Jinn of Current Events

Washington Post: Saudi authorities are investigating suspected illegal [sic] arms sales by members of the country's national guard to al Qaeda operatives in the country, U.S. and Saudi officials said. The weapons were seized in a May 6 raid on an al Qaeda safe house and were traced to national guard stockpiles, the officials said. 

Brad DeLong feels depressed because Cuba is not a success of socialism: Cuba under Battista--Cuba in 1957--was a developed country. Cuba in 1957 had lower infant mortality than France, Belgium, West Germany, Israel, Japan, Austria, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had doctors and nurses: as many doctors and nurses per capita as the Netherlands, and more than Britain or Finland. Cuba in 1957 had as many vehicles per capita as Uruguay, Italy, or Portugal. Cuba in 1957 had 45 TVs per 1000 people--fifth highest in the world. Cuba today has fewer telephones per capita than it had TVs in 1957. You take a look at the standard Human Development Indicator variables--GDP per capita, infant mortality, education--and you try to throw together an HDI for Cuba in the late 1950s, and you come out in the range of Japan, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Israel. Today? Today the UN puts Cuba's HDI in the range of Lithuania, Trinidad, and Mexico. (And Carmelo Mesa-Lago thinks the UN's calculations are seriously flawed: that Cuba's right HDI peers today are places like China, Tunisia, Iran, and South Africa.) That's what communism and its cousin socialism always do: destroy wealth and increase misery. Why is this fact depressing? Depression follows from a feeling that one's values are being systematically frustrated.

Revealingly maybe, DeLong feels the need to malign people who quote Ludwig von Mises (namely the authors of the first study he links to). Does he disagree with the extensively argued critique of socialism, central planning, and interventionism? has he managed to write a thorough refutation of von Mises' ground-breaking treatise on Socialism? Does DeLong maybe not see the irony in maligning von Mises while reporting on further evidence that socialist Cuba is a failure just as von Mises predicted must be the destiny of all socialist systems?

For those who are interested in von Mises's great classic, Socialism, it is online in full (PDF, 28MB), courtesy of TJS — The Jefferson School of Philosophy, Economics, and Psychology.