I deeply appreciate that you took the response in the context it was meant. The medium of text is hard sometimes and when I see a rant emerging from my passion I worry that it can be misconstrued.

The NDP had to work with what they had. Having never had a majority, they couldn’t pass any of their bills. I can bet my top dollar that they would have done something about the bread price fixing, about the price gouging at the groceries, about minimum wage employees not getting any reward for working and keeping stores open for the public during a gobal pandemic.

This is a specific area of complaint that I have with Singh. Because this area is a no-brainer win for them but they played it so incredibly centrist.

What we need from the food security issue — people not being able to afford food — is actual change. Trudeau and Singh were very happy to bring up the CEOs to lecture them on how mean they were, but this was a PR stunt not actual change.

In this case I believe there are two approaches that make sense. One would be to use a market-oriented approach and use competition laws to break up monopolists and prevent mergers and ensure that regulations do not stifle new entrants.

The other approach would be to have the government to use the grain that we grow in Canada and hire Canadians to bake that into bread and sell the bread at a break-even rate. And not just for bread, any type of essential food product that the market is failing to deliver. Like a national scale Farmers Market.

But the NDP doesn’t propose that they propose price caps. Price caps betray a fundamentally ignorant understanding of how markets work, and could cause real harm from food shortages.

However I am convinced from reading Carney’s book that he understands the market-oriented solution I outlined earlier. I have not seen specifics on his plan in this area but I am confident that he knows what a good market-oriented plan would be.

But this is why I say that I want the NDP (and hell even the CPC if I’m dreaming) to put out better alternatives. Because if Carney is elected and fails on this we need to jettison him and replace him wiry someone who can deliver results. Becuse results is what we need.

They also would like to implement better tax laws so wealthy people pay their fair share.

Agreed. Specifically I believe a land value tax and other wealth tax, along with a crackdown on tax havens is absolutely needed. The NDP should begin and end every speech on this point and hell use it as a comma.

Yeah what you suggested is pretty darn radical. Seizing properties and things like that is too much. This will scare away any foreign business that wants to establish themselves here and chase away much needed jobs and investments.

This is a good point and you’re absolutely correct that we need to ensure that overly punitive measures don’t scare away new entrants either domestic or foreign.

So yeah seizing a company should not be the first resort but it should be on the table for cases of extreme and persistent corruption. And maybe that wouldn’t be the favourite on Bay Street but I can imagine the general public being on board for this.

Because people are genuinely sick of the status quo. I can’t prove this but in my head canon, if this election was Charlie Angus vs JT vs PP, I think the LPC would be wiped off the map and the NDP would have a real shot at winning. Maybe that’s a stupid thing to believe, I’m not a pollster but that’s the energy I get from talking with my friends and family and acquaintances.

You made many other good points but I have to leave it at that for now. I appreciate your perspective.

“Schadenfreude” would be a great name for a roller coaster

An obscenely rich asshole — one who is currently dismantling the democratic institutions of a country where many my friends and family live — is asking who derives joy from his company collapsing around him.

The answer to his question is… us. We do. The punchline is that the people taking joy in his self-inflicted failure are the entirety of his former customer base and beyond.

When I posted this in bsky last night it found some extremely modest virality so I thought some folks here might enjoy as well.

In their defence, after meeting with Danielle Smith and Kevin O’Leary… can we really blame the Americans for thinking we were dumber than a sack of hammers and would fall for it?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Canadian MPs vote very consistently along party lines – so with few exceptions I don’t believe choosing based on your local representative is the most rational choice. This is why I stress the party leadership here. However, you aren’t a robot and you don’t have to go with what some asshole keyboard warrior like me thinks is a rational choice. If you have a strong belief in a particular local candidate, they can be where the next generation of leadership comes from.

So what you’re saying is, the NDP is your preferred party, but you’re voting Liberal because you think Carney has better political clout than Jagmeet Singh.

I feel like this is willful misrepresentation of what I was saying here. Instead I am saying that Singh has not demonstrated the specific leadership skills that I believe are essential for success in the coming years, nor has the policy priorities indicated a good path forward. And that while he seems to be a genuine and kind man with good intentions, that he is not a good choice in the here and now – not in policy and not in personality.

The NDP is not my preferred political party, but a version of it might be. An NDP that didn’t play for the centre with half-measure solutions, but instead an NDP that was authentic and said fuck galen weston if he steals from us by price fixing bread we take his company and put it up for auction and let someone else try. And if that person can’t figure out how to sell bread than the government can hire some canadians to bake bread and sell it at cost from the ruined husk of HBC stores. And if no one can figure out how to unfuck the housing market than they can just step in and make homes themselves.

And they can expand Canada Post to deliver packages cheaply from coast to coast to enable small businesses to thrive. And they can seize factories owned by Americans when they tariff us and make our own shit in them with our steel and aluminum. They can nationalize industries like fibre internet which tend towards monopolies, and they can break apart companies that have consolidated into oblivion. And they can hire Canadians to write open-source software to replace expensive american consultants contracts that drain money from our governments at all levels. They could apply an export levy to unprocessed raw material exports, especially non-renewable ones because we don’t fucking need to sell a limited resource on the cheap.

And they can hire people to maintain national parks, and hire bus drivers to connect communities. And have sharply progressive income tax and throw in some wealth taxes and land value taxes and seize assets of companies using tax havens. And we can throw out policies the Americans pressured us into such as insanely long copyright laws which stifle culture and free expressive. We could ban foreign ownership of our media institutions. We could levy significant taxes on the techbro companies that got into a position of monopoly by using venture capital and if they refuse to pay we can block them and canadians can find new platforms. We could radically expand the CBC to make it a glowing showcase of Canadian culture both for independent and commercial content. And I could go on and on for fucking ever.

If the NDP had even a fraction of that, and Carney drops the ball with his market-based approach, then I’m fucking there for it. Because even though I’m a market-oriented person like Carney is – if people like me drop the ball, we need the ball to be picked up by someone who can use it.

But that’s not the reality we have right now. The NDP of right now is playing at being centrist and in my opinion is doing a relatively lousy job of it. And maybe that’s because the things I suggested are too radical for Canadians? But I see the enthusiasm for the optimism of someone like Charlie Angus here or Bernie Sanders or AOC in the US and I have to think maybe we could fucking try? Because it was ever gonna work it’s got to be when Canadians feel like the system has beaten them down.

Sorry if this seems too aggressive. My intended tone is inspirational, not a negative attack on your question. Because I think the core of what you’re saying is correct. I want those things and think Canada needs that energy, but also I don’t want the current version of what the NDP is offering.

I am fully aware that openly supporting the person who is currently leading in the pools is hardly a daring or provocative take. I don’t expect this to change the world, I find personal value in structuring my thoughts in an organized way and sharing them with people. If you read it, thanks for reading, if not I’m not offended. Cheers.

Absolutely.

I have an unfinished bonkers-length ramble in my draft folder about how I failed to see how this was unfolding in real time. It was so easy to just assume the best would happen, that someone would wave a magic wand and make it all better, that they’d wake up before going too far.

At least we are paying attention now!

Did you write that?

Either way I’m a proponent of trying to do what is right regardless of what is the most likely to help.

By sharing or writing that you
can’t control if anyone who reads it or if it would change any minds. But by spreading the message you’re being active and engaged in what may be the most impactful election in our lifetimes. Even if it doesn’t change anyone else this can change you.

So yeah, hell yes it helps.

Ok yeah that makes more sense, I was thinking along the lines of a chemical leak or something.

How does this even happen?

You’re right that it’s not the same intensity of stupid. But it’s still the same kind of stupid, one that says that we are eager to break commitments for short-term benefits.

Because while we may be in good company in having slow progress towards Paris, if we speed in the opposite direction from the people we need to be allied with — they will not stand with us.

Best wishes to you and yours. Having been through that move — likewise with young kids — it’s not a simple endeavour.

Feel free to reach out here or in DMs if you have any questions about the process.

Absolutely, with this site being a good example of such an alternative approach. I think it’s a good clarification you highlighted that may have been underserved in my original piece.

The technologies involved in the websites I listed are largely free and open source. Many of them can be operated relatively inexpensively.

So we don’t need to cut and paste these things exactly, but we can use them for inspiration of what to build next. What’s been stopping us is the inertia of the network effect — why would I comment on Lemmy and not Reddit; Reddit has the people and so that’s where the discussion goes.

What I was trying to get at is that this is a remarkably unique opportunity to overcome that network effect. People want to sever themselves from American dependencies — not just in Canada but in Europe and further abroad. So it’s an enormous opportunity to bring change — for a technologist this can be very exciting!

Well I moved back in 2018 after making the decision to unwind my commitments in the us back in 2016…

So I think the book has closed on “fad” for me at least.

But anyhow, don’t let me stop you — keep on licking them boots. Get em all nice and polished.

As a former ex-pat Canadian who worked for a major US tech company, this was my message to my former colleagues. I thought some folks here might enjoy it as well.

Agreed. My concern is that he and his team are closely allied with MAGA and embrace. their propaganda. With his weak personality and his desperation to win the praise of his ideological idols, I expect with a high degree of certainty they will let the US completely steamroll us.

I see lil PP much like someone like Mitch McConnell in the US senate who theoretically knew better but stood aside, and enabled bad things to happen just because it was the “same team.”

Maybe you’re right… I don’t know. I wasn’t kidding when said part of me agreed with you from the start. But regardless, we can’t change the past.

Perhaps you can choose different words than me and reach the Canadian right in a way to help them understand where the path they are going down leads. That they need to choose a different path. I’ll stand with you when you do.

When it comes to current geopolitics, as for climate change, I’m struggling to hold on to any belief in our collective willingness to do something, anything about what’s coming.

I’ll try to shine some optimism here.

The absolute collapse of Tesla sales around the world is inspiring. People are willing to change and vote with their wallets. US tourism and exports are suffering. Europe and Canada and others are collaborating on security and trade.

Canadians have recognize the danger we are in and have began to rally against the weak-kneed PP and his fellow MAGA. Even most of our right-wing Premiers are working for Canada and against this.

It’s not all lost, not for us. Not if we keep pushing — and I’m going to keep pushing.

Not too long ago I would have made the same argument you did here. Now, I’m less sure.

Part of me is still inclined to agree, but another part wonders if they were just better at recognizing patterns and acknowledging the kinds of difficult truths contained in my op-ed.

Bush2 did instigate a war which coincided with getting public support for his second term. He only got into power in the first place because their courts decided not to count the votes on a partisan split. Republicans deny US citizens in Washington DC or Puerto Rico the right to vote, gerrymander districts to disenfranchise minorities, and work to limit ballot access whenever the demographics suit them.

Is this fascism? Especially with the benefit of hindsight it feels at least a little like the beginnings of it.

How much of my willingness to stand up and say that here and now, these patterns are fascism — how much comes from the fact that their barrels are pointed at me now? Now it’s serious, because a middle-aged white guy like me is affected? At least part of my brain is telling me that actually no I was the coward with my head in the sand the whole time.

In the end I don’t know for certain you’re wrong. But either way, many of us in Canada are seeing this now and we can stand up to it. It might be too late for the Americans but it isn’t for us.