Really interesting analysis. I hope it pans out. I agree we have little experience with the alien ideas of “Confucianism” and I’m not going to pretend I’m qualified to evaluate whether Mark Carney is or is not in fact “it”, but I’m definitely supportive of the idea that overwhelming bureaucracy is crippling in a way that few people in this country ever take the time to acknowledge much less do anything about, and the ones who do occasionally say something about it (typically libertarian-types) aren’t ones I would trust to actually remove said bureaucracy at all, as they typically want to do it for completely the wrong reasons. I certainly don’t love our mountain of regulations and policies but I struggle to see any other way of protecting ourselves from those within and outside of government who would do us harm. If this “Cabinet rule” as Carney calls it is the answer, I’m onboard and I eagerly await some results. But I still have significant concerns and reservations. I guess time will tell, but I’ll continue watching carefully.
My concern is a suspicion that a lot of the support for people like Trump, Poilievre, and other populists comes from the fact that ‘progressives’ don’t even acknowledge that the sclerotic ways of modern govt are doing things like driving up the cost of housing. In the third part of this series I’ll be talking about this. There’s a graph from Naxos polling that I find is really interesting—it seems to show a lot of the people who used to support Poilievre have moved not so much to Carney as to ‘undecided’.
Please note, I’m not completely sold on Carney. But I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt right now. I’m also of the opinion that if we won’t support politicians who at least say the right things, we are never going to get anyone in office that will do a good job.
Really interesting analysis. I hope it pans out. I agree we have little experience with the alien ideas of “Confucianism” and I’m not going to pretend I’m qualified to evaluate whether Mark Carney is or is not in fact “it”, but I’m definitely supportive of the idea that overwhelming bureaucracy is crippling in a way that few people in this country ever take the time to acknowledge much less do anything about, and the ones who do occasionally say something about it (typically libertarian-types) aren’t ones I would trust to actually remove said bureaucracy at all, as they typically want to do it for completely the wrong reasons. I certainly don’t love our mountain of regulations and policies but I struggle to see any other way of protecting ourselves from those within and outside of government who would do us harm. If this “Cabinet rule” as Carney calls it is the answer, I’m onboard and I eagerly await some results. But I still have significant concerns and reservations. I guess time will tell, but I’ll continue watching carefully.
My concern is a suspicion that a lot of the support for people like Trump, Poilievre, and other populists comes from the fact that ‘progressives’ don’t even acknowledge that the sclerotic ways of modern govt are doing things like driving up the cost of housing. In the third part of this series I’ll be talking about this. There’s a graph from Naxos polling that I find is really interesting—it seems to show a lot of the people who used to support Poilievre have moved not so much to Carney as to ‘undecided’.
Please note, I’m not completely sold on Carney. But I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt right now. I’m also of the opinion that if we won’t support politicians who at least say the right things, we are never going to get anyone in office that will do a good job.