cuba does not recognise personal property

Post #40,557 by boxley 5/30/02 2:16:59 PM Reply	cuba does not recognise personal property in housing, automobiles etc. Doesnt appear to be a rush of freedom lovers lined up trying to get in. Albania was another where there was no private property. They are all moving to serbia. thanx, bill TAM ARIS QUAM ARMIPOTENS
Post #40,596 by mmoffitt 5/30/02 4:49:49 PM Reply	Clarification. I'm not saying that you can only be free if there is no private property. All I am saying is that it is not necessarily the case that one must possess private property in order to be free, nor is it the case that private property rights must exist or a society cannot be free (which is essentially Arkediy's position). Private property rights and "freedom" are not mutually exclusive, nor are the necessarily intertwined. And all too often private property rights are considered by a populace that possesses them to be more important than [other] liberties. One need look no farther than the US to see that this is the case.
Post #40,604 by CRConrad 5/30/02 5:46:13 PM Reply	Bullshit, I think. (Goes for the Soviet Union too, BTW.) Cuba is known, in car enthusiast circles, for its rich supply if Battista-vintage American cars; collectors, custom-builders, and just ordinary people -- some who got hooked on some particular model when they were kids, for example -- go there to buy a well-preserved (or "fixer-upper") rarity on the cheap. Whom do you think they buy them from? In all the car-magazine articles on the theme I've seen, it's always something like "I bought it off an old guy who had been driving it as a taxi in Havanna for thirty years, and was retiring" -- ergo, a private citizen. (Oh, and that 'BTW' in my subject line: Hey, Arkadij, betcha you (or your mother, if you will) owned the clothes you wore as a kid, right?) Christian R. Conrad Of course, who am I to point fingers? I'm in the "Information Technology" business, prima facia evidence that there's bats in the bell tower. -- [link\|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=27764\|Andrew Grygus]
Post #40,617 by Arkadiy 5/30/02 7:05:46 PM 5/30/02 7:06:14 PM Reply	Individual belongings versus private property. Yes, I owned my clothes. No one else wanted them. Even socialism recognises that people needed to own _something_ . But, say you have a clothing drive for suffering Vietnamese children. Try not to bring some of your stuff. Ass-chewing at a Komsomol meeting is guaranteed. And if do not say that you "forgot", if you say "I need clothes for myself"... KGB will open a case. Another thing about clothes: school uniform. You get a coupon for one set for whole year. Want to buy more? Tough. Want to wear something different to school? Much, much worse. My whole childhood I was wearing patched up pants - they were worn right through in a few months. Hardly a private property :) By the time of Brezhnev, people were even allowed to buy cars. But, try to use yours as a taxi - you're dead meat (unless of course, you pay some bakshish in time). Selling of used cars is allowed only at state-owned places, using state as the middleman, at state-set prices. Of course, people talk to each other and some money is exchanged under the table. The "dealership" employees simply look the other way. You're confusing what's happening with what's supposed to happen. People under socialism can have some individual stuf. And much more is allowed through corruption. Still more is allowed because the system realises it can't survive on its own principles. But the principles stay the same: you don't have anything that can't be sacrificed for the Radiant Future. Edited by Arkadiy May 30, 2002, 07:06:14 PM EDT Expand All History

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