Ownership

Before we can discuss ownership we must understand what it means. Basically, the owner of anything is the one who can use it for his own benefit. The owner is also responsible for maintenance and security of this property. There is not much more to the concept of ownership. Under this definition the Castro boys own everything in Cuba and the people nothing - the Cuban people are renters. The amount of rent each must pay to the Castro boys depends on their value to their landlord. Since the Castro boys are the owners of Cuba they get the first grab of all wealth creation on the island. Then if you are a "good" Cuban tenant, providing your landlord things like security against Cubans who don't want to be owned by anyone, positive propaganda making the landlord appear kind to his tenants, etc. then you get better housing and more pay. If you are a "bad" Cuban tenant who hopes to one day own himself and his own labor output and maybe a small piece of dirt where he can exist, the landlord will provide you with the worst places to live - gulags and concentration camps where you are starved to death and denied basic medical care. And speaking of medical care, only tenants in good standing with the landlords, the Castro boys, have access to actual free health care. Because only a couple of lucky Cubans own everything, no one takes responsibility for caring for anything. Never is preventive maintenance done on the landlord's property because the tenants get no benefit directly. So everything decays and rots into the dirt.

The reality is in Cuba everyone wants to be an owner. But in public most fear admitting that truth for fear of pissing off the landlords. Conditions are bad now as it is in Cuba. But things could always get worse - if you piss off the landlords.