Zephyr
6d ago
I don't disagree with you in that it is definitely a skill issue; I just don't trust a government to ever do better.
Zephyr
7d ago
If it helps, I'm Canadian, and the Indians we get are not considered to be very hard workers.
Zephyr
7d ago
Can you provide more information on this? I'm curious what proportion is, as I'd assume it'd be fairly close intuitively, and I've never seen anything otherwise.
Zephyr
7d ago
Also as a software engineer, I take the exact opposite approach; close the borders right up. Importing lots of people puts a strain on resources in the host country, and counteracts the will of the native population in favour of "GDP line go up" type thinking.
Indians in Canada are willing to live in situations that are a massive downgrade in QOL to the non-immigrant population - Brampton is famous for having slums with 20+ Indian individuals packed into a tiny apartment. It isn't rights that prevents them from doing better - it's that it is still an upgrade for them.
Zephyr
7d ago
There seems to be a strain of people who absolutely cannot look past labels in any way. I recently read a highly upvoted comment on Imgur (which is extremely left wing) which went something like:
"Remember when they tried to call Antifa a terrorist organization? It's proof they're fascists that they're so afraid of an antifacist idea!"
The people in question seem absolutely unable to see that you can make up your own names for things, and people are absolutely not bound to follow them.
To tie it into the point above - I'd argue that a salient comparison with Antifa would be the National Socialists Party of Germany's Brown shirts - but the sort of people who claim that all of their opponents are Nazis can't even see the comparison, because their opponents are the Nazis, not them, and Nazis used the brown shirts.
I mean, to turn the question on it's head - is there any evidence that would persuade you that it is caused (or at least, worsened) by immigration? From my perspective, it doesn't have to be caused solely by it in order for it to be aggrevating the situation.
An important thing to remember is that Canada has had approximately 1/8 of its residents added in the last 5 years (2019 census has 37.5 million population, 2024 has 41.8, but there was also a report that approximately 1 million people had overstayed their visas). During that time, I've seen housing prices go up by around 65%. (The place I'm buying was last listed at 315k in 2019, and is 485 today). The housing market began to get out of control with Harper, who dramatically expanded the TFW program; with Trudeau, who went into overdrive with TFW and international students, it became way worse.
Every province in Canada is currently suffering from this, regardless of their provincial leaders. We've had a dramatic increase in coethnic violence, including marches to support Hamas and similar groups.
We had a fairly big outrage recently over Indian international students raiding food banks for meals - this directly reduces the resources available for our population that uses them (which has gone up to about 20% of the population).
Do you think it's possible that immigration could be making things worse for the average person? I can't find you definitive proof that this is the sole cause of every word, because it isn't - all I can do is show you the ways we can see direct negatives from it.
Zephyr
19d ago
Sorry to pile on here, as I'm already engaging with you in a different thread; wouldn't your theories only make sense in a hypothetical world where we had an extremely high labour force engagement? Like, if we only have around 65% of the population of working aged individuals engaging in the labour market, doesn't that imply that adding a marginal person does not generate a marginal job (but rather, 65% of one)?
Zephyr
19d ago
But I mean, this is not what we actually see; what you are expressing is what we keep getting told will be the case with immigration, but somehow never actually seems to materialize. When I was a child, I had a family doctor; now, I'm part of roughly 20% of my province that does not, and the lineup to get a family doctor is in the range of years. When I was a kid, the weekly grocery bill was around $100 CAD for a 5 person family per week; it's now around $100 CAD for a single person. This is far in excess of nominal inflation.
The time horizons matter too; I'm currently 33, and moving into a place that is not big enough to raise a family. If the immigration jobs end up stabilizing in 5 years, I'll be 38; if I wanted a family with 5 kids, I'm kind of out of time at that point. It doesn't actually matter to me if everything will be better in 5 years; I only have one life.
I think your theories only make sense if the only immigration is net contributors (people who are likely to pay more taxes than they consume); however, Canada supports both spousal unification, as well as family unification (including the extremely elderly). We also have an average wage of $49000 for new immigrants (as opposed to the $55000 for native Canadians). As such, the immigrants are literally making us poorer on a per-person basis, driving up the cost of our resources that cannot grow at the same pace as immigration (housing, health care), and bringing their racial and ethnic tensions to our streets. Our GDP may be higher than it would've without them; but that doesn't help when my wage doesn't go up, and everything is more expensive (and in Canada, our GDP per capita has actually gone down).
The issue here is that if you are someone who makes their living providing labour, it's a very bad thing for you to have more labour in the pool.
If a job needs to be done, and I am one of the few people who can do it, I have much better leverage than if I am one of the many people who can. This is a very classic leftist argument (see union shops).
On a personal note, housing is one of the areas where it really affects me. 25 years ago, the house my parents bought was a 5 bed 2 bath with an unfinished basement for $200000. With 2% inflation, it would be around $375000 today. Instead, it's around $3000000. At the same age my parents were moving into a great home in a wonderful neighborhood, I'm moving into a tiny condo in a cheaper city, for over double the cost of the house I grew up in. I am Canadian, as I've mentioned before - so the level of immigration I've seen is way above that of the US. But it's one of those problems that scales linearly over time - the more people you allow in without increasing services (everything from doctors, employees at the local DMV, all the way down to lanes on roads), the more everyone who needs those services has their quality of life decrease.
Edit: A word, I meant "Decrease", not "Improve".
Zephyr
1mo ago
Out of curiosity, where would you say the appropriate place to protest would have been? There was behaviour during the election that seemed very suspicious to the layperson (the water main breaking causing poll watchers to be sent home, which was followed by votes continuing to be tallied). The attempts to get the legal system to address it seemed to be brushed off (and I'm saying 'seemed', not 'were', because you don't have to be right to protest, you just need to believe something was wrong). The people absolutely believed that the election has been stolen, and showed up for what was actually an extremely peaceful protest, especially compared to the BLM protests earlier in the year.
We've seen similar protests from left-wing sources occupying state buildings to prevent votes (unfortunately, not being American, I can't recall the specific state; I believe it was some sort of trans bathroom bill that caused a Texan legislature to have to reconvene later, but I'm open to corrections if someone can find it). The same people who complain about Trump being a unique threat to democracy are silent on those protests.
There really isn't any set of events that could've led to the January 6 protests having Trump installed in office, short of convincing everyone that the vote had been stolen (in which case, yes, they would've been right to overturn it).
Zephyr
1mo ago
Not that I disagree, but I think the argument is more like "last time you all screamed he was orange Hitler, and nothing happened. Why should we believe you this time?"
There's a current amongst the left that makes the most recent right wing candidate out to be literally the biggest threat to democracy ever. After a while, it becomes obvious that there isn't any information value from these statements.
Zephyr
1mo ago
The obvious theory is that they wanted to prevent a recession. Every government believes that "triggered a recession" is synonymous with "kicked out by voters".
Most governments overspent on lockdown supports, and lifted them way too late (by which I mean, put them into place at all). The money they spent was often injected into the economy directly (by subsidising demand), and when the market came to equalize it, they panicked and brought in as many people as possible to keep things GDP line rising (Canada has had around 1-3% population growth, but a GDP growth of around -0.5 - 0.5% - it's fairly obvious we'd be in a recession if they hadn't imported somewhere around 3 million people in the last two years (for reference, with a population of 40 million, 3 million people is around 8%, or roughly 1 in 12 people in the country).
Zephyr
1mo ago
It's not just interest rates doubling. Inflation tends to be calculated on a "basket of goods" system, where (in an ideal world) they try to react to trends in the real world by determining how much of a product the average consumer is purchasing in a year. For example, if there is a bad year for pork, most people will buy more chicken/steak, so it doesn't make sense to claim that the average person experienced the full inflation of the pork shortage.
The problems are:
- The people calculating the basket of goods know that bad inflation numbers will act against the current government.
- The basket of goods can accept inferior substitutions without reflecting that the quality of the good has gone down.
So people can feel their quality of life is getting worse because steak is outside their reach due to inflation, but the basket of goods now contains ground beef at the price steal used to be. If the government in power is favored by the bureaucracy, they can also choose to include irrelevant items, or exclude items that are relevant, to make the numbers more favorable (electronics tend to be cheaper over time, so they're a good one to use to balance the numbers if another category is too high). And with electronics especially, it's very easy to selectively say inflation is negative (the iPhone 12 has a better camera than the iPhone 11, but was the same price on launch - that represents a deflation rate of 6%!)
Four years ago, a bag of potato chips was around $3.99 CAD, with the expensive brand being $4.50. Looking at the same thing today, it's $6.39 for the cheap brand, and $8.49 for the expensive one. Inflation has far exceeded the official government numbers, especially for food.
Zephyr
1mo ago
If it helps, remember that I live in Canada - I tend to come to these things from that perspective. We've had a rash of judges appointed by our unpopular liberal government who have been letting criminals out who should definitely not be free (it's not uncommon to see people who have 50+ arrests be brought in for going on a stabbing spree, for example). The disadvantage to a large government is that when it gets corrupted, there is no way to push back on it - it doesn't matter that the LPC may not win any seats in western Canada, we're still governed by their choices.
These judges are utterly immune to public perception - short of performing some fedposting activities, there is no consequence to their actions. One of the hopes of making these things extremely local would be to either enforce consequences on the judges, or to allow people to flee jurisdictions in which the judges have proven to not be acting in the best interest in their community.
Ideally, I'd like to see something more like Scott's archipelago.
With regards to physical punishments - the purpose of that is actually more to get people to actually treat the punishment and the restraining parts of justice differently - I could honestly see an argument that most crimes don't receive any physical punishments at all. I think right now the problem with it is that putting someone in jail is both a way to punish them, and to prevent them from offending again. When you have people like the above (50+ arrests), it makes sense to treat them as someone who is at high risk of reoffending, even if none of their original crimes warrants that harsh of a punishment.
Zephyr
1mo ago
The argument is that if imprisonment for life costs the government money, they look for alternatives (and if that weren't true, activists wouldn't attempt to make the death penalty so expensive - so it's not a completely out there theory, at least).
Yes, there are people who we probably both agree should never be free again. I'd say in an ideal world, we should be able to remove them from our society. However, I don't think that the way our governments have evolved have led to them being good stewards of this power. A more local government system would probably work better - where the person deciding knows the person being punished. Are they an incorrigible bastard, or someone down on their luck? The blind eye of justice can't be trusted to make that decision, especially with politics involved.
I honestly am kind of against life imprisonment as well - I think a lot of people underestimate how time trades off against punishment. I feel like the visceral nature of the punishment needs to remain to remind people that the punishment needs to be deserved. One problem I see happen a lot with punishments is the "hate crime" clause - where everyone tries to get their crime treated as super duper evil so the perpetrators need to receive longer sentences. I honestly think that punishments should be bloody and horrible to separate out the "punishment" part of justice from the "prevention" part, so that jail exists solely to keep people from hurting others (and can be sentenced independent to the punishment).
Zephyr
1mo ago
Certainly, happy to.
My belief is that once MAID becomes an option, the government immediately and irrevocably takes the approach of funneling all its resources towards MAID-ing people, as opposed to resolving the underlying issues behind the issue (as it is almost always the cheaper option).
For example, we have had numerous scandals in Canada where the government has offered MAID as a response to:
- Veterans who have slipped through the cracks (usually due to inadequate supports post-military career).
- People who are lonely or isolated.
- People who cannot receive medical assistance due to an overburdened healthcare system.
The first fairly clearly falls under the domain of the government; the third falls under the government's responsibility, as they take roughly $8000 CAD per person in taxes to make such a garbage system. The second is less obvious, and I would agree the connection is tenuous; however, I'm fairly certain that the reason people feel so isolated and atomized is due to the cost of living crisis, which leads to a situation where most people are working huge hours and are just too exhausted to try to meet people after a long day.
The government of Canada has made statements that indicate that they want to expand MAID to people suffering from mental illness; they have also made statements that indicate that they want to expand the eligibility of MAID to people suffering from mental illnesses that do not permit consent (for example, schizophrenia or alzheimers). This strikes me as a worrying combination.
Note that I don't have any complaints about someone who is in indescribable pain choosing to end their own life; I just don't believe that the government should have any say in permitting it or not. Honestly, if I were to put a safeguard on it, I'd say that anyone who claims MAID can choose any public minister who receives it simultaneously to them (I realize the chances of this being implemented is less than 0; I just don't want a situation where the government is encouraged or permitted to destroy its own citizens). I'd be worried that the government would inflict circumstances on individuals who it should be supporting in an attempt to remove them.
Zephyr
1mo ago
I guess I'll make an argument against the death penalty, as I haven't heard anyone make this argument yet in this thread.
The biggest reason I personally can see to oppose the death penalty is that no government can be trusted with life or death powers over its citizens, as every government serves only its own interests, as opposed to the interests of its peoples (for what it's worth, this also means I am opposed to eugenics, MAID, and similar programs). Given that around 50% of the time, the government is run entirely by people I would consider to have morally abhorrent views (while the majority of the remaining time, it seems to be run by people who are solely interested in enriching themselves), I'd rather not have someone deciding that posting wrongthink is worthy of death, while sexual assault of a child warrants a second chance, all because of who did it.
Zephyr
2mo ago
"I'm not gay, but $50 is $50."
The greater the welfare is, the easier it is to stomach your pride. There are a lot of things (few of which I'm proud of) that I'd do for even as little as a year's salary.
Zephyr
2mo ago
But what possible reason does Canada have for doing so poorly?
Of the many things people have said about Trudeau, no one has ever called him competent.
Zephyr
2mo ago
I find this such an alien viewpoint; once writing has reached a (fairly low) bar, I find it to not really matter towards my enjoyment of a book.
The part of the book I have always felt matters is what it says, not how it says it. Caring about the quality of the writing seems like receiving a gift, and discarding it because the wrapping paper was poorly chosen.
I found ASOIAF to be utterly predictable, save for the character deaths (which I suppose is a twist, in its own right). Someone like Feist, Sanderson, or Cook may have flaws in how they write, but the stories themselves are way more interesting to me.
I don't know where you can read more on it, but I can provide more evidence in that direction.
From my experiences, the Cluster B disorders tend to fall out (roughly) in this fashion.
Antisocial - male dominated (used to be called sociopathy). Tends towards anger as it's primary emotion. Borderline - female dominated (I've heard it called, derogatorily, "crazy bitch disease"). Tends towards fear of abandonment. Histrionic - slightly female biased. Doesn't get a lot of media attention (think of like, the mothers of child stars). Tends towards performative actions (my mother, who fell into this bucket, would run away from home every Christmas and make the whole family persuade her to return). Narcissistic - male biased. Extreme selfishness which is expressed as unending need.
Edit: I just realized all of the above sound extremely similar, so let me provide an example.
If you were, for example, trying to go out for an evening:
- Someone with Antisocial personality disorder would say it's fine, but would break something (or someone) to force you to stay.
- Someone with Borderline personality disorder would hurt themselves, or send increasingly scary messages indicating that they are going to until you stay.
- Someone with Histronic personality disorder would make a huge fuss about you leaving, and how much they do for you (and may pack up everything and leave, or sell all your stuff, or whatever).
- Someone with Narcissistic personality disorder would tell you that you cannot, and tell you how much you are hurting them until you return.
All of the above fall into cluster B behaviors, so it's not like they're exclusive to one or another; it just tends to be the predominant form of expression.
Zephyr
3mo ago
Oh, sorry, I may have been unclear - I am not a progressive. My comment was simply a model of how I think they would respond in this circumstance.
Zephyr
3mo ago
Wouldn't the obvious stance be "we aren't the progressives of the past?" Residential schools have plenty of evidence towards their existence in Canada, and were certainly pushed by what would've been a progressive mindset back in the day.
I think by their very nature, conservatives are more tied to the past of their movement than progressives are. I don't think it'd be memory holed - it would simply be treated as "how awful that society did this - good thing we are making progress to change the horrors of the past"
My suspicion as to why Liberalism was weak to wokeness was twofold.
I think that if wokeness suffers a hearts and minds defeat, as opposed to what Trump is doing, it actually would be possible to go back to liberalism. We'd have in our cultural milieu a reference to leftism going insane, which would produce antibodies against the empathy spirals that the current left uses.
That being said, I don't think that we are currently on that trajectory - I think that Trump (like Biden and Obama) is projecting a culture change top down, and that we have too much of a bifurcation in beliefs to return to it yet. I honestly think that a very major country (like, G7) has to fall specifically from wokeness (similar to the fall of the Soviet Union) before we can see the potential for it to return.
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