Great Moments In Socialism

25 Replies to “Great Moments In Socialism”

1. Similar to running out of sand in the desert.

   1. > Similar to running out of sand in the desert.
      Somewhere, Milton Friedman chuckles.

      1. Right. You beat me to it.

2. Look on the bright side; less diabetes

   1. And less cancer. Otto Warburg proved that sugar feeds cancer. Nobel prize in 1923.

      1. 1931

3. TBF, last time I was in Cuba (2012) most people could only get cooking basics once a month or thereabouts anyways. Sugar, cooking oil, virtually any protein that didn’t involve beans, all of it strictly rationed. Cooking oil, for example, was a once-a-month purchase, and you’d only be allowed between 2 and 4 litres of it. For a family.

   “Running out of sugar,” for most Cubans, is probably the equivalent of “it’s Tuesday.”

4. They run out of EVERYTHING all the time. Sugar and coffee are especially shameful since government mismanagement turned what was once an exporter of both commodities with plenty left to go around at home into perpetually having not.

   Socialist utopia at its best.

5. There is another use for those machetes, would get grizzly for the commissars.

6. The resorts are probably still doing fine on the Castro’s private island and his slaves will still subsidize cheap holidays for canadians who can go there and marvel at the free health care…

   1. Canada’s #1 cheap holiday vacation.

      Fantasy Island for those Canadian serfs that like to be served by the poor unwashed masses and feel like Royalty for a week.

   2. Seems to be plenty of sugar for expensive Cuban Rum.

7. Impossible – not in a socialist paradise!
   Next thing you will be saying that Canadians sitting on huge oil reserves cannot afford to heat their own homes.
   (Says a retired Canadian, sitting at his kitchen table wearing a toque and scarf.)

8. Google: Based on a comparison of 165 countries in 2021, Guatemala ranked the highest in sugar consumption per capita with 52.4 kg followed by Cuba and Gambia.
   
   It’s like people in Rome measuring the wealth by the extent of lead plumbing and pottery that provides their drinking water.
   One thing I’ve learned and adopted this last year is that sugar is never one’s friend. (Resistant starches are alright.) No, l haven’t had any indications of diabetes or sugar related issues but have been impressed with the success and failure of people around me, depending on the route they choose.

9. As someone pointed out years ago, any system that once managed to turn Russia into an importer of wheat really deserved a healthy dose of scepticism.

10. Well over a decade ago now, listening to NPR, a comment was made that Cuba imports 80% of its food. As it was on NPR, there is no reason to doubt it (fact being admitted by a leftist broadcaster).
    Hearing that a communist society has a shortage of anything is never a surprise.

    1. Given that Canada has a shortage of health care, does that imply Canada is well on its way to Communism? Could Canadians even accept the possibility?

11. In a related story, Venezuela has run out of oil. But the good news is they’ve seized the means of production from dirty capitalist colonialists!

12. Venezuela’s citizens voted for socialism. It took a while but the country achieved its objectives. Do not think that the Liberals/NDP have not studied Venezuela’s tactics. It’s only that Canadians have farther to fall.

    1. About those voting machines…?
       Weren’t they a canadian product some years back? First used in Venezuela?

13. Canada, the land of trees, has some of the most expensive building lumber in N. America. Same thing as Cuba importing sugar.

    If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it. If you want to kill it dead, dead, dead, nationalize it.

    1. And if all else fails, unionize it.

    2. Hey Phantom & Rmgk
       Medicare – canadian style comes to mind.

14. Let’s analyze this.

    Half a century ago in a socialist paradise run by communists in the very centre of Europe, there was shortage of everything in a preplanned rotating system.
    I remember one year there was a severe shortage of butter. Not that it was available every day in the course of time though this was serious.
    Don’t know if it was propaganda initiated by the communists, though anyway, the meme was that Turkey was in need of butter and the communists oversold to get foreign currency.
    The local population needed butter?
    Collateral damage, as they sometimes say.

15. In Honor of My Father…
    Not to worry. Canada will soon run short of maple syrup and snow machines.