Saturday, March 22, 2008

Cuba and the eco-socialists

Peter Foster comments:

On Raul Castro’s promise of consumer goods for enslaved Cubans;

... prompted my thoughts of the White Queen, who famously said to Alice "The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday -- but never jam to-day." In Cuba, yesterday is 1959.

... They will be available to the average Cuban pretty much to the same degree as a Lamborghini is available to yours truly.

On the threat of climate hysteria to the free-market economy;

In the past 20 years, central planning has fallen almost entirely out of fashion ... However, anti-capitalism remains at heart based on the endless urge to moralize. Its leading edge has moved on. Specifically, socialism has gone retail within a context of enviro-mania.

... no purchase is now to be made without fretting about its related "carbon footprint," or the location and costs of its recycling and/or disposal. .... No form of corporate activity in the resource sector can take place without appropriate "licensing" by the NGO-cracy.

The Invisible Hand is everywhere being shackled by the new Lords of indefinable -- but infinitely-meddlesome -- "Sustainability."

And on the eco-socialists’ admiration for the Cuban example;

In this context, criticizing Raul Castro for mere thuggish oppression is a little old hat. After all, David Suzuki, one of the High Priests of environmentalism, regards Cuba’s poverty-stricken, oxcart-and-bicycle economy as entirely admirable.

President Raul will almost certainly ... preside cluelessly over [Cuba’s] collapse. But the passing of the old Cuban regime will be mourned by neo-socialists not because they see a world without air conditioning as a problem, but as a model.

The whole thing is an excellent read.

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