Fernando Dámaso, 20 March 2018 — Today the economic theory of poverty and wealth of countries is fashionable, depending on whether they have “exclusive” or “inclusive” institutions. Its authors, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, thoroughly explore it in their book “Why Nations Fail.”
Consistent with this, as long as there is a government in Cuba with “exclusive” institutions, defenders of the one-party system, that reject citizens’ initiative and private property, prohibit the creation of wealth and discourage investment for development, we will remain in the vicious circle of poverty. To speak of an “efficient, prosperous and sustainable socialism” constitutes a fallacy.
For a nation to be efficient, prosperous and sustainable, “inclusive” institutions are needed, which promote the citizens’ initiative, ensure political and economic freedoms and do not punish the creation of wealth, but, on the contrary, stimulate it.
Until now, the “Cuban scheme,” centralized, dogmatic, exclusive and obsolete, has proved convincingly to be a sovereign failure. In sixty years of the exercise of absolute power, they have not been able to come up with a real solution to any of the great economic, political and social problems.
All their efforts have been concentrated on maintaining an iron grip on the citizens, assuring the collapse of the Nation. Today Cuba is among the poorest nations in the world, with most of its citizens having annual incomes of well under one thousand dollars, since the monthly average wage does not exceed twenty dollars.
They try to hide this widespread poverty by means of the propaganda of supposed free systems of health and modern and efficient education, when in fact both services are of bad quality and, in last instance, are financed by what is not paid to Cubans for their work, given their miserable wages.
These economic and social anomalies, unchanged for six decades, due to the existence of “exclusive” institutions, have led to labor unrest, widespread unproductivity, galloping corruption, social indiscipline, loss of moral and citizen values, violence and the irrepressible exodus of the population, mainly of the youngest.
The authorities, exhausted physically and politically, are unable to propose a courageous and decent exit, insisting, with the sole objective of maintaining power, in their obsolete arguments about “the defense of the independence and sovereignty of the Fatherland,” and manipulating the better feelings of the new generations, urging them to defend the indefensible and to swear unconditional loyalty to those who have always been unconditionally disloyal to the Nation, because, instead of serving it, they have dedicated themselves to living off of it.
Neither the recent electoral farce, nor the battered so-called “guidelines,” nor the absurd plans out to the year 2030, which is written and spoken about daily in the official media, will solve any problem: they constitute simple “soap bubbles” to continue trying to entertain the unwary and ensure a few more years of exercise of absolute power.
