bitwise

Unfortunately, I think you're right. As long as property can be owned indefinitely with inconsequential payments into the system (property tax), the race to own useful land will be the last chance for people to establish their own rent-seeking behaviour.

Eventually, the bottom of the pyramid gets crushed or gives up trying to hold the rest of it up. Guess we'll find out soon enough :(

I'll admit that nothing I've come up with was something I couldn't immediately poke gaping holes in.

The problem with any economic system is that there are always weaknesses that knowledgable people can exploit if they're not concerned with those who are hurt by the strain that exploitation adds to that system. Ultimately, the battle is the attempt to impart a near-universal understanding of the negatives and positives of greed and how to best control it to our mutual benefit.

Capitalism is failing in this goal because it requires the promise of endless growth, but can't meet this promise in the physical world, so now it must grow in the virtual/abstract sense. People's control over their own lives and their access to society are quickly becoming a tiered subscription, instead of a goal we work towards of our own volition.

Cynical capitalists might argue that this was always the case, but it was previously a consequence of a natural system instead of one engineered by an "owner class" to extract value for a select few that don't have to participate to enjoy the rewards. Once we had passed the tipping point in which new businesses rarely grow to match existing mega-firms before being bought or crushed, we had essentially locked in the next generation of nobility.

Really, we should be doing what we did in the beginning of the previous century; tax the hell out of the rich and get capital moving again (this, of course, solves nothing long-term).

You're not woefully ignorant, you're correct.

This is the thing people keep missing with those prior experiments; their limited nature insulated from the negative consequences of the devaluation of money because neighbouring communities were meta-stable under the current strategy.

The second we have universal basic income, money will devalue until the significance of that money essentially trends towards zero in terms of impact.

In other words, we'll make the "free" money worthless, which will cause hyperinflation or require extreme market controls that traditionally haven't done much but stifle economic activity.

You never play a game using someone else's rules. You either change the rules or change the game.

Telegraphed?

The problems with mass shootings are stem from psychological problems. These problem stem from a culture that normalized posting photos on facebook posing with firearms. The point of these posts is to appear intimidating which associates firearms with power over others. This puts people that engage in this behavior one bad day from going on a killing spree.

You know that Canadians have had these kinds of firearms for decades, right? The guns themselves aren't the problem, it's the violent rhetoric. Facebook is definitely a problem, and I wouldn't care if they banned that instead (though I imagine it would be a far less popular move). Addressing the root cause would be more beneficial, instead of treating the entire adult population with undue suspicion and fear. Besides, you can already report unstable people with firearms to local police, and if they decide to investigate, they'll confiscate those firearms pre-emptively.

So firearms need to be regulated similarly to tobacco. We don't want tacticool firearms for people to pose with on facebook, which starts them down a dark path. Ideally firearms should be lame looking, and not have the capability of killing large numbers of people. Many weapons aren't suitable for hunting, but pose a significant danger if used for killing sprees have been banned.

I don't own firearms for mass killing. It's a sport that I enjoy that requires a unique blend of practical skills that translate to other parts of life. Are firearms dangerous weapons? Yes, that's why we have licencing programs that require training and education. You know, kinda like cars.

Lame-looking guns still kill just fine, and these bans haven't removed all semi-automatics anyway. The SKS is still non-restricted; it was left alone because it's incredibly popular with First Nations hunters, but that doesn't mean Mr. Mass Shooter can't pick one up to replace his AR-15 or 9mm PCC.

And yeah, guns get across the border. This is also illegal, so not sure why you're trying to make a point about it being somehow hypocritical to have both owning weapons suited for mass killings be illegal while smuggling guns is also illegal.

The bans don't stop the crime, that's the point. Taking guns from lawfully licenced people won't impact the crime statistics because they're almost entirely absent from those statistics. Spending the gun buyback money on increased border enforcement would've been a more effective method.

If you don't like it, go move to the US and have your kids go to schools where they need to do mass shooting drills.

Telling me to move to the US to enjoy mass shootings is not a reasonable or stable response to my objection to the assault on gun ownership in Canada.

What I like about Canada's gun culture is that it's focused on safe use and ownership of firearms. The irony is that we try very hard not to be like Americans in that respect, but we're still villified as if we're the same simply because we have/want firearms.

Not everyone has the luxury of buying meat at a grocery store, and not everyone is silly enough to think carrying a bolt-action rifle in the woods is sufficient enough for safe predator control.

Finally, if you know anyone who has a really fast car, and doesn't race it anywhere but the racetrack, would you ban those fast cars because someone could do something illegal with them? After all, propaganda films glorifying illegal street racing like The Fast and Furious are programming impressionable young minds to drive recklessly on our roads, threatening to make every commute a deadly gamble!

Reposting my comment here.

https://lemmy.ca/comment/14701904

The propaganda to encourage USians to see us as the enemy has already begun in full force. Don't expect them to grow spines anytime soon.

This is the government that banned semi-automatic firearms for licenced citizens even though the gun violence is almost exclusively committed with smuggled firearms from the US.

I don't think they want to draw attention to that distinction because it undermines their political assault on lawful ownership of firearms in Canada.

No plata. Only plomo for Cheeto Benito.

Update: https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/21/politics/trump-fires-top-us-general-cq-brown/index.html

The loyalty purge has begun; I wonder if our military leadership is smart enough to see where this is going?

I was thinking like this a few weeks ago but with more thought I think we are geographically too difficult to invade by force.

It's unfortunately much the opposite; our geography makes us easy to divide and conquer through a combination of the Canadian Shield being difficult to develop on, and the Trans Canada highway being a single point of failure.

https://youtu.be/550EdfxN868

I know the video is about invading the US, but it covers the general strategy the US could easily use to prevent troop movements between the western and eastern parts of Canada.

The rest of the world would also have boots on the ground here to help us out.

The US Navy could easily blockade or destroy the entirety of Europe's combined naval forces in a matter of days. Large-scale troop and equipment transport to bring reinforcement would be extremely unlikely to work, and Europe's militaries know this.

Also I think the vast majority of Americans would just refuse the order to do it.

20 years ago, Ukrainians would never have entertained the idea that Russia would invade and annex them. Many families lived, and continue to live, across both countries. Pernicious propaganda combined with authoritarian rule eventually removed the risk of sufficiently organized opposition.

Will it take 20 years for the US oligarchy to do the same? It's only been two months and we've gone from mutual cooperation to booing each other's anthems in sports games and AI-generated pictures of geese smashing eagles.

Increased trade with China at the US' expense will be the grain of truth buried in Trump's lies about Canada being owned and run by China (it doesn't need to be true, he just needs a fact he can grossly misinterpret, and often, not even that).

I wouldn't underestimate just how thoroughly ignorant and upset many Americans are. A little push in the right direction and the promise of wealth, even if ill-gotten, might be all they need.

I wish I shared in the optimism, but I could easily see them invading, and treating this land as an exploitable frontier. Incentivizing millions of their own citizens to move to their new colony to develop it for their own personal enrichment would mean we could quickly find ourselves outnumbered and displaced.