or revolution, but it still seems like there are small ways they could have tried to improve relations with the US—token liberalization, apologize for shooting down planes in 1996, offer compensation for frozen/confiscated US property, or other things. If there really were so many billions of dollars at stake then I would think they’d have taken some earlier, bigger steps forward. Low confidence on this.′
Betrays a major misunderstanding of the ideological forces at play here. Castro and the Cuban government have, understandably, felt as if the US would do anything to knock it back into being a capitalist, investor friendly state like it was under Batista (Bay of Pigs, Operation Northwoods,the 1976 plane bombing etc). To back down would be to open the floodgates to further US attempts like these. A refusal to kowtow to the US given their record does not in any way indicate that the embargo is not severe
But since the end of the Cold War, America has had little reason to pursue regime change in Cuba. In fact we would probably prefer to avoid a refugee crisis.
Consider how the US acted towards China after the Sino-Soviet split. We warmed relations quite a bit, pressing mildly for liberalization but not for regime change. From the Cuban perspective I wouldn’t see it as an existential threat, unless I simply refused to tolerate the loss of my personal political power (which, admittedly, may be their reasoning).
I’ve heard that the same thing is going on again with China today—Westerners think the Chinese government is efficient compared to democracy but really it isn’t.
Can you please explain why you think this, or link to some relevant resources? (For context, I came across this comment after posting Ways that China is surpassing the US on LW, and I’d like to hear more from your contrasting perspective.)
Chinese people themselves don’t seem to regard the West as having a relatively inefficient govt—their rationale for defending their system is economic and physical security https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/1354066119850253
Studies on relative economic inefficiency of Chinese state owned enterprises, cited in OP
So I went and looked deeper.
Re: Chomsky, there’s nothing but quotes from back then? I was expecting a chapter with arguments. These quotes from back then are nothing new. As stated in the OP the Soviet Union did indeed industrialize rapidly in the 1930s/1940s period (Allen says that things went bad in the 1970s, though others talk about the Khrushchev era; I didn’t bother citing Red Plenty) and also there was this kind of exaggeration from Westerners during the Cold War who didn’t know much about the USSR. Partially due to ignorance and exaggeration/fear, but partially due to misleading or false Soviet data. I’ve heard that the same thing is going on again with China today—Westerners think the Chinese government is efficient compared to democracy but really it isn’t. I find nothing here to add to the report.
Re: Cuba. So I mostly read the book, skimmed some of it.
One of the authors was a child in Cuba, went to America, got a BS in econ, did investment banking and private equity, as well as some political activism about Cuba. But the other is a prolific published economist. Parts of the book didn’t have many citations, I wasn’t sure where they were getting the info from. However the book was pretty strongly focused on economics, as well as going back to the island’s colonial roots. It only barely mentioned things like political repression, no mention of gay persecution, and so on, which reassured me that they are writing to answer the economic question rather than making political propaganda. Generally it seemed informed and serious as far as I could tell.
I checked one part for misleading info. The authors use Cuba’s GDP per capita in 1950 and 1957 to emphasize their wealth pre-Castro. So I checked if they cherrypicked the years for this. I looked at 1946-1949 and found that Cuba was similarly wealthy at that time. Then I checked 1955-1958 and found that Cuba’s economy did peak in 1957, but the whole world’s economy was rising in 1955-1957 as well, and Cuba faced some revolutionary violence and US embargoes in 1957-1958, so it seems alright. I also checked for non-economic indicators of quality of life but found that I was getting ahead of myself and the authors were looking at the exact same statistics in the next chapter anyway.
The authors didn’t go over the embargo in detail but they point out some issues which are not affected by it. First, inefficient farming and food shortages arose quickly after the revolution, before the main embargo came into effect. Tobacco export quantity and quality to the US also fell before it was embargoed. The efficiency of the food and sugar farms themselves was poor. Meanwhile the USSR gave large amounts of aid and trade subsidies to Cuba. When this ended circa 1990, Cuba’s economy collapsed, which shows that the USSR support was very important (possibly more important than the US embargo). Additionally, what trade and finance Cuba did have in the 1990s/2000s suffered major retractions caused by government actions, so we know they could be doing noticeably better even with the US embargo. And Cuba gets a very big amount of remittance money, $5 billion per year. The remittances and USSR aid together might easily outweigh the impacts of the US embargo. And the problems for Cuba just seem too great to be explained by any embargo: in some ways Cuba’s standard of living is actually worse than it was before the revolution!
Authors also point out that the non-economic quality of life indicators for Cuba are really not impressive, and the official statistics (like their GDP) are inflated. Not just their opinion: the UN agrees that there is a lack of reliable information about Cuba’s economy and development. Plus, the idea that Cuba would post false/misleading statistics is expected by the research on autocracies that I included in the OP.
Overall, I’m reasonably satisfied by the book, it’s not a slam dunk but it makes a good argument. I think it would be good to spend more time on the standards of living in 1989 before the loss of Soviet support—it still seems like Cuba made a poor showing over 1960-1989, but maybe it wasn’t as bad as it has been since then.
But I also found other studies on the topic. Three of them take a general look at Cuba’s economy/development and find that the revolution hurt it:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-economic-history/article/the-road-not-taken-pre-revolutionary-cuban-living-standards-in-comparative-perspective/1710F4E3173FCABE07BB7400406BF55E
https://economics.ca//2013/papers/SG0030-1.pdf
https://www.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/twec.12609
I also found this article which looks at Cuba’s famous healthcare and finds that it’s overrated. Also it further underscores the idea of Cuban government statistics not being reliable.
https://academic.oup.com/heapol/article/33/6/755/5035051
Finally, I think if the embargo were really so severe as to be mainly responsible for Cuba’s problems, Cuba would do more to try to undo it. I don’t know the details of the diplomacy here and of course there limits to how well Cuba can reform without risking a coup or revolution, but it still seems like there are small ways they could have tried to improve relations with the US—token liberalization, apologize for shooting down planes in 1996, offer compensation for frozen/confiscated US property, or other things. If there really were so many billions of dollars at stake then I would think they’d have taken some earlier, bigger steps forward. Low confidence on this.
But in summary: it seems well substantiated that Cuba’s economic model has failed. I will add these new studies into the report.
Thanks for an enjoyable article, but I think
′ Finally, I think if the embargo were really so severe as to be mainly responsible for Cuba’s problems, Cuba would do more to try to undo it. I don’t know the details of the diplomacy here and of course there limits to how well Cuba can reform without risking a coup or revolution, but it still seems like there are small ways they could have tried to improve relations with the US—token liberalization, apologize for shooting down planes in 1996, offer compensation for frozen/confiscated US property, or other things. If there really were so many billions of dollars at stake then I would think they’d have taken some earlier, bigger steps forward. Low confidence on this.′
Betrays a major misunderstanding of the ideological forces at play here. Castro and the Cuban government have, understandably, felt as if the US would do anything to knock it back into being a capitalist, investor friendly state like it was under Batista (Bay of Pigs, Operation Northwoods,the 1976 plane bombing etc). To back down would be to open the floodgates to further US attempts like these. A refusal to kowtow to the US given their record does not in any way indicate that the embargo is not severe
But since the end of the Cold War, America has had little reason to pursue regime change in Cuba. In fact we would probably prefer to avoid a refugee crisis.
Consider how the US acted towards China after the Sino-Soviet split. We warmed relations quite a bit, pressing mildly for liberalization but not for regime change. From the Cuban perspective I wouldn’t see it as an existential threat, unless I simply refused to tolerate the loss of my personal political power (which, admittedly, may be their reasoning).
Can you please explain why you think this, or link to some relevant resources? (For context, I came across this comment after posting Ways that China is surpassing the US on LW, and I’d like to hear more from your contrasting perspective.)
This China scholar is pessimistic about the recent pivot to more state intervention.
https://cscc.sas.upenn.edu/podcasts/2019/04/12/ep-17-diagnosing-chinas-state-led-capitalism-yasheng-huang
General perception gleaned from the opinions of informed China watchers, e.g. https://twitter.com/Scholars_Stage
Chinese people themselves don’t seem to regard the West as having a relatively inefficient govt—their rationale for defending their system is economic and physical security https://sci-hub.tw/10.1177/1354066119850253
Studies on relative economic inefficiency of Chinese state owned enterprises, cited in OP
Chinese AI not as good as the hype https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/deciphering-chinas-ai-dream/
Despite ballyhoo about surveillance and precise social engineering, they are still relying on old fashioned brutalities to pacify Xinjiang