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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • Not to mention foreign slave labour that’s subsidized by a government intent on taking as much of the western world with them when they crash and burn.

    Not only that, but Chinese industry is declining so hard right now that even the EV industry is on the verge of failing with record number of companies in the middle of shutting down, so relying on Chinese EVs is not just asking for destroying our local industries, but also have our supply vanish the moment the Chinese are unable to deliver once they can’t even get half the parts to build them due to all the tarrifs that are being put on them.

    Then there’s there’s all the stories of Chinese EVs spontaneously combusting that keep popping up before being covered up. I think there’s been at least two cargo ships that went up after the EVs they were carrying suddenly caught fire, then all the thousands of EVs that caught fire after minor bumps due to a lack of safety features. Even the Russians are saying no to Chinese EVs lately due to how bad they are.


  • Interesting they’re blaming the Liberals when this decline’s been going on for at last two decades now, at least relative to global wealth. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see that relative standard of living compared to the rest of the world, we’ve been declining the entire 40 years on average.

    And looking at the trends, we’re headed right towards another recession on top of a housing bubble burst, so no matter what anybody tries, we’re looking at another decade of decline before there’s even a chance of things getting better. The moment the housing bubble crashes, we’re looking at a similar situation to Japan’s lost decades, and we can only hope to ride it out half as well as they have.


  • I have a strong suspicion that this won’t be a guaranteed income in the near future. There’s already human testing for life extension treatments, so it won’t be a surprise that in twenty years, we’ll see a serious decline of profits both for funeral homes and in elderly care facilities making them both rarities.

    That said, I do think that cremation or something similar should be a subsidized if not a free government service. Being charged an arm for dealing with a tragedy is just plain exploitation and there should be alternatives for those who aren’t in the best positions. There’s already so much paperwork and other things people have to deal with, it’s a wonder that this hasn’t been a major public issue for decades now.


  • To be honest, it doesn’t have to be HSR at that point. Just reliable normal rail would do that, something we’re still lacking for most of the country. Imagine being able to get to any province in a day under $30 (and even cheaper group deals) with zero chances of any delays.

    Vacations across Canada, or even just visiting family in another province for a weekend would be easy and regular. Not to mention how much it would bring the nation together. As things stand, the provinces are more separated from each other than the states in the US. We’re closer to the EU than the US in terms of unity. Arguably even worse than the EU. Promoting cross provincial movement for even little things would seriously bring us together, not to mention all the economic benefits.






  • While I think this is an issue, I think it’s a minor one. If it was a big problem, we’d see a whole bunch of 2 storey apartments sprinkled amongst single family homes. But I’ve never seen one in all my time in Toronto. Because there’s a whole ton of regulations that make it impossible by just plain making it illegal without jumping through a whole ton of other hoops that make it far too expensive.

    I’m not saying fixing this won’t help, but it’s just one of dozens of issues, and a minor one compared to some of them.



  • The faster the charger, the more powerful of a charging station you need, and the more expensive they are. No matter how fast your car is capable of charging, it’ll be limited by the charging station so the speed itself won’t change.

    On the other hand, solid state batteries are supposed to have quite the increase in charge density so there’s the hope that they can be a lot cheaper since you don’t need as big of a battery.

    On the other other hand, isn’t the car market slowing down as a whole? Sales seems to have slowed dramatically these last few years as people are relying on other ways to get around more and more, so rather than replacing cars with EVs, it’s more like cars are just plain disappearing, even it’s only at the rate of partial replacement levels.



  • Specifically it’s bad for rich people who own offices, but good for rich people who own businesses that don’t need offices and now aren’t expected to waste money on them.

    The issue is that office space is leased for several years at a time, with the shortest leases being something like 5 years. It looks bad on the spread sheets when you have 3 years left on your lease, yet you’re not using those offices because people want to work from home, so a lot of companies are trying to force people to go back to offices so they can get their yearly bonuses, even if it costs the company millions doing so.




  • Theoretically carbon capture can work, but just like you said, it takes additional energy to capture carbon, and that amount is more than what it takes to produce the needed electricity if you’re using a carbon based energy source.

    That said, if you go for something like nuclear, than you do get a clean source of energy that can be used to capture existing carbon. But we’re already at the point where our energy infrastructure is inadequate for just electrifying what we currently have, and in a few years the Pickering plant is going to have to shut down due to being so old (though apparently the government is trying to delay it as there’s no plans for building a new plant of any sort to replace the Pickering plant).

    So even in the best case scenario, it’ll be more than a decade before any sort of large scale carbon capture scheme can even be started, as that’s how long it’ll take to build enough new plants to cover existing demand, let alone accounting for future demand.



  • This is only a small part of the problem. The issue is that corporations are bidding on an extremely limited number of lots. Like a hundred firms on five lots kinda insane. By bidding on each other over and over, the prices inflate, and the end result ends up having to rake in more money just to recoup the costs.

    It’s just plain illegal to build multiplexes on single lot residential. That’s why you can get several square km in the middle of downtown of only single family houses with front and back yards, with 50 story sky scrapers a few blocks down.


  • That’s right. If I remember right, one of the top ways that the 1% earn their wealth is by taking bank loans with things like stocks as collateral. Since they never cash in the stocks, they technically have zero income.

    If you don’t directly tax assets, or otherwise broaden the definition of income to include assets (though that’ll take some serious lawerying to make ironclad), no amount of taxing the wealthy will make a serious difference. Only those that have shitty accountants.

    Even then, you’ll always have to watch out for those wealthy just fleeing the country selling off any asset they can’t take with them, screwing over the entire country.