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  • 8 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 25th, 2023
  • AlexRogansBeta@kbin.socialtoCanada@lemmy.ca•Almost half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque as Tory support grows: poll
    0·
    10 months ago

    I hear you. But I think both are equally damaging, ultimately. One party might accelerate the process, and the other may drag the damage out over decades. But we end up in the same place.

    And, just spitballin’ here, maybe an accelerated view of how destructive liberal capitalism is may be exactly what Canadians need to jolt us out of our world-renowned complacency. I dunno what it’ll take to get Canadians fired up enough to seek actual change. Clearly raging forest fires, a housing crisis, a health care crisis, drug addition crisis, rampant depression and anxiety, rampant inflation, ballooning cost of living, and political corruption (both domestic and foreign) isn’t enough. So, maybe shit needs to get even worse before it gets better. Aka. Vote in the conservatives?

  • AlexRogansBeta@kbin.socialtoCanada@lemmy.ca•Almost half of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque as Tory support grows: poll
    12·
    10 months ago

    Lots of chatter in here about not supporting the conservatives. But, there’s no options for Canadians. Liberals are outta gas and haven’t done anything praiseworthy in a while. Conservatives suck and PP would just be a lamer Harper who wants to eat the poor. The NDP need a new leader as J.S. hasn’t made headway in years.

    More importantly, theyre all just arguing about how to tweak the broken, oppressive system we live with. No one is advocating for change. It’s just a debate over who thinks they can keep liberal capitalism afloat. But liberal capitalism is the root of the problems. We have no advocates for change.

    I vote we all go pull a 1919 Winnipeg and have a Canada-wide general strike in support of truly radical change. Change that pulls us away from rampant neoliberalization and rejects the basic assumptions of liberal capitalism.

  • AlexRogansBeta@kbin.socialtoCanada@lemmy.ca•A remote Canadian island makes history in fight for affordable housing
    6·
    10 months ago

    I believe the phenomenon of people buying houses “as an investment” is relatively new. People historically bought houses as places to live and have stability. They also happened to be a good investments but that wasn’t their purpose. The change in primacy of purpose is pretty much a direct result of neoliberalization, which has been underway for decades since the post-WW2 era, but became much more normalized in the 70s/80s.

    What I mean to say is that it’s a current cultural trend, but hardly a law of the housing market. More problematically, if we make policy based on the assumption that people view houses as investments, it serves to reify that, rather than combat it.

    I’d also be shocked if the market prices were primarily driven by your cited 65%. It’s been a long time since our markets and policy-making machines have been primarily driven by the majority of the population. We are a democracy composed of powerful, minority (not speaking about racial groups but class groups) interests. Anyone blaming the 65% for our woes isn’t paying enough attention to the absurd weight and influence exterted by only a handful of people and institutions.

    I am someone with a life-long attachment to the island, and who is surrounded by homeowners both on and off of Cortes. They have seen their home prices go up by absurd percentages in the last 5 years, they all recognize it isn’t right, they would not begrudge a market correction. Most people in my experience want everyone to live well and no one well-adjusted takes the “I got mine” attitude when it comes to housing. Meaning, a 20% drop in prices wouldn’t cause them to lose their shit. Heck, they may even welcome it if it meant a thriving community. Money stuck in inflated property prices can’t be invested in community, after all.