A version of this post appeared in the San Antonio Express News.

I'm fired up by the new US policy

I'm totally fired up that the Obama administration relaxed travel, trade, and diplomatic restrictions on Cuba last week.

Removing the US embargo will not raise up Cuban people's lives as much as we hope without the Cuban regime, for its part, embracing more of a market system.

For over 50 years, the Castros took every public speaking opportunity to point their fingers North and blame all of their country's ills on the US.

By lifting the US embargo, we at least remove the Cuban regime's primary excuse for the past fifty years of horrific economic conditions of the Cuban people under the Castros.

It's not the embargo, it's their suppression of a market economy.

Markets vs. Cuban Socialism

I'll be the first to declare that our markets-based system has tremendous failures.

Markets are unjust.

Markets – without a safety net – heartlessly leave children, the unemployed, and the elderly in poverty.

Unregulated markets commonly lead to the terrible treatment of consumers and the environment.

But to paraphrase Winston Churchill's famous quip about Democracy, I would say free markets are the worst form of economy, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Churchill had something pithy and brilliant to say about everything

One thing that made me a card-carrying Adam Smithian Wealth of Nations-thumping pro-markets guy was visiting Cuba under the Castros.

My wife and I visited twice in the 2000s. We've visited many resource-limited countries. But nothing compares to Cuba.

In Cuba, everything is illegal

In the absence of any legitimate way for ordinary Cubans to earn enough to get food to eat, corruption envelops every day life.

Everyday. corruption.

Not for anything special, or anything nice. Just to get enough calories in the body.