wampus

Trade isn't really meant to be a win-lose calculation, your take on NAFTA being a win for the USA and not Canada is a fundamentally Trumpian way of looking at it. NAFTA benefited all participating countries.

In terms of Canadian companies filling voids, that's a very optimistic/hopefully outlook. More realistically, Canada's market size is about 1/10th that of the USA, and it's most likely that the Canadian government won't employ things like industry protectionist tactics, such as tariffs on foreign imports. They definitely wouldn't tariff that USA's imports, and not tariff other countries, due to the amount of trade still reliant on the USA -- even if the Canadian govt hits its target of doubling non-USA foreign trade, the USA would still be like >50% of our exports.

I think a slightly different way of looking at this though, is that the companies that are considering moving do not have a sufficient customer base / market in Canada 'alone' to justify their presence. Too many of our businesses get too much of their revenue from USA sales, with little market activity on the Canada side. There are also some manufacturers, particularly in the auto industry, who are getting obliterated by the automation/efficiency of Chinese companies already, who are using the trade fiasco as an excuse -- similar to tech companies using AI as an excuse to trim bloat.

Agreed. Canada seems to have an issue where we pretend we can do / accommodate far more than our infrastructure is actually able.

Auditor General report noting the Foreign student program had 75,000 cases of alleged fraud per year, while only being able to investigate 1000-2000 cases per year, is another easy recent example. Healthcare another. And as our political system inches towards a more 'two party' setup, where one party blindly promises the impossible and the other promises to destroy social supports to "Make Canada Great Again", we're on a not great trajectory.

PP is a focus group managed candidate that will back any cause conservative researchers believe might get them into power. There was another story recently, for example, with some conservatives promoting some lgbtq+ charity, for example, as they attempt to soften the blatant image of their party being anti-lgbtq+. "Look at our recent photo ops! Ignore our party policies and our party-base!". The canadian conservative party's recent track record makes it look very much like they just want to do anything to get into power, in order to enact a policy program very similar to what the US Republicans have done in the states -- PP even re-used the same sorts of slogans and rhetoric.

Hunter Biden in the states recently put up a post about how the electorate can smell a focus group a mile away, and that they're sick of being managed -- they want to be led, ideally by someone with convictions and determination to see their vision through. PP ain't that.

Carney's screwing up, sure. But I don't think anyone is that surprised that the banker-guy is doing banker-guy things, he's not changing his stance based on what some focus group is telling him.

I hope Avi has a good showing next time around.

Agreed. I've voted center-left in pretty well every election of my adult life. Generally in favour of a socially progressive / fiscally conservative approach irl. Donated to green party campaigns. Was a card carrying member of Greenpeace for years. But on Lemmy, when I express a generally neutral viewpoint on a topic, and/or don't support hard-left positions, I'll be accused of being a right-wing republican nutjob who's destroying America and supporting Trump and crew's agenda. Even more amusing in that I'm Canadian, make no attempts to hide that fact, and am vocally part of the "don't buy american stuff" crowd.

I do think it feels insular/hostile, though my take is different than yours. Yes, I've had some folks nitpick posts and one up, though I imagine you get that in many similar social media sites -- there're reasons for the running joke that in order to get a correct answer online, you gotta post a question as a woman, and confidently answer it wrong on a male account, and then people will pile on with correct answers and judgey-ments.

Many of the sites that seem to get posted to lemmy are on VERY fringey locations, locations that often seem highly likely to be hosting malicious content. There's also far fewer people posting topics, with a very small group of users having like 10k+ posts per year. So it feels a lot more 'concentrated', especially on particular subjects, due to those posters' bias': if you're an aggressive poster, it's fairly easy to astroturf lemmy. Which feels insular / bubbly.

Adding to that, Lemmy has mods who are just as heavy-handed as on Reddit or any other heavily moderated setup -- though lemmy'll moderate things in a far more 'progressive' friendly way than most alternatives these days. Pejoratives are allowed for some groups, but not others. Even calling that sort of thing out in more explicit terms, though still in a neutral tone, can get you banned from many communities on Lemmy.

Still not on par with the USA running influence campaigns and using a plant in the Alberta government to try and literally break apart the country. Still not on par with openly declaring economic warfare against us, and upending trade agreements/standards based on totally bullshit 'reasons' like "fentanyl!".

The USA is openly hostile to western democracies. The USA overtly supports Russian puppet candidates in European elections. The USA props up far right xenophobic fascist politicians. The USA's biggest corporation leaders do Nazi salutes on international stages, and speak at far-right rallies, and publish techno-fascist manifestos. The USA's VP literally goes to other countries to speak at far-right campaign rallies. The USA doesn't support Ukraine in the Ukraine / Russia conflict, and tends to push peace terms that explicitly benefit Russia. The USA insults Ukraine regularly, disrupts shipments, and has been at best a tepid supporter via arms sales. The USA's director of national intelligence used Russian propaganda, inventing cities and claiming they had biolabs which didn't exist, in releases even within the last month.

I'm not saying China's free from risk. Sure, there's risk in doing business with any global hegemon. But at present, the USA represents a greater risk to Canada than China, in part because our stuff had become so integrated, prior to the USA going rogue. Like Risk is usually defined as the impact of an event multiplied by the chance of that event occurring on an annual basis. Chinese EVs have a far smaller impact/likelihood, than Trump walking away from CUSMA / applying tariffs across the board to Canadian goods. Which is a greater risk, that China may build infrastructure in Canada to start surveilling Canadians more via EVs, or that the USA is already surveilling Canadians via our dependence on Google / US tech companies who are actively exploiting our lack of privacy to fuel AI -- one case is a "maybe this will occur", the other is "this is already occurring on a routine basis"; so one is super frequent, and impacts like 99% of Canadians.... while the other is mostly theoretical. The USA is, without a doubt, objectively the bigger risk/threat.

Meh, honestly, while I agree there ought to be more offline options for guys, blaming the internet for isolation is a bit simplistic. It's not simply just "being online" that causes this sort of shit.

Earlier internet days, it was common for guys who were on the outskirts of social norms to find support and inclusivity in online activities. You'd pick a game, go online, and have the same general set of gamers you played with over a long period of time -- you'd get familiar, start guilds, have real-life meetups and so on. Even FPS games, it was super common that you'd hit up a specific designated server that was close to you for a lower ping, and the same people from the same general geographic region would meetup there regularly. You got to know one another, interact socially, and have that sort of ecosystem where you could voice ideas, even questionable ones, and you'd get checked by other sane/regular people. Incel type stuff was practically nowhere on the radar.

Social media is a different story though, and likewise how the internet in general has evolved since its early days. Social media basically turns people into faceless mobs -- some 'influencer' pushes out a racey photo and gets 1m followers thirsty, someone posts a lusty comment, and there's no checking, just piling on, because no one will remember each other later, no one will have to actually interact with one another. The influencers will even post more racey photos, because all that matters is engagement/clicks, not quality of discussion. You get games like WoW revamping their systems, with the aim to reduce wait times on group content, by making it so that you get randomly paired with a bunch of faceless people you'll likely never interact with again after that night - instead of a massively multiplayer online social experience, it's a game with a lot of faceless players you can treat like disposable NPCs. FPS games are similar, with little to no persistence amongst the actual player communities. Servers are often run by companies, that have rules/auto-censures that prohibit open conversation/dialogue -- say the wrong thing in a chat, and you're kicked.

Even more, we endorse/support communities that provide lgbtq+ safe spaces, or women's safe spaces, where people can generally be openly misandrist, without repercussions because it's a safe space, and the target of their vitriol are men -- but male safe spaces don't have the same protections, you still face banning if you question the broader progressive narratives.

Saying solutions are hard to find, is galling to me, when the system has been progressively designed to break apart the sorts of supports guys need. Third-spaces are needed, I agree -- physical ones are great, but virtual ones also previously helped, until we engineered them to push guys into isolation.

The walrus should be asked to name a Canadian auto company. Like what car do I buy, to support a Canadian-head quartered auto company. It's USA car companies, with Canadian outposts, where Canadians work making US car companies money. The USA doesn't want to let us build their cars anymore anyhow.

So who cares if Chinese car companies want to take over as the outpost owners. Chinese car companies are talking about building cars in Canada, likely with more automation involved, granted. But the auto industry has already said they can't compete with their old approach anyhow. So ANY company that wants to build viable cars in Canada, will likely need to automate / robo-size their factories.

Is it a Risk? Sure. But while we can point at Chinese car companies as a POTENTIAL threat to Canadian sovereignty, US car companies are a vulnerability that the USA is ACTIVELY EXPLOITING to undermine Canadian sovereignty. It's like seeing someone who's getting raped, and telling them not to try and flee out the building/fight back, because "You never know, might be another rapist outside!". Stupid fucking media.

I generally agree with you, but there are also a bunch of older generation 'norms' and etiquette things at play in some of these situations / scenarios.

So first off, there's definitely back channel reasons for some customs/behaviours. Consider for example the recent example from Trump's trip to China, where Xi had Trump sitting in a lower chair, with the intent of creating a specific dynamic to the meeting and photo-ops. Or how Putin made sure to introduce Merkel to his pet dogs, having discovered she had a fear of dogs. Higher-tier diplomacy often involves such shenanigans, in part as it sends a message in itself.

One older tradition/norm, or 'way to flex', is exactly what the article mentions -- showing up late. There's an old saying I recall hearing my mom say (passed to her from her dad), along the lines of "If you need to meet with someone, arrive 5 mins early to be respectful of their time. If someone needs to meet with you, arrive 5 minutes late so that they understand you're busy / getting your time is a privilege". In more modern terms, think of it like a webinar/video meeting -- if you need to attend a webinar/virtual meeting, you should be logging in to the system early to make sure there are no technical issues on your end. If it's not something you need to attend, or if you don't care about it that much and are just pressured to go to check a box on a list for your boss, you might not bother pre-checking connections: you don't care if the other party has to wait 5 mins for you to sort it out, you don't care about wasting their time.

Honestly, even in the private sector, I've cancelled meetings with people if they're more than 5 mins late without notice, though you'll usually allow for at least a 15 min window depending on what's on the agenda.

That said, it's clearly getting spun to try and drum up clicks. They don't mention how long people were waiting, for example -- big difference between Vance waiting 5 mins, and him waiting 2 hours.

Inferring from your phrasing, and some of the other comments posted, the question is more accurately asking "Why do rich people love being bailed out / supported by the government, but have convinced the working class that being bailed out / supported by the government is something to hate / avoid?".

I think the answer is honestly really simple. People are in many ways concerned with their own selfish interests. Government systems are, in some ways at least, systems that aim to distribute finite good supplies to a populous with near infinite demands. People generally vote / back systems that provide the most benefit to themselves. The amount of effort that goes in to backing gov systems, is partly based on how much of a benefit will be provided directly to the individual.

As an example, developers in Vancouver benefit immensely by convincing the government to bail them out of really stupid / borderline fraudulent condo construction, to the tune of $3.2 billion. These are developers who own penthouses for lols, have fleets of sports cars, personal art galleries, giant mansions in expensive areas, etc -- who were facing potentially huge losses for trying to sell small 1 person condos for $1m+ in semi-remote areas (for a single person, you'd need to be in the top 5% to afford such a starter home). Rich people like those developers stood to lose a lot of money, so they put a lot of effort into lobbying government for bailouts. They can get really large sums from govt, in part because the bailout money is paid to a very small group. The amounts are so large, that you can even justify hiring full time lobbyists at high salaries to go after that funding -- or, heck, looking at Musks govt funding, you can even build the 'largest' companies around using that approach.

When it comes to poor people getting bail outs / support, the payouts are far lower per person. Things like class action lawsuits are a great comparable -- you'll see huge aggregate settlement amounts, lawyers will get paid for practically decades negotiating the settlement, but the 'victims' will get a final per-person payout of less than $10. It's barely even worth the time it takes to collect. The only reason class actions move forward, is because of those lawyers collecting huge sums for so long throughout the process (the lawyers personal interest). With most large-volume bailout plans / support moves from govt, it'll often amount to similarly dispersed benefits -- you'll save a couple bucks from a tax holiday, or you'll get <$1000 from some support program. It's not enough to motivate people en masse to support it.

You could also add in to that mix things like poverty pimps / social workers, and the conflict presented in terms of their self-interest. They're sort of similar to lawyers in class actions, where they're high-paid workers meant to advocate/support for lower income interests. However, the continuation/maintenance of their high-paid social work, is practically dependent on the continuation of lower income issues / problems -- so they're de-incentivized to try and actually solve those problems. Some even hope for the situation to get worse, as it'll be easier for them to justify/demand larger salaries -- these are the folks commonly termed as poverty pimps. Social workers are, in some ways, a set of workers explicitly paid/kept as middle class to deflect the rage of the lower-class - one person with a billion dollars, pays 100 people 100k each, to keep the 1000 people earning nothing at bay. Those 100 people aren't working for the interests of the 1000, even if they think themselves socialists due to the 'social' worker terminology; just like the class action lawyers, collecting millions in professional fees, to get victims a $10 payout, aren't working for the interests of those victims.

So to loop back to your initial question: you gotta start by interpreting most people's actions as being motivated largely by self-interest, in my view. After you've done that, it all sorta connects.

Other guys comment, and the note about pension funds, is more about how things like the CPP will invest in SpaceX -- as will many ETF/bundled type 'funds' that people use. Things practically outside your control.

Yes, you and others can invest your personal wealth into whatever you want. But your gov old age stuff will invest into stuff like SpaceX regardless, and be exposed to potential risks should things collapse catastrophically.