Never expect sarcasm to carry in simple text. Emoticons exist for this very reason.
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- Thread starter Sativa Quemador
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Never expect sarcasm to carry in simple text. Emoticons exist for this very reason.
The setback might be temporary but I'd see it as a temporary costly setback that would teach us a lesson. Hell, the first thing I know that the majority would do is grab my guns and then we'd just have to wait until food and lumber prices jump up and a good chunk of our mineral resources becomes economically inviable. I probably won't get'em back, but the next generation would.
A constitution prevents a tyranny of the majority. The system that we have is severely disproportional. Bottom line is that if people don't get to determine how the country is run, why bother even pretending we have a democracy?
We don't have a Democracy. We have a Constitutional Monarchy. We also don't have direct representation by vote, but rather weighted representation by region, for a very valid reason. A 'temporary costly setback' would have become a permanently broken economy for us, had it happened during the recent crash. In fact if the bank reforms that Harper had been pushing for prior to his election had come to pass, it would have broken our economy as badly as the Americans' was.
What we currently have isn't broken enough to warrant a complete scrapping and rebuild. What we need to to create incentives for regional representatives to truly represent their electors while simultaneously censuring political leaders for punishing the regional reps, when they vote their electors' collective will. Perhaps the one change that we need to to make the party leaders less of a controlling force in their parties, and more of a figurehead?
That is one possibility, but how would you make that happen?
That's a very good question and one that I don't have a particularly good answer for. The only one that I've come up with is to elect the PM as a separate entity from his party, as the Americans do their President, and give him veto power. I don't particularly like Americanizing our system in any way but, given that we would maintain the two Houses of government and the trappings of royalty, it might work.
While they have many failures in the way they run their country it doesn't mean that all of their ideas are bad. Also they have some crossover where a democrat would vote for what would traditionally be considered a fascist issue and a republican would vote for what would be considered a hard right issue.
-D-
Banned
And which party will step forward to fundamentally change our political system?
The reason we have self serving politicians is that we have self serving voters. Give me a free cultural centre for my riding and I'll vote for you. So dumb self serving voter gets a free cultural centre and pays higher taxes to pay for his sworn enemy's cultural centre in another riding. No one realizes that if they paid their own way the lack of governmental squandering would have saved them all a bundle.
The masses have become brainwashed. Free beer tomorrow.
Hudak only offered reduced beer prices.
I've read this a half dozen times and I still can't see the sense in it. According to you, self-serving voters lead to big government projects which lead to more waste. Presumably, waste is the heart of the problem with government?
If that's what you're saying, it flies in the face of all evidence. If you want to know what a self-serving voter looks like, you don't need to look any further than this thread on the proposed gas tax: http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforu...iter-gas-hike-to-fund-transit&highlight=taxes The response in general is the self-serving "I'm opposed because it won't do anything for ME"! And of course GTAM is hardly the bastion of big government ideals! Quite the opposite in fact.
It's stunning that on the one hand members here will chose who to vote for based on "how does it benefit me?", and then on the other hand they get all upset when government enacts laws that restrict them. So they decide based on their personal gain but then when rules are enforced that restrict them, they come here screaming about government meddling with their personal lives! These are standard complaints from the more extreme conservatives, not from progressives. And it's all centered on selfishness.
Another classic illustration of selfish voters voting for less government is our own mayor, who got voted in by the suburban voters who were looking after their own self-interest. This is further demonstrated by his decision to robocall Paul Ainslie's Scarborough ward to incite people against him because he voted against the Scarborough subway. The message being that he didn't act in the selfish best interest of his ward, but acted instead in the best interest of the city so he should be booted out! Rob Ford is not secretly socialist, and his base is not full of closet commies!
In fact your very statement implies that people aren't being selfish ENOUGH. You say that if people were only were smart enough to see that their vote is benefiting others, then they wouldn't vote that way! You seem to assume that it's impossible for any of them to deliberately vote for anything that benefits others! How are you not displaying the embodiment of selfishness? There are plenty of policies that benefit targeted groups in order to improve the whole of society. Tax breaks for the rich, for example. Or public transit for the poor. They are both big contributors to economic strength of a region, but you think that because the receptionist in Essex doesn't benefit directly so she should vote against?
There is place for selfishness in the way we run our lives, but election days are the one day every four years where selfishness needs to be put aside. People need to open up their perspectives and vote for a system that is beneficial for the whole region (municipal, provincial, national), not just for themselves. Then once the social agenda is set we can all spend the remaining 1460 days between elections doing whatever suits us best within that framework.
This is what Gates and Buffet were talking about when they said the rich aren't taxed enough in the US. It wouldn't do any good for them to voluntarily give their money to the government, because that wouldn't fix the underlying problem. They recognized that their government was failing to set a healthy tax framework and wanted to change it, but for the other 1460 days between elections, they continue to act in their own best interest when it comes to avoiding taxes. And so we all should.
When we vote, it's not for a government of us, but for a government of the region (muni, prov, fed...). So voting in our own best interest is counterproductive. In fact it defeats the purpose of government altogether. Our votes should be made in strict consideration for what is best for the region as a whole.
I'm thinking the Norwegians understand this a bit better than North Americans.
I'm thinking the Norwegians understand this a bit better than North Americans.
Then there are the people who can't understand why such things can't be funded by the existing taxes as they are in jurisdictions that pay less tax, and yet have more heavily subsidized transit systems. Gas tax was created to fund roads and it's not a big stretch to say that it should also be used to fund transit too, yet it goes into general revenues. We're now paying HST on gasoline when PST was not applied to it (just Provincial Excise previously), and yet this also goes into general coffers.
You would have an easier time convincing people that they should pay more for something specific, if they could see what money was already going to that specific item.
You would have an easier time convincing people that they should pay more for something specific, if they could see what money was already going to that specific item.
This whole free gift card boondoggle is really making them look incompetent.
Funny, to me it makes them look like they're buying votes.
To what degree? Should we not have our own home owner's/renter's insurance?
Well, ya. And how people let food get spoiled in the middle of winter is beyond me.
It's not like they were out of ice.
