tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59314536872562320172024-03-11T08:28:52.312-04:00TANSTAAFL CANADA!The personal blog of Caleb McMillanUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger574125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-36997676573379455152022-07-04T16:31:00.000-04:002022-07-04T16:31:00.089-04:00Defunct<p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> This blog is defunct now. As in dead, deceased, finished the course of its life.</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">I probably no longer hold any of the opinions you'll find here, even those tagged </span><em style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Poe's Law</span></em><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">.</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">This blog was an exercise in thinking and writing. I had fun doing it, and I hope you had fun reading it. But let's be honest, TANSTAAFL Cringe! is more like it, amirite?</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">I don't know. I haven't bothered re-reading any of this. I'm sure it's not that bad. I was just some 20-year-old kid who'd read Murray Rothbard for the first time and wanted to express himself. </span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">So I thought I'd stop by and make the defunct'ing official. Just in case someone comes snooping along and wants to hold me accountable. </span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Don't you hate that? Why do people get in trouble for past tweets or blogs or whatever? It assumes the person who wrote the offensive thing is the same person who stands before you today. It also assumes the mean and nasty tweet is considered offensive by everybody. Many hilarious jokes have been misinterpreted, and that's a shame.</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Seems we still haven't figured out that everything is moving. Things are perceived on a marginal basis. You can't ignore marginal utility. It's baked into reality. Or at least our version of it.</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The mind is entirely metaphysical. The brain and body conspire to create it. But it's a runaway greenhouse effect in the brain department. We may be <i>too</i> self-aware.</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> </span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Do you know why we can't remember when we were babies? Because we didn't have language, we didn't really have consciousness. Not in a strict sense. </span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Anyway, I'm rambling. Blog's done. I've got a substack if you want to read that, but I barely update it because I'm too busy with work.</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Speaking of which - I am a freelance content and copywriter, so contact me if you need any of that done. My niches are cannabis, psychedelics, well-being, self-improvement, business and politics.</span></p><p style="background: transparent; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-50040332163426398302019-05-23T23:50:00.001-04:002019-05-24T01:30:10.315-04:00How to Stop the Empire <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">From the ashes of the Second World War and the 25 chaotic years that preceded it, finally, in 1945, there was stability. <br /><br />America the safe. America the prosperous.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">America, haven of the world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Also the world’s strongest military after 1945.<br /><br />Financially, the U.S.' hegemony far passed the former Soviet Union and Communist China. With these funds, an empire was born.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">An empire, that, like the British one before it, began with private individuals with private interests.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">America's elite offered loans to underdeveloped states. The richest people in the world used their power and influence to establish a system of corporatocracy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These loans covered engineering and construction projects. U.S. companies, and later, European, Canadian and other "Western" companies were contracted to fulfill these projects.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But the loans and the interest owed were outrageous. Completely disconnected to market time preference. These were, and still are, corporations unaccountable to the U.S. government. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rewarded money by international bodies funded by the U.S. government, but unaccountable to Congress.<br /><br />Trained in business schools and sounding like economists and accountants, the men and women who help build the empire deliver page after page of economic data and projections. They persuade third-world leaders to take loans from the “international community.”<br /><br />By taking these loans, the leaders are signing off on a debt their taxpayers have no hope of repaying. <br /><br />The nation’s natural resources are developed by Western companies and profit is shipped back home alongside the goods. The third-world sees none of it, and worse, they owe.<br /><br />This corporate cancer, backed by the military might of the United States, used to use the ole’ USSR as its justification. Then, it was the drug war and the terrorists. Always with the TV, radio, and newspapers on their side.<br /><br />Today, thank God, we have the Internet. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But there is also the “3x5 card of allowable opinion.” To test its limits is wrong. To go outside it is unspeakable. Surely, no arguments are needed since the people who originate such views are beset by white supremacy.<br /><br />The Empire faltered in the 1970s when people became aware of the West’s reliance on oil. But a Saudi deal for oil smoothed things out. Thanks to Uncle Sam’s secret economic hitmen.<br /><br />Secret no more — <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perkins_%28author%29" target="_blank">at least one person spoke up.</a> And even if he’s lying, everybody believes in the Empire now anyway. Like the English at the turn of the 20th century. The "Little Englanders" were unpopular in the public debate. The MPs who espoused such views lost their seats. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">It doesn’t really matter if these “economic hitmen” exist or once existed. Or, if they aren't hitmen at all, but human beings with a different set of values. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">After all, who says one must abide by Kant's dictum that people should be treated as ends and not means?<br /><br />People today have an “international community” mindset with America more or less as its head. They believe crony-capitalism is real capitalism. That price inflation, economic booms and busts, terrorism in the middle east, America world police, state-funded education, government action on climate change, welfare, etc., are a normal part of everyday life. <br /><br />That it’s okay to bomb countries without pretext because they have bad leaders. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That it’s okay to enjoy the cheap cost of labour overseas despite needless human suffering. That’s just how industrialization works. (Technically this economic argument is correct provided the state isn’t undermining natural capital formation, which most states are certainly doing.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />That it’s okay to trust the secretive “intelligence community” although they’ve been caught spying on regular people. That they've been wrong many times before. That they have questionable ethics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />That it's okay to keep rewarding the already rich and politically well-connected banking, industrial and resource-extraction tycoons.<br /><br />Generations of state schooling and compelling media content have dumbed down most people. <br /><br />Some understand the Empire and don’t care, others understand part of it and don’t care, and of course, some understand none of it, and don’t give a flying fuck one way or the other.<br /><br />Some don’t understand the Empire but do care. Or they understand some of it and still want to do something. Whether for good or ill. And others get it completely and are doing something about it.<br /><br />What the fuck am I talking about? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Activists, radicals, and such versus media gatekeepers and academics.<br /><br />Now, fortunately in the age of the Internet, activists, and media have blended together and made it easy for anyone to consume. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But this category of media gatekeepers still exist since Twitter, YouTube, Patreon, Facebook and others have started editorializing their social media content.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Even Craigslist will take down a "rant and rave" ad that uses the word cunt.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Prior to the outbreak of the Internet and true dissident opinion, the media gatekeepers and academics kept us in the dark about our 3 favourite issues. The 3 most beneficial to the Empire.<br /><b><br />Income inequality —</b> you can blame banks, especially the central bank, for this one. When the central bank does its "open market operations" bit and credits the big banks without debiting itself first, who do you think gets this new money? And even if they did doll it all out to fixed-income seniors and the disabled, is that still ethical?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>Use of resources in an unsustainable way —</b> wanna stop burning oil and gas and start recycling garbage for fuel? Adjust the climate like a thermostat? Once again, you’re gonna wanna <a href="https://www.amazon.com/End-Fed-Ron-Paul/dp/0446549193" target="_blank">End the Fed</a> and <a href="https://mises.org/" target="_blank">read Mises.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><b>Corruption in government, business, and banking —</b> Start with banking, they’re the worst. Then move onto reforming government and limiting its power so corporations have no incentive to lobby since there’s no advantage to harnessing the power of the state… unless you’re a defense contractor.<br /><br />Because that’s all we need a state for — national defense.<br /><br />And probably not even that.<br /><br />Now, of course, at this point you’re skeptical. So take some time out and read about that Mises fella I mentioned. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Has_Government_Done_to_Our_Money%3F" target="_blank">Some Rothbard also couldn’t hurt.</a> I’ll be here when you return.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br />Welcome back.<br /><br />Now onto this Empire business and what to do about it.<br /><br />We are witnessing a revolution of minds. We are part of it. People are already questioning the world around them and there’s no stopping the bum rush. But we need to figure out what’s rubbish and what’s intelligent.<br /><br />Some cunt spouting off about the flat earth, chemtrails or vaccines being bad for you is not worthy of discussion. <br /><br />And not because it falls outside of some “3x5 card of allowable opinion” I’m imposing on myself, but, because, when you look into these things objectively, they are flat-out, scientifically, 100% wrong. Full stop.<br /><br />What we need are words, music, videos, pieces of art — change the culture and politics will follow. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Steering people in the right direction slowly but surely. <br /><br />Similar to how Mick West suggests we talk people out of their conspiracy beliefs. Or how <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian/dp/1939578094" target="_blank">Peter Boghossian </a>suggests we talk people out of their religious faith. <br /><br />As far as I’m concerned, that kind of persuasion can happen about the Empire with <a href="https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Praxeology" target="_blank">praxeology</a>.<br /><br />It’s not that outlandish to read, critique, and <a href="https://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Praxeology" target="_blank">understand Mises.</a> No more than it would be read Derrida, Foucault or Rorty.<br /><br />In the 1950s, a unified theory of casual-realism was delivered by a Jewish professor of economics, a veteran of World War 1, and a refugee of Hitler’s Germany. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A man who built from the economic and liberal traditions of those before him. From a time before the world wars destroyed Western civilization. Before an entire generations of people were slaughtered. <br /><br />That is how we stop the Empire. We read Mises. We read revisionist history.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">We change the culture.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-26500108246808352472018-12-19T21:44:00.002-05:002018-12-19T23:44:19.330-05:00Who Should Get the Right to Vote? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><br /></b> <b>I - Background Philosophy </b><br />
<b><br /></b> Everybody gets the vote? Are you serious?<br />
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Universal suffrage is one of those ideas that sounds great in theory but doesn’t work in practice.<br />
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Now you may say, “Caleb, there is a right to vote."<br />
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So? Assuming we have a thing called rights, who says everyone 18 and over should be endowed with this particular right?<br />
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We’re not all equal in IQ, skill sets, or general cognitive ability. There are some very stupid people out there who cannot grasp certain concepts in a real way and therefore should not get the vote. Ever. And before you accuse me of being elitist, think of the flat earthers.<br />
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For all my libertarian leanings, there remains a part of me that is truly statist. And that probably exists in everyone. Like a yin-yang, this state, and market. There's always this dichotomy in society. Free trade and peaceful interactions, on the one hand, violence and destruction on the other. And of course, these two principles cross-fade with each other all the time, right now and throughout history.<br />
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Your local butcher and their supply chain belong to one side of the spectrum. War and concentration camps on the other.<br />
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Economist and anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard didn’t like philosopher Robert Nozick for a reason. I suspect it’s because Nozick poked holes in Murray’s theory of anarchy. Namely, when a private governance agency is the market’s natural monopoly in one region, it becomes a state.<br />
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You may respond, “but muh contracts,” and I agree, a physical binding contract would be a nice choice given the unwritten “social contract” we have today. So it's an issue of consent. But there’s also the issue of constitutions and rights.<br />
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What makes a constitution binding for individuals across generations? The founders of America and Canada based their ideas on many sources, but John Locke is the elephant in the room.<br />
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John Locke emphasizes life, liberty, and private property rights. Property is the focal point of Locke’s civil government. He says that’s the primary reason for having a government at all. People join together and form a society because they have property to protect. Property isn’t just real estate, it’s the very stuff you own, the clothes on your back, the food in your fridge, the money in your bank account.<br />
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As far as I’m concerned private property is a sort of “extended phenotype” of our species. Resources are required for human survival let alone civilization. And how we possess and allocate said resources is a problem addressed by economics as a subset of praxeology. It is the hows of the human action, not the whys.<br />
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So who gets the vote? More importantly, does it matter? If the lobbyist game in Ottawa and Washington are strong enough, then does it matter whom we send up there from the traditional parties?<br />
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If a mass of people changed their mind to view property as worth dying for, Americans could just elect independents. Or better yet, split into a bunch of countries. At least two, preferably more. If America divided into two countries during the 19th century it could have been disastrous financially. In the early 21st, I think each new bloc of former US states will manage fine. So long as trade crosses borders and people are friendly with their neighbours.<br />
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War what is it good for, eh? For us Canadians, we’d almost need to send 169+ independents to the House of Commons. Then, when they’ve figured out 10 common themes to agree on, they'll select in-house a prime minister and form a cabinet. They will then ask the Speaker of the House to form the government. All based on 10 issues they were able to hammer out of the hundreds of thousands of requests they heard from voters while on the campaign trail. People looking for change or financial help.<br />
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As these 165+ independents deliberate their way to forming the government, the country runs without them. It happens. Belgium was without a government for 289 days or so. Canada was technically without government when Harper prorogued parliament back in ’08. As Mises says, “Cabinets may come and go, but the bureaus remain.”<br />
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Now, this thought experiment of electing independents assumes everyone gets to vote. First, we must strip people of this perceived “right.”<br />
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Now — this sounds a bit Orwellian. Definitely tyrannical, and what government body could we ever trust to get this done right? So allow this to be more of eh... stripping of one's preconceived notions. Planting a seed in someone’s head so that their 95% irrational brain can water it and grow it into a beautiful idea. Then when the 5% rational brain comes walking by and sees the idea blooming, he or she will think it was theirs all along! It’s the perfect plan.<br />
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Let’s figure this out. There are clearly people who should not get any sort of say in the electoral process. Government workers are the top priority. If income is derived from taxpayers, even as a contractual clause, you have no “right” to the vote. If you live off welfare or some kind of state-funded social assistance, no “right” to the vote for you. The reason, of course, has to do with private property. These people don’t own any in a meaningful sense. If all their “wealth” is derived from wealth-producing taxpayers, any "wealth" they spend in the economy is foreshadowed by this initial destruction through taxation. Markets may shift to accommodate a parasitic class, but no net wealth has been added to the economy. A tax-recipient is an economic parasite regardless of whatever value he or she may provide to a group of individuals. No matter what he or she may buy with their loot.<br />
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An economy run by bureaucrats didn’t work for the Chinese or Soviets, and a conglomeration of industries (education, health care, product safety and regulation) run by Western bureaucrats is just as ineffective.<br />
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And what if you work in the private sector, but you own no property, save for a few possessions, do you have the vote? Yes, but it means less than a wealthier landowning merchant.<br />
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Votes aren’t fixed but proportional to an individual’s standing in society as determined by his or her economic value. A single mother working in the private sector but receiving alimony would have lower voting power than the single father working in the private sector and paying that alimony. As well, if you’re currently active military, then you have no right to vote.<br />
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Now this issue of stripping the right of active military men and women but not retired ones, the vets, who either still live off taxpayers or have found private sector jobs, brings up another excellent viewpoint on who gets the vote. Ending universal suffrage is downright impossible in today’s “climate.” And with inept democratic governments (the very ones we’re looking to reform) doing the reforming, we run into a logistic problem. A solution is found in Hoppe’s <i>What is to Be Done</i>, for those more interested in the anarcho-capitalism tradition. But by borrowing a philosophical worldview from a science fiction author, I’ve solved our troubles with statism.<br />
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<b>II - Who Gets the Vote?</b><br />
<br />
Robert Heinlein’s 1959 novel <i>Starship Troopers</i> takes place in a future where only one class is privileged with the vote. They are the veterans of the “Federal Service.”<br />
<br />
But as a side note, I’d like to speak publicly on how it might be a good idea to start conscripting 16-year-olds for a couple years. Straighten them up and give them purpose. Violent, destructive purposes. Get it out of their system and alienate the ones with no taste for it. Only those that continue on to basic training get the vote. And only when they’re no longer in the service.<br />
<br />
Now, sure, there are plenty of changes to the Canadian State I’d like to make before implementing this kind of suffrage. Namely, the only thing you need a state for are military purposes, like securing the border, and maintaining the rule of law. First, a little bit about the rule of law.<br />
<br />
We have a series of inferior and superior courts, judges, lawyers, law societies — an entire judicature independent from the state. Yet, due to its legal nature, also intertwined with the state. There are major concessions the Western legal tradition have made to modern-day states. Enough to alarm Harold Berman in the opening introduction to <i>Law and Revolution.</i> Berman is dead now, but his books describe the history and importance of the customary and common law traditions of the West.<br />
<br />
Common law is a case-by-case discovery of what’s fair and just. Rules that work are embraced and work long term. Rules that don’t lead to peaceful cooperation, rules that lead to violence and destruction are discarded. Uncertainty isn't good for anybody and that's what violence brings. Out of legal anarchy in post-Roman Empire Europe, new decentralized orders took shape and sharpened over the centuries. The Western nations, like the British Commonwealth countries and the United States of America, are descendants of this successful legal system.<br />
<br />
The state acts as a last resort, an arbitrator of final decision making. It's interventions into the judicature are alarming enough to justify revolution (something John Locke believes we have a right to do). But for now, we'll focus on who gets the vote. So back to limiting the State apparatus.<br />
<br />
National borders are a state’s reason for being. Even a 1% sales tax would likely be enough to maintain a decent military. Not to patrol the world as policemen or “peacekeepers” but to maintain the borders at home, namely, keeping that warming Arctic and its resources away from those Ruskies. (And for those who object about “abandoning” the world at large, may I suggest individual Canadians fund mercenary groups abroad to fight their war games? And surely, in a globalized world of trade, protecting cargo ships and consumer cruises would be the financial interest of everyone involved? No need for a single nation-state superpower capable and willing to elect sociopaths and morons.)<br />
<br />
I’m sure the Canadian public would be willing to pay more than a 1% sales tax to the beloved military. Especially since this would be the only tax. We already pay well over that in each province, plus various income taxes and capital gains taxes and a host of others. Which gets us back to the issue at hand. Who should get the vote? Only retired military personnel of course!<br />
<br />
Conscripts don’t count and active personnel are on the government’s payroll, so… At 18-years-old, if you decide to stay in the military and undergo basic training, then when retire from duty, you become a voting citizen of the Dominion of Canada. You can also run for Member of Parliament. And with a smaller number of voters and a lot less dependency on the state in general, there likely wouldn’t be a need for provincial legislatures. There would only be a federal election, reserved for retired military personnel. Why?<br />
<br />
Because that first idea about proportional voting power for property-owning classes is unlikely. It is also meant as a path towards anarcho-capitalism.<br />
<br />
What if we still want a state?<br />
<br />
Nozick concludes that a constitutionally limited government would be best. I say, take that one step further. Canada’s constitutional democracy already follows classical liberal principles, so don’t tweak anything with it. (Except maybe dumping the Charter of Rights and Freedoms) Forget mixed-member representation. Forget abolishing the Senate (in fact, perhaps non-vets can be appointed to the Senate).<br />
<br />
Join the revolution of the mind. Universal suffrage gives everyone an equal vote. But not everyone is equal. And equality isn’t always synonymous with justice. In fact, in most cases, the two couldn’t be more opposed to each other.<br />
<br />
#SupportTheTroops — Only retired military personnel get the vote.<br />
<br />
And this doesn’t mean just combat veterans. Just as in<i> Starship Troopers</i>, there are non-violent means to serve. But consider what a combat veteran understands about the vote. The veteran understands what it means for an individual to sacrifice everything, literally, risk their own lives, for the whole. What liberties does an individual need to give up for the collective good of the whole? With the military, it’s life, liberty, and property. It is to become a ward of the state.<br />
<br />
... And they'll get their war games with the Ruskies. Gotta keep the arms manufacturing industry alive and give our young soldiers a taste of real combat, amirite?<br />
<br />
Although, again, let me emphasize here that as per the book not all “Federal Service” volunteers are involved directly with combat operations. But, being involved with military personnel, when faced with the very real prospect of dying for one’s cause, when forced to work together as a team, and not for profit or “social good” but as a complex military unit representing the military might of Canada…. What more could you want?<br />
<br />
The vet is an informed voter. He or she will make better choices than the undisciplined masses. Students of science and engineering can serve non-combat positions. Areas of the military that play to their skills. They retire from the service in four years, join the private sector, vote in elections. Even run for office.<br />
<br />
Young men and women with no foreseeable skills, the ones cursed with poorer IQs — they serve combat. What else is there for them to do?<br />
<br />
In a system of universal suffrage, these people represent the uninformed voter. So in a way, everyone still has the opportunity to vote, some just need to literally risk their lives for it.<br />
<br />
And that’ll make them appreciate what one has to go through to get this “right.” If they want to influence the power of the throne, they must be willing to die for it. They have to be pissed when special interests, such as big business or unions, aim to influence or hijack the reins of power.<br />
<br />
Coupled with the educated non-combat vet voter, Parliament becomes closed to outside forces. In matters of commerce, banking, and regulation, the free market handles it all. The judicature discovers the rules.<br />
<br />
The state: a) defends national borders and provide defence. For logistic reasons, this means outright ownership of the Trans-Canada Highway and the Canadian side of the Alaska Highway. We might still want the Post Office too but just for government business. Citizens can use the numerous private sector couriers.<br />
<br />
b) Maintains the judicature by taking a hands-off approach. If English common law produces legal tyranny, future representatives of future voters can deal with the hypothetical in the legislature. The legislature exists as an ultimate arbitrator on issues the free society can't deal with.<br />
<br />
One can foresee a Muslim or radical Christian cult undermining local and regional customary and common laws with culturally insufficient practices. Perhaps the military steps in? Or could a regional defensive agency conduct a market-friendly Waco siege on these religious extremists? Either way, the state is there in case everything goes wrong. In case the country falls to communists.<br />
<br />
So why hold onto this idea of universal suffrage? Maybe you thought there was hope with the 165+ independents idea or maybe you think we can start a new party, join a small one, or influence an old one...<br />
<br />
Politics is an internal affair. An esoteric activity. You don't get to determine the outcome of a basketball game if you don't know anything about the sport. I'm not recommending a caste system since the state deals with nothing but borders and defence. Non-voters are still free to buy and sell property, amass millions or lose everything. There is no capital gains tax, no income tax, no inheritance tax, no tax except whatever parliament levies for the security of the borders. I'm assuming a 1% federal sales tax. Anything more is institutionalized theft.<br />
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<b>III - The Objections</b><br />
<br />
Some vets have PTSD or other mental illnesses. Should they be deciding on the future on the country versus a well-made middle-class family man who has all the entrepreneurial experience but has not served with the military? Isn’t that fundamentally anti-libertarian? (Hell, this whole scheme is unlibertarian. By taking away universal suffrage, my philosophy strips classical liberalism of one of its core values: the franchise. But by admitting equality and justice are at least incompatible some of the time, I ask when would this be so? Does the vote, the right to influence one’s state, justly belong to everybody because they are over 18 years old and a citizen of the country?)<br />
<br />
States are dangerous fires to play with. Does allowing a combat vet with PTSD the vote while denying it to a wealthy private-sector entrepreneur seem just? Of course not. Hence, I recommend stripping that combat vet of his or her right before opening the franchise to those who haven’t gone through their basic training. However, there's nothing to stop this wealthy entrepreneur from being appointed to the Senate... unless we arbitrarily make that a rule too.<br />
<br />
What's the problem? Any non-voting citizen, even at a late age, after his or her kids move out, can take a leave from work and join the service on non-combat duty. Four years later, they can vote. It's simple.<br />
<br />
It ain’t a perfect system but if the people are using gold, silver or some other private monies, then no harm no foul. This federal government certainly won’t have a central bank and won’t issue currency backed by the goodwill of future taxpayers. Taxes are collected in gold and silver or by credible bank notes. The government does not borrow. The budget balances every quarter.<br />
<br />
This system I’m describing is not a military dictatorship. The prime minister and his or her cabinet are in charge of the military. There’s still the House of Commons we know and love. I haven’t even abolished the Senate in this scenario.<br />
<br />
Everything is the same the way it was on July 1st, 1867. Tried tested and true.<br />
<br />
A beacon of classical liberal values.<br />
<br />
It’s just the electoral functionality has diminished a bit. "Representation by population" isn't as cracked up as it sounds. And given our current excesses of democracy... That the Founders specifically warned us of this very thing... You'd think this would be more obvious.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-422886464447805532018-07-18T23:33:00.001-04:002018-07-18T23:48:49.353-04:00Is Islam an Evil Cult?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Did I say harsh words? You're darn right I did, and I stand behind them," <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/todd-beasley-medicine-hat-united-conservative-party-1.4748603" target="_blank">Todd Beasley said Monday in an interview with CBC News.</a></i><br />
<i>The party rejected Beasley as a candidate on the weekend, citing some of his online comments, including several posted to Facebook in 2017.</i><br />
<i>"Islam is not a religion of peace. It's cruel, revolting, racist, oppressive and has no legitimate basis," said one of Beasley's Facebook posts. "The Mongols would have done mankind a favour if they snuffed this evil cult when they had the chance."</i></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Isn't Islam an evil cult? I always thought most if not all religions were evil cults. If you say it's politically incorrect to insult Islam in such a manner, you're fueling the right. If you try and justify your reasoning, whether identifying with being PC or not, you'll still fuel the right.<br />
<br />
We need a left and right. And we need authoritarians and libertarians. Just, preferably, the former in business and latter in politics. As corruption with authoritarian businesspeople is weeded out in a free market. While corruption in government by libertarians is obvious.<br />
<br />
But anyway, I probably shouldn't call Islam an evil cult just in case I want to want for mayor again someday. But I'm hedging my bets for a more libertarian future, provided we make it. Also, I'll likely be wiser when I'm older. I do feel smarter at 30 than I did at 20... So, by the time 2057 rolls around, no one will give a shit that I once called Islam an evil cult because: a) that will have been well established and is popular opinion, b) no one cares what people say online anymore, especially if it's dated or c) we will be living in an Islamic fascist state and I will have long since left the country or have been killed... possibly both.<br />
<br />
Just kidding about that third option, only right-leaning white trash crotch waffles, a lot of them aging parasitic baby boomers, worry about Islam. As far as I'm concerned if Muslims want their covenant communities with Sharia Law, then have at her! I'm all for private law and order. I suppose there is a Hoppean element in me, however, that would interpret Sharia Law as a variant of socialism and therefore must be physically removed.<br />
<br />
This is just a long way of saying that Islam is an evil cult. Most, if not all, religions are. Christianity gets no exception, so neither does Islam. Both have their histories, their important moral lessons. But they've also got a whole lot of bullshit. Lots of it. Probably more in the Qur'an than the Bible but who's counting? Take out the good narratives and remember that, while ancient humans needed myths and stories to tell something true about reality, today we can just use our advanced knowledge.<br />
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<br />
Christianity didn't build the West and Islam is not destroying it. Capital accumulation built the West. And if once upon a time having most of Europe believe in a particular interpretation of Christianity helped lay the foundations for capital to accumulate, then that's all well and good. But today, if you take the time to read and understand Mises, then you don't need some metaphysical belief in god.<br />
<br />
You just need economics.<br />
<br />
Islam may be an evil cult, but it's socialism that's destroying the West.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-71275463545277982942018-07-14T01:14:00.001-04:002018-07-14T01:20:03.483-04:00Donald Trump & Russia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Mueller indicts 12 Russian government agents for hacking Democratic computers during 2016 presidential election.<br />
<br />
So?<br />
<br />
Here are facts according to the mainstream narrative: Twelve Russian spies have been charged with running a hacking campaign to damage Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Special counsel Robert Mueller is accusing the agents of installing spyware on the computers of Democratic Party staffers to monitor their work during the campaign; stealing embarrassing e-mails and other documents; and making off with voter information on 500,000 Americans from a state election agency.<br />
<br />
Now that sounds bad...<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<br />
But spyware is nothing new and the US government uses it all the time to spy on its enemies both foreign and domestic. They even collect data from their own citizens.<br />
<br />
All forms of computer hacking are done by state agents around the world. Are you telling me US foreign policy doesn't include influencing elections?<br />
<br />
What the Russians did may be unethical, but it is not a "whataboutism" to bring up facts of the American empire.<br />
<br />
Putting things into a larger context is helpful.<br />
<br />
If their government is interfering in other nation-state elections, then it shouldn't come as a surprise when it happens to themselves. It's like a much less extreme version of 9/11. It's retaliation.<br />
<br />
Or in Putin's case, it's the preemptive war doctrine the neocons are fond of using.<br />
<br />
According to Hillary Clinton and establishment Democrats and Republicans, Putin was (and still is) an intolerable enemy.<br />
<br />
So what if Putin was the mastermind behind it all? Can you blame him? The dude is former KGB. Ultra-nationalist and wary of American influence.<br />
<br />
This is Russia we're talking about. An Eastern Europe power. Allies in World War 2.<br />
<br />
You can't invade Russia.<br />
<br />
And what if they do start to take back former Eastern Soviet satellite states?<br />
<br />
Well, then it gets complicated. But must the free world find enforcement with the American military-industrial complex? Couldn't we contract these negotiations and use of force out to a mediator? It doesn't have to be big and grand (like that useless United Nations bureaucracy), just agree on a third-nation to do the adjudicating.<br />
<br />
Nah, nukes are a better bargaining chip. More primal.<br />
<br />
So what's the issue with Putin? His lack of respect for the rule of law?<br />
<br />
Okay, now we're getting somewhere.<br />
<br />
The rule of law is a myth. It's an idea true only because a lot of people believe it to be true. There may be a socio-biological basis for social norms like don't steal and don't murder. But taxation and war have always been the exception to that rule.<br />
<br />
English Common Law underpins the West. Russia hasn't been so lucky. But considering they used to be communist, things aren't so bad.<br />
<br />
This doesn't justify Putin's behaviour, but it does put things in perspective. A global arbitrator resolving conflicts and preventing large groups of people from warring and annexing and hacking each other's elections is the idea of the century.<br />
<br />
Last century.<br />
<br />
This time, we need to understand that that arbitration begins at home. Between parents and children. Between friends and extended family. Neighbourhoods and communities. And domestically, as a nation, using English common law and an independent judiciary.<br />
<br />
Only then will our international relations get resolved.<br />
<br />
The American government may be more ethical than the Russian government, but both have questionable pasts and concerning presents.<br />
<br />
Here's an idea. Think back before Obama, to a time when George W. Bush was president. When people were calling him a war criminal for invading Iraq and leaving over a million Iraqis dead.<br />
<br />
If I told you, in 2004, just after Bush was reelected: "okay, you'll get your full two-terms years of a Democrat president in 2008, but then the next Republican will be a businessman from New York City.<br />
<br />
"That doesn't sound so bad."<br />
<br />
"Yeah, in 2016, the Republican contender is a businessman from NYC, world-renowned, a true American cultural icon. He has no attachments to the Bible Belt, and he supports gay marriage."<br />
<br />
"Oh wow! Who's the Democratic contender?"<br />
<br />
"Hillary Clinton."<br />
<br />
"Of course. Well, tell me Mr. Man from 2016, who is this Republican? Do I know him?"<br />
<br />
"He's Donald Trump."<br />
<br />
"Does he win?"<br />
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<br />
"The electoral college, not the popular vote."<br />
<br />
"So he wins?"<br />
<br />
"Yeah."<br />
<br />
I imagine the reaction would be a subtle confusion, followed by a "well I guess that's not so bad."<br />
<br />
"No, wait," I remind him, "in 2016 there's a thing called social media. And people have smartphones. This pair has made everyone go crazy, including him."<br />
<br />
"What?"<br />
<br />
"Yeah, he's been a disaster mostly, a real phony."<br />
<br />
"Has he done anything well?"<br />
<br />
"One good thing, I guess. He's meeting with third-world dictators and questionable world leaders. It's like a let's-make-a-deal sort of thing. I guess that's what he's good at. Making deals. Suppose it's better than invading the countries. He still does that, of course, but he's talking to North Korea and Russia. The deep state pretty much runs itself. Presidents just have to play cool and be the voice of the nation."<br />
<br />
"But he's gone crazy?"<br />
<br />
"Everyone has. He really is the embodiment of the people."<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-80816216873603964142018-07-08T00:40:00.002-04:002018-07-08T00:41:19.540-04:00The Right Way to Solve First Nations and Cannabis Issues<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s a controversial opinion in 2018 that First Nations should be treated equally like everyone else.<span class="m_2534065021375453009gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="m_2534065021375453009gmail-Apple-converted-space" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I don’t know why.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The history of the human race is one of conquest. Homo sapiens dominated the scene so other archaic hominids didn’t stand a chance. Then, once they were gone, we hunted large fauna. Then, once our natural predators were gone, we turned on each other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The conquest of North America is in recent memory. As opposed to driving out Neanderthals from Europe, which happened around 40,000 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But even the residential schools of the 20th century aren’t the fault of regular people living today. I am not guilty nor responsible for the actions of my ancestors just because I descend from white Europeans.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, this is all very politically incorrect. And seemingly has little to do with cannabis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But the passage of the Cannabis Act almost didn’t make it because First Nations groups felt they weren’t properly consulted. After what the introduction of alcohol has done to their communities, they were (and still are) fearful about what the introduction of a new substance would create.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But this is the same illogic the police are using.<span class="m_2534065021375453009gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Cannabis is not a new drug. I guarantee you there is youth, whether Fist Nations or not, that are smoking cannabis. Legal or not.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But that didn’t stop Liberal Saskatchewan Senator Lillian Dyck from putting an amendment in Bill C-45 to delay legalization up to a year. Just so a special class of Canadians could negotiate a revenue-sharing agreement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Which goes to show you — it was really more about the money. As it always is. People in power often pay lip service to “youth” or “community” when they actually care about excising their own power and becoming rich in the process.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Why we turn our blinders on First Nations is beyond me. They’re human like the rest of us. Perfectly capable of deceit and corruption.<span class="m_2534065021375453009gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And now it should be obvious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Nova Scotia First Nations want an exemption from the provincial government’s retail monopoly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Mi'kmaq community has teamed up Olympian Ross Rebagliati to roll out a "seed to sale" cannabis operation.<span class="m_2534065021375453009gmail-Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Sipekne'katik First Nation wants to grow cannabis on their reserve and sell directly to consumers, while Millbrook First Nation wants retail locations outside the provincial Crown corporation bureaucracy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Nova Scotia government has obviously said no, but First Nations are arguing that their lands are under federal jurisdiction and therefore the provincial government has no say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The speedy passage of the Cannabis Act will probably take the blame. Since the Liberals didn’t consult with First Nations for 365 days straight, the legal and constitutional battles will be the fault of government negligence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, this all could have been avoided if the country actually on ran on liberal principles and legalized cannabis in that fashion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">At the end of the day, the courts are likely to side with the province on this one. Provincial laws apply to reserves. Full stop. Unless a First Nation community could show how cannabis has been an integral part of its culture or tradition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But considering that most First Nations attempted to delay the bill due to concerns about health and safety and youth, this may be an uphill battle for them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Still, if they can work out an exemption from provincial monopolies due to their special status, then perhaps there’s hope for the rest of us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After all, despite how the former Governor General had to apologize for this, the fact remains: First Nations are immigrants too.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sorry, not sorry. Their creation stories are as dumb as other religious creation stories. Human migration to the Americas is estimated to have begun around 16,500 years ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps we can all become tax exempt and start operating outside the government’s crony-capitalism cannabis industry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After all, I’m a 7th generation Canadian. How much more native can I get?</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-56949650407086171692018-07-05T23:20:00.001-04:002018-07-06T00:41:56.599-04:00No More Cap & Trade - Now What?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ5MaR8U1ExpudYogJtDAiDkU9SqofAwjj-cHeqGYWPdcXap2Hkb4EAVz46evaYzGBieMI5qznVCGR3jN6OQln0O98vG5HG7Hj64LyxZWQqEnk5nF7S0qh-hg11O47kbAi8CiyKWgN3udd/s1600/hamiltonlanding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="784" data-original-width="1200" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ5MaR8U1ExpudYogJtDAiDkU9SqofAwjj-cHeqGYWPdcXap2Hkb4EAVz46evaYzGBieMI5qznVCGR3jN6OQln0O98vG5HG7Hj64LyxZWQqEnk5nF7S0qh-hg11O47kbAi8CiyKWgN3udd/s400/hamiltonlanding.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Congratulations Doug Ford. As premier of Ontario, you've been able to eliminate cap and trade.<br />
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Imagine if Wynne had implemented carbon taxes (surprised she hadn't) do you think Ford would hang onto it? Cap and trade is one thing, but a carbon tax? Why would the PCs give up on a tax? Best to cater to their base, calm them down, it's okay Progressive Conservatives of Ontario, a carbon tax is not a hill to die on.<br />
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But why not? Death and taxes are the norms. Something's gotta give. What about this social contract? I don't think it's sufficient. I've never seen this document. A parade of government documents I've been compelled to sign numerous times under the watchful eyes of the state have all been predicated on this mysterious birth document... okay, enough of this.</div>
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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. The Queen. Appointed by God herself, or himself, or whatever. There probably is no god.</div>
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But that doesn't mean we must lose our imagination. Say the Earth is the centre of the universe. Consciousness the manifestation of the cosmos. We experience things through time so everything looks the way it does, but we're still stardust. We look and feel like evolved apes on a spinning planet, but what about all the dark matter and energy?</div>
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That's us, butt-tard. We're hiding in plain sight. No wonder we can't see us, it'd be like turning around to see the back of our own head.</div>
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We are the bang big and we are the universe as it exists now, through the lens of evolved primates. It's all about perspective.</div>
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But back on point -- Doug Ford. Cap and trade. Climate change. Yes, if conservatives don't find a hill to die on soon, they will forever be on the verge of becoming irrelevant. The left has principles, what does the right have?</div>
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Here we get back to the Queen and our imagination. We've also got nukes, computers, the internet, there's a weird volcano thing in Yellowstone, and all that carbon we've released into the atmosphere. Makes buying land in the Northwest Territoires a good investment.</div>
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But human ingenuity will figure things out, and that's where the right comes in to keep our taxes low and remind everyone that business is good. Small, medium, big or super large, all business operates peacefully when the conditions for law and private property are met.</div>
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That's the hill to die on. The Libertarians can keep them in check by saying "Taxation is theft," but for a genuine Conservative today, the best hill to die on...is... well. Sorry fellas, it's still radical.</div>
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Money.</div>
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Money is a commodity, not a policy tool of government. Separation of money and state are good starting points for Western civilization. If we can figure that shit out, we might get somewhere better.</div>
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Climate change? It's real despite the politicization of the topic. In fact, anthropogenic global warming was one of the first victims of this over-politicization of every topic imaginable under the sun. This is what happens in communist and overly socialist countries. Everything becomes political. Fixing a toaster becomes a matter for the state.</div>
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The problem in the West is all these issues have become political and nation-wide instead of isolated to family, friends, and communities where applicable. (I'm not just talking small towns, but a larger network of neighbors and coworkers in a city.)</div>
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So now we're getting somewhere on cap and trade and carbon pricing. But before going further, a brief pause to explain what cap and trade is.</div>
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Since industry inevitably releases carbon and other pollutants, the government has taken upon itself to create a sort of "market" of credits and debts, using carbon output as the general measurement of value or, er, uh.. disvalue?</div>
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The idea is a business will be able to generally wind down its carbon emissions, thereby easing the financial cost, by using these carbon tokens produced by other larger emitters. The larger emitters can more easily absorb this cost and so will produce these carbon credit tokens the other smaller emitters can buy. But even the larger emitters are expected to wind down their carbon-producing actions.</div>
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Remember when state and church were separate but rivaled for supremacy? I'm talking about the Middle Ages. From 1100 AD and on or so. If there's any justification for the assertion that the West predicates itself on Judeo-Christian beliefs and traditions, it's our belief and understanding in a metaphysical thing called the Rule of Law.</div>
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And thus we return to the Queen. And God. And atheism and imagination. What is the alternative to cap and trade? And why such these random tangents about all these different topics?</div>
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It's connected maannnn!!! And so, we must return to our imagination if we're going to make sense of this all.</div>
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Here are a couple real-life facts: anthropogenic global warming is real. Taxes and government bureaucracy don't generate prosperity.</div>
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Here is a suggestion: the conservatives find a hill to die on, I suggest the separation of money and state.</div>
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I'm not saying don't collect taxes. But having government bills floating around, issued by the central bank, where deliberating policy is in secret, this has got to be one of the dumbest ideas imaginable. Granted, it's not straight-up communism, but eventually, the game gets there.</div>
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The logic of human action Mises figured out is only "debunked" by philosophy and free will and human action and agency... consciousness itself. An area the realist scientific/materialist philosophy cannot account for.</div>
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So give up on this game of monopoly and remember that gold and silver are the best moneys we've figured out so far. There are a lot of smarter people out there who can figure out what exactly governments "should do" to make this transition easy and painless.</div>
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But we might not have time. The laws of nature keep working whether we want them to or not. Left-leaning skeptic sites say the national debt is no problem since we've always had one. But this ignores every example in history. There are no examples of it ever working long-term.</div>
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The rise and fall of civilizations happen for a bunch of reasons but economy is one. An economy is the use of scarce resources. This matters a whole lot more now than it did in Roman times. We're using resources in a much more delicate way. And our paper money system simply can't work in the long-run. It corrupts too easily. When you can print money, the temptation is always there.</div>
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And by printing money you add water to milk.</div>
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You dilute the economy by undermining purchasing power. In a true capitalist society, our earnings are supposed to increase over time, not fall. The amount of gold and silver more or less stay the same, but their purchasing power goes further. My gram of gold might get me a haircut, a dinner for two, a video game, and a book or two depending on where I shop. Maybe it will buy more. We'll never know. At least not right now.</div>
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Excuse the length of this post, but I feel it's necessary to fully flesh out what exactly Doug Ford's PCs should be doing without cap and trade.</div>
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English common law already accounts for pollution since it existed in primitive forms during the Middle and Modern Ages. Industrialization disregarded traditional rules in the name of progress. No one had any idea of what they were doing. Things were just getting better. The long-term consequences have only recently begun to sink in. That's about 200 years. Not bad for a bunch of apes. I'm confident we can build carbon capture machines and eventually terraform the planet as we see fit. Then we can do the same to Mars and maybe build a base on the Moon. And what about Venus? It sure looks like hell, but couldn't we eventually terraform that planet too? And what about space hotels?!</div>
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The solution to climate change isn't taxes and imposing green technologies in a top-down "private-public partnership" fascist manner. It isn't going to come from government fiat. It can't. It's impossible and silly to think the government can plan its way out of this. They created it by undermining our centuries-old common law.</div>
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But of course, this brings us back to the Queen. Our imagination. We know she's not appointed by God. There probably is no god. Our English common law evolved out of a fear of heaven and hell. Of sin and redemption. Judgment.</div>
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We can use those narratives and dispense with the rest. We can even borrow from neuroscience and assume free will is an illusion. That, while a sociopathic killer needs locking up somehow, the idea is his consciousness, that which is introspection, only justifies his behaviour in his own mind. The rest of us do this with non-murdery things. We've evolved stardust that acts in the world. Our analog "I", our introspection and idea of self, is an illusion.</div>
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Our free will is an illusion. Our illusion of free will is an illusion too.</div>
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We act and make up reasons for it later. So we must use our imagination a bit and think of a way the Queen is still relevant.</div>
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Am I a freeman on the land? I feel like one. I don't accept the idea of the Monarch nor do I particularly like democracy. I don't think much of these government birth certificates and the social contract that follows, but I don't fuck with the taxman. I play ball so long as I'm protected in the same way one is "protected" by the mob.</div>
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"But isn't that a terrible, negative view of society?"</div>
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No, it's an honest liberal assessment of the state. I'm skeptical of it. I know we can't live without it. I'm a bit romantic in the right-leaning sense (okay, maybe a lot). I really like Murray Rothbard, but I know Nozick got him with the fact that everything leads back to a state.</div>
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State and market. Like the yin and yang.</div>
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Rothbard's economics, based on Mises, is still relevant. Government intervention in the market ain't gonna work. TANSTAAFL. And Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism system is a technical masterpiece. But would it work?</div>
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If we could all truly understand anarcho-capitalism and transition our society to it peacefully, we wouldn't need to. We could just do the nightwatchman state of classical liberalism. So there you have it conservatives.</div>
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You've eliminated cap and trade. Now what? I've figured it out for you. It's been a long rant, but I feel we covered some solid ground here. Just remember the main points.</div>
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<ul>
<li>God Save the Queen.</li>
<li>Money and state separate.</li>
<li>Don't oursource social problems to politicians.</li>
<li>Taxation isn't theft like the libertarians say, but taxes should be really, really, really low. And we shouldn't have property taxes. Or income taxes. Or capital gains taxes. Or inheritance taxes. I mean, really, couldn't a conservative-leaning classical liberal state get by on a 1% sales tax alone?</li>
<li>Business is good. Leave them alone.</li>
<li>Global warming is real, but English Common Law and entrepreneurs free from bureaucratic shackles will figure it out. </li>
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Governments are like controlled forest fires. They keep the whole forest from burning down. I don't know who the hell we should put in charge of that but I believe it begins with education.</div>
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Which we'll have to get to next time.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-35553648227885768252018-07-03T18:53:00.001-04:002018-07-03T18:53:30.545-04:00An Eye for an Eye...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHO7XAsSlAjxUwZHzPrACqDQTchXBKHYHFkDhvBYr_mbg7kK52HJBfW0KITe6KYpAvPeyWr4we3x5SGJgnR5tBCT-nwasDzk6zs28u0GmfuunZj-2MbmhvE7bgc4WN6CYTMmiZ2omKFwoU/s1600/105306218-1530529266385gettyimages-979831348.530x298.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="298" data-original-width="530" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHO7XAsSlAjxUwZHzPrACqDQTchXBKHYHFkDhvBYr_mbg7kK52HJBfW0KITe6KYpAvPeyWr4we3x5SGJgnR5tBCT-nwasDzk6zs28u0GmfuunZj-2MbmhvE7bgc4WN6CYTMmiZ2omKFwoU/s400/105306218-1530529266385gettyimages-979831348.530x298.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
An eye for an eye makes the world blind, but when it comes to retaliatory tariffs, things are different.<br />
<br />
Not actually, but that's the modus operandi of the Canadian government.<br />
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Donald Trump's presidency has officially put tariffs on Canadian products and so how did "we" respond?<br />
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By taking the moral high ground? By saying, listen President Doofus, we're not playing your game. Slap all the tariffs you want on us, you're really just hurting your own economy and raising prices for consumers. We will not play ball. We will turn the other cheek.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
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Would this not have been the best road to take? Canadians are going to be hurt by the tariffs anyway. What good does it do start imposing our own retaliatory tariffs on American products?<br />
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Now I gotta pay more for Jack Daniels whiskey. Thanks a lot, Trudumb. In addition, the Trudeau government is bailing out a bunch of Canadian industries hurt by the tariffs by giving them taxpayer money.<br />
<br />
For someone who is always going on about "the children" and "young people," Trudeau seems to have no problem mortgaging their futures with his reckless spending.<br />
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Was it not Gandhi who said an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?<br />
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Did Jesus not say, "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."<br />
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Yeah, yeah, I know. There's no proof Gandhi actually said that the Jesus of the New Testament is a character in a piece of literature giving a moral lesson.<br />
<br />
But that's the point, isn't it? A moral lesson to guide us through the chaos of life? Jesus's teachings are one of the factors underpinning Western civilization. (I won't get into the whole "Judeo-Christian tradition is responsible for the West," argument today. There's some good and a lot of bad in that viewpoint.)<br />
<br />
The point is -- instead of imposing our own retaliatory tariffs, the Canadian government should have said NO.<br />
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Free trade is preferable to tariffs. America is our largest ally. Trudeau could have come out and said, "Listen, this is going to hurt, but we're not retaliating. No one likes that man and his silly backward policies anyway, so hopefully, all this will be a thing of the past come 2020 or possibly sooner."<br />
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But nope. We're playing right into Trump's hand by not only imposing tariffs on American products but specifically targetting Trump-friendly Republican states.<br />
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That is, Canada's retaliatory tariffs are purely political.<br />
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Goddamnit, this is how wars start.<br />
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The best thing we could have done is nothing at all. Tell Trump to go fuck himself, continue to freely trade with Americans and hope no one like him ever comes to power again... although it's not like the alternatives were all that great either.<br />
<br />
On a similar note, I love how Stephen Harper went to the US without notifying the PMO. Typical sneaky Harper. I miss that man. I didn't always agree with his policies, but I loved his style.<br />
<br />
Harper had style. And in the poetic words of Charles Bukowski, "Style is the answer to everything."<br />
<br />
Harper had style.<br />
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Trudeau is a pussy.<br />
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Just say no to tariffs. When someone slaps you on the cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.<br />
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Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-17023903923731201682018-06-21T22:34:00.001-04:002018-06-21T22:34:25.207-04:00The Next Financial Crisis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBuYNCcMnXTD1w5-4qR37K4OnDA6OEgeW8ZazvLxSsuGzomTXaR6hQlRzHa2xhWAPcQA_FHvdAlDGB25qDL3AXoNOnP9EJQhvcjlm1UAiyu-wYWdaJPVba6yszmKSoMcGWg59jNBMkW3sR/s1600/poverty_news.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="719" data-original-width="1280" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBuYNCcMnXTD1w5-4qR37K4OnDA6OEgeW8ZazvLxSsuGzomTXaR6hQlRzHa2xhWAPcQA_FHvdAlDGB25qDL3AXoNOnP9EJQhvcjlm1UAiyu-wYWdaJPVba6yszmKSoMcGWg59jNBMkW3sR/s400/poverty_news.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Some days I wish Hillary Clinton won just so when the economy collapses, people can get mad at her.<br />
<br />
But Trump is too hilarious (and Trump Derangement Syndrome so interesting) that I'm fine people will blame the bad economy on his tariffs and tax cuts.<br />
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After all, with Clinton at the helm, I'm sure those evil Ruskies would have been to blame for the downturn economy.<br />
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But who's really at fault? Why the Fed of course!<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
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Can you believe Janet Yellen survived as Fed Chairmen? Ever since Greenspan left, the Fed has been playing musical chairs with its leadership.<br />
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I thought Bernanke would take the fall. Then, Yellen was in charge and I thought for sure she'd be the one sitting in the Chair when shit hit the fan.<br />
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Now we have Jerome Powell. Appointed by Trump, this will surely be the man who is at the helm when recession comes.<br />
<br />
But when has the Federal Reserve ever taken the blame? Network news will certainly blame Trump.<br />
<br />
But we all should be looking at Powell. And here's why:<br />
<br />
The Federal Reserve centrally plans monetary policy like the ole' Soviet Union used to plan their entire economy.<br />
<br />
For the Fed, interest rates are a policy tool. For rational thinkers, interest rates are the prices for money.<br />
<br />
Interest rates are supposed to help coordinate production and consumption over time. When the Fed engages in interest rate price controls, they discourage savings and encourage consumption through loans and debt.<br />
<br />
While the Federal Reserve is American, Canada has its own central bank that essentially mirrors the Fed. Through central banking, Canadians and Americans alike are living well beyond their means. We have virtually no savings.<br />
<br />
With so many indebted North Americans, the rises in the Feds Funds Rate (FFR) could be the tipping point for consumers.<br />
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There is historical precedent for this. Rising FFRs reveal the unsustainable trajectory businesses are on.<br />
<br />
The Fed has managed to slowly raise rates to 2%, which is higher than Canada's 1.25%. But it's still nowhere close to high rates of the 1980s, like 20% in June 1981.<br />
<br />
Of course, those were tough times. But the bad debts and financing of the 1970s needed to be liquidated. This should have happened in the 2000s after the dot-com crash, but Alan Greenspan decided to lower interest rates further.<br />
<br />
For this, the same media networks that sold you on the Iraq War and are convinced Donald Trump is a Russian agent, titled Greenspan "The Maestro."<br />
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All Greenspan did was inflate a housing bubble. And then when that crashed, Bernanke inflated a bond bubble. That is much worse than real estate. The next crash will be an accumulation of almost 20 years of bad economics. Much worse than 1980.<br />
<br />
But the Fed doesn't need to raise rates to 20% to trigger a recession. The 3% they're promising in 2019 should do the trick. Or if not that, 3.5%... we're dangerously close.<br />
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And did I say 20 years of bad economics? Let's make that 40. For each sequential credit crisis hasn't entirely eliminated malinvestments. The 80s only bought us some time. The fundamentals are truly fucked.<br />
<br />
Interest rates represent time-preference values across millions of people. To suppress this and alter it is to distort the economic actions of savers and borrowers. Businesses are encouraged to borrow to expand production.<br />
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But, under these conditions, the extra demand for capital goods evolves, and thus commodity and production prices begin to rise, reflecting new credit expansion. Rising prices are usually an indication for central banks to lay off the interest rate manipulation.<br />
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Unfortunately for us, modern central bank employees were likely graduating school in the 1990s and 2000s. They never lived through the 80s. To them, interest rates are a policy tool. They likely have no fundamental understanding of the economy.<br />
<br />
To make matters worse, statistics measuring the "general price level" fail to measure anything. For one, there is no scientific basis for a "general price level" and second, the way governments measure prices now leaves a lot to be desired. Energy and food are excluded from the "core" consumer price index. Measuring the "general price level" is done to mask monetary inflation.<br />
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And yet, these are the statistics the Fed will use to determine policy.<br />
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Chairman Powell has bought the hype from Trump that the economy is doing great. Therefore, it's time to raise rates. As William McChesney Martin Jr., the ninth and longest-serving Chairman of the Fed, once said, the job of the Fed is "to take away the punch bowl just as the party gets going."<br />
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But will interest rates ever increase significantly again? Like they did the 80s?<br />
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We better hope so. If putting the FFR up to 3% triggers a crisis and subsequent recession, and then the Fed drops the rate back down to 1% or even 0%, then we're truly fucked.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgigewvewNSsGIJQl9gQbUhYNHs_xaxSQPqJztzPtjw5HP4yuxcKuySf-BCGb1z7da8V-2eY29FJioRuoVTh6NHj2737zq7VTM3mMwmHN23Q6vKoXRbx5Bdzh1JvDHFFoZv2mcPzi-hqAU5/s1600/Base+Money+1918-.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="630" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgigewvewNSsGIJQl9gQbUhYNHs_xaxSQPqJztzPtjw5HP4yuxcKuySf-BCGb1z7da8V-2eY29FJioRuoVTh6NHj2737zq7VTM3mMwmHN23Q6vKoXRbx5Bdzh1JvDHFFoZv2mcPzi-hqAU5/s1600/Base+Money+1918-.png" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An explosion in the US monetary base is unsustainable. Adding to this will not help. The answer is clear: default or hyperinflation.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br />
We already have evidence that shit is slowly but surely hitting the fan. Bond yields are rising. Equity markets are fucked.<br />
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And Canada is going along for the ride.<br />
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Having the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency means we're all in this together. We're all on the same credit and production cycles. The onset of the next financial crisis in the U.S. could trigger a crisis in Europe, which, of course, is going to come to Canada.<br />
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But it'll all be Trump's fault, right?<br />
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Forget the actual people who saw this thing coming and can tell you exactly how it happened. No, let's listen to the central bankers, like Janet Yellen who said they likely won't be another financial crisis in her lifetime.<br />
<br />
Much like how, in the 1920s, economists and pundits believed the newly created Federal Reserve had eliminated business cycles from the face of the planet.<br />
<br />
Trump is partly to blame. We all are. But especially that idiot. He campaigned on the fact the Fed had created a bubble, that it suppressed interest rates for political reasons.<br />
<br />
Candidate Donald Trump was critical of the Federal Reserve. He supported an audit of its books and operations.<br />
<br />
He criticized the 20 trillion dollar national debt. He correctly pointed out that Hillary Clinton’s team was stacked with Goldman Sachs bankers.<br />
<br />
But like everyone else running for office, once he was on power, his tune changed.<br />
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President Donald Trump hasn’t said a single negative thing about the Federal Reserve. He's actually been praising them. He said he likes and respects Janet Yellen. When the Dow Jones stock market index hit 20,000, he took credit for it.<br />
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Trump appointed several Goldman Sachs bankers to his cabinet including Gary Cohn, former COO of Goldman Sachs, as his economic chief economic adviser and Steven Mnuchin, former CIO of Goldman Sachs, as his Treasury Secretary.<br />
<br />
But while Trump is to blame for not living up to his populism, the next recession really is the central bank's fault from a technical standpoint.<br />
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With any hope, if governments and banks around the world respond to the next crisis like they did in 2007/08, by ramping up the printing presses and bailing out the people who caused the crisis -- then the average Joe may start to question this racket.<br />
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The public may actually start to question the ability of the taxpayer to live up to the "full faith and credit" we see printed on the money.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-60576763827683242982018-06-17T11:02:00.000-04:002018-06-17T11:38:53.478-04:00How to Save Canada's Democracy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rShMPyhFFCf-Q5Mi6Q8z4HSWWcz50ra2HE2vSc9mfOpPIilLXS4pJuRPZcjRlpkNCabpVnReajC8n7XU76OKjS7qB6T0kv8zIZfUvNcJR0RUhcBe_juwcaGUbr79Rt0QYQZnS-4JVpZA/s1600/f96.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="700" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9rShMPyhFFCf-Q5Mi6Q8z4HSWWcz50ra2HE2vSc9mfOpPIilLXS4pJuRPZcjRlpkNCabpVnReajC8n7XU76OKjS7qB6T0kv8zIZfUvNcJR0RUhcBe_juwcaGUbr79Rt0QYQZnS-4JVpZA/s400/f96.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
Canada's golden age was between 1840 to about the 1900s, before the start of World War 1.<br />
<br />
Now, you may say, Caleb, Canada wasn't a country in 1840.<br />
<br />
But I disagree. When Upper and Lower Canada were united and given responsible government, I contend that this is the actual beginning of Canada. For, the move from colony to nation-state didn't occur all in 1867.<br />
<br />
Hell, the country didn't get its constitution from England until 1982.<br />
<br />
On February 10th 1841, Canada was unified. From the shores of Lake Superior to the ports of Montreal and Quebec City.<br />
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And then, we know the rest of the story. Other British North American settlements merged with the Canadians and, eventually, we all became Canadian.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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So what happened in this golden age? Unimagined prosperity, mostly caused by the Americans and English, but with the effects of industrialization first coming to Canada's few wealthiest, then to everyone.<br />
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The US War between the States notwithstanding, this golden age was marked by a rise in living standards. Goods and services fell in prices, wages increased in purchasing power.<br />
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Of course, governments interfered with gold and the monetary system, but banks were still independent enough that consumers could withdraw their funds and put a run on the banks. This, while unstable, is one of our greatest remedies against fractional reserve banking.<br />
<br />
So what happened? How did we go from a functioning capitalist economy with strong civil institutions and a government that more or less stayed out of the daily affairs of individuals and commerce to this bankster-run stock-market casino of debt, war, and welfare?<br />
<br />
Well, it's complicated.<br />
<br />
It helps to read Nietzsche. Or at least read about Nietzsche, but I do highly recommend <i>Beyond Good and Evil.</i><br />
<i><br /></i> In the late 19th century, especially as technology and capitalism made life more luxurious for a larger amount of people, the death of God was easy to come by. As science progressed our understanding of the world, the primitive stories of the Bible were looking more like myths than anything literally true.<br />
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These myths or narratives can provide value and give life meaning. But after nearly 1900 years of Christianity, the time had come for new ideas.<br />
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Without God, humanity was free to direct their own affairs. To combat against nihilism, Nietzsche believed individuals would have to create their own Übermensch, or superman. Or that, in fact, they already were.<br />
<br />
I think... Nietzsche isn't so simple to read.<br />
<br />
But it's clear democracy and socialism is an embodiment of this idea. That, without God as the head of state, we can, as free men and women, choose the most capable leader among us by voting in a free and fair democratic election.<br />
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Through Canada's democratic institutions, we become masters of our own fate.<br />
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But since Parliament can’t keep up with the proliferation of legislation they’ve created, subordinate bodies have been established to carry out the details of every statute.<br />
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Unlike MPs, we don’t elect these people. And unlike the private sector, we can’t stop paying their salaries by patronizing competitors.<br />
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Performing good or bad work isn’t a criterion imposed by the end user. A hierarchy of commands rule the day, and sufficient political capital or budgetary crises are usually needed before anyone even risks losing their jobs.<br />
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Because technology and capital have increased and become more complex, because private enterprise must respect “public health and safety,” it follows that the legislative response must be complex and nested in technical language, covering a wide range of activities.<br />
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That’s why government grows beyond "classical" liberalism.<br />
<br />
But does this argument follow?<br />
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Must government grow larger and become more of a tax burden because people want to buy, sell, invest, and consume?<br />
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Proponents of the state will say, "because there is no area of human life and affairs not covered by law, we need laws in order to maintain our free and civil society. So when a problem arises, politicians and/or the public demand legislation in order to solve it."<br />
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Yet, as Upton Sinclair famously said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”<br />
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Ergo, the more problems governments can contrive, whether real or imagined, the better off they are. It doesn’t need to be nefarious, it’s just human nature. That’s why the real liberals are government skeptics, not its cheerleaders.<br />
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The current state of Canada demands that we ask ourselves whether legislation and the resulting branch of administrative law are really the best means for resolving our complex social problems.<br />
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Since World War II, and definitely after the 1960s, a proliferation of legislation at federal and provincial levels have delegated authority to inferior tribunals that set policy, enforce and render decisions.<br />
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Budgets sufficient for permanent staff are provided, as well as for their pensions, in addition to funds for hiring outside consultants and experts.<br />
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At a minimum, each public sector employee is making at least $15,000 a year. Many are making a lot more. Public sector employees only "work" 6 hours a day but get paid for 8. Ottawa is the only city in Canada where rush hour is at 3pm.<br />
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In the private sector, an employee is more likely to work 8 and a half hours a day and only get paid for 7 and a half or 8 hours.<br />
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Public sector employees pay consultants and contractors hundreds of thousands of dollars to do "work" while they get paid to check the "work."<br />
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The reason I keep putting "work" in quotations is that government work is different from work in private sector.<br />
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Government is a bastardization of the real thing.<br />
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When entrepreneurs in the private sector buy and sell, when they use prices and factor in capital goods for accounting and balancing the books —they perceive scarcity and provide consumers with the most efficient uses of resources.<br />
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This is not what government bureaus are doing when they mimic the real thing.<br />
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Businesses must find a way to persuade individuals to give them money. Governments simply tax.<br />
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Bureaucrats pricing goods, purchasing capital equipment, factoring components into the structure of production — it means nothing. It's a confirmation bias.<br />
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Entire countries have attempted to run their economies on the belief that capitalism is merely arithmetic the government can replicate. This mistake cost hundreds of millions of lives over the 20th century.<br />
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Unfortunately for us, the lessons have not yet been learned.<br />
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It’s little wonder that taxes and government borrowing have trended upward with no end in sight.<br />
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Nietzsche was wrong. We can't create our own values. In fact, perhaps Mises was even wrong in a philosophical sense. We might not even have free will.<br />
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Nevertheless, we should probably find some transcendental values beyond participation in Canada's democracy.<br />
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Democracy is a tool, not a religion or way of life.<br />
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State intervention, with its ethical and financial costs, have crowded out the spontaneity of regulatory rules and customs that once flourished in private life and business. The poor and downtrodden were once the responsibility of our civil institutions like the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs, the Kinsmen Club, or the Lions Club<br />
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We've now outsourced that problem to politicians. Our taxes are high, but our social programs are inefficient despite whatever level of funding they receive. Our streets are full of homeless and drug-addicted.<br />
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The State mediates to an increasing extent in regulating private conduct and the ramifications are detrimental to liberty and prosperity.<br />
<br />
Despite cries of “deregulation” by some of the same people who believe defending Western culture and traditions is “racist” and an example of “white privilege,” the fact that we remain a society heavily taxed and regulated by various levels of government run counter to ideas of freedom Canadians lived with 150 years ago.<br />
<br />
The 19th century was an age of political deliberation when politicians and the public had confidence in the power of words.<br />
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Today, the strong monarchical element in our system has been displaced by a populist PMO. And in the post-modernist tradition, words and definitions no longer describe real things, they have become arbitrary proposals for the use of a term.<br />
<br />
To return to a golden age, one must accept the universal truth that “every step that leads away from private ownership of the means of production and the use of money is a step away from rational economic activity.”<br />
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To save Canada's democracy, we have to rely less on it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-62388734586152675082018-06-13T22:11:00.000-04:002018-06-14T08:46:45.671-04:00Canadian Dairy & Trump's Tariffs <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcr1HzipicZu8FozmvAw8PIPqx2PVtTw_NNDEeiawCEr1yepjemQk926py5lw1gTwK28n2tdDn2BaIdWtPGPluelACgJutBSIA8zgKr-ajWWLC1cwA1wkLysmTLTYBdkJqoXmieunIjtKU/s1600/105263939-GettyImages-969833310.530x298.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="298" data-original-width="530" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcr1HzipicZu8FozmvAw8PIPqx2PVtTw_NNDEeiawCEr1yepjemQk926py5lw1gTwK28n2tdDn2BaIdWtPGPluelACgJutBSIA8zgKr-ajWWLC1cwA1wkLysmTLTYBdkJqoXmieunIjtKU/s400/105263939-GettyImages-969833310.530x298.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
NAFTA isn't free trade.<br />
<br />
Amazon is free trade. If I sell something to an American through a platform like Amazon and there are no extra fees or taxes from the government because I am a Canadian trading with an American, then we have free trade.<br />
<br />
The regulatory legalism of NAFTA is a far cry from a natural progression of liberal values. Somewhere in the 19th or 20th century, liberal ideas unglued and merged with untested theories of social democracy and socialism.<br />
<br />
Ergo, the state of the world in 2018.<br />
<br />
So let's break down what Trump's tariffs mean in this world where central banks and governments "float" fiat currencies against one another.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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Forget Adam Smith and <i>The Wealth of Nations.</i> Adam Smith popularized the labour theory of value. As far as I'm concerned, the man was a goddamn communist.<br />
<br />
Let's instead focus on Ricardo's Law of Association and Mises' deductive study of human action. While not "scientific" in the materialist sense of the word, up until the 20th century, this method of knowledge was at least respected for what it was: sound logic from sound axioms.<br />
<br />
Free trade works. It is a specialization of labour. The head of every household never wants to pay more than he needs to. He has a family to raise.<br />
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The liquor store isn't brewing its own beer, they're buying from the brewery. The brewery isn't building its own delivery trucks, they're buying from established car dealers. The car dealer doesn't build the cars either, he is the middleman between the manufacturer and the consumer.<br />
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The insurance underwriter cares for none of this. She buys from the liquor store carrying her favourite beer. Her purchase helps employ individuals and maintain the supply chain.<br />
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When categorized as an entire "industry," individuals in the supply chain may argue for their own self-interests. Normally, this isn't an issue, since free trade promotes harmonious competition. Like in sports.<br />
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Politics captures the violent element of humanity. When self-interests are employed through the legislature, interests come at the expense of others.<br />
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It is precisely the same problem <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hazlitt" target="_blank">Henry Hazlitt </a>was dealing with during his lifetime. And here we are still making the same mistakes, Trump notwithstanding.<br />
<br />
The issue isn't tariffs per se. Considering only the immediate effects on special groups while neglecting to consider the long-term effects on the everyone is the problem.<br />
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It's always this problem.<br />
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I never liked American politics with or without Donald Trump, but I must say, from a pure entertainment standpoint, he is by far the best president that country has ever had. When I hear his voice on the radio, it's pure gold.<br />
<br />
So, let's take this from the Canadian perspective first.<br />
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With Trump slinging insults and mocking political sensibility, Canada's dairy lobby has taken issue.<br />
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They're saying Trump is wrong. Supply management is not the same as a tariff. Supply management protects Canadians and dairy workers. Maxime Bernier challenged this view and was subsequently robbed the leadership of the federal Conservative Party for it. Later, he was kicked out of the Conservative shadow caucus for again challenging this idea.<br />
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Supply management is not a tariff per se since the Canadian government is not charging American dairy producers fees for imports. The Canadian government doesn't allow American dairy producers to import at all.<br />
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The Canadian dairy lobby believes it will be a national disaster if the Canadian government ends supply management, effectively allowing American dairy producers to compete in the Canadian marketplace.<br />
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Just like how the telecommunication lobby believes it will be a "national disaster" if the Canadian government ends their cartel, allowing American internet and phone providers to compete in the Canadian market.<br />
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Canadian milk is, on average, $4.50 per gallon, unless you're in Atlantic Canada, where it's more like $5.70 per gallon. (I know, we go by litres, but, for milk, gallons are easier.)<br />
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Americans can probably sell Canadians milk at $3.20 per gallon.<br />
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That's right. Are your panties in a bunch because of something Trump said/did? Are you watching too much network news? This "issue" comes down to about $1.30 worth of savings in milk.<br />
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Personally, I don't even drink the stuff. I prefer we talk about the Bank of Canada or something, but I guess I can get to that in another post. The Fed is hiking rates.<br />
<br />
Anyway, Canada's dairy cartel doesn't consist of a roundtable of evil conspirators. They're normal people like you and me thinking of the thousands of people they employ, and the consumers whose spending, in turn, creates their employment.<br />
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Throw them out of work and you create unemployment. The issue is simple. Supply management wins.<br />
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Also, American milk is gross. Hormones and stuff. GMO. Puss. "I'm not going to argue with you!"<br />
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Never mind that you can still freely choose, as a consumer, to drink the same milk you always have.<br />
<br />
And that not all American milk is mass produced. I'm sure there are local Wisconsin and Minnesota dairy farmers willing to sell organic, even raw, milk to the people of Manitoba and Northern Ontario.<br />
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Why is some invisible line guarded by real people standing in the way?<br />
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Because Canada's dairy lobby looks after their own interests at the expense of everyone else. There is simply no other way to use the government apparatus.<br />
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And what of Canadians interested in becoming dairy producers themselves? Supply management is a barrier to entry if there ever was one.<br />
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Supply management is not a tariff. It is worse.<br />
<br />
Supply management doesn't help Canadians in the same way that Trump's tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum producers ultimately harms Americans.<br />
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If all goes as planned, Trump will help bring American steel jobs back.<br />
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The cost of Canadian steel to the American buyer may be so high that Americans find it profitable to enter the steel business in whatever fashion (use your imagination here, it's not just "steelworkers" but entrepreneurs starting new factories, existing corporations branching off into new developments and capital investments, insurance companies finding new clients with these new steel producers, janitorial services for the expanding factories, construction companies to build the new infrastructure, and other positive externalities in the community such as steelworkers shopping at local vendors).<br />
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It all looks so real. But American consumers would be subsidizing this industry. Every piece of steel and aluminum produced in the US would be at the expense of the purchasing power of consumers.<br />
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Trump would bring jobs back. Americans would be employed in the steel and aluminum industries who had not previously been employed in these industries.<br />
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But there would no net addition to the country's overall wealth.<br />
<br />
This is a crucial distinction.<br />
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Americans would be paying more to artificially prop up the steel and aluminum industries. Insomuch that the steel and aluminum industry would prosper, hundreds of thousands of other industries may shrink. In order for Americans to be employed in the steel industry, fewer Americans would be employed elsewhere.<br />
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It's hard to see these consequences. Trump's tariffs may bring back American jobs and this would be seen, it would be visible.<br />
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Perhaps then, just as a Trump presidency is making us rethink our nuclear weapon policy, perhaps Trump's tariffs will remind people of the "unseen" in economics.<br />
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Trump's results would be palpable. But the reduction in other industries, the loss of jobs somewhere else, would not be so easily noticed. Even statisticians are at a loss to know precisely what the incidence of the loss of other jobs would be. Call it the uncertainty principle of human action.<br />
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The loss is spread over too many people and obscured further by inflation. But, the loss exists. The wealth created from Trump's tariffs would be an optical illusion.<br />
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There may be more Americans in the steel industry, but there is no real increase in wages in general as a result of the tariffs. Just as there is no net increase in the number of jobs, no net increase in the demand for steel or aluminum, and no increase in the labour productivity in these industries.<br />
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Labour productivity is in fact reduced since they won't have to compete with us Canadians anymore.<br />
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American land and capital are redirected from what's more market efficient to what's more politically efficient.<br />
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All right, this is already going long. And there's plenty more I want to get to. Simply, tariffs work for the specific producers but make everyone else poorer. Including those specific producers, in the long-run.<br />
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Yet... the fallacies coming from Trump's tiny lips are the same ones I hear coming out of Canadians fat mouths. And this is whether they politically identify with the Orange Dingbat or not.<br />
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This idea that "we don't need no Americans, we got all the resources here in Canada, let's just build our manufacturing base here!"<br />
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And how do you suppose we do that? By discouraging exports through tariffs? How about the outright nationalization of crude oil, cars, gold, refined petroleum oils, automotive parts and accessories, petroleum gas, sawn and chipped wood, aluminum, and turbojets industries?<br />
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We could always raise the price of manufactured goods in Canada, demand Canadian entrepreneurs step up to the plate...<br />
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But how could we be expected to do this in a regime with punitive taxation and a costly and unnecessary government bureaucracy? Where business decisions are increasingly and fundamentally the will of bureaucratic enforcement instead of the entrepreneur?<br />
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Canadians, if they don't want to sound like Trump cut from a different cloth, should consider looking at the long-run effects on everyone as a whole instead of the immediate effects on a single group of people.<br />
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And about Canada's dairy cartel?<br />
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It's true -- they will be hurt if supply management ends. As some people have developed specialized skills surrounding supply management, they may suffer permanently. That is, until they learn a new skill. If they can. Perhaps they're in their 50s or 60s and without sufficient savings.<br />
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Such is life. It's unfair. Once upon a time, mutual aid societies like the Lions Club or the Odd Fellows played a much larger role in civic life. Like with everything else, the state has made this unaffordable. It has unintentionally fostered dependence on itself. It has crowded out private investment, including social capital.<br />
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We are now at the end of the experiment in social democracy and socialism. It may last another 20 years. But this is the end.<br />
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Fair or unfair, facts don't lie. It is a fallacy to say supply management or tariffs "provide employment," or "protect consumers" or any of that nonsense.<br />
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So far as our standard of living is concerned, it does the complete opposite.<br />
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We are poorer with tariffs and we are poorer with supply management. We're probably better off with NAFTA then without it, but, ultimately, we need to focus on the <a href="https://mises.org/library/case-against-fed-0" target="_blank">Federal Reserve</a> if we're ever going to get anywhere.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-11783030731457386292018-06-11T09:38:00.002-04:002018-06-11T13:40:14.223-04:00The Trite of Trump, Trudeau and Tariffs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpWfqB7Kn_rqSTazthly0euJm56GHsGLIUsGAVQaOndfkNDpICRjH-t4fpOLqiKFbxKPbh_WPv7SSePcxU3cmntt0QDkMU4zQRpSQvL5UZKM7VLhJ6AQqumu7i3R0SySX6q-0F3t2A9ESe/s1600/g7-summit-20180608.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="780" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpWfqB7Kn_rqSTazthly0euJm56GHsGLIUsGAVQaOndfkNDpICRjH-t4fpOLqiKFbxKPbh_WPv7SSePcxU3cmntt0QDkMU4zQRpSQvL5UZKM7VLhJ6AQqumu7i3R0SySX6q-0F3t2A9ESe/s400/g7-summit-20180608.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
The problem with blogging about Canadian politics is that you have to be a political news junkie.<br />
<br />
Once upon a time that was me. Especially when I first started getting into "Austrian" economics. But, as time went on, I wanted to know whether praxeology was really telling me something true about the world.<br />
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So, I got into philosophy, particularly epistemology. It's a journey that is far from completion. But there's been one nasty side effect.<br />
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The daily nitty-gritty of politics and current events has never been so annoying.<br />
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Imagine a discipline so far removed from philosophy yet shaped by unconscious assumptions determining fundamental worldviews -- that's politics.<br />
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So when all the countries get together for the G7, when Trump has a "meltdown," none of this means anything to me. And it shouldn't to you either.<br />
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Nevertheless, I'm sure there's some lesson behind Trump's advisors referring to Trudeau's "special place in hell."<br />
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Let's see...<br />
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There's a recent episode of the <a href="https://tomwoods.com/ep-1170-trump-and-the-deep-state-is-everyone-getting-it-wrong/" target="_blank">Tom Woods Show</a> I recommend where he reads and comments on a piece by a progressive leftist writing about Trump. Spoiler alert: there's a lot of agreement between the lefty & Tom.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-real-revolution-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump-96fe64a493ea" target="_blank">"The Real Revolution Has Nothing To Do With Donald Trump,"</a> is a great read and more or less summarizes my thoughts.<br />
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That said, no one is going to change Trump's mind on tariffs. He's just going have to destroy his own economy until Americans kick him out in 2020. I just hope his tariffs don't take the heat for what the Fed has created, but that's a long-shot.<br />
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Anyway, the relationship between Canada and the US has been deteriorating long before Trump took office. Granted, he has poured a ton of gasoline onto the fire... about ten years worth of gasoline, if I were to guess.<br />
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So the clashes that were 10 years coming are happening today. Pretend like it's the unfunded liability crisis. Are we going to consult with the experts that saw it coming? No, let's pretend this thing starts and stops with one man. That an election (free from those evil Ruskies!) should free us.<br />
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So -- In May, the US said Canada will no longer be exempt from steel and aluminum tariffs. Trudeau called that "totally unacceptable," and retaliated with Canada's own tariffs, equalling $16.6 billion.<br />
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But Trump did bring up a couple good points -- Canada's supply management on dairy is an anti-free trade, protectionist policy that ultimately harms everyone in the long-run (sorry, Canadian dairy farmers, y'all need to read Hazlitt).<br />
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As well, during the NAFTA talks, Canada has been putting emphasis on gender neutrality and other postmodern nonsense instead of real constructive talks on trade.<br />
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If only Harper was still in power. Granted, I'm still a libertarian (really more of a classical liberal these days, but I digress), but Harper was clearly the lesser evil. He had a masters in economics (his thesis criticized Keynesian economics). He wasn't well-liked which boded well for voters who have a habit of deciding leaders based on whether they'd have a beer with them instead of anything pertaining to their policy and worldview.<br />
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Nevertheless, by June things has escalated. And mostly over Twitter.<br />
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Trudeau said he was "disappointed" asking (rhetorically?) "in what universe" could a long-time ally like Canada be considered a national security threat.<br />
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Indeed, I find Trudeau's domestic policies more threatening to Canada's national security than America's, but I don't think that was the point.<br />
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What is the point? There isn't. This is commentary on a news cycle. Now you see why I neglected this blog for a few years. It get's frustrating. Oh, trade and tariffs? I already figured that out in a blog post from 2011. How could that still be an issue? I already solved it. The books I used are still in print. They're still relevant.<br />
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At least with Trump, it's less about the issues and more about his personality. Over Twitter he attacked Trudeau for "being so indignant" on US-Canada relations while ignoring our tariffs on dairy which he says are "killing" American agriculture.<br />
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Of course, the USA has done plenty on its own to destroy their agricultural industry, but, sure, let's blame Canada.<br />
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Fucking Trump. He's generating sympathy for Trudeau at a time when Trudeau has been fucking up royally.<br />
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Just when you thought Trudeau wouldn't get a second term, Trump's trade adviser Peter Navarro tells Fox News, "There's a special place in hell for any foreign leader that engages in bad faith diplomacy with President Donald J. Trump."<br />
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Fuck dude.<br />
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Trump is generating sympathy for Trudeau.<br />
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Trump campaigned on how the Fed was creating a bubble, but then took credit for the "great" economy and booming stock market once in power<br />
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Trump's mind isn't controlled by the DC establishment which is a nice refresher and polar opposite of his old opponent...what was her name again? Billary Hilton?<br />
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But Trump's mind isn't in tip-top shape and he's certainly not bound by principles or convictions. Other than tariffs, of course. On that, his mind won't be changed.<br />
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If only he were more concerned with the central bank.<br />
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OK - somehow this all comes back to North Korea. But let's drop that for a second. Let's examine what Republican Senator John McCain tweeted in response to all this bullshit.<br />
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To our allies: bipartisan majorities of Americans remain pro-free trade, pro-globalization & supportive of alliances based on 70 years of shared values. Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t.</div>
— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/1005614491768360960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 10, 2018</a><br />
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Sounds reasonable, eh? But it is precisely these "70 years of shared values" that prompted a Trump presidency. Let's not pretend like this is a one-time anomaly. The establishment will do everything in its power to prevent another Trump figure from occupying the White House, but the resentment is still there.<br />
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When McCain tweets about remaining pro-free trade and pro-globalization, he doesn't mean it in the classical liberal sense. To guys like McCain, the current state of Western liberal democracy (sans Trump) is ideal. We're essentially at the end of history.<br />
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Trump's election was proof that this fantasy only existed inside the heads of a small number of Americans. For many, having two parties neglect fundamental cultural and monetary issues have resulted in a Trump presidency.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://youtu.be/-0Rj7qcLu1A" target="_blank">This was a protest vote.</a> A vote against the policies that have hollowed out America's industrial belt and awarded exclusive government contracts to top cronies and banks.<br />
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Not that Trump comes from outside that world, I still would have preferred Ron Paul as president.<br />
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But, I've said before and I'll say it once more - we have no one to blame but ourselves. Removing Trump isn't going to solve the long-term issues that put him into power.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-739547237606423022018-06-08T19:50:00.000-04:002018-06-08T19:50:27.171-04:00Doug Ford Jr. is Ontario's Premier<div class="p1">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Well, that was quick. CBC was calling it a Doug Ford Majority within 21 minutes. Which was great, I really had no desire to stay up all night and watch the Ontario election.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But still, I wanted to be entertained for at least more than 20 minutes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So Doug Ford won. Good for him. I would have preferred the Libertarian Party, but ole’ Doug the Slug beats an NDP government any time of day.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Because — What’s the worst that will happen?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">He and Trump could team up and put a million minorities into concentration camps.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But even if they did that, they wouldn’t be worse than Hitler, Mao or Stalin who put millions more into actual death camps. They practically turned their whole countries into death camps.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What a nightmare of a life that must have been for those millions of people.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">So let’s get a little rational here — ole’ Doug the Slug will do just fine. Not great, this is Ontario we’re talking about. And this is the <i>Progressive</i> Conservative party, here.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But he did win a large majority very quickly and that was funny.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In retrospect, it’s obvious. The red and orange team split the “left” vote so the blue team was off to the races, even with a fat fuck as a leader.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Imagine if the PCs had picked Christine Elliott. They probably would have covered the entire province in blue. Seriously.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Anyway, the worst Ford will do is cut taxes and, with any luck, gut the public sector.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">When he does this, those unemployed bureaucrats should be able to find employment in the private sector.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If they can’t, then their job wasn’t worth squat.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Or, they are unable to due to artificial constraints on their actions.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">For example — unemployed nurses should be able to open their own private nursing clinics.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Quality assurance, that is, what we normally homogenize as “government regulation” is a series of services that are in demand (even the ones we haven’t visualized yet) and will be provided for in the private sector.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There are already real-life examples of market regulation — competition between vendors as determined by consumer preference, insurance companies and their pooled premiums, private security firms like Brink's.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">All Ford has to do is legalize competition with government services. I don’t think he will, but that’s all he needs to do to ensure a functioning economy.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Wean people off government services or default on the debt. I don’t see a third option.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">What will Ford do instead? Probably cut taxes and ax not enough government jobs while doing nothing even remotely similar to what I’ve just described above.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">That makes his PC government marginally better than the opposition. And I stress the word <i>marginally</i>.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As for the actual issues:</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Trump's Tariffs —</b> Don’t worry about it, he’s not well liked anyway. Stay true to free trade and criticize Ottawa when they retaliate with their own tariffs. If Ford minimizes the size of government in commerce, then the PCs can get back to what makes for good government — maintaining the rule of law.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">“But what about the steelworkers?”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Let them suffer like Alberta oil workers have suffered under Trudeau.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">No bailouts. No stimulus. Fuck yer jerb, just free the damn market already.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Health Care</b> — I’ve already touched upon the solution above.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Since doctors want more money and Ontario residents need better health care, the solution is obviously privatization.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Adherence to “universal health care” makes no sense once you get into the details of the argument. Basically, it’s that you have a fundamental right to health. This is obviously false. In the state of nature, you ain’t entitled to shit.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">But since we aren’t in the state of nature, the argument goes, the rules have changed. Social norms now dictate reality.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">This is fallacious.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We are still in the state of nature. Our private property is our extended phenotype. We’re the most advanced species on the planet, but we’re still bound by the laws of nature.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">If we don’t understand what makes the world tick, whether it be physics or economics, then we’re truly fucked.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Ergo — privatize health care.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>Hydro rates</b> — In fact, privatize everything and do it correctly this time. Hydro is such an easy fix it’s almost painful to watch news coverage of it. Everything is so short-term and based on up to the minute facts.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Nobody steps back and looks at the big picture. They miss the forest for the trees.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Privatizing hydroelectricity in Ontario means decentralizing control. It means transferring ownership of provincial assets to local populations by handing them shares in their new private companies.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Where your ownership is proportional to the burden the Ontario government has placed upon you and your family up to that point.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">We can’t fix all these problems on day one. But Doug Ford has 4 years.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Unfortunately, it’s not up to him. It’s up to you and me. The libertarian revolution isn’t going to be won by elections alone. It involves changing the hearts and minds of everyone, everywhere.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-74964699335151431112018-06-07T20:37:00.000-04:002018-06-07T20:59:59.133-04:00Blame Trump for the Bad Economy? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm8YIdNlvgzvzawSZhSzgRuZVmytBpgBqoLS6Xt2lkJnV95JXMnjT65apQdJ-aZiH5XCCO476n90cypYNosUdiLpjq7g_vehy3hoRC7oy7PYlZePYYg1RFoVC2vaQDDPJesccNT925jsPo/s1600/Trump-Economy-570x321.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="570" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm8YIdNlvgzvzawSZhSzgRuZVmytBpgBqoLS6Xt2lkJnV95JXMnjT65apQdJ-aZiH5XCCO476n90cypYNosUdiLpjq7g_vehy3hoRC7oy7PYlZePYYg1RFoVC2vaQDDPJesccNT925jsPo/s400/Trump-Economy-570x321.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">To what extent will Trump be blamed for the bad economy?</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">What will be the reasons? Deregulation? Tariffs?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">At no point do I expect major news networks to scrutinize the Fed. To ignore Trump for one second and do some real investigation of the economy. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Here's a good starting point: what do you mean by science? For, if there is something to be said about an objective economy, an economic science, economic knowledge rooted in facts and reason - then to what extent will Trump be blamed for the bad economy?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">Science predicts. Karl Popper's falsification principle is a good starting point. But what about knowledge that doesn't conform to the scientific method? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">The scientific method is good at explaining natural phenomena. Applied to individual action, not so much.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">Austrian economics, or praxeology, is knowledge that is a priori. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">"Fuck Kant," you might say, "this a priori and a posteriori distinction is bullshit."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">And that's a great argument to have. Unfortunately, those are not criticisms of Austrian economics I often come across.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">If we even get to that point. After the endless arguments about minimum wage, price controls, government ownership, welfare, and bureaucracy, there's just no room for philosophy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;"><a href="http://tanstaaflcanada.blogspot.com/2016/08/you-cannot-falsify-praxeology.html" target="_blank">"Philosophy?! Who needs it!"</a> says the strawman.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">Sorry, straw-person.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 15px;">This person may retort: "Our </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">knowledge depends on empirical evidence derived from experience. This is the foundation of not only our science but our personal understanding of the world. It's the scientific method or bunk."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">To which I say, a priori knowledge is independent of experience, as with mathematics, deduction from pure reason, and tautologies (e.g. "all bachelors are unmarried").</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">All ontological proofs are a priori. </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span> <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Would you say string theory is pseudoscience? It is non-falsifiable. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Some make this argument. That String Theory must be some conspiracy theory held by scientists to make themselves seem smarter than they actually are. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Okay, not a conspiracy theory, just a popular idea that caught on. Now String Theorists are like cult-members who can't see the truth. These physicists want so much to know about the how the universe works they're willing to make shit up and peddle it as the truth.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Or... there is knowledge independent of experience. Like 2+2=4.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Okay, can we get back to Trump now? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">To what extent will the Orange Dingbat get blamed for the bad economy? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">To the extent that <a href="http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap11p1.html" target="_blank">tariffs actually do hurt the economy,</a> and when the smoke-show the Fed has been putting on finally begins to unravel (and there's nothing they can do about it), Trump's tariffs and general presidency will take the heat.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">But we both know the problem rests with central banks, fractional reserve banking, fiat money and government corruption. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Trump is a symptom of the disease. He can be blamed for criticizing the Fed during the campaign but doing shit-all as president, but, to be a truly mature and responsible person, we need to blame ourselves.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 15px;">Seriously, we have no one to blame but ourselves.</span></div>
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<style type="text/css"> p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 12.0px} li.li2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 15.0px 'Helvetica Neue'; color: #000000; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} span.s2 {font: 18.0px 'Helvetica Neue'} ul.ul1 {list-style-type: disc} </style>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-46386373273400309722018-06-04T11:39:00.001-04:002018-06-04T11:40:31.988-04:00Doug Ford Wants "Strong Mayors" <div class="p1">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIWYdknBmdo4tQU30gzrT85sohgdhC-T14BNYgKpaLHCcCspDMvam49cnG-dZoqcaVMsT3U0ov3EOWzHl2MIM5bF4NuyFoSdw3D7HtOR_WzxpVo4VohDMFrIE78QNMwa3OYHu4ajrUpvuJ/s1600/doug-ford-qa-1-803x603-1520968133.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="603" data-original-width="803" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIWYdknBmdo4tQU30gzrT85sohgdhC-T14BNYgKpaLHCcCspDMvam49cnG-dZoqcaVMsT3U0ov3EOWzHl2MIM5bF4NuyFoSdw3D7HtOR_WzxpVo4VohDMFrIE78QNMwa3OYHu4ajrUpvuJ/s400/doug-ford-qa-1-803x603-1520968133.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Doug Ford once wrote that if he were in provincial politics, he’d revamp Ontario municipalities so mayors can have more power.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“If I ever get to the provincial level of politics, municipal affairs is the first thing I would want to change,” Ford wrote in his book, <i><a href="http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-pc-leader-says-hed-like-to-bring-in-a-u-s-style-strong-mayor-system-for-cities-one-person-in-charge#comments-area" target="_blank">Ford Nation: Two brothers, One vision</a></i>, before being PC leader.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“I think mayors across the province deserve stronger powers. One person in charge, with veto power, similar to the strong mayoral systems in New York and Chicago and L.A.”</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">So far, during the campaign, Ford hasn’t mentioned the idea.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But it is an idea. Something fresh. One that will help streamline policy in large cities like Toronto, eliminating the ad-hoc chicken crap of the elected municipal councils.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Others fear it will create despotic local governments.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Of course, giving mayors more power doesn’t address the economic calculation problem. Despite Ford’s admiration for NYC or LA, those cities have all kinds of problems arising from statist management.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">And in smaller communities (e.g. pretty much every municipality outside of the GTA), mayors are part-time administrators. Municipalities really are the glorified custodians of democratic government. They run the roads, sewers, and shitty-ass public transit.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">And there’s no need for it. Any of it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">In the common-law tradition, after the divine right of the monarch, peaceful cooperation was a given. State force only entered once it was clear conflicts weren’t going to resolve themselves through mutual arbitration.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Canada (and most of the West) evolved out of this idea, but the democratic and socialist excesses of the last 100 years has undermined the traditional civil liberty of economic freedom.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">When the city of Toronto has a problem, they don’t turn to the mayor. At least… they shouldn’t.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Ford should expand on these ideas and cook up an even better solution than “strong mayors.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I mean, as a businessperson, especially living in Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal Ontario, he should be able to understand why removing red tape and cutting taxes is the verifiable path to prosperity. Labour needs the entrepreneurial spirit to create wealth.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">All McGuinty-Wynne socialism has done is bankrupt a once wealthy province.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Laws underpinning a free, fair, and orderly society compel obedience, but words have a tendency to change meaning, and, legislation tends to be thick and plentiful, and so, administrative tasks don’t always reflect “peace, order and good government.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Prioritizing mayoral authority isn’t necessarily reflective of the preferred social reality.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">The City of Toronto is a complex, spontaneous order of human strangers. You can only realistically know so many people, but you can buy goods and services from people all over the world.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Cities work because peace is a prerequisite. Residents don’t steal and murder each other the first day of a police strike. They find other means of law enforcement.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Civilizations don’t decay when police forces aren’t large enough. Civilizations falter when strangers fail to exchange freely, when prohibitionary forces arbitrarily restrict them from buying and selling to each other.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Canada’s middle-class cannot sustain itself in an environment where the state subsidizes certain producers while subverting others, where the tax-regime disincentives production and wealth accumulation, where banking policies undermine the economic sustainability of the nation.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Where are the principles of economic freedom that once defined a free society?</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Having to choose between two socialist cunts and a loud-mouth malcontent posing as a conservative is a result of not questioning this 19th-century constitutional fiefdom.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">An unwarranted persecution of free markets cannot be justified by appeals to emotion.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">But that’s all we hear from governments and police. “You cannot do x, y, or z. You cannot provide a, b, or c. The state must monopolize d, e, and f.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Or as Benito Mussolini would say, “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">So what are our options? </span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><a href="https://mises.org/library/what-must-be-done-0" target="_blank">Easy:</a> the local vote, that is, electing anti-democratic, pro-private property politicians to the local government.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">No need to revamp the mayoral process.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">An anti-democratic city council could transfer ownership of government assets in their jurisdiction to local companies. These companies would be owned by taxpayers, with ownership of shares proportional to the burden the democratic state has placed upon each individual to that point.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Long-term residents get greater shares. Those who’ve lived off the government dole their entire lives get nothing.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Allowing private neighbourhood associations to regulate commerce within their borders, instead of delegating that power to local politicians, is a goal worth striving for.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">While not completely remedying our issues, it is a better tool for securing liberty than electing a PC government.</span></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">(And FYI, Ontario readers, there are Libertarian Party candidates running in all ridings. So either stay home and don’t vote, or go Libertarian. Why the fuck would you waste your time doing anything else?)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-73470384375751587282018-06-03T10:41:00.003-04:002018-06-03T10:41:58.107-04:00Better than Beethoven Have you ever heard anything more beautiful?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="true" allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="315" scrolling="no" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FCTVNews%2Fvideos%2F2084763878232194%2F&show_text=0&width=560" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" width="560"></iframe><br />
<br />
"A new decision for voters" -- to kick your ass out.<br />
<br />
Of course, if Trump didn't lock Hilary up, I can't see Ford being harsh on Wynne. And, of course, if the NDP win then Ontario is just as fucked. Might as well have voted this bitch in again.<br />
<br />
But don't you just revel at those tears? This statist deserves every failure. Every lost seat. Even losing official party status.<br />
<br />
And those kids in the background -- what a great photo-op.<br />
<br />
"I'm not crying because it's about me." -- Bullshit. You're crying because statists hate giving up power, but since we all pay lip service to democracy... (don't worry, Wynne. You'll get a hefty taxpayer-funded pension in spite of your criminal behaviour)<br />
<br />
"It's about those kids" -- you know, the ones whose future I've destroyed with endless deficits, debts that can never be repaid, and a job market decimated by my radical leftist policies."<br />
<br />
Poor Liberal Party. With the PCs going Ford Nation, they really could have hand-picked <i>any</i> <i>other</i> person, hell, even a doormat would have sufficed. Anyone but Wynne.<br />
<br />
Oh well, she's gone now. Or, almost.<br />
<br />
All I can do is apologize for not keeping this blog up to date. I plan to change that. Despite who wins the Ontario election (or the fact that I don't even live there anymore). There's plenty of other crap to write about, anyway.<br />
<br />
Tanstaafl Canada is back because the belief in a free lunch is stronger now than when I started this thing in 2010.<br />
<br />
"After Thursday, I will no longer be Ontario's premier...." The sound of beauty. Better than Beethoven.<br />
<br />
Thank you Wynne, you've inspired me to write about Canadian politics again.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-33521893012362330422018-05-30T11:23:00.000-04:002018-05-30T11:28:18.730-04:00Is B.C. Premier John Horgan a Moron?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqJV8lAKoffv7xfs7B4_hJauILE0aErnY4drjgeT9xq0rmalUywInxCO15dRBxch3A5telVhoxQC5UFX7FKAFfQpj04Uqh3ODnPBVcU4-zSeS1ufE2Ng1ZNNjoiRbbM5pLmNMYOA9oPBe-/s1600/33456093990_d953c89c54_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="683" data-original-width="1024" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqJV8lAKoffv7xfs7B4_hJauILE0aErnY4drjgeT9xq0rmalUywInxCO15dRBxch3A5telVhoxQC5UFX7FKAFfQpj04Uqh3ODnPBVcU4-zSeS1ufE2Ng1ZNNjoiRbbM5pLmNMYOA9oPBe-/s400/33456093990_d953c89c54_b.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With Kinder Morgan pulling out of the Trans Mountain pipeline project and having federal taxpayers pick up the slack to a tune of $4.5 billion, one really has to wonder what’s going through B.C. Premier John Horgan’s head.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">"I continue to have concerns about the potential adverse consequences of a diluted bitumen spill on our marine environment, on our coast and the consequences to our economy," <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-premier-concerned-about-catastrophic-consequences-regardless-of-pipeline-s-owner-1.4682167" target="_blank">Horgan told CBC.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">However, "The good news though is that I now know the owner and have his phone number and I can call him with my concerns."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Horgan, you moron.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">B.C. Green Party Leader and balance of power in the provincial legislature Andrew Weaver gets it. "A government that promised to end fossil fuel subsidies and to champion the clean economy should not be spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money to buy out a fossil fuel expansion project,” he said.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">No one is happy about the pipeline project. Both sides oppose Trudeau for a variety of reasons. With any luck, the former ski instructor Prime Minister will be a one-term pony.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">After all, a “liberal” Finance Minister, in 2018, should not call taxpayer subsidies and government ownership “an investment in Canada's future.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Now Kinder Morgan doesn’t have to assume any financial risk. That burden is now on taxpayers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Federal Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, who’s been fined $1,500 as part of her protests of the pipeline in Burnaby, said: "The amount we've just spent is more than we are putting into climate programs so far... I have to say that it's galling on so many levels that it's breathtaking.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, but, like Horgan and the federal government, she’s also missing the forest for the trees.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Simply, no pipeline means higher prices since the entire world runs on fossil fuels. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Even things you wouldn’t think need oil is a byproduct of a laundry list of interlocking capital goods.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Individual action results in organization controlled by no single person or agency. There is a free market for goods and services because people are free to trade with each other. It is only with restricted trade, especially by centralized authorities, do we find ourselves poorer. Imposing limits and conditions on trade deteriorates the capital structure of the economy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">This is what is happening in Canada. Horgan doesn’t see it. Without the pipeline, there are trucks and trains to deliver the goods. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">The fact that pipelines are (or were) the cheaper and more reliable option is dictated by a market economy dominated by central banks and tens of thousands of regulations imposed by government regulators and dreamt up by lobbyists.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">What would a truly free market look like? What would happen if Horgan put his foot down on the pipeline and then rescinded Canada’s involvement with Confederation?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Fuck the Supreme Court, fuck your international law — Horgan’s gone radical and established himself King, divinely appointed by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia" target="_blank">Gaia</a> to save the planet. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">In addition, the sovereign people of British Columbia have agreed on three things:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;">1. free markets both domestically and internationally</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">2. private property is sacrosanct, it is our species <a href="http://tanstaaflcanada.blogspot.com/2013/01/private-property-and-extended-phenotype.html?m=0">extended phenotype</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">3. all conflicts arising between persons and involving property can be resolved using the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674517769" target="_blank">Western legal tradition.</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-78092220234456770062017-06-22T22:48:00.000-04:002017-07-13T15:28:18.399-04:00What's Happening in BC Politics? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0icn7mUOKJrZWMQsQYz3sfha1dojgkl9vfRWZd2tivQUozpom9MJpZoG9CZrBNQ0aDpKEoYh2sEb09lmfvb4hYU4Kr__73pJX4xuz-aHw8VQ9-EcI-GVtIfb_i2PlJa8fQuAlShHj25Mi/s1600/christy-clark-andrew-weaver-john-horgan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1180" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0icn7mUOKJrZWMQsQYz3sfha1dojgkl9vfRWZd2tivQUozpom9MJpZoG9CZrBNQ0aDpKEoYh2sEb09lmfvb4hYU4Kr__73pJX4xuz-aHw8VQ9-EcI-GVtIfb_i2PlJa8fQuAlShHj25Mi/s400/christy-clark-andrew-weaver-john-horgan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Gawd, I hate politics. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Although Christy Clark has given her throne speech, it is the Lt. Governor who technically decides the outcome. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Because when people say “BC,” they must forget what the “B” stands for. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">British. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And in this inherited political system, we commoners divide monarchical power with democratic and aristocratic powers.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">It’s almost as if the classical liberal English of old understood political philosophy. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">That every society has its monarchical, democratic and aristocratic elements. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">That the success of the British Empire more or less rested on balancing these governing principles.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">So while Christy and Horgan lust after power like blood-thirsty parasites, it is the unelected Head of State that will determine BC’s future.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Since the BC legislature would be in a virtual stalemate if the NDP-Green coalition comes to power, the speaker of the house, who is currently Liberal, would have to constantly cast a tie-breaking vote.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">If the Lieutenant-Governor doesn’t have confidence in this hobbled together agreement between the NDP and Greens, then it really doesn’t matter that the MLAs propose and vote on an amendment to topple the Liberals.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Now, in 2017, these Head of States like BC’s Lieutenant-Governor or Canada’s Governor General don’t hold much power beyond figureheads and rubber stamps. The democratic element has eroded society and is actively undermining free markets.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">In fact, the Governor General of Canada just apologized for the fact that even aboriginals are technically immigrants. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Worse than a runaway legislature, the social media mob now has public opinion in its grasp. How does a far-right bigot make it in this world?</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Will the Lt-Governor side with Corrupt Clark or the Horgan-Weaver Tax-and-Spend Brigade?</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Clark is clearly the lesser evil, provided that the Libertarian Party never wins any seats, and it would have been nice to see the Greens side with her (#ISideWithHer).</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Think about it — nice, clean environmental record while cutting taxes and red-tape. The BC Liberals are the most fiscally conservative Liberals in Canada and, hey, since we have a carbon tax anyway, you might as well massively decrease income taxes, and while you’re at it, get rid of that sales tax. There’s already a federal one, isn’t that enough?</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And property taxes at a municipal level are getting out of control, but I digress. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">BC could be looking at another election. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">How fun. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">More of those goddamn plastic signs. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">More commercials and before YouTube videos too! C’mon, man! I can’t skip that one? A full 30 seconds? I’d rather watch a full minute or two of actual commercials!</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">But there’s still hope. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The Greens aren’t calling their deal with the NDP a “coalition,” meaning, they could look at the promises made in the throne speech and say, okay, since this government depends on how we vote, let’s make this parliament work by having the stable Liberal Party in charge.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">And knowing lower mainland BC, this would result in plummeting poll numbers for Weaver and his Greens.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
And since democracy <i>is</i> the god that failed... The Lt-Governor would be best to play ball and let the NDP form government.<br />
<br />
But I hope she doesn't.<br />
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*Update* She did. Say hello to Premier Horgan </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-63130714583330864992016-12-06T15:25:00.000-05:002016-12-06T15:25:59.079-05:00All Hail the CRTC!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjf8omaXHW8fyoT6dbTEDQM9WVI9O-cNpBE5oubCVCZmRVy3Gaea_g43RDKhYrU0Q-YNuqmsdPtn4H0w6GxjG2WcQBlXTm1yTZf0BKWAKK9RaC7p6M_OMTEYodpcNVvh179wJO2nrEXlyy/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-12-06+at+12.16.14+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjf8omaXHW8fyoT6dbTEDQM9WVI9O-cNpBE5oubCVCZmRVy3Gaea_g43RDKhYrU0Q-YNuqmsdPtn4H0w6GxjG2WcQBlXTm1yTZf0BKWAKK9RaC7p6M_OMTEYodpcNVvh179wJO2nrEXlyy/s400/Screen+Shot+2016-12-06+at+12.16.14+PM.png" width="322" /></a></div>
Canadians pay through the nose for the internets.<br />
<br />
Our cell phones aren't cheap, either.<br />
<br />
This is, of course, the government's fault. The CRTC regulator is to blame, but so is legislation that favours Canadian companies at the expense of American companies.<br />
<br />
Putting Canadians out of work, really. Depriving them of entrepreneurial status.<br />
<br />
Who knows what innovations a Canadian could create when he or she has access to American markets.<br />
<br />
Canada's Telecom cartel and the CRTC are destroying wealth before it's even created.<br />
<br />
And it's about to get worse.<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a><br /><br />
First, the <a href="http://business.financialpost.com/fp-tech-desk/four-crtc-decisions-that-will-impact-your-phone-tv-and-internet-bills-in-2017?__lsa=00a3-f9a0">CRTC wants to establish a wholesale price for interest usage.</a> That's right, a final rate on what Bell, Rogers, Telus, SaskTel, Shaw, Cogeco, MTS and Videotron can charge.<br />
<br />
This centrally-planned rate also determines what the Telecom giants charge smaller companies on their physical networks.<br />
<br />
Wouldn't it be great if American companies could come up here and build new internet infrastructure?<br />
<br />
Wouldn't it be great if governments and banks everywhere stopped debasing the national monies?<br />
<br />
Slow and steady inflation to induce economic growth is about as backwards as having the CRTC set wholesale internet prices.<br />
<br />
Until Canadians embrace laissez-faire capitalism, the deterioration will continue. Phone and internet bills will rise steadily.<br />
<br />
The CRTC says it must set prices to help foster competition. Their reasoning is invalid. They focus on the apparent benefits while ignoring the unseen consequences.<br />
<br />
Opposition to the scheme focuses on the effect lower fees might hold. They fear lack of investment into the broadband network.<br />
<br />
What about the malinvestment orchestrated by the CRTC?<br />
<br />
The solution is simple: decommission the CRTC and open the market to international commerce. Canada's protectionist telecommunications industry is a global eyesore.<br />
<br />
And it hurts consumers.<br />
<br />
But never fear! The CRTC is here.<br />
<br />
They've been investigating monopolistic practices of the Telecom cartel. Consumers were complaining about overcharging on data plans.<br />
<br />
Consumers accused Telecom of acting as "gatekeepers" while Telecom said something along the lines of, "hey, we're a business, we're only in it for the money."<br />
<br />
Of course, the problem is lack of competition. The market-clearing price for mobile data plans is higher than otherwise would be.<br />
<br />
Telecom pockets more consumer funds because they enjoy a nice little made-in-Canada cartel.<br />
<br />
And, lo and behold, even a consumer advocacy group swings to the left. Meanwhile, a CRTC tribunal of bureaucrats will decide on "differential pricing" instead of permitting the market to work.<br />
<br />
But how could the market work?<br />
<br />
The CRTC imposes codes regulating everything from conduct to contract lengths, unlocking phone fees, wireless data limits, and cancellation fees. And that's just scratching the surface.<br />
<br />
It's as if the CRTC is unaware of the difference between commercial contracts and consumer contracts.<br />
<br />
Commercial contracts "are usually between corporate entities with specialized knowledge of industrial practices and a financial interest in minimizing the interruption of business."<br />
<br />
Consumer contracts "are those in which one or both parties lack commercial sophistication and large sums do not rest upon a speedy resolution of any dispute that might arise."<br />
<br />
Instead of having a uniform body of contract law, perhaps we could have <a href="http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm">a free market for legal services. </a><br />
<br />
Perhaps we could also have a free market in telecommunications.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-71167423999725118112016-09-07T18:36:00.002-04:002016-09-08T11:24:52.530-04:00How To Game the System and Make Taxpayers Pay for Your Shitty Business Idea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj95UBsPXrYxhyphenhyphengEqKgBxEhfGpZ1CU1TYyyu1xIHAW-rhlITidjZY3lEVfSNkEz2GORonqt276hMjEX5aW78qGMfJOTFIz7vIvI-oQVgqsgkYoL-Zikj1mxLwl2GMJUeslEnbGbbOh6zbSM/s1600/Money-resize.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj95UBsPXrYxhyphenhyphengEqKgBxEhfGpZ1CU1TYyyu1xIHAW-rhlITidjZY3lEVfSNkEz2GORonqt276hMjEX5aW78qGMfJOTFIz7vIvI-oQVgqsgkYoL-Zikj1mxLwl2GMJUeslEnbGbbOh6zbSM/s400/Money-resize.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Alyssa Furtado had no startup money, but she had an idea.<br />
<br />
So, did she pitch the idea to venture capitalists? Did she find some way to raise the necessary capital?<br />
<br />
No, of course not. <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-money/how-my-company-raised-more-than-1-million-in-government-grants/article31308864/">She pillaged the taxpayer through government grants.</a><br />
<br />
Can’t say I entirely blame her. If she didn’t do it, someone else would, and thus the system bestows socialism and entrepreneurial laziness.<br />
<br />
But still, writing an op-ed in a major newspaper may not be the best PR strategy.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Alyssa praised the grants that awarded her over $1-million that doesn’t have to be paid back.<br />
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She gave us, dear readers, advice on how we too can game the system.<br />
<br />
This isn’t a type of “entrepreneurship” that should be encouraged or applauded.<br />
<br />
“Consider the application process like an investment pitch,” she writes, except, instead of pitching the idea to investors who have earned their capital by providing goods and services to the public on a voluntary basis — she’s pitching ideas to bureaucrats who have no direct financial incentive to be careful with this money.<br />
<br />
Money forced out of taxpayers and likely more valuable if directed to hospitals than entrepreneurs incapable of raising capital on their own.<br />
<br />
If the government wants to help, then they can lower taxes across the board and gut red tape above and beyond what they think is necessary.<br />
<br />
“RateHub applies for four or five grants each year. It’s made a profound difference in our ability to support our company’s growth.”<br />
<br />
Well yeah, it’s free money from the government. Except it’s not free. Alyssa has to waste time going through the bureaucratic paperwork process. And taxpayers are on the hook for the billions this all adds up to.<br />
<br />
Bragging about sponging off the taxpayer due to her inability to fund a business idea shouldn't be good PR.<br />
<br />
When business success is measured by how much taxpayer money you can loot from the treasury, then Canada is in trouble.<br />
<br />
There is nothing to be proud of. Fleecing taxpayers for more than $1-million should be condemned.<br />
<br />
She should be ashamed of herself.<br />
<br />
Not to mention, this is all entirely unsustainable in the long-run. You can't create wealth by destroying it first.<br />
<br />
Somebody needs to read Mises.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-75197419941741818642016-08-22T18:40:00.000-04:002016-08-22T18:42:36.381-04:00You Cannot Falsify Praxeology<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtIaQ7umPwDxS_VSfNaNRr0nKvLB003lk390Wf46koNCtGKxJaWhrQxjhm1JtzctNE0PObR6pg77h2ua-R5bz7c9GBCEGldbObGdwB8ePtQqCZcijUULbfOY9Wul6L2sV8goyHQ_Rl0m5E/s1600/praxeology.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtIaQ7umPwDxS_VSfNaNRr0nKvLB003lk390Wf46koNCtGKxJaWhrQxjhm1JtzctNE0PObR6pg77h2ua-R5bz7c9GBCEGldbObGdwB8ePtQqCZcijUULbfOY9Wul6L2sV8goyHQ_Rl0m5E/s400/praxeology.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
Unlike the natural “hard” sciences, the study of human action doesn’t proceed from inductive generalizations of perceived regularities. Instead, its method is deductive, its starting point is the concept of action.<br />
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From the analysis of the concept, economics can be deduced. “Action and reason,” wrote Mises in Human Action, “may even be called two different aspects of the same thing.”<br />
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But why would humans, who are part of the natural world, require different analysis?<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br /></div>
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Even Mises wrote that “determinism is the epistemological basis of the human search for knowledge,” so why not start from inductive generalizations about human action?<br />
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Because, while determinism does apply to human beings, we don’t know how human thought and action are determined by physiological factors. At least not in the sense that we can discern how Einstein came up with the theory of relativity, or what went on in the mind of 20th-century composer Frank Zappa.<br />
<br />
The mind operates autonomously but it is not independent of the physical world. There are plenty of ways to build a house, but there is only one correct way, so to speak.<br />
<br />
So, just as Ludwig von Mises debated positivists in the first part of the 20th century, today’s praxeologists are defending the science against those who demand a test for falsifiability, a doctrine promoted by intellectual giants such as philosopher Karl Popper, astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and Bill Nye “the science guy.”<br />
<br />
Praxeology is true despite failing the falsifiability test, and, why this is so, requires some philosophy, a “meaningless topic,” according to Bill Nye.<br />
<br />
Neil DeGrasse Tyson also claims philosophy has not been “a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world.”<br />
<br />
Stephen Hawking declared philosophy dead.<br />
<br />
But Tyson, Nye and Hawking are holding a metaphysical position, one that resembles “scientism” rather than what is scientific.<br />
<br />
To declare praxeology illegitimate because they don’t understand philosophy is itself illegitimate. Lack of metaphysical belief does not overturn science.<br />
<br />
Tyson, Nye and Hawking’s theory of knowledge is dedicated to the method of the natural sciences and underscored by their irrational rejection of philosophy. This is no basis for understanding why praxeology gives us knowledge of the real world.<br />
<br />
While philosophy is subordinate to science, by rejecting praxeology, many scientists are actually engaging in metaphysics.<br />
<br />
What about Karl Popper? He knew his philosophy, what about his falsifiability criterion?<br />
<br />
Popper did not take all metaphysical statements to be meaningless, just that scientific statements must be capable of being proven false.<br />
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Praxeology, insofar that it is deductively derived from self-evident axioms, fails this test. Nothing falsifies praxeology.<br />
<br />
But the proper tests of praxeology are the truth of its axioms and the validity of its arguments. Why should praxeology meet the criterion of science proposed by a particular writer?<br />
<br />
Popper says that definitions do not describe real things: they are arbitrary proposals for the use of a term. But Popper’s characterization of scientific statements is itself an arbitrary proposal.<br />
<br />
Mises wrote: “The proposition that there are no synthetic a priori propositions is itself a… synthetic a priori position, for it can manifestly not be established by experience.”<br />
<br />
Praxeology is not Freudian psychology, which is a common and understandable response to why the verification principle is important.<br />
<br />
Definitions do describe real things, rejecting this doesn’t do away with reality.<br />
<br />
The fact that theorems can be falsified does not necessarily falsify praxeology, since economics, once learned, is recognized as factual and universally true.<br />
<br />
Is this an inductive generalization? Why? Why not reject other examples of a priori propositions?<br />
<br />
If praxeology consists of disputed analytic statements, on what grounds is this assertion made?<br />
<br />
Perhaps the propositions of string theory are tautological where we can’t learn anything new because the theory is non-falsifiable.<br />
<br />
Would Tyson, Nye or Hawking agree to that?<br />
<br />
Praxeology does not conflict with the natural sciences. It should not be disregarded due to some failure to falsify its axioms.<br />
<br />
<i>Further reading,<a href="https://mises.org/library/philosophical-contributions-ludwig-von-mises"> "The Philosophical Contributions of Ludwig von Mises,</a>" by David Gordon.</i><br />
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<a href="http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-dream-of-a-world-where-the-truth-is-what-shapes-people-s-politics-rather-than-politics-neil-degrasse-tyson-87-61-41.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-i-dream-of-a-world-where-the-truth-is-what-shapes-people-s-politics-rather-than-politics-neil-degrasse-tyson-87-61-41.jpg" height="188" width="400" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-10131549731317970102016-08-05T17:00:00.001-04:002016-08-05T17:02:46.193-04:00Earthquakes in British Columbia!!!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTA3YfyEuAcAw0m67YLEjIEfpcuC00yMUIPTMcpFvtAji_5LGOSCQ0cYB2HcGqzrT2g-i0xh_c3cex7IsIlSQGfCMo0_EaZu5Hz2A39vKliMet1BKJVPNZMeUHM2FIMD2djQIdV3Rz3_vJ/s1600/resources-digitalassets-Disaster-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTA3YfyEuAcAw0m67YLEjIEfpcuC00yMUIPTMcpFvtAji_5LGOSCQ0cYB2HcGqzrT2g-i0xh_c3cex7IsIlSQGfCMo0_EaZu5Hz2A39vKliMet1BKJVPNZMeUHM2FIMD2djQIdV3Rz3_vJ/s400/resources-digitalassets-Disaster-4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Would you ever live in an earthquake zone?<br />
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Vancouver, Victoria, Nanaimo, Tofino?<br />
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Goddamn, a tsunami in Tofino and you're done.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Drowning is one of the worst ways to go.<br />
<br />
But let’s say you survived.<br />
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Or let’s say you lived safely inland, away from the Pacific Ring of Fire.<br />
<br />
You’d still suffer from the hands of government.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<a href="http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/how-a-major-earthquake-could-put-cracks-in-canada-s-financial-system-1.3013500">The C.D. Howe Institute is warning about this.</a><br />
<br />
Funnily enough, they don’t see the massive fallout as a boom to the economy.<br />
<br />
They’re saying a $35-billion insurance pay-out would cripple the industry.<br />
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We’re talking “systemic financial impact.” Forget any government bailouts.<br />
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There’s nothing “we” can do collectively that can’t already be done individually.<br />
<br />
A major earthquake off the West Cost would be one of the craziest things to happen in our lifetime.<br />
<br />
And there’s a 30 percent chance of it happening in 50 years.<br />
<br />
That sounds better than some lotteries.<br />
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And since this whole fucking country is one giant artificial construct, where Western wealth gets funnelled back to the Laurentian elite, that is, the Montreal-Toronto-Ottawa corridor, a massive earthquake would financially impact the whole country.</div>
<div>
<br />
And 45 percent of homeowners in Vancouver don’t even have quake insurance.<br />
<br />
Most mortgages, including those backed by the <i>unshakeable</i> Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (see what I did there), aren’t covered at all.<br />
<br />
The Property and Casualty Insurance Compensation Corporation (PACICC) says, like the 2008 financial crisis, a catastrophic earthquake is serious and inevitable.<br />
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According to them, and the C.D. Howe Institute, Canada’s economic players aren’t ready for the Big One.<br />
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So what’s the best course of action?<br />
<br />
How would a libertarian society deal with this problem? Why would that be better than the statist quo?<br />
<br />
Would private generosity from less affected areas really be superior to a burdensome tax regime that funnels from one group to another?<br />
<br />
What if people in the rest of the country give a voluntary fuck you to British Columbia?</div>
<div>
<br />
The C.D. Howe report says the government should raise awareness.<br />
<br />
They advise people to buy insurance.<br />
<br />
And as for the insurance companies, will they go bankrupt? … what can I say?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If anyone is to blame, it's the central bank for undermining the market order.<br />
<br />
Democratic governments also legislate petty tyranny and wage war with anybody and everybody, no matter how violent.<br />
<br />
In the long-term view of things, potential earthquakes, like undermining free markets, take a backseat to short-term interests.<br />
<br />
Yet, the long-term thinking free market is the guarantee we'd need to get through this crisis.<br />
<br />
Democracy is by far the dumbest political system ever devised by man.<br />
<br />
What can you expect? We’re hunter-gatherers adapting to a complex market order few of us understand.<br />
<br /></div>
<div>
But even praxeological knowledge won't excuse us from an inevitable death.<br />
<br />
Whether it's old age, cancer, an earthquake, or at the hand of government (and maybe indirectly, say, through the universal health care system), we'll all going to die.<br />
<br />
But in the meantime, you own yourself. Even if you interpret that as mere self-control.<br />
<br />
So get out of dodge if the thought of an earthquake scares you.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We still all suffer from the hands of government.<br />
<br />
And they will fuck up any disaster response. Just look at what happened with Hurricane Katrina.<br />
<br />
That wasn't Bush's fault, per se, but the inevitable result of bureaucracy overriding markets.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-54541887160460644342016-08-02T19:25:00.002-04:002016-08-02T19:31:23.338-04:0010 Idiosyncrasies of Vancouver<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Awd0yqrvifz6xdkiliKMXrpKqLhMH9Q6bd7wz0XaTOZSp8Uz_N_bW0xDdF1ArTOIwu4Jb2AfhKgBNWhzKYtQetQ44fBiSo3Gg-xG0B4mp1U73cXfW8F8hlTqI5lNObxQIZ1gJOccN02G/s1600/1509855_10203177574215310_6078618868333890121_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Awd0yqrvifz6xdkiliKMXrpKqLhMH9Q6bd7wz0XaTOZSp8Uz_N_bW0xDdF1ArTOIwu4Jb2AfhKgBNWhzKYtQetQ44fBiSo3Gg-xG0B4mp1U73cXfW8F8hlTqI5lNObxQIZ1gJOccN02G/s400/1509855_10203177574215310_6078618868333890121_n.jpg" width="288" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Vancouver is the real-life version of Epcot</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Having now lived in Vancouver for over two years, I’ve come to notice some peculiars about this city. Here are ten.<br />
<div>
</div>
<div>
<br />
<b>10 — The police are lazy</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
Not that I care, in fact, this is one of the nice things about the city.<br />
<br />
While everyone goes on about the North Shore mountains, the Pacific Ocean, or lack of snow, I find comfort in the fact that the police generally don’t give a shit.<br />
<br />
Sure, they’ll pull you over for some minor infraction, but for a city with over 100 illegal cannabis dispensaries, it’s clear that the cops are too lazy to enforce all the laws on the books.<br />
<br />
Or, more likely, there are too many laws on the books and, thanks to the economic calculation problem, the Vancouver Police Department has trouble allocating compliance.<br />
<br />
<b>9 — Fireworks are a big deal</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>Did you ever watch <i>Parks and Recreation</i>? In it, there is a miniature horse named Li’l Sebastian that the town practically worships.<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
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Ben, a city planner from out of town, just doesn’t understand the community’s fascination with this tiny horse.<br />
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This is how I feel about Vancouverites love of fireworks.<br />
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I mean, they’re just fireworks. What’s the big deal?<br />
<br />
It’s not like every other city on this continent doesn’t have some kind of a fireworks display.<br />
<br />
<b>8 — Cold Zone Beer</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>Unlike Ontario, British Columbia now allows for private liquor establishments. But there still exists the government retailer, “BC Liquor” where you can purchase warm beer right off the shelf.<br />
<br />
Except, of course, if the BC Liquor Store is one of the special outlets with a “cold zone.”<br />
<br />
Only the government would advertise cold beer as a luxury.<br />
<br />
Beer is supposed to be cold.<br />
<br />
It’s one thing to sell warm beer, but to advertise “cold zones” at selected retailers where we can buy beer the way it’s supposed to be sold (and with no extra charge!) is downright silly.<br />
<br />
Thank God for the private liquor stores.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL60aitdeyWhqH8HowUNnfrXznLy88F3DsjhSkSJew81OgNxYufwsiaIDZ6oga0EphkExcaHihjof6Roat__D6HA3j1Yf-kAElohE0NxBSFkw0advRE_G931yqplVjBt6nwAL3iY5X1wgT/s1600/IMG_20160802_145609.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL60aitdeyWhqH8HowUNnfrXznLy88F3DsjhSkSJew81OgNxYufwsiaIDZ6oga0EphkExcaHihjof6Roat__D6HA3j1Yf-kAElohE0NxBSFkw0advRE_G931yqplVjBt6nwAL3iY5X1wgT/s400/IMG_20160802_145609.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beer is supposed to be cold. You wouldn't sell frozen dinners at room temperature, would you?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<br /></div>
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<b>7 — Unfriendliness</b></div>
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<b><br /></b>As far Canada goes, Vancouver is by far the unfriendliest city I’d ever lived in.<br />
<br />
People don’t make eye contact, they never smile, say hello, they don’t even say “sorry,” (they're more likely to yell at each other).<br />
<br />
Maybe this is because of the large homeless population. When every other person on the street is asking for money, you tend to start ignoring everyone around you.<br />
<br />
As well, I’m sure this is just a big city thing. But Vancouver does seem a lot colder than Toronto, despite the warmer weather.<br />
<br />
<b>6 — Left-Wing Yuppies</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.<br />
<br />
More common than anywhere else in Canada (except maybe Ottawa) are the busybody yuppies.<br />
<br />
They drive hybrid cars, consider themselves “progressive” (especially when calling for increased state power), talk about environment sustainability without actually doing anything, and thumb their noses at anyone with different values.<br />
<br />
These are the people that support the city’s ban on Uber and overregulation of Air B’n’B.<br />
<br />
They call themselves progressives but routinely blame the Chinese for the city’s real estate bubble.<br />
<br />
For a great example of this mentality, check out the “Smug Alert!” episode of <i>South Park.</i><br />
<br />
<b>5 — Asian Food is Everywhere</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>As are Asians.<br />
<br />
Sometimes Vancouver feels like an Asian city, but I don’t mind. Ramen is pretty good.<br />
<br />
<b>4 — We Built This City on Undermining Cars</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>This city was not built for cars.<br />
<br />
See idiosyncrasy #6, I blame the yuppies.<br />
<br />
There are no major highways to get through the city, especially from the airport.<br />
<br />
And why not?<br />
<br />
Because environmentalists complain any time this is brought up. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The result? Bumper-to-bumper traffic. An action that causes more pollution than a seamless highway for cars to drive on.<br />
<br />
It’s the unintended consequence of statist environmentalism.<br />
<br />
Also, the traffic lights never sync up. Especially since pedestrian crosswalks take precedent.<br />
<br />
It’s just one mass of cars moving together from one stoplight to the next.<br />
<br />
As well, there are bike lanes everywhere and plans to build more by limiting parking spaces and road space.<br />
<br />
<b>3 — Sidewalk Etiquette</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>Perhaps because of its large immigrant population, Vancouver lacks sidewalk etiquette.<br />
<br />
Or perhaps it’s just me. I just feel that, like the roads, pedestrian traffic should stick to the right.<br />
<br />
This doesn’t happen in Vancouver. People walk on whatever side they want. Some people, in large groups, walk far too slow and in the middle. They make it essentially impossible to get around and have no awareness of the line of people forming behind them.<br />
<br />
Stick to the right-hand side. Especially if you’re slow. If you’re in a large group, don’t walk side by side, be mindful of others on the sidewalk.<br />
<br />
In fact, let’s just privatize the sidewalks. That’ll fix the unwritten rules of sidewalk etiquette.<br />
<br />
<b>2 — Transit Police are Armed and Bylaw Officers Look Like Actual Cops</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b>The transit monopoly in Vancouver has its own police force and they have guns. They’ve been known to shoot and kill people.<br />
<br />
As well, the bylaw officers look like actual cops but they only deal with bylaw infractions. It’s ridiculous… er, I mean, “progressive.”<br />
<br />
<b>1 — Nobody Follows the Rules</b></div>
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<b><br /></b>Like any good “progressive” city, there are plenty of rules on what you can’t do.<br />
<br />
But nobody listens.<br />
<br />
There’s no smoking or drinking at the beach, but very often there are people doing just that. And they don’t bother hiding it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
The smell of cannabis permeates the city.<br />
<br />
I don’t know what the hell the bylaw officers do all day, or where they go, because this is just the tip of the iceberg.<br />
<br />
Vancouver is a perfect example of the “more laws, less justice” quote.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-68567698246387470402016-07-29T19:13:00.002-04:002016-07-30T17:31:38.653-04:00Vancouver Housing Bubble: Wildcard!<div class="tr_bq">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNqKHlFbpIhnLxMTU7FDROwUnbQNya9nuJJD3Gn6g4tMTzTXbdy9FArw2Hg9qIj1nU8qMqGkAtx5eBhljl2QBNOn-iiy_8oUKkvqNVkXfFrQN3_eK5BbgLjuSIXGgRRV5vI7GNZl-_9w4s/s1600/c091324e52955297f2d2432603e78b438910d4b441df97d647651a4d96e1283a.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="382" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNqKHlFbpIhnLxMTU7FDROwUnbQNya9nuJJD3Gn6g4tMTzTXbdy9FArw2Hg9qIj1nU8qMqGkAtx5eBhljl2QBNOn-iiy_8oUKkvqNVkXfFrQN3_eK5BbgLjuSIXGgRRV5vI7GNZl-_9w4s/s400/c091324e52955297f2d2432603e78b438910d4b441df97d647651a4d96e1283a.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Silly Vancouverites.<br />
<br />
At the risk of this post being used against me in a municipal election (<a href="https://www.mises.ca/the-problem-with-canmore-2/">like what happened when I ran for mayor of Canmore, Alberta</a>), all I have to say is: Vancouverites are delusional.<br />
<br />
First off, although this is completely anecdotal, I cannot count how many people I've spoken to that think Vancouver's housing prices will never crash.<br />
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Oh yeah, those $3 million houses will just keep climbing in value.<br />
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Fucking delusional.<br />
<br />
Second, they blame the Chinese all the time. I once mentioned the low-interest rates set by the central bank. I was told that these foreign investors pay for everything in cash and therefore "interest rates are irrelevant."<br />
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*Headdesk* For when facepalms aren't enough.<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Okay, where to begin?<br />
<br />
The "wildcard" as determined by<a href="http://www.straight.com/news/745336/us-federal-reserve-and-nervous-bankers-could-put-brakes-vancouver-housing-market"> <i>Georgia Straight</i> writer Charlie Smith</a> is the United States Federal Reserve.<br />
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Never mind that they actually caused this beast. That credit expansion worldwide is the cause of all these property bubbles.<br />
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Apparently, it's all about the foreign investors and the Fed is just an "affect" [sic] as one Facebook commenter put it.<br />
<br />
I don't want to dwell too much on this article since there are bigger fish to fry, but I will note this one line:<br />
<blockquote>
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Keep in mind that the U.S. Federal Reserve will likely want to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/27/us-interest-rates-federal-reserve-unchanged-economy">hold the line</a> on raising interest rates until after the November presidential election. </blockquote>
<blockquote>
That will keep the U.S. economy humming forward, which would help Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stave off a challenge from Donald Trump.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Oh yes, the Fed will "hold the line" on raising rates, but only because there's no other option. The Fed tried to raise rates late last year and the result was a little bit of chaos.<br />
<br />
Now, with the Brexit or whatever excuse they cling to, they can cut rates into negative territory, warning off any economic reality of scarcity and the unsustainability of providing credit where there are no adequate savings to back it up.<br />
<br />
But my real beef with this line is that an apparent neutral board of directors who are supposed to remain "independent" from government are holding off on certain monetary policies so the Democratic candidate can win.<br />
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Like it fucking matters.<br />
<br />
Donald Trump is today's Ronald Reagan: campaigns as a populist but will make peace with the establishment and govern like a neo-con.<br />
<br />
Anyway....<br />
<br />
The Fed can't raise rates without bankrupting the West and usher in a (much needed) economic depression.<br />
<br />
That doesn't quite work for Wall Street or the people who make money off cheap credit, plus it's not politically favourable so...<br />
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So? Back to Vancouver.<br />
<br />
Or Vancouverites who not only believe that housing prices will never fall, but that one of the only people who have predicted this fiasco is a "typical con bot" and an "idiot" and whatever he says, "do the opposite."<br />
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I am, of course, referring to <a href="http://www.straight.com/news/745281/former-mp-garth-turner-points-finger-government-crap-houses-costing-million-bucks">former MP Garth Turner</a>, blogger and author of "The Greater Fool"<br />
<br />
Like him or hate him, Turner has been on point (more or less) when it comes to Canada's housing bubble. And he's not jumping on the bandwagon, he's been singing this tune since at least 2010.<br />
<br />
Turner says, "There’s simply no data showing foreign guys caused houses to go ballistic, and overwhelming evidence Canadians have done this themselves (with the help of politicians)... Even the latest Van stats reveal locals and foreigners spent an identical amount per purchase, and Canadians outnumbered them by nine-to-one. Case closed."<br />
<br />
Indeed, case closed.<br />
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Vancouver's housing bubble isn't the fault of foreign buyers, and imposing a "head tax" on foreign investment will do nothing.<br />
<br />
As Turner writes, "In fact for decades, there’ve been strong pro-real estate measures enacted by every successive group of politicians, leading us directly to now—when the average family can no longer afford the average home... Artificially-low borrowing rates, government-backed mortgage insurance, legislated 5% down payments, RRSP homebuyer loans, first-timers grants, property tax rebates, land transfer tax exemptions—the list of interventions is endless. So now crap houses cost a million. Good job, government."<br />
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It's all about peace, order, and good government, right?<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (Canada's version of Freddie Mae and Fannie Mae) is finally admitting something might be wrong.<br />
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"Strong evidence of problematic conditions is seen in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Saskatoon and Regina," their report stated. "In Toronto and Vancouver, this is due to the combination of price acceleration and overvaluation. In Calgary, Saskatoon and Regina, this is due to the combination of overvaluation and overbuilding."<br />
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<br /></div>
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Actually, it's a combination of low-interest rates and the policies cited above by Garth Turner.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Why do Canadians, especially Vancouverites, think they're exempt from the laws of economics?</div>
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That somehow the laws of supply and demand, especially with loans and savings, are irrelevant?</div>
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This isn't going to end well. And I don't mean a real estate crash. I mean ignorant statist yuppies regarding themselves as "progressive" while calling for government overreach and power the likes of which human civilization hasn't seen since the days of Mao in China and Stalin in Russia.</div>
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<br /></div>
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This isn't hyperbole. This is the inevitable conclusion of all-around government bureaucracy. Even if Canada remains "peaceful" in the sense that we never see the likes of such a leader, there remains an economic calculation problem.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Politicians cannot and will not fix this problem. They helped create it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The only solution to scale back government power, legalize competing currencies, cut red-tape so anyone can start a bank and.... well I'm sure there's more we can do but let's take it one step at a time.</div>
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We can start by putting the Bank of Canada out of business. Forget new taxes or regulations on foreign buyers. Central banks are the cause of this mess. Everything else is an effect.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5931453687256232017.post-69951663037674207502016-07-28T20:38:00.001-04:002016-07-29T18:04:13.438-04:00No Bananas For You!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2016/07/27/theres-an-ontario-farm-growing-bananas.html">Terry Brake was in a car accident </a>that left him with brain damage. He had to relearn how to walk and speak.<br />
<br />
Can you imagine?<br />
<br />
I probably would have said fuck it. Do a bunch of drugs, fuck a bunch of whores, then put a gun to my head when the fun was over.<br />
<br />
But Terry obviously had more ambition than I.<br />
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As part of his recovery therapy, Brake’s doctor gave him a banana plant to grow.<br />
<br />
This sparked an idea that eventually saw Brake and his caregiver start a 40-hectare tropical fruit farm.<br />
<br />
In Ontario.<br />
<br />
Tropical fruit.<br />
<div>
<br />
In Ontario.<br />
<br />
Surprisingly enough, or perhaps not so surprisingly, the hard part isn’t growing tropical fruit in Ontario’s climate.<br />
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The hard part is getting through the government bureaucracy.</div>
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Now how much bureaucracy could there be?<br />
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It’s not like anyone has ever tried to commercially grow bananas and papayas before. And how regulated could small farmers markets be?<br />
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Located in Blyth, a three-hour drive west of Toronto, on Ontario’s “west coast,” the farm is six years old. <br />
<br />
“Our dream is to see (these fruits) growing everywhere and not have to depend on other countries and employ local people,” says Brake.<br />
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Noble cause, I won’t comment on the “shop local” fallacy for the sake of argument.<br />
<br />
For my beef isn’t with some Ontario farmer growing grapefruit and coconuts in a greenhouse. It’s with the busy-body, nanny-state, anti-progressive, anti-liberal Liberal Government of Kathleen Wynne (although let’s be honest, the same shit would occur under the PCs)<br />
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The farm is facing multiple charges from the Township of Huron and Huron County for “failing to obtain permits for its hoop houses,” as well as a charge from the Maitland Conservation Authority for “altering the wetland and clear-cutting.”<br />
<br />
First, we’ll begin with the latter since conservation authorities should not have this kind of power.<br />
<br />
If any changes I make to the wetland on my property affects the wetland on your property, then there’s a case to be made and we have centuries of tort law in our common law tradition to deal with such a “threat.”<br />
<br />
If one cuts down trees on one’s own property, that is one’s own business. It certainly isn’t the role of busybody bureaucrats to lay charges.<br />
<br />
Especially since “We do select cutting,” says Brake. “We have loggers cut trees from an area and we don’t cut from it again for 20 years. We noticed in the last six years, our maple trees have gotten bigger because they have more room to grow now.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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Imagine that. Private property owners actually having a long-term interest in their property...<br />
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And, of course, the heat from the wood keeps the tropical plants alive during winter, thereby reducing Ontario’s “carbon footprint” when it comes to importing tropical fruits.<br />
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But don’t tell Ontario bureaucrats that. They’re fucking stupid.<br />
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Second, there is the issue of the “hoop houses”<br />
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Apparently, the township's former building bureaucrat determined the hoop house wasn’t a permanent structure and wasn’t subject to commercial taxes.<br />
<br />
The new bureaucrat-in-charge has overruled the old one and now Blake, far from being a genuine entrepreneur, is a criminal facing a court date in October.<br />
<br />
Welcome to Canada, particularly Ontario, where wealth creation, environmental sustainability, and entrepreneurial innovation are met with charges from unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, some of whom are anti-environmental environmentalists.<br />
<br />
How about that.<br />
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In the meantime, there is an online petition supporting the farm, but anyone with any sense knows the state is going to do what the state wants to do.<br />
<br />
And if that means undermining a farm bringing local, tropical, food to people on a sustainable basis — so be it.<br />
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The cause of “progressivism” is too great to be derailed by pesky entrepreneurs and the consumers who have voluntarily purchased their product.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1