Not to be too pedantic, but “The Prince” was intended as a sincere operating manual for governing (not a satire in any way).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince
The shocking lack of morality in the book is what made it rather infamous. It was not a joke at all.
That’s not as big a problem as you’d think because they have those scooters at the supermarket. You can ask another shopper to reach stuff on the upper shelves for you.
Unlike the USA, Canada doesn’t have any legal countermeasures against monopoly, duopoly or oligopoly. In many areas of Canadian life, citizens choose between one or two companies for phones, 6 or 7 banks, 5 insurance companies etc. For health care, pensions and education you’re basically dealing with government programs and they are compulsory. It’s all too big to fail and completely uncompetitive. For example, this huge rich telecoms in Canada could never compete outside of the country…they only survive through regulatory capture and mega corruption of the government.
A generation ago, much of the attraction of Canada was the fact that things like education, medical care and social housing were open to both native born and immigrants and the standards were good. People would move to Canada and cheerfully move down the social ladder with the idea that their kids would later have upward mobility. And life could be ok.
A lot of the social safety nets were paid for purely from population growth. They didn’t have a huge pot of saved money to dip into, they take this year’s taxes and pay out current year benefits. So immigrants were coming into the country and paying for elder Canadian’s old age pensions and end of life health care. But at least there was a perception of a social contract and it would eventually benefit these immigrants.
However, now its clear that an entire generation of elder Canadians have pulled this ladder up behind them. Their own kids and grandkids are thrown to the lions now that all these bubbles are either exploiting workers / young people or (in the case of education and health care) popping and leaving everyone to deal with anarchy and collapse.
There is now a phenomenon where immigrants pack up and leave Canada and go back home. Sometimes their kids also leave. A lot of other nations have improved a lot and it can be better to be retired back in their place of origin rather than to face the Canadian systems and high cost of living.
In the case of this particular story, notice that nobody cares about the fact that these government registered colleges were running outright scams? Like charging students application fees, running entirely fake and low quality courses, reporting false and inflated enrollment to the government to scam extra money and all that…that was fine. It didn’t matter how bad it was for these students or the native Canadians who were stuck in the same school system.
They are only fixing this to reduce demand for housing, period. A certain class of Canadians are worth something and everyone else can suffer.
But what if you make a department of Honey Bun Efficiency? There is surely a simple solution for your fiscal crisis.
I have noticed this in my own area. Forests in this area are logged in a cycle spanning multiple decades.
What I picked up on is that when patches are logged during years where the summer has droughts and heat waves, new trees do not regenerate. When summers are colder and wetter the forest will grow back normally.
So there is a clear mosaic where there are 10 and 12 year old bare patches and 5 year old patches where the trees are shooting up and doing well, and sometimes the new logging scars look to have the older forests and the old cuts seem like they just happened.
He had 20+ open federal level investigations at the time of the national elections, and basically I believe his entry into national politics was most likely motivated as an attempt to circumvent the consequences. Getting embedded into government was his “get out of jail” card.
It’s left to the individual states to push him out now. Just as a practical matter, the federal level is too corrupt to hold his companies to account.
The USA is highly dependent on China for animal feed supplements (all the vitamins and minerals and amino acids that they add to raw grain to make it a complete diet for factory farm raised animals).
About 50% of all the staple crops are exported, and that market will collapse. Farmers may choose not to plant anything if the market prices are too low to cover their operations.
Normally all the trucks and train cars get filled up and take our food products to the ports , empty, then fill up with imports. Since we will not be exporting, the costs of running empty trucks and trains all over will double the transport cost components. Even for distribution of domestic food items the transport system will not be efficient any more.
It’s a complex system of interdependencies that will unravel in unexpected ways.
We are definitely not covered for what will happen.
We could tolerate everything except intolerance itself.
You and I completely agree, it seems.
So how come you think it wouldn’t be a very good piece of public policy to be crystal clear and honest about that?
Like why can’t the state say: “we are not subsidizing this business with taxpayer money any more, because of their ethics”?
You can make a legal case against Tesla for accounting or SEC violations or tax fraud…but that’s not taking a moral stand.
But why do you want to attack Musk though?
Are you mad because he cheats on his taxes or his wives? We should probably broadcast that our only problem is with his taxes. That would be a better way, right? Like, dont call him out morally, tolerate that and just look for a legal case?
Do you see the problem?
That is to say I’m no stranger to “voting with my wallet”.
“A little fascism is okay when it’s my side doing it” and I say that is not okay.
You are DEEPLY confused.
Fascism is literally the system of government where businesses and the state merge. So Tesla has received over $20B in direct government subsidies and the CEO is part of the federal government.
There is no “free marketplace”, not any more.
Voting with your wallet, like fascism is literally that. Literally. This is the mechanism.
This is all going to have to change to get out of this deal. People seem to actually not even know what fascism even looks like.
Just wow. You are parroting the exact ideology. This is the actual mechanism they use.
Right now the state of NY is trying to revoke the special deal they gave Tesla’s dealers to extricate themselves (the governnent) from propping up his scam business. The state subsidizes his operation and they are merely trying to end that. That’s how it looks when you stop fascists – you cut ties between the businesses and the government.
The first headlines stated it wasn’t a cyber attack, but the latest headlines say it hasn’t been ruled out. (Reported by Reuters that a cyber attack is at least possible.)
To say the least, there should be many, many safeguards, backups, redundancies and margins for error.
For a multiple country grid down scenario something very strange could be happening.
In the last place I lived, even the sewer lifting pumps also ran on electric and there was no backup. So once certain tanks and cisterns filled up and the pumps didn’t kick on, the system quit working. The fresh water tanks would keep fresh water pressure for 2-3 days (gravity fed) but could not recharge/refill without power. The whole system only worked if there was reliable electrical supply .
In that location every cell tower ran on its own backup gas generator, so after a handful of hours the gas supply would run out and each tower would also fall off until a technician could get fuel delivered.
As OC stated, “The shops haven’t done anything to warrant revoking their licenses and rat’s [Musk’s] activities are totally unrelated.”
Yes, but see, I disagree. Musk’s activities are related. Sorry, but that’s a dumb opinion, I just can’t even see how anyone can believe that.
But trying to slide that in as an assumed proposition is very important to your argument, because otherwise you are allowing an open Nazi to run a large business unchecked.
I defend Musk’s God given right to be a Nazi, but I don’t think there shouldn’t be a consequence for it. A civilization is allowed to respond to this information.
No, these two things are not morally equivalent. This is well studied, start here:
If Shitler isn’t angry and thinking of suing you for what you did to him, you’re openly doing things wrong. They precisely should state that it’s revenge so that he knows he can never prevail no matter if he wins in court. Like, the door must be closed for all time. It must be a clearly sent message that it is a personal sanction.
Reverse cause and effect. Wake up. They are already dismantling DEI and citizenship and due process and the courts and on and on. Now it’s your move in response.
They have gotten this far precisely because of the lack of spine in their opponents. They are absolutely leveraging tolerance and a rules based ordered retreat from people who don’t believe what they believe.
If you aren’t a bigot, racist or Nazi, they expect passivism, banging on powerless law books and some nasty bumper stickers as a response.
But to just revoke them as retaliation for musk’s unrelated bullshit doesn’t sit right with me.
It should.
Rules and laws come from our values. If a company isn’t moral or ethical, retaliation and consequences are exactly what needs to happen. And we should create new rules and laws to make sure they are forced out.
You do not normalize Nazis.
The royal “we”. Interesting.