Yes.

My impression was then when America tried to force other countries to participate in the embargo they told them to shove it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act

Also yes Cuba has trade with the rest of the world

http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/cub/

> Cuba is the 140th largest export economy in the world. In 2014, Cuba exported $1.74B and imported $5.91B, resulting in a negative trade balance of $4.17B.

> The top exports of Cuba are Raw Sugar ($392M), Refined Petroleum ($314M), Rolled Tobacco ($236M), Hard Liquor ($116M) and Raw Nickel ($108M), using the 1992 revision of the HS (Harmonized System) classification. Its top imports are Wheat ($234M), Refined Petroleum ($228M), Concentrated Milk ($207M), Corn ($204M) and Poultry Meat ($196M).

> The top export destinations of Cuba are China ($311M), the Netherlands ($157M), Spain ($141M), Senegal ($92M) and the United Kingdom ($67.3M). The top import origins are China ($1.05B), Spain ($920M), Brazil ($507M), Canada ($389M) and Mexico ($360M).

Of course geography still matters, the US is nearby, large, and rich. Exporting to the US would be a huge plus for the Cuban economy but it wouldn't change everything.

>> My impression was then when America tried to force other countries to participate in the embargo they told them to shove it.

Your impression is wrong.

An example knock-on effect relevant to HN is that as a UK company, we couldn't sell windows software to Cuba because things like windows run-time libraries would be covered by the US export embargo. In theory, they wouldn't even have a legal copy of any US operating system.

I'm sure there were similar knock-on effects across all industries that had US products, suppliers or connections in their business.

This is naive

As even you said, Cuba was not supposed to have Windows copies, but I'm sure they had

Iran theoretically couldn't have access to Boeing parts (and this was a stricter embargo), but they had

There's always a way of solving things.

Most of Cuban problems were caused by themselves, not the embargo.

>> This is naive

What? This was the real world, a matter of first hand experience. We could not consider jeopardising sales to our biggest market (the US) by breaking US embargo for a barely significant market.

You're right, you shouldn't consider doing it unless there are significant gains to be had.

But see my other comment.

(However, I don't think Cuba has qualms about pirating software, if this was hw it would have been a different issue)

> There's always a way of solving things.

Except, not really.

You can’t put any app using any encryption technology up on the Google Play Store or the iOS App Store, if you also distribute anything to Cuba.

For the first you need to get an approval from the US DoD, which requires that you never interact with Cuba.

Yes, but you don't sell it directly to Cuba, you sell it to $COUNTRY which might eventually sell it to Cuba (and you don't even know about it)

It's not you selling to Cuba, it's Cuba buying through intermediates.

(Of course if you really want you can sell things directly to Cuba, but you need to find a way of disguising it)

You're (or, were) also forbidden from bringing Cuban cigars to the US, but if you arrive from a flight from Panama with a box of unmarked cigars nobody is going to do anything.

You could sell apks

I can’t sell anything to Cuba while also providing anything in the Google Store or the Apple App Store.

That’s part fo the issue.

You could write your software in another operating system, giving a middle finger to oppressive Uncle Sam. Not doing so shows you did not appreciate Cuban market enough.

Same goes for other products. Don't base them on U.S. technology if you plan to trade with America's enemies.

I suppose I agree. The US' embargo was probably quite tough on Cuba. But I don't think the state of the economy in Cuba can be entirely pinned on the embargo.

Of course it can. Cuba is an island nation and relies on trade to acquire the vast majority of the goods those of us in the West take for granted. Block that trade and you basically stifle all economic growth.

From wikipedia:

>>Cuba produces sugarcane, tobacco, citrus, coffee, rice, potatoes, beans and livestock.[2] As of 2015 Cuba imported about 70-80% of its food.[51] and 80-84% of the food it rations to the public.[52] Raúl Castro ridiculed the bureaucracy that shackled the agriculture sector.[52] Before 1959, Cuba boasted as many cattle as people. Today meat is so scarce that it is a crime to kill a cow without government permission.[53] Cuban people suffered from starvation during the Special Period.[29]

Hacker News is not the place for fighting political battles, which this account has been doing much of. We have to ban accounts that post primarily this way, so please stop.

Fair enough. Can I at least suggest, though, that if you don't want political fights going on at HN it would be a good idea to swiftly remove "stories" such as this one that are purely political and are guaranteed to bring out every ax-grinder on the Internet in the comments?

China

China had to abandon the economics of Communism in order to produce an economic boom finally after decades of extreme failure. They had to adopt systems of the market economy: private property, stock exchanges & stock ownership, real estate ownership, privatization of the means of production, wealth accumulation, business formation, etc. etc.

They hold on to the politics of the Communist party dictatorship as a means to continue their power and wealth extraction (China's political elites are by far the wealthiest politicians on earth, they make the US Congress look like paupers).

Trying to apply communist ideology directly in China led to famines nearly as deadly as a decade and a half of war, both civil and against the Japanese.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

If Cuba had a capitalist economy the result would be the same. Or do you believe that capitalism has the ability to generate essential goods out of thin air?