Don't be unduly impressed. It's common for a totalitarian state to focus its resources and "punch above its weight" in a specific area or two, but it's at the expense of the rest of their economy and the general well-being of its people. Its also a common tactic used to shore up support at home and win superficial plaudits abroad.
The Soviets were able to keep pace with the US militarily and in space. The also had world-beating athletics, chess and classical arts (ballet, orchestra etc). All this came at the high price of individual freedom and basic human prosperity. Milton Friedman aptly observed this gap between "public affluence and private squalor" as the defining outcome of centralized socialism. Christopher Hitchens, at that time a committed socialist, described his disillusionment w/Cuba while volunteering there in 1968 as follows:
Cuba was torn between grim austerity for its people and flamboyant hedonism for its revolutionaries, and one’s elementary socialist principles managed to register the gross injustice of this even while hoping (perhaps) that the engine of history would make up the deficit.
- http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_spring_1968.html
It is, I guess, better that Cuba has chosen to focus on healthcare rather than war-mongering, but it doesn't recommend their method of government as preferable to our own. It doesn't recommend their hundreds (perhaps thousands) of political executions or their death squads or their forced labor camps. It doesn't recommend their complete suppression of free speech and their prosecution of Cubans wanting to leave this self-proclaimed "paradise".
And it seems quite unethical to praise Cuba for it's export of medical expertise while ignoring the fact that relatives of these experts are essentially held hostage to ensure they won't defect. If you don't see something extremely sinister and disgusting about this, I'd posit you don't have the capacity for suspicion and disgust.
.. the government "bars citizens engaged in authorized travel from taking their children with them overseas, essentially holding the children hostage to guarantee the parents' return. Given the widespread fear of forced family separation, these travel restrictions provide the Cuban government with a powerful tool for punishing defectors and silencing critics."
- Human Rights Watch, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba
I'd posit that a fair (and fairly obvious) measure of a political system is the market for voluntarily migration. The fact is that almost no one migrates into Cuba and millions have braved, and continue to brave, incredible costs and dangers to migrate away from Cuba.
American style democratic capitalism is not without its flaws, and we must be eternally vigilant to resist and reverse attempts by both state and corporate power to impinge on our rights & freedoms in their own selfish interests. But, unlike Cubans (and former East Germans etc), we have the political infrastructure and basic human freedom to improve our system for the better. We shouldn't sacrifice these hard earned and extremely rare circumstances in the vain hope of securing marginally better health outcomes (or marginally better security, chess skills, literacy rates etc) by means of totalitarian socialism.
Don't worry. If agencies like NASA and Elon Musk manage to get anywhere with their Mars ventures, we can go back to praising America and free enterprise soon enough (since it apparently is a choice between that and communism/totalitarianism).
The Soviets were able to keep pace with the US militarily and in space. The also had world-beating athletics, chess and classical arts (ballet, orchestra etc). All this came at the high price of individual freedom and basic human prosperity. Milton Friedman aptly observed this gap between "public affluence and private squalor" as the defining outcome of centralized socialism. Christopher Hitchens, at that time a committed socialist, described his disillusionment w/Cuba while volunteering there in 1968 as follows:
Cuba was torn between grim austerity for its people and flamboyant hedonism for its revolutionaries, and one’s elementary socialist principles managed to register the gross injustice of this even while hoping (perhaps) that the engine of history would make up the deficit. - http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_spring_1968.html
It is, I guess, better that Cuba has chosen to focus on healthcare rather than war-mongering, but it doesn't recommend their method of government as preferable to our own. It doesn't recommend their hundreds (perhaps thousands) of political executions or their death squads or their forced labor camps. It doesn't recommend their complete suppression of free speech and their prosecution of Cubans wanting to leave this self-proclaimed "paradise".
And it seems quite unethical to praise Cuba for it's export of medical expertise while ignoring the fact that relatives of these experts are essentially held hostage to ensure they won't defect. If you don't see something extremely sinister and disgusting about this, I'd posit you don't have the capacity for suspicion and disgust.
.. the government "bars citizens engaged in authorized travel from taking their children with them overseas, essentially holding the children hostage to guarantee the parents' return. Given the widespread fear of forced family separation, these travel restrictions provide the Cuban government with a powerful tool for punishing defectors and silencing critics." - Human Rights Watch, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Cuba
I'd posit that a fair (and fairly obvious) measure of a political system is the market for voluntarily migration. The fact is that almost no one migrates into Cuba and millions have braved, and continue to brave, incredible costs and dangers to migrate away from Cuba.
American style democratic capitalism is not without its flaws, and we must be eternally vigilant to resist and reverse attempts by both state and corporate power to impinge on our rights & freedoms in their own selfish interests. But, unlike Cubans (and former East Germans etc), we have the political infrastructure and basic human freedom to improve our system for the better. We shouldn't sacrifice these hard earned and extremely rare circumstances in the vain hope of securing marginally better health outcomes (or marginally better security, chess skills, literacy rates etc) by means of totalitarian socialism.