Cuba’s constitution declares that the Communist party, which is the only legal political organisation, has regulatory jurisdiction over all radio, TV and print media. It also prohibits journalism outside this sphere. Starting an independent magazine meant declaring war on the government.
You’re not being exploited by either the Americans or the capitalists…..freedom, d’ye see?
BTW, well worth reading. About opening an independent online magazine in Cuba…..Oh, and fair play to The G for running it. It’ll right piss off the weirder of their readers.
The auto section of Cuba’s Exchange and Mart is pretty dull.
For sale Buick 40 Special, one careful owner, liquidated. Used to drive to jazz club and own execution.
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I thought this was very good in response to one of Bernie’s idiotic posts on X about taking a public 50% ownership in AI companies:
https://x.com/DanielPriestley/status/2062070288523616476?s=20
And look what happens when they do…
The funny thing is that in very short time they would no longer be the biggest AI companies. A few blokes in their garages would be outcompeting them.
I work in corporate IT and the difference in performance in public and private sector isn’t “a bit”. It’s massive. Like 4x difference in performance. I reckon that 50% of all the public sector projects I worked on were never finished. Private sector is not even 10%. And that’s before we get into how overspecified public sector systems are, or how slow everything is in procurement and recruitment.
I worked on a system to do with expenses which absolutely didn’t need building. There’s lots of off-the-shelf tools that would have done 99% of what they needed. But no-one cares. If they can get a million pound budget, they’ll get it and use it. Where a private sector company will spend £5/employee/month on an expenses SaaS,
As I’ve noted before – when my father ran a pub in Huddersfield in the late ’60s he was fond of pointing out to those who worked in nationalised industries, there was a big steel works in town, that he wished the government would nationalise pubs so he could sell the worst beer in town.
They did, didn’t they? Not in many places, but several hundred in WW1 around two or three munitions factories (think Enfield was one, and somewhere in the North).
A wartime measure, but like all ‘temporary’ government restrictions it lasted for decades; did Thatcher finally sell them off?
A small private company I worked for had a machine control software package that would only work on an Intel 286 running Windows 3.11. This was still the case when I left in 2012.
But is there anything actually wrong with that? If the ware runs the machine it’s doing what’s required. Why upgrade with a new box of bits & struggle with new ware when you don’t need to?
It was getting difficult to maintain 286 PCs, cannibalising parts from “dead” units. I even used bits from one of my own superseded PCs from home.
It’s about visibility. Spending on a SaaS is very visible in the budget, spending on contractors to build one also visible, spending on employees to build one not so much.
Triumph Motorcycles was run as a workers’ co-operative for several years, before being bought by wealthy businessman John Bloor. It seems to have done rather better since Mr. Bloor took it over.
You don’t even need to start a compnay, just start your own business yourself.
Yes, but that limits you; in practice most unincorporated businesses are one-man bands.
The point of a company is that it’s a much better way to bring in outsiders; to raise equity investment, to employ more staff, to expand.
It’s not just that anyone can set up a business, it’s that anyone can set up a company and, if its business works, grow it into a large one.
I would think their more weird readers would love the idea. They certainly seem to want to see that sort of thing at home.
There’s a Venezuelan woman journalist in London I know is an example of what happens when you contravene Cuban regulations. I’ve seen the cigarette burns all over her. She told me the Cuban police were smoking Marlboro.
Incidentally, there doubts expressed on another thread about Cubans’ attitude to getting rid of their government. Cuba’s like East Germany before the wall came down or Romania. You don’t know who is an informer. People become informers for self protection. I know lots of the Cuban ex-pat community here. I did in London. I probably know more about what’s going on in Cuba than other Cubans do. Because Cubans are very wary about speaking with other Cubans. Even out of country. They never know who they’re talking to. It’s like my Venezuelan friend. She can be very open discussing her experiences with me because I’ve no direct connections with Venezuela or Cuba. And by the sort of people I hang about with I’m obviously not a pal or any authority anywhere. She’s not going to be the same with other Venezuelans. She has family there. They’re vulnerable if she says the wrong things to the wrong people. Same with Cubans.
I’d say you’ve the same problem in the UK except it’s worse. At least Cubans don’t go looking to inform. You do something in the UK & some “public spirited” curtain twitcher will take pleasure in shopping you.
No, it’s declaring war on The Party. As they say, The Party regulates media, *not* the government. Same as in China where the People’s Army is a branch of the Communist Party not of the government.