O is for Oligarchy. Relevant to Canada to an extent
(www.austinchronicle.com)
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It seems like a whinge about capitalism. This person approaches things from a left wing perspective, so what's the issue here when the oligarchy is overwhelmingly left wing and pushes for centralized control of people's lives? Also, I chuckled at this bit
"Mostly Republicans, but sometimes Democrats too, gerrymander districts to make it difficult to get incumbents out"
Right. They see what they wanted in the world, and since they hate the capitalist Republicans, they notice our gerrymander more than they notice the Dems gerrymander. Gerrymandering sucks, but at the same time, there's no such thing as neutral in this hyper-partisan time. Look at the "neutral" California redistricting commission which handles their redistricting. It's a sad consequence of the socialist assault on the west that neutrality is all but dead, but you acknowledge the reality of things rather than lamenting what could be.
They talk about lobbyists. The lobbyists are lobbying for a more cartelized, centralized economy and are lobbying for MORE GOVERNMENT REGULATION, not less. The lobbyists understand that regulation may cut millions out of their net worth but it kills their opposition, whoever remains standing, the cartels get together and agree to not challenge each other. It's one of the big, BIG problems of American healthcare: Hospitals are cartelized. It was bad before Obamacare, but after Obamacare, much like how the bank bailouts of 2009 caused big banks to buy up all of the smaller competition (leading to worse outcomes for consumers), larger insurance companies ate up their smaller competition, and big hospital systems ate up independent practices. 70% of American doctors work for corporation-like medical systems. The corporate-like medical systems then lay claim to specific states and agree to not challenge each other, giving themselves monopolies in various states and letting them do unethical amounts of pricing since they own that state's healthcare system and the citizens have nowhere else to go. This stems directly from the author getting what they wanted out of healthcare. The lobbyists aren't lobbying for an Adam Smith world, they're lobbying for a world that more likely resembles what the author would want (intense government intrusion into private affairs).
Also stop reading American shit. You're like a New Yorker bitching and complaining about something happening in Texas. Canada is an overwhelmingly left wing country, I don't see why you're pretending that anything happening in some red state in America can happen in Canada. Your arguments, when made specifically about Canada, are weak, so you resort to Republican derangement syndrome to bolster your shoddy arguments.
I think its fair to be concerned that our meth lab basement neighbors are run by CEO's and lobbiests - your explaining away was super unfactual and it is a problem. Canada is Us lite with better PR. We still murdered the indigenous population en masse, still have police killings (read: Starlight Tours), and still have a glass ceiling over the general population so we have no choice but to be modern slaves in the age of the greatest economic disparity surpassing the french revolution easily.
Canada isn't US lite in the slightest. You've got an unhealthy obsession with a boogey man is what it is. Canada is not perfect (re: indigenous population). Neither is any country on the face of the Earth. One of my biggest beef with you liberals is that if something isn't utopia, it's failed. There's no country on the face of the entire Earth which has a completely clean history, so Canada's tragic actions there do not make Canada a bad country by my estimate. I compare Canada to what's on planet Earth, not based on unicorn ideals. First worlders like yourselves have had such a comfortable life that you can afford to complain that your high standard of living is a failure because there are flaws here and there, flaws that are actively being addressed.
"Still have police killings" sounds like utopian bullshit to me. As long as there is man, there will be mistakes. Unjustifiable police murders, as all unjustifiable murders, will ALWAYS exist. But how often do they occur? Juxtapose the number of run ins that people have with cops against how many unjustifiable cop murders occur. Such an issue is infinitesimally small in the US, just as it is in Canada.
And I don't care about income inequality because I don't think someone else being rich condemns someone else to poverty. Wealth can be made out of thin air, it's not a zero sum game. When one country becomes rich, it doesn't mean another country had to become poor for it to happen, that country took otherwise worthless resources (like steel, brick, plants, etc) and made them into useful commodities that can be bartered and traded with. The citizens of those countries made products that sold for money, and that money allowed the citizen to purchase things that, once before were luxuries, became normal, every day life as that country became wealthier and wealthier. The argument of wealth inequality being the cause of poverty and blight supposes the argument that the software engineer earning $200,000 a year working for Amazon is impoverished because Jeff Bezos is the richest man on the face of the planet.