Hundreds Dead in Cuban Dengue Outbreak

The Caribbean island of Cuba has recently been experiencing a strange outbreak of dengue. This may have resulted in hundreds of deaths throughout the island, something the Castro regime has done little to acknowledge the outbreak. Doctors at hospitals have also been dying from this disease leaving fewer individuals to properly treat patients. José Antonio Fornaris of writes that

In the end, no one can say for certain; the government-controlled media have not acknowledged the spread of the disease while many claim to know of at least one case of the mosquito-borne illness.

Last Monday, Carlos Campos, a 61-year-old physician who was director of the Luis de la Puente Uceda hospital died; some say of heart disease, others claim dengue was the cause of death.

Campos was the chief of the team of doctors performing medical tests on Cubans migrating to the United States.

This is a perfect example of the type of cover-ups associated with these tyrannical communist governments. Castro has refused to comment on the outbreak and has given little aid to the island in order to facilitate the treatment of patients. While the communist elite are in their mansions consuming thousands of dollars in luxury goods a day, the citizenry can not even fight the spread of a preventable disease. Communism is not equal wealth distribution, it is wealth confiscation.

Mises' 125th Birthday

Let us all celebrate the life of one of the greatest libertarians of all time and an extraordinary economist. His breakthrough ideas significantly affected the outlook of an entire generation of economists and would forevermore be the foundation of libertarian laissez-faire economics. I encourage you all to be aware of Mises, his life, and his accomplishments in the name of freedom. He fought his entire life for freedom, even in the face of relentless Nazi persecution. George Reisman, student of Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand, has a great article up today.

A Brief Individualistic Analysis of Fight Club

Masculinity and violence play a large role in Fight Club and the story seems to endlessly revolve around these two identities. Violence is expressed as an attribute of masculinity and that in order for a male to truly experience their life, violence must be a large part of it. In the underground fighting arena, violence prevails and this gruesome reality is highlighted as the culmination of masculinity. Fight Club starts off as an underground fighting arena where normal, everyday individuals get together and barbarously decimate each other until only one individual is left standing after each match. Though for most of the movie Fight Club was simply a weekly brawl that individuals looked forward too, it quickly became more and more institutionalized as the movie progressed.

The institutionalization of Fight Club truly began when Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) and the narrator (played by Edward Norton) move their idea from the street to the basement of a bar. Once Fight Club began and its popularity grew, Tyler Durden set down rules for the brawls. The fights remained barbarous but individuals were confined to withdraw from any fight in which the other individual did not want to participate in. Though these rules were quite crude and non-invasive to any individual’s freedom within the organization, they were the foundation of what was to come. Once the rules were in place, Tyler began to administer to the individuals homework assignments for which members had to complete strange tasks in order remain in the club. One of these tasks was beginning violent confrontations with citizens outside the basement. This was in an effort to bring back the male population to its violent roots that Tyler Durden felt was vital to human existence. At this point in the story, the Fight Club has begun to move out of its underground confinements and spread beyond its original boundaries. In addition, those who now interact with Fight Club are not longer individuals who willingly did so. In essence, Fight Club has become somewhat of a gang, a group of gangsters who bother the livelihood of individuals that have not requested such a service.

As the organization grows, the local police forces gather information about the organization and begin their search in an effort to stifle Fight Club. Tyler Durden, the narrator, and other organization members quickly mobilize and threaten police leaders into calling off the persecution of Fight Club members. This is an evolution of Fight Club from the basement of a bar to seriously affecting the decisions of political leaders. At this point, the narrator becomes quite distraught with Mr. Durden’s actions and finds them to be more violently intrusive into other individual’s lives then he believes the organization should delve. As the story progresses, the members of the organization begin to act as a unit and seemingly strip away their individuality by only responding to orders and dressing similarly. This is the beginning of a deeply rooted nihilist, anti-capitalist, anti-individualist theme in the movie. The narrator is upset at Tyler for having turned the organization into a terrorist group that participates in destructive behavior. The group has evolved into a criminal force that attacks the foundations of the individualist capitalist society. Tyler Durden continuously speaks throughout the movie of a type of nihilistic, anarcho-primitivistic, anti-capitalistic society where each individual must engage in violence in order to find their place in life.

In accordance with Tyler’s vision, the band of thugs that used to once be known as Fight Club has changed their name to Operation Mayhem. The irony of this is that though these individuals find very little importance in life, they are willing to risk their lives to bring about a society where no individual can escape the primitive state of humanity. In addition, the change from simply an underground club to a titled terrorist organization shows the hypocrisy of the nihilistic undertone within the film. At the end of the film, the narrator realizes that Tyler Durden is in fact a figment of his imagination and is part of his persona. This comes as a shock to the narrator who tries to stop Operation Mayhem’s destructive plans from coming to fruition. This attempt is futile because the supposedly nihilistic, anarcho-primitivistic organization has been so well institutionalized that they can now complete their plans without direct orders from any overarching authority. As the major cities around the United States crumble, the narrator stands looking at an event that he has planned for some time and did not even realize it.

The underlying elements of this story are as vast as they are vital in understanding the entirety of its message. Though the film begins with an almost homosexual aurora of uber-masculinity and violence, it later alters these attributes into a nihilistic undertone. Fight Club is transformed from two different personalities brawling in the streets, expressing their masculinity, to a well institutionalized organization of anarcho-primitivistic, nihilistic terrorists. The story seems to take the position that nihilism and masculinity are somewhat compatible but the hypocrisies present in the delivery of the message blur the premises. Masculinity and violence, for the most part, are inseparable but the focus of the film illogically brings these primordial attributes to a largely undesired extreme.

LewRockwell Post

My NASA article has been published onLewRockwell. Go ahead and check it out.

Dengue Outbreak in Cuba

It has been reported that in Cuba there is a spread of dengue fever, José Antonio Fornaris reports that

dengue fever is on the upswing in Havana, according to one researcher who said she had recorded six thousand cases in the Párraga neighborhood of Arroyo Naranjo municipality in the city.

The researcher said the ward where dengue cases are referred in the local Julio Trigo hospital is completely full.

A nurse in the municipality who said new cases are admitted daily to the Covadonga, Calixto García, and Dependientes hospitals, said public health authorities cannot explain the increase in the number of cases.

Authorities have been waging a campaign against the mosquito that transmits the disease, with aerial fumigation in open areas and daily home visits by public health personnel looking for mosquito breeding grounds. Nonetheless, critics say authorities have not acknowledged the outbreak in the city.

It is no surprise that Cuba does not have the wealth and technology sufficient enough to combat these common diseases. The capitalist entrepreneurial system is what has brought the United States an enormous rise in the standard of living of all its citizens. Until Cuba turns to a market economy, the standard of living of the average Cuban citizen will not increase and they will be incapable of expanding their economy.

NASA: Exemplary of Government Waste

It is quickly becoming the natural state of affairs that citizens are no longer working for themselves but are instead laboring in order to fill the greedy coffers of the State. Most individuals in the United States have about half of their yearly income taken away by the government and this percentage is steadily growing. A majority of the citizenry may believe that these funds are being funneled into important social projects but in fact most of this wealth is simply wasted by opportunist politicians and bureaucrats. There are an endless number of government programs that would increase the wealth and productivity of the citizenry if they were only dismantled. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), with a requested 2007 budget of almost $17 billion, is a government program that is nothing short of wasteful.

Individuals claim that a majority of NASA's funding is spent on the exploration of new useful technologies. The citizenry views the government as an entity that can fund and perform research in order to uncover technologies that would be beneficial to the market. There is no reason to believe that corporations, with patent laws in place, would not be more than willing to research more efficient ways of creating products. Yet, even if it were the case that government research in technology was necessary or beneficial, NASA is funding scientific studies that are far from useful to the market. Much of NASA's funding is spent directly on extraterrestrial initiatives that study the solar system, space exploration, and methods of improving shuttle performance. It is also a myth that NASA created such technologies as Velcro, Tang and those famous memory-cell mattresses. In reality, the maker of Velcro was a private engineer with a bright idea, Tang was created by the General Foods Corporation, and the Tempur-Pedic company developed those memory-cell mattresses for use on NASA flights. These were all private initiatives and not outcomes of NASA’s technological research efforts. To their credit, NASA did develop freeze-dried ice cream but who likes those things anyway? NASA dedicates over two-thirds of its budget to space exploration and extraterrestrial research. The government agency has spent close to $150 billion dollars simply on the shuttle program, which calculates to about $1.3 billion per launch. This is a decent sum considering that the space shuttle program was sold to the taxpayers as only costing $5.5 million per launch. The question then arises, “should the United States citizens continue to pay for such a costly program?” In the end, it is always the citizenry who pays. Naïve individuals may believe that the Federal government has an endless spring of wealth from which it draws in order to fund its operations, but this is not the case.

NASA has continuously let down the United States citizens and is nothing but a wastebasket into which the government throws our hard-earned wealth. The NASA shuttle tragedies are an outright shame, not only because of the precious lives lost, but also due to the immense cost of these shuttles. The costs of these space ventures are steep and the rewards reaped from these explorations are close to nil. The Mars Observer, that was lost in 1993, cost the taxpayers nearly $1 billion dollars. What the government can not understand is the profit and loss mechanism that is so ingrained into the market. Private entrepreneurs produce goods in a way that minimizes costs in order to obtain a high profit margin. Government programs, such as NASA, continuously spend without giving any benefit to the public. One may say that the simple existence of shuttle programs are a psychological benefit to society but this does not justify the coercive collection of taxes from citizens who may or may not be willing to donate to such a program. When government collects tax revenue, it does not allocate the funds to where citizens demand but instead the funds are spent where politicians desire. Not to mention the fact that much of this funding is lost in the shuffle between citizen and program and wind up in the golden pockets of pork-barrelers.

NASA, like all government programs, becomes increasingly less efficient as time goes by and its purpose becomes less clear. The space shuttle programs may have once accomplished significant scientific discoveries but this is no longer evident. In addition, the social reward of these programs, regardless of what scientific feats they accomplished, are to be measured by a cost-profit analysis and not arbitrary merit. NASA's space exploration programs have continued to fail and this is only understandable to those aware of the lack of incentives present in the public sector. Government, unlike the capitalist market, has little incentive to strive for successful output and may often times overlook the many systematic failures present in the execution of these programs. The public sector inherently has less of an economic incentive to keep costs low and profits high. NASA knows that funding will continue, at least for the coming year, and pushes on promises rather than accomplishments in order to receive funding. On the other hand, the private sector functions on accomplishments, the achievement of its goals, and keeping costs at a minimum while maximizing profits. The failure of the NASA program is inevitably tied to the fact that it is not a private company; it has much less of an economic incentive than those companies that are furthest away from the government’s grasp.

In addition, the current President, with a projected 2007 fiscal budget of $2.8 trillion, has shown no sign that the government will decrease spending in the near future. President Bush stated on June 16, 2004 that

we will explore space to improve our lives and lift our national spirit. Space exploration is also likely to produce scientific discoveries in fields from biology to physics, and to advance aerospace and a host of other industries. This will help create more highly skilled jobs, inspire students and teachers in math and science, and ensure that we continue to benefit from space technology, which has already brought us important improvements.

The President's hopes are sadly misplaced, there is no evidence proving that NASA funds improve technologies in any marketable industries. Any jobs produced by NASA funding will simply be a misallocation of labor. It should be up to the market, with its profit and loss mechanisms, to decide were labor should be properly allocated including the labor of highly skilled scientists. In addition, $17 billion dollars should not be arbitrarily spent in order to "lift our national spirit" through space exploration but should instead be given back to the taxpayers and allow them to lift their own spirits with the wealth.

The solution the problem of NASA overspending and endless mishaps is, like all government programs, privatization. If the citizenry, through the market process, find it profitable to invest and consume products that are tied to space exploration, so be it. In such a scenario no individual is forced to pay for products that continuously fail to meet their expectations. In addition, private companies that take on the task of space exploration will be doing so at a profit and trying to minimize cost. This is significantly different from the wasteful practices of government and public sector programs. Whenever costs outweigh profits, precious resources have been wasted in the production of that good or service. In the private sector, entrepreneurs quite literally pay the price for having misused resources and the costs will cut into the entrepreneur’s income. If this occurs, either changes are to be made in order to cut costs or the entrepreneur will need to shut down the business. When public sector industries waste resources, often times no direct harm is done to their ability to continue the misuse of funding. Any punishment comes down from the legislature and usually comes with multi-millions of dollars in addition funding. It is a time-proven fact that when a private sector company fails, they go out of business yet if a public sector industry fails, they get additional funding.

In order to save the taxpayer from having to pay the increasing costs of a hopeless space exploration program, simply disband NASA and allow the market to decide if such practices are needed in society. If the market decides that these services are in fact desired then it will take hold of these projects while trying to reduce the use of valuable resources. This is becoming evident in the success of SpaceShipOne’s flight in 2004. SpaceShipOne showed the world that the market can do marvelously what NASA has, time and time again, continuously failed to accomplish. The success of SpaceShipOne also spurred the creation of another private space exploration program, Virgin Galactic that intends to send private individuals into space. Currently, the price of travel into space with Virgin Galactic is $200,000. That is right, $200,000. Not only is Virgin not doing this at a cost (if they were it would quickly fail) but they are allowing private individuals to take part in an experience that was only granted to government scientists. In addition, the risk of these spacecrafts will, in time, diminish as corporations feel an increasing need to secure their customers or else suffer heavy loses. Safety is a hefty concern for individuals who are risking their lives and money in order to partake in an emerging industry. Space shuttles Columbia and Challenger illustrate that even though NASA engineers might only want the best for its passengers, safety has not been such a prime concern as to prevent any of these tragic moments from occurring.

In summation, in order to roll back the growing tide of government spending, the most wasteful programs must be cut first. What is needed from such public sector failures as NASA is not increased funding and wasteful behavior but full privatization. Only when this occurs will resources be used efficiently, will there be increased emphasis on consumer safety on extraterrestrial flights, and an end to the coercive sequestering of funds from taxpayers to prop up a failed program. It is time to put the industry of space exploration to the ultimate test: that of the market economy. The market, not the government, will be the true decider as to the existence of such an industry. It seems that the market is declaring that space exploration can be not only profitable but safe. If this is so, then so be it; it might be possible one day for all citizens to afford flights into the far reaches of space. What is important is to allow consumers, not bureaucrats, to decide where precious resources should go. It is time to end the government finance of wasteful public space exploration and to forevermore dismantle NASA.

Scalping For An Answer

Football season is in full-bloom in Gainesville and with it, ticket scalping. The University of Florida football games attract an incredible number of individuals and thus, the demand for these tickets is quite significant. Ticket scalping has been getting much publicity not only in Gainesville but also throughout the state. Scalpers are viewed by the public as greedy individuals who are exploiting consumers by purchasing tickets at one price and then selling those same tickets at a higher price on the street at a profit. The public often calls upon government to solve any problem that might arise but few dwell deeper in an effort to find the root of the problem. The fact of the matter is that the ticket scalper is doing the public a favor. Such a statement may sound absurd but it shall be elaborated in the following paragraphs.

The capitalist free market depends heavily upon the price system. The price of any good is rooted in the supply and demand for that product. Ceteris paribus (latin for “everything else held constant”), the point at which supply and demand equals is called the equilibrium point. At this point all individuals who sought a ticket, received a ticket. If the price of a good is above the equilibrium point then the quantity supplied will exceed the quantity demanded. If the price of a good is below the equilibrium point then the quantity demanded will exceed the quantity supplied.

If an entrepreneur prices their product below the equilibrium price, then they will see inventories empty quickly. If a product is being sold off too quickly and willing buyers are left without the product then this is a market signal for the entrepreneur to set the price higher. If the price is set too high then inventories will be sold off slowly and there are not enough willing buyers. This is a market signal for the entrepreneur to set the price lower. In both cases the entrepreneur does not set the price higher or lower due to benevolence or greed but aiming for a profit. It is the profit and loss mechanism that tells the entrepreneur if a product is priced too high or low.

If there is a unwillingness by the entrepreneur to set the price higher, another individual may choose to speculate and purchase the product at the low price and sell the tickets at a higher price. Speculation is a market process that allows the price to come closer to the equilibrium point and allow those who truly desire the product to receive the product. This is how commodity futures work in equity markets. Now that the basics are covered, we can analyze the problem at hand.

Ticket scalpers are driven by the market profit and loss mechanism to set the ticket price closer to the equilibrium point and allow those who truly want tickets to get them. It is the fault of the ticket sellers, not of the ticket scalpers, that scalping exists. If those who sold tickets were to set prices higher, closer to the market equilibrium point, ticket scalping would be virtually non-existent. When such a proposal is made, many individuals, especially students, yell 'nonsense!' and are disgusted to think that they would have to pay more money in order to attend the football games. If this is the case, then those same individuals should not turn around and complain about the rampant ticket scalping.

Aside from simply complaining, these ticket scalping nay-sayers are crying out for increased policing of streets on and before game days tracking down the scalpers. Such coercion never eliminates markets but simply moves the product into the black markets. This increases the crime and violence associated with ticket scalping and only hurts those consumers who want to go see the game. In addition, when one adult decides to purchase goods from another adult it should not matter at which price or where they are doing this exchange as long as they are not harming the liberties of another. The freedom to engage in market exchanges is what has made the United States economy great and one of the strongest in the world.

In short, the “problem” of ticket scalping is not actually a problem but a solution to a problem. The problem is the fact that football tickets are priced too low. If the ticket sellers were to price the tickets higher, scalping incentives would be greatly diminished. It is also important to understand that it is the right of individuals to engage in exchange, regardless of what others may think of the exchange, as long as the exchange does not harm the livelihood of other individuals. As for those who are crying out against ticket scalping, simply increase prices so that they satisfy the equilibrium point. If these individuals fear increased prices then stop speaking out against a problem whose solution they will are unwilling to accept.

The Leviathan Grows

The growth of the United States government has been quite incoherent. There have been epochs where the United States has experienced little governmental expansion and others where there has been an unbelievable increase in centralized authority; under Lincoln, Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and, most recently, George W. Bush federal powers were shamelessly expanded. These presidents served only to increase the size and scope of the federal government and systematically seize control of many of the liberties the United States citizens once enjoyed.

Lincoln removed the right to secession that was ingrained in the United States prior to the "war against southern independence" or better known as the Civil War. Roosevelt effectively plunged the United States economy into a depression that lasted a decade. The 1929 depression was not caused by the policies of Roosevelt (in fact they were caused by the foolish actions of the Federal Reserve) but his administration's socialist policies failed to allow the economy to recover. Roosevelt spent hundreds of millions of dollars on public make-work programs that only served to misallocated resources. Roosevelt also kept wages artificially high as well as prices and did little to cure the problem of unemployment. Johnson enacted the horrid social programs that were supposed to bring about a "greater society" but failed by turning our nation into one that depends wholly on the government. His administration also entered us into the Vietnam War, one of the worst military decisions in the history of the United States and a conflict that the nation should never have participated in.

The result of the war were thousands of dead Vietnamese civilians, United States soldiers, and billions of dollars in expenditures towards the war effort. The problem of overspending was so devastating that gold was being shipped out by foreign central banks from the Federal Reserve. The country had made too many outstanding debts with respect to the amount of gold the Federal Reserve had. Thus, the United States was effectively going bankrupt. Nixon entered the presidency after Johnson and, fearing bankruptcy, eliminated the international gold standard. This removed the last objective check the United States currency had against endless inflation. This looming bankruptcy could have been solved by simply end the Federal Reserve's inflationary trends, something Nixon had no desire in doing. In addition, Nixon furthered the fight against drugs in the United States and brought about a horrible civil war now labeled as the "War on Drugs." This enforcement of absurd drug laws has cost the tax payer hundreds of billions of dollars and has only served to increase the number of drug suppliers and drug users in the country as well as allowing the central authorities more reasons to breach civilian constitutional rights.

Reagan had been elected to the presidency under a free market banner but was nothing of the sort. His administration spent more on government programs than any other president since Roosevelt. Government spending as a percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was at an all time high and hence, so was the power of government. Our debts increased rapidly and Reagan's tax cuts did little to fight the ever growing deficits. Reagan also managed to instate a "voluntary" trade barrier with Japanese automobile manufacturers. In an effort to favor United States automobile producers, who were getting much competition from the Japanese automakers, Reagan mandated that Japan decrease the amount of automobiles exported to the United States or the administration would raise the tariffs. The Japanese government agreed and the end result was lower quality, higher-priced automobiles in the United States and Japan.

George W. Bush has done little besides blur the limits the Federal government has when investigating its citizens. The infamous P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act has served to increase the size and scope of the governmental police forces and has made it simpler for the central authorities to breach civilian Constitutional rights. Bush has also begun a war with the government of Iraq that had nothing to do with the 9/11 tragedy. In order to pay for this war the Federal Reserve has been pumping money into the government, which has had the consequence of inflating our prices as well as bringing about economic malinvestment.

The inhumane acts of these administrations and their breaches of the United States constitution are vast. The number of individuals who have been negatively affected by these monstrous presidents are unbelievable and the figure is increasing rapidly. One thing is certain when evaluating the history of the United States government, the citizens have been losing their liberties at the expense of centralized authority. This country will never be freed until citizens realize that the answer to all of their problems is not more government, but less. As the late Frank Zappa once wrote, "there ain't no Great Society, as it applies to you and me, our country isn't free."

Inflation and Government Trickery

Now with Alan Greenspan gone, Ben Bernanke has taken over as Federal Reserve chairman. Many individuals saw the appointment of Bernanke as another mishap of the Bush administration. The new Federal Reserve chairman has stated that there are no plans to decrease inflationary policies and that any deflation must be avoided. That said, Mr. Brandly writes in this editorial of the extraordinary inflation rates that have been appearing in private indexes and the effort the government is putting forth in order to silence public worries of inflation. The author points out that the CPI (Consumer Price Index) is leaving out "volatile" products in an effort to "better" measure inflation.

These volatile products are goods whose prices are rising rapidly and are purposefully being left out of public indexes in an effort to hide highly important data. Inflation often affects certain goods before others and indexes should not ignore those goods that are being affected most by expansionary monetary policy. The Cantilion effect states that inflationary policy sets certain "injection points" and the prices of goods closest to these points often rise much quicker than other market prices. It is not sufficient for government to ignore the prices of "volatile" goods and simply analyze the other products on the market. If the CPI wants to give an accurate account of inflation these "volatile" numbers must be calculated into the data. The reason that Mr. Brandly believes the government is withholding this data from CPI calculations is so that their figures align themselves with consumer and investor expectations rather than give an objective judgment of the situation. In addition, these incorrect inflation statistics hide much of the government spending that has led to these numbers and may give politicians unwarranted public support to increase government deficits.

I whole-heartedly agree with Mr. Brandly's analysis and find it quite enlightening. Few citizens truly understand inflation and the detrimental affects it has on our economy. These new numbers lower the credibility of the CPI and show the massive effort to which government is trying to hide its spending habits. In addition, government can be seen, by manipulating these numbers, as tricking investors and consumers into believing that price increase are less severe than previously estimated. The Federal Reserve needs to provide less inflationary policy and must once again reinstate the M3. By keeping up an inflation rate much closer to our rate of growth, the affects on the citizen's pocket and on the economy will not be as severe. If we are not to remove the Federal Reserve of its post then we must encourage these bureaucrats to alter monetary policy in a way that it keeps up with, and does not outdo, economic growth.

Another Cuban Revolution?

Fidel Castro, the ruthless dictator of Cuba, was recently ill with severe internal bleeding, bringing the media's spotlight on the island. Castro's physicians managed to bring the him back to good health but doubts have arisen as to how much longer the dictator will be in power. Raul Castro, Fidel's brother and successor to the "presidency," has openly admitted that he desires to see a more open economy in Cuba. Raul has showed much sympathy towards the Chinese economy and their mixture of communist rule with quasi-free markets. That said, questions have surfaced as to the possibility of counter-communist revolution when Fidel "buys the farm." Cuba has seen some civil unrest recently, mostly due to repressive labor laws and the government's failure to pay workers. In this article, Liannis Meriño Aguilera writes of graffiti that has appeared at a bus stop in Holguin which has caught the immediate attention of the communist regime. The article states that

someone wrote anti-government slogans on the walls of a bus stop across the street from a military post in Banes, Holguín municipality last weekend.

The graffiti read "Down with Fidel" and "We don't want Raúl," in chalk. A detachment from the political police, headed by Major Wilson Ramírez, of the Department of State Security, converged on the site in the early morning and cleaned up the wall after thoroughly photographing it.

Later in the day, the local contingent of the "Rapid Response Brigades," the government directed mobs who prosecute all those not in agreement with government policies, were gathered at the fire station and told to "be watchful of acts of disobedience like this one."

There may not be a radical libertarian revolution when Fidel kicks the bucket but one thing is for sure, the coming years will be quite interesting. My family is Cuban and suffered tremendously under Castro. My mother was driven out of the country and my father was placed in a concentration camp for eighteen months cutting sugarcane for the regime. It would be a relief for my family as well as millions of exiled Cubans to see a significant change from a repressive communist regime to a much freer market.