ninthant @ ninthant @lemmy.ca

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4 mo. ago

The challenge for the prairies is that we need to undo the brain rot that has told the people in those provinces their only future is in servicing American oil extractors.

There is a story for these provinces. The Norwegian or Saudi model of having the oil extraction being state-owned — and then using the profits to enrich the population — has been tremendously successful.

Alberta and Saskatchewan control these rights in their provinces and the centre and left should be screaming this from the hilltops. The oil and minerals are non-renewable and they should focus on getting value to enrich their own populations, not rush to produce at a discount in order to enrich American shareholders.

Perhaps it’s a failure of imagination on my part.

What I see from the NDP for example are extremely poorly considered centre-left policies that don’t go far enough but yet at the same time are ignorant of the economics they want to continue working within.

Take for example their proposal for national rent control. This is a disastrously ignorant policy proposal inside the context of a market economy as it will instruct the markets to halt any future construction of rental units.

Whereas I believe what they need to be doing is either what Carney is proposing, or giving up on the idea of markets entirely and using socialist tools to directly build the homes that the market has failed to build.

But I’ll take your advice to heart and listen if someone comes up with an alternative I’ve not considered.

If Carney gets a majority and is unable to substantively turned things around, I’m giving up on capitalism.

I sincerely believe we will never have a better candidate to represent the perspective of directed market economics. As the sportsball chant goes: “If he can’t do it, no one can.”

Which is separate from saying everyone should agree with it.

I’d love to see a similarly highly-competent socialist economics nerd leading the NDP in our future.

No, it doesn’t. There are two important differences.

PP is a devotee of the cult of the free market, that markets are best and all we need to do is remove restrictions on them. Carney believes markets should serve to people, that the end goal isn’t just naked efficiency but they we need market forces directed to get human-centric outcomes.

This is extensively covered in Carney’s 2021 book “Values” which I encourage everyone to read in order to understand the important differences in these approaches. Carney’s approach is an explicit rejection of the idiotic free market cultism of PP and his ilk.

Another critical difference is in competence. Carney is an experienced leader who was so well-regarded in his field that the UK selected him as the first ever non-local to run the Bank of England. Whereas PP can’t even manage to handle questions from friendly press, let alone lead something.

So no, they are not the same. You might still want to prefer an explicitly socialist approach that rejects markets entirely, which is a legitimate perspective for sure. But aside from the revolution party no one is really advocating that at the federal level.

I’m not sure why you deleted that, because you’re absolutely correct.

If not for being targeted, my own country would have elected a shitbird and we’d have become the lone US toady as the world isolated both of our countries, while the Americans treated us like an open pit mine.

So it’s not that I think my countrymen are inherently superior. The Albertans who want to create a landlocked country — deeply vulnerable to American bullying — are acting dumber than the poverty stricken folks supporting Spraytan.

And it’s not that I don’t trust democracy, I do trust that it’s reflecting will of the people. The American voters have shown a lack of priority to respecting their own commitments worldwide and a dislike of the world order that placed them at the centre. So while many in the country do have that commitment, their inability to keep the deplorables out of power means that the rest of the world can have no illusions about depending on them going forward.

Carney has taken questions from mainstream media, as well as from overly partisan hostile alternative media.

PP gets a friendlier media, does fewer questions, and still fails to do anything beyond tossing out well-rehearsed empty slogans and stammering out word salad.

It’s not just money, it’s the realization that we are nothing to them. It’s the betrayal of seeing someone you thought was a friend stab you in the front without remorse.

So I do believe it is different this time. Perhaps history will reveal you to be correct — PP yipping about being “Americas best friend” indicates at some think the old status quo will return — but I don’t think so.

I’d throw in greed and ignorance into the mix but yes

Oh, you misunderstand me.

Absolutely yes, people will continue to trade with the US after a few years. Hell, they are still doing it today!

What’s different is the level of dependence the rest of the world will enable in the future. Their special status no longer applies; and there is no trust they will be good actors in the future.

Long term cooperation will be built in anticipation of likely irrational and volatile behaviour. Something like the integrated North American auto industry or aligning with the US as primary defence contractor or intelligence, these mistakes will be not be repeated.

There will continue to be trade, but across the world a higher priority will be given to domestic production and alternative suppliers for critical products. For example Canada had been slowly retreating from our protectionist policies on dairy — but instead I expect these to now be strengthened. I expect to see a stronger push away from reliance on the US for military equipment, semiconductors, financial and digital services, and more.

I need to hire you to summarize my lengthy pretentious blathering into a nice concise sentence. :)

From my perspective in Canada, there’s nothing the US can do to unfuck this situation.

Let’s say folks unseated Comrade Spraytan somehow and reversed all of his policies. I would still never trust their country again with economic or security dependence in the way that much of the world has enabled in the status quo.

It was the American voters who selected this foolishness, not once but twice. They and their country will not be trusted for a generation or maybe longer. They threw away a very good thing for them because of abject greed, and now it’s gone forever.

Respectfully, I don’t believe that’s something you want to say or joke about in a public forum.

Well said. With people like you out there helping to stop it, we will dump him and his maga ideology in the trash where it belongs

I believe this is the first instance where PP been open about using his weapon against our fundamental rights.

I mean yes we’ve long suspected it would be this way, and he’s hinted at it before.

But this is no time to be smug. Our rights are under attack, and most Canadians don’t even understand it’s happening. So I challenge you to change the attitude, and try to reach out to people who don’t understand section 33 and explain to them what’s at stake and why they must vote to stop this.

Canadian media is busy telling you the most important issue in politics this week is two low-level LPC staffers making a mistake.

But meanwhile, our fundamental rights are under attack. Ostensibly to enact some American-made crime policy that caused widespread harm there and is broadly understood to be a failure.

This is important, and it affects each and every one of you reading this. Your rights are at stake.

Get out there and vote. If you can’t stomach strategic voting to cross party lines, or even if you dislike the choices available at the local or leadership level — go and vote regardless. When Canadians reject this evil and send PP and his MAGA goons to the dumpster, know that you were an active participant in the rejection.

Over-estimating is just as dangerous. People -- and our governments -- keep getting surprised by this pattern of behaviour because we pig-headedly refuse to admit the truth.

In order for our countries to plan economic matters, and defense and intelligence and more -- we need to expect the same patterns of stupidity and irrationality as we've seen demonstrated time and time again. This doesn't mean all the actions will be stupid -- folks like Putin other intelligent evildoers are in the mix of those who are manipulating the president. But they have shown a lack of ability to fully control the irrational behaviour from surfacing in policy whims.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me thousands of times... c'mon at some point we have to learn.

We’ve all been conditioned to not accuse our political opponents of being stupid.

For one, it can cause you to underestimate your opponents — you don’t want to be caught unawares of some secret plan.

Second, there’s an aspect of pettiness to just labeling your opponents dumb. Most often people attribute “stupid” to “I don’t understand this”. For example, the idea of it being stupid for poor people in Kentucky or whatever to vote against their interests and aid billionaires and oppose their own healthcare — when it’s not stupid, it’s a misunderstanding of how important identity politics are to these groups.

Third, there’s a pushback to the “Jon Stewart effect”, where we sit back and laugh about how our opponents are dumb and we smugly know we are smarter. This is an excuse to do nothing, and it’s an ugly impulse and we must fight it.

But all this conditioning — and more — has led us to a point where we can’t actually recognize stupid when it’s staring us in the face.

The video doesn’t show evidence of this being a planned out endeavour.

For it to be grift, those people would have had to benefitted from the dip in some way. But that’s not what this shows, it’s just billionaires having their shares go down in value because of trumps idiocy and then back up from the whiplash when he erratically reversed course.

Spraytan is trying to ingratiate himself to these rich assholes by taking credit for their gains by wilfully ignoring their losses were inflicted by him.

This is not to say that no one in the administration is using this for their own gains. It’s entirely likely that some are.

I’m just super sick of this narrative that Trump secretly has some master plan when we have 40+ years of well documented evidence about how stupid this man is.

Oh my gourd please stop

He is a failed nepo baby whose only successes in life were being a hired hand on a reality tv show and accidentally stumbling into politics via undisguised racism.

He

Is

A

Fucking

Moron