The media like to portray Cuba as a vibrant place, Latin culture plus classic cars. The street view is entirely different. Block after block of pre-communist era buildings falling apart and very few cars. Indeed, you’re more likely to see a cart as a car. Check it out for yourself.
In Venezuela, the conditions of the masses of people are so desperate that many women turn to prostitution and even pimp out their adolescent girls … and boys.
Prostitutes are especially cheap for jet-setting communists who can pay prostitutes in dollars. When trading sex for dollars, prostitutes are likely to make more money selling the dollars in the black market than they make from selling sex for local currency.
In Russia, where the government had been controlling the trading of dollars, it now has suspended trading dollars altogether. The idea, I suppose, was to throw the dollar out the window of a tall building. But, instead, the rouble looks to have been thrown out the window. With black market dollars becoming more and more scarce, vodka is gaining as an unregulated currency in Russia, as though it were Russia’s bitcoin. Beware of counterfeit vodka!
In China, the black market in human organs is growing more sophisticated. Inventories of organs of prisoners are being digitized to better match demand with execution and organ-harvesting.
Reports of starvation are making their way across the border from North Korea. According to the U.N., 40 percent of the population is malnourished. Children and the elderly are particularly at risk.
Clifford F. Thies is the Eldon R. Lindsay Professor of Economics and Finance at Shenandoah University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Boston College.
