Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Cuban Economics 101: The Store Is Empty Because the System Is Full
Communism does not eliminate the rich. It simply replaces private wealth with political privilege. Cuba did not build an economy. It built a toll booth feeding one class and called it a country. --YNOT!
In Cuba, the shelves are empty for the people, but full for the connected. That is not failure. That is the system working exactly as designed.
And I understand why it is hard for people to grasp. Cuba is so foreign compared to almost every other economy on Earth that most people naturally assume it works like a normal country.
It does not.
In almost any country in the world, except maybe North Korea, if you want to buy something, you go on the internet, click a button, pay for it, and it gets shipped to your house or to a place where you can pick it up. Maybe you pay a tariff. Maybe you pay a shipping charge. Maybe the government takes some tax. Fine. That happens everywhere.
But the basic idea is simple: you have money, it is your money, and the country allows you to buy what you need.
Cuba does not work that way.
In Cuba, almost everything has to pass through the Cuban system. You either buy it from a Cuban government store, or you depend on a family member in the United States or some other country to send it to you. But even then, that item usually has to pass through a company that functions like a freight forwarder tied into the Cuban system.
That company gets its cut. The government gets its cut. The connected people inside the system get their cut.
By the time the Cuban citizen gets the item, the poor thing has been taxed, handled, shipped, processed, squeezed, and blessed by every little parasite in the chain.
So let’s say you want to buy a microwave oven.
In a normal country, you buy a microwave. It arrives. You plug it in. You heat your food. End of story.
In Cuba, that microwave becomes an economic adventure novel.
You can go to a government store and buy the microwave for three times what it would cost almost anywhere else. Or, in theory, a family member outside Cuba can send you one. But by the time your family member buys it, takes it to a company like VaCuba, pays the shipping fee, pays the handling fee, pays the tax, and then deals with whatever charge may appear when it finally reaches Cuba, that microwave can still cost three times what it should.
And sometimes, when your family member in Cuba finally receives the item, they have to pay another fee on their end.
So what do you do?
You send extra money along with the microwave.
Maybe you send $100.
But even that money does not arrive cleanly. By the time everyone takes their percentage, your family member may only get the equivalent of $75.
That is the point people miss.
The whole system is designed to take a cut at every step. It is designed so the Cuban citizen cannot simply bypass the state and buy what they need directly.
That has nothing to do with the embargo. That has nothing to do with sanctions.
That has nothing to do with America preventing Cuba from buying a microwave, a refrigerator, a fan, a bag of rice, or a bottle of Coca-Cola.
This is how the Cuban economy is structured. This is how the system protects itself. This is how the system funds itself.
It is not just tariffs. It is not just shipping. It is not just bad luck.
It is a controlled economy built to make sure the government and the people connected to the government get paid before the Cuban citizen gets what he needs.
And now we get to the part nobody wants to talk about.
The people in the Cuban government, the elites, the connected families, and whoever else is tied into the system do not have this problem.
They travel freely abroad. They buy whatever they want.
They bring things back with them. They have connections to get things through customs.
The rules that crush the average Cuban do not apply to them.
If you go to Havana, you will see two Cubas.
There is the Cuba of the regular people, and there is the Cuba of the privileged class.
There are stores for ordinary Cubans, and then there are stores for the connected people. The stores for regular people are often empty or filled with overpriced basics. But the stores for the privileged class look like Costco. They have products from all over the world. You can buy almost anything.
Nothing stops China from selling products to Cuba.
Nothing stops other countries from selling products to Cuba.
The problem is not that Cuba cannot buy things.
The problem is who gets access to those things once they enter the country.
And understand this clearly: at that level, the government is the seller.
When you buy Coca-Cola in Cuba — and yes, you can buy Coca-Cola in Cuba — you are buying it through the system. Where did they get it? I do not know. But they got it. And they are selling it.
That is the magic trick. The shelves are empty for the people, but somehow the connected class can still find what it wants.
Walk around Havana and you may be surprised by what you see. You will see Toyotas, Lexuses, Mercedes, BMWs, Porsches, and even the occasional Alfa Romeo or Lamborghini. You may even see newer American cars.
But very few people own those cars. And when you do see them, you know exactly what you are looking at. You are looking at someone connected to power.
Because in Cuba, you do not become truly wealthy unless you are connected, protected, corrupt, or part of the government system.
That is Cuban Economics 101.
So now ask yourself a very simple question:
Should you give money to the Cuban government?
And here is another part people do not understand.
One reason Cuba does not have enough food is because the system is so broken that farmers do not truly control their farms.
If a farmer does not own the farm, does not control the price, does not control the market, and does not benefit from his own production, then why would he produce more than he has to?
He does what everyone else does. He waits. He survives. He plays the system, because the system gives him no real incentive to build, grow, improve, expand, or produce.
That is what socialism does when it gets old. It does not create abundance. It creates excuses. It turns productive people into people who wait. It turns farmers into employees of a failed theory. It turns a country with land, climate, and history into a country standing in line for imported food.
Cuba was and should be an agricultural powerhouse.
It has the land. It has the climate. It has the history.
But after more than half a century of communist control, the government still cannot feed its own people.
So Cuban government imports food. That is why people are hungry.
Not because Cuba is an island. Not because the sun forgot to shine.
Not because the soil went on strike. People are hungry because the system is stupid, corrupt, and designed to control production instead of reward it.
And here is the final trick. The Cuban people do not have real money.
The Cuban government has the money. But the Cuban government does not create wealth.
It does not build enough. It does not produce enough. It does not innovate enough.
It survives by extracting money from its own people and from Cubans abroad through fees, taxes, inflated prices, remittances, government stores, and controlled import channels.
That is the system.
So when those outside revenue streams are cut off, the Cuban government suddenly has no money to buy anything because it never built a real economy.
It built a machine of control. It built a toll booth and called it a country.
It built a warehouse for the connected and a waiting line for everyone else.
It built a system where the government gets paid first, the elites get served second, and the people get whatever is left over — if anything is left over at all.
The Cuban government is a parasite on the Cuban people.
And that is how communist economics works. The state controls the economy.
The connected class gets access. The government sells the goods.
The people pay three times the price. The relatives overseas send the money.
The middlemen take their cut. The customs office takes its cut.
The store takes its cut. The party takes its cut.
And the Cuban citizen stands there wondering why the shelves are empty in a country that somehow still has luxury cars, elite stores, imported products, and government officials who never seem to miss a meal.
That is not an accident. That is the design.
And now you know what has been happening for 70 years.
