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Electricity is the foundation of modern life. Cheap, reliable power is the defining feature of a developed country. A poor country is one where the lights don’t always go on.

Among the poorest of the poor is Cuba, now experiencing mass blackouts:

Electricity went out across Cuba on Friday just hours after its cash-strapped government ordered the shutdown of nonessential businesses to save power as millions of residents were already suffering from widespread outages.

The country’s Energy Ministry said that a failure at the largest power plant sparked a nationwide blackout affecting the island’s 11 million residents. …

The blackout came hours after Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said that fuel shortages and maintenance problems at the country’s power grid and rising electricity demand required the government to reduce electricity consumption with harsh measures.

Cubans have endured power cuts that extend for four or five hours a day in the capital Havana and most of the day in the rest of the island. The Communist country faces one of its worst-ever economic and energy crises. Deteriorating and obsolete infrastructure and inadequate fuel make it impossible to generate enough electricity.

When you can’t afford to run a power plant, your only option is to further degrade your people’s standard of living:

The government said it ordered a state of emergency and halted “all non-vital services that generate energy costs.” It suspended weekend classes at schools and universities and cultural activities. It also ordered the closure of bars and nightclubs and nonessential workplaces. Hospitals and food processing centers were permitted to operate while most state workers were sent home.

Things have been grim in Cuba for a long time, but they are getting worse:

Cubans are living with increased hardship, said Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a Cuban political activist. Even preserving food is hard due to a lack of refrigeration, he said. With no electricity, Cubans can’t use air conditioning, fans or electrical stoves on the tropical island.

“This is terrible, and the government has no solutions,” Cuesta Morúa said, as the lights went off at his home in Havana. “People are very upset.”

Not upset enough. Tyranny still reigns on the island:

Some small, scattered protests emerged on Thursday as power outages intensified, said José Raúl Gallego, a Cuban journalist based in Mexico City who follows political and social developments in Cuba. “Residents now say that the government is deploying police and military officers in Havana to prevent protests,” he added.

Oppression is the one thing they are good at. Meanwhile, for Cubans, things go from awful to even more awful:

The government urged residents and state-run businesses “to prepare quick, light and soupy meals” as a lack of hard-currency has also hobbled the government’s ability to import cooking gas for households.

“It’s essential to take extreme power saving measures,” said Cuba’s official Communist Party daily Granma, urging the population to implement a “general unplugging.”

What we see in Cuba is the inevitable end point of socialism: extreme poverty.

The energy crisis and a deep economic contraction in recent years has fueled social unrest and mass migration to the U.S. Cubans stand in line for hours to buy basic goods such as chicken or bread or to take a bus.
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The Cuban Human Rights Observatory, a Spain-based advocacy group, says the measures are a tacit admission of a failure in the management of the country.

“The crisis goes far beyond an electricity shortage—which leaves Cubans with blackouts for almost 20 hours a day. It also includes a lack of food, running water and medicines,” the group said.

No power, no food, no medicine, no running water. So it always goes in a socialist paradise. I don’t suppose things will change until Cuba’s government runs out of the one commodity that, from its perspective, is truly essential: bullets. What Cubans need is the Ceaușescu Solution. That may come about any day now.