A prospect of Cuba: Past and Future

Cuba is described by two libraries that do not read each other: one records the literacy campaign, the health outcomes and six decades of siege; the other the one-party state, the camps, and a grid that cannot stay lit. Both are accurate; neither is honest. Parts I and II hold them together, because Part III is a design, and a design is only as good as its initial conditions. The record yields one finding. Almost every measure proposed here has been tried in Cuba; most worked; all were reversed. The binding problem is not which policies to adopt but how to make them irrevocable. The embargo sets the cost of Cuban failure; the Cuban system sets its probability. Part III keeps a universal welfare state at Western European standard and changes only who pays: rent-financed becomes tax-financed, because an entitlement funded by an external rent lasts as long as the rent. Rule of law before ballots; official dollarisation; six gigawatts of solar with storage; the right of any Cuban to sell their work abroad and be paid; compensation, never restitution. The largest available source of finance is not foreign. It is Cuba's own investment budget, spent differently.