I enjoy reading your content , I find it fair and balanced , at times quite brutal in your honesty (including toward your own personal questions or shortcomings) I find it refreshing in todays polarized political discussion. Keep up the great work!
I wrote a big reply & then erased it because by the time I'd filled the box I realized that I'd just made clear to myself that Good Canadian Socialism just can't cut it. It was built for a different time and a different people. Too bad, I enjoyed being a Good Canadian Socialist. A lot more fire and desire are needed now.
Actually, I think all these structures are off by a fair bit. Also, and perhaps more importantly, the ground underneath them has shifted. Example: the origins of Democracy, in Greece, are really a lot closer to oligarchy than what we have in modern day. You had to be male (WWII changes everything), a citizen (Rome opens that up), own land (the Industrial Revolution and unions change that), hold a fairly narrow and generally common set of values (well, originally Socrates is the true rabble rouser, but the Internet supercharges that), and be Greek (I guess we can blame the Wright brothers or maybe it was really the British Empire?). So now you have to govern an ungovernable mess with too many opinions shared too frequently.
Can I be the only one who thinks we should take a collective breath and sit and think for a minute or two BEFORE we start shouting again? I guess I really am a radical for suggesting a societal time out. I think we can take a page from soup and stew. You can basically take whatever you have and make a delicious soup or stew. We've been doing that for millennia across most cultures I'm aware of. The tricks are: concentrate on only a few main ingredients/flavours (usually sweet and savoury, like an onion or mirepoix base with a meat finish), balance and bring out your spices and use them judiciously and most importantly allow time for the flavours to blend. Every soup or stew I know of is better the next day or at least after a few hours blending time. I think this last step is the one we're currently trying to cut short because we're in such a rush and it sours everything, just like soup.
Oh, and if I were making the soup, it'd be truly radical.
•Eliminate the corporation as a legal entity, to be replaced by a Lloyd's of London type syndicate structure with at least half the members of any one syndicate being Canadian and personally liable for all corporate actions. No more bankruptcies to hide corporate malfeasance and shirk liability. No more direct foreign ownership. Also eliminate all alter ego trusts, deemed resident trusts, etc.
•Make it much easier, with both less regulation and less taxation, to start small to medium businesses but much harder (and more heavily taxed) to create large entities (see above) with the possible exception of some startup priorities (see below). Start lots of regional small banks or just break up the Big 5. Make venture capital investment, bonds and commodity markets easier to access, depreciate stock markets, which are more of a casino at this point.
•The great firewall of Canada, control the flow of, specifically, false information. If a website rises above a certain amount of falsehoods in its reporting it's blocked. Let's say 10%. Goodbye outside social media, hello homegrown social media, that's quintessentially "nice." Construct a social media outlet that isn't based on collecting user data for marketing, addictive behaviour science and doesn't allow revenge porn, doxxing, etc., something that allows users to control their own data and narrative and allows for privacy and the right to be forgotten.
•Privatize Bombardier, include it in a vertical integration with Air Canada and make Air Canada only a regional/national airline where international flights are off limits and only bid on by other airlines. If you want to get around Canada, it's Air Canada, otherwise it's other airlines. But to make that affordable you need to produce the jets themselves at cost.
•Government has a vested interest in transportation routes and modes, increase all rail, regional air, road routes and maintenance, nationalize both CP and CN and increase lines and safety (it's been decimated under the current companies). Government should also fund a bunch of mass transit projects Canada wide as well as increasing charging infrastructure for EVs, all of this should be a national resource, not a corporate one, ever. Again, use Bombardier to create a lot of this stuff; busses, trains, charging stations, etc. Start building cars here. Hell, start building everything here. Eliminate any trade barriers between Provinces. If we're going to be a country let's be a country, not a collection of wholly independent states.
•Invest in chip fabrication for Canada, we have a lot of the resources for it, including fairly cheap electricity. Let's have one. Along the same lines we need at least one national lab for genetics and one for drug production/research. I'd say partner with outside companies on all of this.
If you want more action, make action more possible and easier to maintain. If you want more balance, get rid of the crazy or the overlarge. If you want more consideration, increase cooperation and collaboration.
This is awesome. I am definitely of the "gimmie a minute" school of thought, and, maybe it's the time of year, but the soup and stew analogy is right on.
I enjoy reading your content , I find it fair and balanced , at times quite brutal in your honesty (including toward your own personal questions or shortcomings) I find it refreshing in todays polarized political discussion. Keep up the great work!
Thanks Gil.
I wrote a big reply & then erased it because by the time I'd filled the box I realized that I'd just made clear to myself that Good Canadian Socialism just can't cut it. It was built for a different time and a different people. Too bad, I enjoyed being a Good Canadian Socialist. A lot more fire and desire are needed now.
I would have liked to read that. But this comment is clear and telling.
Closer to a radical pinko Commie, I'm afraid.
Actually, I think all these structures are off by a fair bit. Also, and perhaps more importantly, the ground underneath them has shifted. Example: the origins of Democracy, in Greece, are really a lot closer to oligarchy than what we have in modern day. You had to be male (WWII changes everything), a citizen (Rome opens that up), own land (the Industrial Revolution and unions change that), hold a fairly narrow and generally common set of values (well, originally Socrates is the true rabble rouser, but the Internet supercharges that), and be Greek (I guess we can blame the Wright brothers or maybe it was really the British Empire?). So now you have to govern an ungovernable mess with too many opinions shared too frequently.
Can I be the only one who thinks we should take a collective breath and sit and think for a minute or two BEFORE we start shouting again? I guess I really am a radical for suggesting a societal time out. I think we can take a page from soup and stew. You can basically take whatever you have and make a delicious soup or stew. We've been doing that for millennia across most cultures I'm aware of. The tricks are: concentrate on only a few main ingredients/flavours (usually sweet and savoury, like an onion or mirepoix base with a meat finish), balance and bring out your spices and use them judiciously and most importantly allow time for the flavours to blend. Every soup or stew I know of is better the next day or at least after a few hours blending time. I think this last step is the one we're currently trying to cut short because we're in such a rush and it sours everything, just like soup.
Oh, and if I were making the soup, it'd be truly radical.
•Eliminate the corporation as a legal entity, to be replaced by a Lloyd's of London type syndicate structure with at least half the members of any one syndicate being Canadian and personally liable for all corporate actions. No more bankruptcies to hide corporate malfeasance and shirk liability. No more direct foreign ownership. Also eliminate all alter ego trusts, deemed resident trusts, etc.
•Make it much easier, with both less regulation and less taxation, to start small to medium businesses but much harder (and more heavily taxed) to create large entities (see above) with the possible exception of some startup priorities (see below). Start lots of regional small banks or just break up the Big 5. Make venture capital investment, bonds and commodity markets easier to access, depreciate stock markets, which are more of a casino at this point.
•The great firewall of Canada, control the flow of, specifically, false information. If a website rises above a certain amount of falsehoods in its reporting it's blocked. Let's say 10%. Goodbye outside social media, hello homegrown social media, that's quintessentially "nice." Construct a social media outlet that isn't based on collecting user data for marketing, addictive behaviour science and doesn't allow revenge porn, doxxing, etc., something that allows users to control their own data and narrative and allows for privacy and the right to be forgotten.
•Privatize Bombardier, include it in a vertical integration with Air Canada and make Air Canada only a regional/national airline where international flights are off limits and only bid on by other airlines. If you want to get around Canada, it's Air Canada, otherwise it's other airlines. But to make that affordable you need to produce the jets themselves at cost.
•Government has a vested interest in transportation routes and modes, increase all rail, regional air, road routes and maintenance, nationalize both CP and CN and increase lines and safety (it's been decimated under the current companies). Government should also fund a bunch of mass transit projects Canada wide as well as increasing charging infrastructure for EVs, all of this should be a national resource, not a corporate one, ever. Again, use Bombardier to create a lot of this stuff; busses, trains, charging stations, etc. Start building cars here. Hell, start building everything here. Eliminate any trade barriers between Provinces. If we're going to be a country let's be a country, not a collection of wholly independent states.
•Invest in chip fabrication for Canada, we have a lot of the resources for it, including fairly cheap electricity. Let's have one. Along the same lines we need at least one national lab for genetics and one for drug production/research. I'd say partner with outside companies on all of this.
If you want more action, make action more possible and easier to maintain. If you want more balance, get rid of the crazy or the overlarge. If you want more consideration, increase cooperation and collaboration.
I like the airline, transportation, and chip manufacture ideas.
War in the era of capitalism and digitalism is different from war in the age of land wealth. We gotta have our own digital foundation.
This is awesome. I am definitely of the "gimmie a minute" school of thought, and, maybe it's the time of year, but the soup and stew analogy is right on.