>All valid points and very well said. If we take places like Cuba for example, where it took revoltiionaries..aka terrorists..to drive out the mafia from the island guess what it worked. So you meet a capitalist on the street selling pipes because now you can do your own plumbing. Talk to the guy a little more and find out he's actually a doctor and got his education for free and payback too so selling pipes on the side. It's a very awkward position to be in. But it's happened..the seeds of capitalism have been planted. People can by and sell land there are 165 legal things you can do.

Now imagine if there was a free market. Cuba could sell their stuff freely, and the profits of their cigars wouldn't go to smugglers, but to the people. And the Bacardi family would have competition from rum that'd be far more Cuban than what they sell.

> I give it another 30 years before it is completely over-run. Will the culture survive? Yes perhaps ..even if it is theme parks and casinos...but perhaps. Fidel Castro did not meet the pope and go the Vatican because suddenly got religion, he wanted to see the riches and control that running a tyranny for 2000 years can do...and how the hell you pull something like that off. There is old saying in rock'n roll. 'here is the new boss, same as the old boss. hope we don't get fooled again'.

One thing that gives me a deeply based feeling that the whole transition from socialism into capitalism is a scam and a wholesale robbery is that they all want to take over the state- or society-owned enterprises, and drive them into ruin, then sell chinese junk instead of what these were producing. The old style worker-owned enterprises are almost banned (and, short of that, driven into debt by various scams) - what's that, was the new capitalism afraid of allegedly dysfunctional competition?