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MyBrainHurts

@ MyBrainHurts @lemmy.ca

Posts
20
Comments
257
Joined
12 mo. ago

  • Poilievre says Carney's moving in the 'wrong direction,' pledges to 'legalize' pipelines

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  • I think I'd take that bet!

    I'm super curious how the base will see it. On the one hand, he did win a much larger percentage of the popular vote than most Conservative leaders have won while making inroads in traditionally Left areas.

    But, he also lost one of the largest polling leads in modern Canadian history...

    On the other hand, the Liberals won in large part because of voters from the NDP/Greens defected to the Liberals... But then how much of that was to keep Poilievre out versus some other Con?

    You could go nuts going back and forth on that.

  • Poilievre says Carney's moving in the 'wrong direction,' pledges to 'legalize' pipelines

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  • Pssssh, amateurs, actions speak louder than words! For example, whenever I'm on public transit and we're about to turn right not Left, I stand up and demand the driver instead make three Left turns instead. Admittedly, this has been difficult on trains but it's the effort that counts.

    Edit: formatting

  • US officials plan to punish foreigners ‘making light of’ Charlie Kirk death

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  • No better way to honour someone who, as much as I dislike him, consistently argued government should not restrict speech and different opinions, no matter how repugnant.

  • Prime Minister Mark Carney is delaying a plan that requires automakers to hit minimum sales levels for electric vehicles

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  • CPC must be pretty ecstatic. If they can ditch PP for his excessive social conservativism, they can easily win the next federal election as Carney is Conservative. Greenpeace gets it:

    However, Greenpeace Canada was quick to criticize the EV mandate delay.

    “What was the point of electing Mark Carney when we get Pierre Poilievre’s climate policy?” said Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with the activist group.

    Can we please at least admit that a Polievre government certainly would have had a pipeline or two in the upcoming national projects? Please? I cannot think of a more simple but correct example thus far:

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/no-oil-pipeline-on-list-1.7629818

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • It’s either fully proportional or its not.

    What, why? All but 20% are proportional, the same coalition and minority governments exist etc. I get you don't like the outcome but declaring it doesn't count despite functionally being PR is a weird position.

    it goes hand and hand with your ban from !fairvote@lemmy.ca for your dismissive and disrespectful conduct.

    Ahhhh, lol. I politely tried to excuse myself but someone from there just wanted to come with increasingly silly and somewhat hysterical "points." I don't think the onus is on me to pretend everything being said is reasonable. (If memory serves, someone had read so little about the topic that they called me racist for noting that the Nordic states are homogenous countries, as opposed to say, Canada with the Quebecois/Anglo divide, or Iraq with the Shia, Sunni and Kurd groups.) Although, dang, I wish I could see that thread because some of the stuff OP ended up trying to say was legitimately hysterical. Though I guess I appreciate the ban happened after I said that I said the discussion had reached an impass, that's at least respectful.

    disrespectful conduct.

    To be clear, accusing me of being on the side of a mass murderer like Mugabe is fine and respectful but saying you don't seem to read about the real world isn't? That's certainly... A choice.

    That’s certainly strawmanning my position

    Your "position" is just statements, repeating the same unproven desires that PR leads to "real progress on issues, friendly compromise and collaboration" when time and time again, that's shown not to be the case which is the fundamental problem with PR. I've used multiple examples that show this has not been the case. All you've done is say examples don't count for specious reasons (somehow, only 80% PR means fundamentally different mechanics and a coalition government, the typical outcome of PR means the Kickl isn't a problem) and then repeat the same hopes for PR. Waving away all the real world examples that you dislike without any particularly good reasons is not a way to demonstrate that you are correct.

    What are the differences between statements and points? Consider someone who said capitalism was the best because it delivered the highest living standards and the most freedom for people. And then you went and pointed out those aren't entirely true using facts, examples etc and their response was "no, those countries have welfare so they aren't real capitalism" and then just kept repeating that capitalism delivered the highest living standards and the most freedom for people. In this case too, those are just unproved statements that someone wants to be true without evidence being given.

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • Yes, but (admittedly, I was off by .3%) he still won more votes than his opponent.

    In fact, a PR system may have enabled him further as presumably not all of RFK's voters followed to trump BUT in a PR system that wouldn't matter. As long as they voted for RFK and he teamed up with trump A) their wishes wouldn't matter and B) he could hold trump hostage for even crazier anti vax stuff.

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • That is a bold take, what brings you to that conclusion?

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • Yup, but I think PR fosters the emergence of Far Right/fascist parties.

    I sort of explained the mechanisms to someone else in this thread here:

    https://lemmy.ca/comment/18847795

    tl;dr: FPTP discourages fringe parties, so they can't snowball into something much more dangerous. And PR systems have, in the last couple of decades, had a much harder time passing significant legislation which has led to a general stagnation/dissatisfaction, whereas a system that produces strong majority governments for better or worse, gets a legit chance to pass comprehensive legislation to tackle issues. Carney has 4ish years to try his best to make serious change without having to beg the Conservatives for everything.

  • What are some trends/fads that you are glad the world has moved on from?

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  • Oh I figured as much, unless you went to Bayside with Zach Morris and crew!

    But I didn't know Pogs came back in the early 00s, which is super cool to hear.

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • That is my favourite kind of question! Unfortunately, social sciences are pretty hard to demonstrate causation. (Any research would involve so many subjective decisions, e.g., Turkey is nominally a PR country but I imagine İmamoğlu and others would uhhh, have strong disagreements with that. Do you count poorer countries with a complicated recent history? If we restrict too much the sample size becomes negligible etc.)

    But, after having doorknocked and bugged friends to do so as well for proportional representation in 2015, I've watched what's happened across the world since and it's spooked the shit out of me. In part, what I've seen are the causal mechanisms, which I think are twofold:

    1. FPTP disincentives fringe/extreme parties. Think back to the thankfully short lived PPC here. That's not to say they can't take hold, look at Reform UK or the Republicans. But, in both cases, it took the collapse or infiltration of an existing mainstream party, which thankfully, is pretty rare. As much as I dislike and disagree with Polievre, few reasonably informed Canadians would put him or the Conservatives in the same bucket as the far Right parties in Europe/America.
    2. In recent, more polarized years, it's been harder for parties to compromise to pass significant legislation, which has resulted in surprising stagnation and papering over problems. As a joky but illustrative example, in Germany, the trains no longer run on time! (Seriously, if you've been to Germany 20 years ago, you'll know what a bizarre thing that is to say. It'd be like basketball replacing hockey here.) But that inability to pass bold, significant legislation means problems don't get addressed and people don't see much significant change in their lives.

    Our system has a lot of faults. But in my eyes, the biggest strength is that a government with a majority can really do things as there are fewer checks and balances. Think back to how effective and targeted CERB was, proportionally, we spent a fraction of what the US did but it helped people who really needed it and quite well. Despite being interrupted by a pandemic and then fighting off challenges to his leadership, Trudeau still started us on a path to subsidized childcare (absolute game changer if we can get that over the finish line) dental and pharmacare. BUT, for all that strength, it also means we are much more susceptible to disastrous outcomes with a bad government.

  • What are some trends/fads that you are glad the world has moved on from?

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  • Oh wow, do you mind if I ask when pogs hit for you? I would've been in early grade school, so, maybe 94/95.

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • To be clear, your 2 points are "Italy only aloocates two thirds of its seats via PR so it doesn't count!" and "Austrian politicians have contorted themselves to keep out Kickl!" Neither of which is a ringing endorsement of PR.

    Oh, and somewhat bizzarely deciding that Mugabe would be a fan even though he took power under a PR system! (80/20 split between PR and FPTP but he won a majority through PR anyway.)

    If people want to vote fascists, that’s a different problem from the electoral system ie propaganda.

    Or, the system you propose has generally not delivered satisfactory results which helps push people to extremes.

    The system that represents 95% of the vote, gives people better healthcare, climate action, accountability

    This isn't a fact, it's just some random nonsense you've declared. Hopefully you know there's a difference.

    Basically, of the two of us, I actually read about the world and then think about it. You've decided that PR is the best because you want people to have more choices at the ballot (which is good) without considering what happens to countries that have tried this.

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • You can't just decide that A) the folks who didn't vote would actually vote for your side and B) that turnout would be significantly higher (Italy's last election had about the same turnout, Austria had higher, both turned out governments of which you would not approve.)

    I'm opposing this system because it has turned out really bad results in the last decade and I care about the people those governments would hurt here.

    You might be okay regardless of government, I care about the people who wouldn't be.

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • ??????

    Both of those examples won thr majority of votes. DeSantis won almost 60%, donald got over half...

  • It's happening! The Canadian Costco cult is showing fractures!

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  • If random internet comments are on the side you want them to be, they are a sign of the people. If they are on the other side, obviously they are AI slop.

  • Montréal Could Moves Toward Proportional Representation |A Breakthrough for Canadian Democracy.

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  • Yeah, just let the fascists win!

    PR is a gift to the fascists, e.g., Italy, Austria and Poland come screaming to mind with Germany and France being dangerously close to having far Right parties take power.

  • What are some trends/fads that you are glad the world has moved on from?

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  • Last week, I had to explain what pogs were to a pair of teammates, had to stop myself from starting with "back in my day, when things were good and people didn't spend so much time on their phones..."

  • Prime Minister Mark Carney is delaying a plan that requires automakers to hit minimum sales levels for electric vehicles

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  • I basically agree, it's really how you define the terms. We don't have Canadian manufacturers etc. But it's not straight up American, we also have Honda and Toyota.

    And a lot of the world fights for any position on that resource chain as the almost 400K jobs in the sector are generally high paying, often low education requirements, hard to replace jobs with specialized, not always particularly transferrable skills. One of the last of the "good" manufacturing jobs and replacing it will be incredibly difficult.

  • Prime Minister Mark Carney is delaying a plan that requires automakers to hit minimum sales levels for electric vehicles

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  • I remember Trump favouring Carney more than PP during the campaign for the federal Canada election. I don’t fully understand it

    It was dead simple. every Conservative politician both here (and the few who cared there) was essentially screaming/signalling as hard as they could to donald to STFU about Polievre as their relationship was huge wedge issue in the Canadian Conservative party. (Donald also rarely likes backing the losing side.)

    Not to be rude, but it seems like you're fairly new to politics if this was something that was honestly confusing. So, if I can offer some friendly advice/perspective: Carnery is handful of months into a new term with Canada facing arguably the largest economic crisis of the last 30 or 40 years? An almost unprecedented upheaval to our economic system in that our single largest trading partner (we trade more with America than we do with the rest of the world combined) now wants to decouple. The Liberals barely won that election, and even with an almost historic consolidation on the Left, could not assemble a majority. At the same time, Left wing governments across the world are embattled as far Right movements rise in popularity (Germany, the UK etc.)

    How we approach the next few months likely has generational impacts that far outweigh an EV mandate next year or the next five. That's a time to be cautious, measured and compromising, especially with those with whom we disagree. I would prefer more stringent climate regulations but what matters most is that we can carry those out long term. How do we do that? On some aspects of climate, we're probably going to have to compromise (EV mandate) and on others (say, doubling oil production) we're probably not.

    I fear Canadian politics is descending to the 2-party system

    Because almost half the country went Conservative. They got more than 40% of the vote. Even adding together every Green, NDP and Liberal vote barely gets to 50%. Either the centre and the Left fracture and let the Conservatives do whatever they want, or we appeal to some of that 45% and get back to our regular multi party system. But as long as the centre and Left so repel 45% of the population, that's just a recipe for actual climate suicide, not this "oh no, Carney is the same as Polievre" silliness." Especially in our elected dictatorship, it's a great strength of our system but also means that there is a huge risk.