30 thoughts on “Controversy Erupts Over SASA Hotel Choice”

1. Wait, now as consumers we must show ‘solidarity’ with the labor force comrades in the dispute between the hotel and its workers and choose sides?

   Sure, if the hotel staff was abused, stuffed in sweatshops, and had working conditions similar to what Upton Sinclair described I would be for it, but this is a contract dispute between two parties. No need for un-informed members who are not a part of the process to jump in and take sides.

2. I think I am going to start my own LA based org boycotting SASA but not for the reasons stated here. I just don’t want those drunk thugs here. The SASA conference should have been disbanded a long time ago, or at least had its Acronym changed so that it doesn’t continue to bring shame to those in the South Asian community that care about more than getting drunk and wrecking hotels. After Chicago they were banned by the hotel chain it was held at. Word had it that in San Fran the SWAT team was called out. SASA should be disbanded because of the embarassment it has become. Its just an excuse for spoiled South Asian kids to get drunk and start fights. Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about this one and five years later I still hang my head in shame for having attended one.

3. For once i’m on the same page as abhi. SASA is an embarrassment. the chicago business…i remember that. All kinds of vandalism of the hotel and the surrounding environs – the kind of thing these kids would never do if their parents were around.

   That said, screw the unions. They just want to raise prices for consumers and attack “scabs” who’re willing to work without agitating against the guy who’s given them a job.

4. Ditto Abhi. If there is any reason not to go to SASA, then it is the reasons you have stated. I was at the Chicago one and it was pretty lame. Problem then was Northwestern nor U. Chicago had any experience in throwing or managing such an event. The only school in the Chicago area that had experience with large events like these were the University of Illinois at Chicago. Quite ironic that they were not invited as a result of the ‘thug school’ image, even though year in and year out they tend to manage such ‘thugs’ better.

   If the dangerous inmates are coming, you need the high security top notch guards to lay the law too.

   Before Chicago, the ones in the South and East were very well organised and ultimately well balanced.

   This had degenerated into an excuse for stupidity rather than going to conferences, discussing issues, and then having fun too (and not playing demolition derby). I remember the stupid ghetto party organised in the North West side of the city where the club was overcrowded, sketchy, and then a dude got thrown/pushed through a window.

5. Never went to one. I don’t regret the decision

6. I wonder how the legions of Desi hotel owners feel about Hotel Worker’s coalition. And I wonder if South Asians for Change ever talked to them.

7. “I wonder how the legions of Desi hotel owners feel about Hotel Worker’s coalition. And I wonder if South Asians for Change ever talked to them.”

   Father (Motel Owner)- Son, you cannot have the raise.

   Son- But Dad, I am cleaning 3 extra rooms cause SHEEE is slow and lazy

   Daughter- Am NOT! MOOOOOOM…

   Father- Great, not the arbitrator

   Mom – Children, we need to work together and Unionize. Time to picket outside until your father realises that he must not be a miser.

   Father- Whatever, you have the cheque-book anyway, do what you must…sigh…

8. “Wait, now as consumers we must show ‘solidarity’ with the labor force comrades in the dispute between the hotel and its workers and choose sides?”

   By going to a conference at the hotel, you ARE taking a side- you’re supporting the hotel. Of course we always take sides a consumers. The reason so many things are messed up in the world is because we blindly consume without thinking about the consequences.

9. The reason so many things are messed up in the world is because we blindly consume without thinking about the consequences.

   Funny…I thought it was because people blindly protest, unencumbered by knowledge of history or economics. After all, as Will Wilkinson so aptly put it:

   People in North Korea are eating each other because other people sincerely believed Marx’s theory that the human essence varies with the socio-economic context in which it is embedded.

   Communism & class war was tried in plenty of countries…and it failed, failed BADLY. I think consumerism is – on the whole – the more thoughtful choice relative to your warmed over Marxist vision of state control & punitive taxation, mmmmkay?

   And with that, Merry Christmas! 😉

10. um, what does this have to do with anything but nothing, gc? this is about labor unions and bad behavior at conferences.

    labor unions != communism. When they were first started, they were meant to provide workers a fair wage and a safe work environment. Tell me how this is a bad thing?

    I can’t argue that maybe over time, people have taken them and used them for their own ends in some cases, but is this cause to want to abolish them? If so, let’s abolish religion too, since it started out back in the day for some very nice purposes and now is used for materialistic and selfish ends by so many

11. um, what does this have to do with anything but nothing, gc?

    This sums it up fairly well:

    The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one’s breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry “caste.” In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either “poverty” or “consumerism.” In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry “alienation.” In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry “oppression.” In a society of boundless private charity, they cry “avarice.” In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the “exploitation” of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry “injustice.” In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like “liberty” in quotation marks when these refer to the WestÂ….

    lest you think this is a straw man, we can ask Anjali straight up a few questions:

    1) does she want to abolish capitalism? 2) what does she think of communism? 3) why is America wealthier than continental Europe, Hong Kong/Taiwan/Singapore wealthier than the PRC, South Korea wealthier than North Korea, and (the former) West Germany wealthier than (the former) East Germany?

    I think the answers would be revealing. Anjali (and liberal pundit, Abhi, etc.) have never actually thought about why free economies are a precondition for prosperity.

    Note that this is a continuous situation: it’s not just a binary communist/capitalist dichotomy, though that’s the starkest example. No, the difference in economic freedom between capitalist America and market socialist Europe is the reason for the $10000 GDP-per-capita gap between America and the big four of Continental Europe (Italy, UK, Germany, France).

    This has real consequences. Anjali thinks “income equality” is the highest good. The problem is that there is a simple solution to income inequality: make everyone equally poor. That is in fact what socialism inexorably leads to:

    “Black people, who have the lowest income in the United States, now have a higher standard of living than an ordinary Swedish household,” the HUI economists said. If Sweden were a U.S. state, it would be the poorest measured by household gross income before taxes, Bergstrom and Gidehag said. . . . The median income of African American households was about 70 percent of the median for all U.S. households while Swedish households earned 68 percent of the overall U.S. median level. This meant that Swedes stood “below groups which in the Swedish debate are usually regarded as poor and losers in the American economy,” Bergstrom and Gidehag said. Between 1980 and 1999, the gross income of Sweden’s poorest households increased by just over six percent while the poorest in the United States enjoyed a three times higher increase, HUI said.

    Point: The left’s economic policies kill economic growth. That has real consequences in the long term. It means the median inhabitant of a socialist country becomes worse off than the 10th percentile inhabitant of a capitalist country. How could it be otherwise when the GDP gap is $10000?

    So there is a reason that the strongest and most successful countries in the world have pursued right-wing economic policies (with minimal exceptions for pollution/externality regulation as opposed to heavy punitive redistribution), while third world backwaters and totalitarian hellholes have pursued socialism and communism respectively. And that’s the same reason why China and India are only now climbing out of the pit that people like Anjali put them in with their socialist fantasies.

    But, amazingly, after condemning tens of millions to death and billions more to poverty and famine over the 20th century, these guys still haven’t learnt their lesson.

    What’s the lesson? As the point of the socialist spear, labor unions are the enemy of the consumer. The activists who “stand in solidarity” with the workers aren’t paying them anything at all, but they’re throwing stones at the people who are paying them something. Furthermore, they’re damaging the consumer – who is not always “wealthy” – by forcing up prices! Example:

    Those who vent their moral indignation over low pay for Third World workers employed by multinational companies ignore the plain fact that these workers’ employers are usually supplying them with better opportunities than they had before, while those who are morally indignant on their behalf are providing them with nothing.

    I’d have a hell of a lot more respect for Anjali and co. if they’d actually say it straight up: they want every truck driver, business traveller, and vacationing family to pay higher prices at hotels so that they can feel less guilty.

12. andrea:

    Let me moderate my post above by clarifying that my beef isn’t with you, nor with moderate Democrats. Those on the left who agree that capitalism is – on the whole – optimal and that modifications should be made to correct externalities (e.g. pollution, spam) rather than punish entrepreneurs are fine by me. Clinton, Gore, Daschle et al. are all within this area.

    My beef is with semi-crypto-socialists like Anjali who try to shame people by using the premises of the radical left. One of their key premises is that the poor are poor because the rich have taken their money, and that those who reject this idea are troglodytes who blame the victim.

    Hence her self righteous posturing as an “advocate for the worker”:

    The reason so many things are messed up in the world is because we blindly consume without thinking about the consequences.

    You see, Anjali ISN’T “blindly consuming”, or so she thinks. She has blindly consumed Chomskyist propaganda, but leave that for another day.

    By accusing others of being “blind consumers”, she wants to believe that she’s an enlightened fighter for “equality” while the rest of us are all mere consumerist sheep. And the reason she supports the strike is because she wants to feel good about being more moral than us.

    She doesn’t actually care about the economic consequences of her actions. Let me make that explicit: she couldn’t care less about looking at how much money it would take to satisfy her demands, how much room prices would have to rise to accomodate them, or how her agitation will – on net – result primarily in a hike in prices for the people who attend hotels rather than a telling blow against the evil capitalist hoteliers.

    She’s just interested in fronting about how “moral” she is, as opposed to all of us “blind consumers”. Well, I beg to differ – as do vinod, razib, etc.

    Why she believes it’s “moral” to agitate for a License Raj or a Gallic union culture on American shores is anyone’s guess. She is in thrall to a discredited ideology – socialism – which is responsible for the poverty and famine of countless millions across the globe.

13. gc,

    I don’t think that by Anjali’s two sentences above that she is blanket advocating socialism in the United States. All she seemed to be saying was “you should know what you are supporting when you give your money to an organization.” There are companies I personally boycott because I do not like their labor practices (an issue for another day, please let’s not get into it here.) I have that choice due to our free market economy, so w00t capitalism in that regard. I think Anjali would agree with me. Under a communist system, you’d have to spend your money at the places the state told you to. I don’t think ANYONE is advocating that.

    One of their key premises is that the poor are poor because the rich have taken their money

    And please don’t say that this has never happened. It doesn’t ALWAYS happen in every case, but it is a travesty when it does. I am pro-union because I believe in checks and balances. The little guy hardly EVER has any say in what’s going on. (example: My boss’s boss doesn’t even KNOW WHO I AM, and I work for a relatively small institution!) Unions are a great way for the workers’ voices to be heard in a system where, quite frankly, money does the talking. Yes, they can be abused. But so can power. You should know this, as you rail against communism – a system where power is frequently and systematically abused. Unions give the less powerful the same legal resources and ability to be heard as those whom their livelihoods depend on.

    Hey Anjali – care to jump in? I don’t wanna put words in your mouth…

    oh and merry Christmas 🙂

14. By going to a conference at the hotel, you ARE taking a side- you’re supporting the hotel. Of course we always take sides a consumers. The reason so many things are messed up in the world is because we blindly consume without thinking about the consequences

    Not to get too technical here BUT, if you consume a service provided by a hotel, you aren’t “siding” with the hotel in a strict sense. You aren’t giving them something for nothing – it costs them $$$ and sweat to provide you with a service which you exchange for your $$$. IF they make a profit off of it, well, that’s their “problem.” But it isn’t a “gift” from you strictly speaking.

    By contrast, if you actively avoid an otherwise rational choice to go to a hotel b/c of some labor issue, then you are making an active choice to support the union (of course, perhaps you’re concerned that you’ll get worse service b/c of the strike… that’s a diff story.. the real question is whether your motive is YOUR quality of service or THEIR wages).

    By boycotting the hotel, you’re giving the union something (e.g. the price of not attending the event, inflicting pain on the hotel, etc.) in exchange for nothing…. This is a truer form of “support.”

    w.r.t. “blind consumption” – there’s a pretty fruitful field of econ pioneered by Hayek around “The Knowledge Problem” for which he won a Nobel Prize. Core outcome for us – the wealth maximizing policy for society writ large is for suppliers to abstract as many of the links in their supply chain as possible from consumers….

    for ex., I don’t know / care what price Toyota paid for its steel nor do I know how much a hotel worker is paid by Hilton. And we’re all richer because of it. In fact, as Hayek et. al. have proven, society is often worse off overall if/when my decisions are based on an attempt to factor this into my decisions (even if the attempt was good hearted from the outset — of course, this isn’t a 100% true rule… but I think you get the drift & the pointer)

15. The hotel is paying for the strike already with the well trained personnel out and replacemnets trying to do a good job. I am sure the Labor Unions thought that striking would harm the hotel.

    The strike in itself is punishment for the hotel. Now changing my decision based upon what little information I have about the negotiations would not be rational. Not that I am going to SASA, but I see that as a double whammy.

    As mentioned, if there were issues such as unsanitary/unsafe work conditions, abuse by management, or things along those lines then that reflects poorly upon the people running the hotel. I would not support such activities. However in a contract disupute over wages and benefits, I am not going to step into the middle to show my support for either side.

    They are private parties negotiating a mutually beneficial deal. I have no place to make demands on the hotel or labor groups.

    With respect to labor unions = communism/socialism I do not see it as a bad thing when the came around. Labor unions were the primary force that helped underprivileged workers gain their basic rights and employees (safety, decent wages, respect).

    Today labor unions exist as a counterbalance to corporate management on a pretty level plane. But the ‘issues’ have not remained as grave. Most strikes or disagreements are on wages and rates. Labor Unions also flex their muscle and have hindered basic progress in many industries.

    An example would be the auto industry. It has taken a good decade for American Automakers to gain better manufacturing capabilities rivaling those of Japan simply because the labor unions would not allow a few jobs to go in the benefit of a better product.

    Not that it is the ONLY issue, but it was one along with poor management. This resulted in Automakers having to setup new assembly lines simply to employ the newer process since the older lines could not be amended (as a result of the unions)

    Again, not saying unions are bad or corporate is good. There is a balance. But both parties have to contend with the realities of what this dynamic world throws at them. If they donot, they will go the way of the great lizards.

    Unions need restructuring. It is understood that their strength is no where near their fellow union folk in Europe or many socialized nations. But, to stay ahead a funcitoning symbiotic relationship is neccessary. Europe has found it harder to adapt than Americans have at times. One factor is definitely their labor situations.

    A static condition is no good for a global economy, balance or equilibrium is definitely a goal though.

    Apologies for Yoda speak, but I thought it was important to point out that neither side is evil, but that does not mean they are right either.

    I have no clue of the inimate detials of what the hotel vs unions are doing. Therefore it is not my place to support either. The hotel makes a loss just by losing skilled workers and the union employees strike and lose their worktime and wages.

16. “1) does she want to abolish capitalism? 2) what does she think of communism? 3) why is America wealthier than continental Europe, Hong Kong/Taiwan/Singapore wealthier than the PRC, South Korea wealthier than North Korea, and (the former) West Germany wealthier than (the former) East Germany?”

    1. I don’t think it’s so simple. I see a LOT of problems with capitalism, but I don’t think there’s a quick solution of just abolishing the system. At least not right now.

    2. I think communism offers a lot that we can use to build a better society, but I also think it has its flaws. I think it’s rather simplistic to be in this black and white capitalist/communist dichotomy. If I attack capitalism, I don’t need a McCarthy-ist attack for being a communist (which isn’t really the scariest thing in the world). But seriously, can’t we think outside the box. There are so many possibilities for a different type of world.

    3. If an entire system is built for the sole purpose of profit, then of course it will generate more wealth. Continental Europe might not be as wealthy as the US, but they take care of their people better than we do. Why is it so important to be wealthy? To have basic necessities, yes, but the drive to be the wealthy superpower causes more harm than good.

17. gc- Note that I said WE are blindly consuming, not just YOU. I’m just as accountable, but I think it’s important that we’re conscious about it and do what we can to challenge injustices. As far as blindly consuming Chomskyist propaganda, well, we don’t live in a place where there is so much of it, do we? The propaganda which we get here, which you my friend buy into, is capitalist propaganda. It’s funny how it’s not acknowledged as being propaganda. Yeah, a lot of communist/socialist organizations spread some “propaganda”, but don’t we get capitalist propaganda EVERYWHERE? It is the most blindly consumed ideology, and it’s such a part of our daily lives that we don’t even see it.

    But back to the issue of the hotel….Vinod, yes we are technically taking a side. We don’t live in an era of bartering, so the entity that provides the service exists solely to make a profit. When I spend my money somewhere, I am choosing to let that business make money.

18. andrea, I rest my case. Check what Anjali had to say for herself:

    I think communism offers a lot that we can use to build a better society, but I also think it has its flaws. I think it’s rather simplistic to be in this black and white capitalist/communist dichotomy. If I attack capitalism, I don’t need a McCarthy-ist attack for being a communist (which isn’t really the scariest thing in the world)

    Communism isn’t the scariest thing in the world? Well, shucks, maybe I’m just a yokel, but I’d have thought the millions of skulls stacked up in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, and countless other locales might testify to it being the scariest thing in the world.

    Anjali’s got sympathy for these guys:

    THE Red Army’s orgy of rape in the dying days of Nazi Germany was conducted on a much greater scale than previously suspected, according to a new book by the military historian Anthony Beevor… The rapes had begun as soon as the Red Army entered East Prussia and Silesia in 1944. In many towns and villages every female, aged from 10 to 80, was raped. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel laureate who was then a young officer, described the horror in his narrative poem Prussian Nights: “The little daughter’s on the mattress,/Dead. How many have been on it/A platoon, a company perhaps?” How many German women were raped? One can only guess, but a high proportion of at least 15 million women who either lived in the Soviet Union zone or were expelled from the eastern provinces. The scale of rape is suggested by the fact that about two million women had illegal abortions every year between 1945 and 1948.

    Nice way to stand up for women’s rights, comrade! I’m sure the South Asian Sisters knew all about the fact that Communist murderers organized the largest, most systematic, most premeditated pattern of rapes in recorded history.

    Yes, these were the very same guys who started World War 2 with the the Germans, who started a Holocaust that dwarfed the Nazi civilian death toll by more than an order of magnitude.

    So yeah: Anjali, you’re a Communist Holocaust denier. Do you have any idea how many millions were killed by Communists? Ever read The Black Book of Communism, The Gulag Archipelago, or One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?

    I’m going to refrain from calling you a moral zero because I know you’re probably just ignorant rather than actively evil. But I’d advise you to reexamine your sympathy for the most murderous ideology ever to have existed on this planet, with a death toll of more than one hundred million to date.

19. Anjali:

    Ok. While the above was heartfelt, and while I encourage you to check out the links, let me lighten up for a sec. I apologize for yelling at you, and I think you’ve been a champ in responding substantively even when I’ve been sarcastic. You actually strike me as being reasonable, so let me reason with you.

    You say:

    3. If an entire system is built for the sole purpose of profit, then of course it will generate more wealth. Continental Europe might not be as wealthy as the US, but they take care of their people better than we do. Why is it so important to be wealthy? To have basic necessities, yes, but the drive to be the wealthy superpower causes more harm than good.

    But what about the link I showed you which demonstrated that African Americans had higher per-capita incomes than Swedes?

    Alternatively, if you think wealth is immaterial, check this out:

    Within a week of each other, two earthquakes struck on opposite sides of the world — an earthquake measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale in California and a 6.6 earthquake in Iran. But, however similar the earthquakes, the human costs were enormously different. The deaths in Iran have been counted in the tens of thousands. In California, the deaths did not reach double digits. Why the difference? In one word, wealth. Wealth enables homes, buildings and other structures to be built to withstand greater stresses. Wealth permits the creation of modern transportation that can quickly carry people to medical facilities. It enables those facilities to be equipped with more advanced medical apparatus and supplies, and amply staffed with highly trained doctors and support staff. Those who disdain wealth as crass materialism need to understand that wealth is one of the biggest life-saving factors in the world. As an economist in India has pointed out, “95 percent of deaths from natural hazards occur in poor countries.”

    This is what I don’t get. On the one hand, you have granted that capitalism creates wealth far more effectively than socialism (of course it will generate more wealth), though you have yet to concede all the downstream implications of it.

    Yet on the other hand, you are agitating for these workers because you don’t feel they’re wealthy enough.

    So which is it? Is wealth important or not? If it’s important, is relative wealth really more important than absolute wealth? Why would you rather have a society with median income of 20000 per year and low variance than one in which the median was 30000 per year but the variance was nonzero?

    In practice your policies, if implemented, would mean that everyone would get poorer for everyone to be more equal. Is that what you really want? Do you think absolute wealth is important or not?

20. gc- Time and time again, you are putting words in people’s mouths. You seem to have no arguments or thoughts of your own, but rather well rehearsed and memorized arguments that I’ve heard many times before. You say that people on the left are ignorant, but you just start framing arguments against your stereotypes of the left rather than looking at what has been said. All people on the left do not think alike. We may have a similar analysis, but not always the same solution. You’re asking me to defend positions that I have never taken. For example, I never said wealth is immaterial. I was questioning whether it makes sense for an entire society to be based on generating wealth. Nor did I express support for armed revolution. I do agree that it is important for us to know about the horrible violence associated with the revolutions you mention. And that there are many cases in which it just doesn’t work. Does capitalism work? Is it working for so many countries who are in debt? Is it working for small farmers here and abroad? Isn’t capitalism waging violent wars? The point I’m trying to make is that we don’t need to rush to defend any system. We should be critical of it all, and see what does work. For example, when I visited Cuba, I saw a lot of things that really worked in their educational system and health care system. There were also a lot of things that did not work. I don’t want to romanticize a socialist government either. And yeah, the Cuban revolution was bloody. The ends don’t justify the means, but now that we have a system that reflects socialism in a way that I think works better than China or Russia. I know it has it’s flaws, but isn’t there also something we can learn from socialism in Cuba?

    And as far as “But what about the link I showed you which demonstrated that African Americans had higher per-capita incomes than Swedes?”

    Do Swedes have to pay as much out of their pocket for the basics? I don’t think so. I think if you look at the actual standard of living, Swedes have it better off. If you don’t believe me, just compare low income neighborhoods in the US and Sweden. Notice any differences?

    And as far as the earthquake comparison, obviously something does pay for all of these things. But how is our current system a solution? Will the people of Iran be better off if we just put a few fast food chains and a Dow Chemical plant over there? Or maybe call centers.

    This may seem way too idealistic, butI think it’s good to have visions: We need a GLOBAL minimum wage and maximum wage. Eventually.

    Alright, gc, time for you to take things out of context and make personal attacks. Have fun!

21. btw, the last post was mine. 🙂

22. “This may seem way too idealistic, butI think it’s good to have visions: We need a GLOBAL minimum wage and maximum wage. Eventually.”

    Are you serious? I mean, I am a BIG fan of Star Trek and its utopic Earthbound settings but enforcing a GLOBAL minimum AND maximum wage is the most naive suggestion I have heard.

    Capitalistic, communist, whatever. Bottom line is people will pay for services and good desired and not pay for things they do not see desirable.

    You put a cap on both, you simply force the business to go underground in ‘Black Markets’ which are completely unregulated.

    Maybe when we do have Warp drive and go where no man has gone before we can aspire to work for self betterment, not for monetary gain.

23. I know it has it’s flaws, but isn’t there also something we can learn from socialism in Cuba?

    Ummm, people are risking death to escape Cuba:

    The three men, Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac, were among a group who reportedly hijacked a Cuban ferry with several dozen passengers on board on 2 April, and tried to force it to the United States. The incident, the third hijacking in two weeks in Cuba, ended without bloodshed, after several days’ stand-off between Cuban security forces and the hijackers.

    Friday’s executions capped weeks of tension on the island of 11 million that included a flurry of attempted hijackings, dozens of arrests and stiff jail sentences for dissidents. Last week, 75 dissidents were sentenced with terms up to 28 years. They were accused of collaborating with, or taking money from, U.S. officials.

    It’s a prison state ruled by a Communist dictator with a third world standard of living. The sentence for trying to escape is death. Nevertheless, every year dozens of brave souls try to make it to American shores.

    You don’t see anyone sneaking into Cuba. So what exactly would you have us “learn” from Cuba?

24. I know many people who had to sneak into Cuba since our government hasn’t always made it easy to go there, but I know that’s not your point. GC, I understand that there are huge problems in Cuba. Racism, sexism and homophobia exist. The government does suppress people, but look at what they are up against. I’m not defending their actions, but they are trying to survive through all the sanctions and shit our government has imposed. Anyway, sorry this is all scattered, but I’m about to go out…So there is a lot of poverty. I’m not denying that, but we can learn that even a country with very little can accomplish a lot for its people if resources are pulled together. If Cuba can have such a low infant mortality rate, pretty decent health care, and a high literacy rate, it can happen in other places too. Plus, they have really good music because they’re not forced to listen to Clear Channel crap all day.

25. “Clear Channel crap all day”

    I agree on this one. Clear channel is crap, go XM or Sirius Satellite Radio.

26. clear channel is the DEVIL.

27. Anjali,

    Well, the logical response to sanctions from the US is so clearly locking up dissidents and democracy activists. And that whole shooting people when they try to leave Cuba? Understandable. Sanctions, you know. Cuba is free to trade with the whole rest of the world, so it seems unlike that US sanctions are the sole reason for the poverty; more likely the fact that Cuba lost the Soviet Union as a patron over a decade ago and has never really recovered from losing all that foreign aid. And also, I would be very, very careful of believing statistics compiled by that particular regime. They might not be, well, entirely accurate.

    (Anjali, I respect your opinion very much, I just disagree with you 🙂 I am no ‘bash the left’ person, although I am of the right. Just saying, in case you think I am piling on, which I don’t mean to do).

28. MD- No, I don’t think you’re left-bashing. 🙂

    As far as I know, Cuba isn’t free to trade with the rest of the world. I haven’t read up on this lately, but I do know that in the past, the US has made it difficult for other nations to trade with Cuba, punishing companies or nations that trade with Cuba. I think they’ve eased the sanctions a bit now, but honestly, I don’t have up to date info on this. I don’t support how the government handles dissidents, and I said before, I’m not defending their actions but pointing out the struggles they are up against. Our government has also done some nasty things when in a state of emergency.

    As far as statistics go, yeah, one should always be careful. I’ve also read about the literacy rate in independent sources not compiled by the Cuban government. I also had the chance to travel and meet people in Cuba. I visited schools, and I do think they do a good job educating their children.

29. GC, I understand that there are huge problems in Cuba. Racism, sexism and homophobia exist.

    Ummm, I think the fact that they’re a COMMUNIST DICTATORSHIP is probably slightly more of a problem for Cuba than the relative paucity of gay pride parades. Their grinding poverty is a direct consequence of communism.

    I mean, you admitted this above. You agreed that capitalist countries would create more wealth than market socialist countries, and market socialist countries would in turn be richer than straight-up communist dictatorships. Quote:

    GC: why is America wealthier than continental Europe, Hong Kong/Taiwan/Singapore wealthier than the PRC, South Korea wealthier than North Korea, and (the former) West Germany wealthier than (the former) East Germany?” Anjali: If an entire system is built for the sole purpose of profit, then of course it will generate more wealth. Continental Europe might not be as wealthy as the US, but they take care of their people better than we do. Why is it so important to be wealthy? To have basic necessities, yes, but the drive to be the wealthy superpower causes more harm than good.

    You don’t seem to understand that being “more wealthy” is the difference between roads, running water, and electricity versus third world squalor. I don’t understand: how can you believe absolute poverty is a bad thing if you think wealth is unimportant? You have an enormous contradiction in your worldview.

    As for the infant mortality statistics…I can’t believe you’re serious. Cuba is a third world country. People urinate and defecate in the streets. The idea that their medical care is better than ours is ludicrous – where are their CAT scans, 21st century drugs, and MRI machines?

    You might try being a little curious about the propaganda you’ve been fed:

    The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category — the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old. Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive in the world. The United States is, for example, one of only a handful countries that keeps detailed statistics on early fetal mortality — the survival rate of infants who are born as early as the 20th week of gestation. How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive — and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent — that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death. In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.

    In other words, the ostensibly higher “infant mortality” rate of the US is because we actually try to save the lives of premature babies – and record their deaths as deaths.

    This may seem way too idealistic, butI think it’s good to have visions: We need a GLOBAL minimum wage and maximum wage. Eventually.

    It’s not “idealistic”, it’s economically illiterate. I mean, do you understand that wealth can be created and not just moved around? Singapore did not loot its cell phones from Sierra Leone. You are not going to make the world wealthier by robbing the Taiwanese to give to the Tanzanians.

    Let me ask you straight up: do you really believe that someone can get rich only if someone else is getting poorer? If so, how do you explain all the wealth – the running water, the electricity, the airplanes, the cars, the phones, the computers – around the world today? Where did that come from? And how do you explain the fact that previously useless things (like processed sand) are now worth billions of dollars?

    A simplistic zero-sum understanding of economics cannot account for the brute fact that wealth has been created through technology.

    Plus, they have really good music because they’re not forced to listen to Clear Channel crap all day.

    Newsflash: no one is “forcing” you to listen to Clear Channel. You know that little dial that sits next to volume on the radio? Yes, it changes the station! In America you have a CHOICE, whereas the Cuban government controls what’s heard on the radio and said in print:

    Reporters Without Borders today launched a campaign to bring the imprisonment of 30 journalists in Cuba to the attention of the public in France and the rest of the world. Twenty-six of these journalists were arrested at the end of March and sentenced to prison terms ranging from 14 to 27 years. The announcement was made at a press conference at the Saint-Lazare FNAC in Paris to mark World Press Freedom Day.

    I mean…jeez…this idea that we’re being “forced to listen to Clear Channel” is the kind of elementary illogic I’d expect from feminists who equate women who voluntarily wear bikinis with women who are forced to wear burkas.

    Then again, if you can’t understand the difference between voluntary charity and forced taxation, you may not understand the distinction between coercion and volition…or between freedom and communist slavery for that matter.

    After all, what do you call someone who has 100% of his earnings seized by a state which has outlawed private property if not a slave?

30. You know, I am all for the hotel workers. Having been a temp, I can tell you that hotel workers get little respect. The less you get paid, the less dignity with which you are treated. That’s the rule of the market. If a company can defraud you of your legally-earned wages, they will try. Only fear(not even the law!) will keep corporations from keeping a few dollars from the sweat these workers earn. Unions and government exist for a reason, to prevent wage slavery. The SASA folks have obviously never tasted the bitterness of being shouted at by a manager or having a temp agency attempt to cheat them of $50 of a $300 paycheck. When they go into the modern workplace, hopefully, they will learn.