I’m not one of those who thinks Cuba is the next Singapore or even the next Puerto Rico.  Why not?

I’m willing to assume that the end of the American embargo will mean some kind of economic liberalization over the next ten years.  But how much good will that bring?

We could start by looking for relevant comparisons.  We could ask how well have non-British-ruled, non-Dutch-ruled, non-American-ruled Spanish-speaking Caribbean islands done?  There is a fairly clear example of such a country with some ethnic, cultural, historic, and linguistic similarities to Cuba, namely the Dominican Republic.  For non-PPP-adjusted gdp per capita, the D.R. clocks in at about $5800 per year.  And that is about where I think Cuba will end up, after a good bit of turmoil.

He goes on to list a bunch of things that probably have nothing to do with what comes next for Cuba. I like how he skirts around the biological aspects and simply makes a rosy comparison to nearby Dominican Republic. The reason a guy like Steve Sailer is not allowed out in public is he would simply say Cuba is not going to do well because it is full of Cubans.

I’ll go further and and say it is full of the worst Cubans. The best Cubans got the hell out of Cuba when Castro took power. Those who hung around hoping the terror would pass found a raft eventually and took their chances with the sharks, on their way to Miami. All the smart, industrious Cubans are in Miami now, living the middle-class American dream. The same thing happened in Lebanon, which is why that country never got off the mat.

That’s the central defect of liberals and libertarians. They never bother to stop and wonder why things are the way they are now. They just seem to assume the facts of life were placed around so they can change them. In this case, Cuba has been a totalitarian police state for fifty years for no particular reason. The fact that there are no riots in the streets or populist protests against the status quo does not turn on any lights for these folks. Nope, Cuba is now a blank slate on which they can draw their utopian future.

Cuba is the way it is because the Cubans living there prefer it that way. Not all Cubans everywhere, but a majority of the ones living in Cuba. Most of the dissenters now live abroad. Those remaining are small in number and are easily suppressed. The idea that they will create a Singapore is so laughably ridiculous you have to wonder if Tyler is not sniffing glue in his office.

That’s another thing libertarians have in common with liberals. No, not glue sniffing, although that is a problem. No, both cults look at people as things, in the same way a socio-path looks at people. People are just bits of machinery to be arranged in whatever way suits the ruler. Culture and biology are looked upon as obstacles that can be yanked from the garden like weeds. Of course, if that means yanking out a few people along the way, so be it.

I think if Cuba joins the rest of the world they will probably continue to be Cubans. That means a country somewhere between Haiti and Puerto Rico. The things that will change are the cars. American collectors will swoop in and buy the old relics on the Cuban roads and sell them our old jalopies. Global tourism will snap up the prime real estate for the global ruling class. Otherwise, Cuba will continue to be Cuba.