tommy mulcair and free trade

To: elizabeth.may@parl.gc.ca, elizabeth.may.c1a@parl.gc.ca

hi.

i think you really need to push mulcair on free trade in the debates, and generally.

whatever his recent rise in the polls is attributed to, the ndp base has been rooted in it's opposition to free trade since 1993. and, i'm not convinced that mulcair is really in line with this.

consider what happens if the ndp win and he takes the neo-liberal consensus on this and just pushes the tpp through. you're going get protests and strikes and the whole thing when it really kicks in. and, the liberals have no credibility on this. who wins when their base collapses? you.

but, it's not just self-interest. i'm a pragmatist; i'm not going to vote for a fourth or fifth place party, and i don't want to see you knock him down to win harper another majority. it's a really serious public debate that isn't happening and something that voters in general need to get a better grasp in - both in terms of what's at stake and in terms of where the guys stands on it. nobody's voting for the ndp to elect another (neo)-liberal government.

we don't have a lot of checks and balances in parliament. but we perhaps have too many parties, and this surplus of parties could maybe serve canadians better by acting as one.

we're not going to get another "nation's conscience" type ndp leadership, and they're not positioned to make sure much of anybody is sticking to their word and keeping their promises. rather, somebody needs to step in and fulfil that position as it relates to them. as a party that is (in some ways) to the left of the ndp, that's a role you can actually fill. the best the liberals can really do at this point is parrot the conservatives in critiquing their budgets.

there's lots of things in that platform of theirs that look pretty good. somebody's gotta make sure they're actually doing it.

evolution doesn't really work in "steps". the error you're making of evolving to a higher state is widely made in evolutionary biology by experts and non-experts alike. if you want to know if this is going to be an evolutionary advantage, you need to ask if it's going to increase chances of survival. and, that practically amounts to arguing that the nerds will outbreed the jocks.

that said, i do agree that this is a type of variation that has the potential to be game changing should we find ourselves in the proper environment - which would need to be constructed by nerds. in the end, the nerds may inherit the earth, but only if they build it in such a way that they give themselves an advantage.

and, we're always under threat of being beaten up and having our technology stolen at recess.

the bottom line is that intellectual capacity of this type is probably never going to be an evolutionary advantage in any kind of strict sense. the best applicable model is sympatric, but what that would suggest is not the evolution of the entire species to some kind of higher state but a small population of nerds splitting off. it would basically have to be class-based. and i think that kind of class division really strains the boundaries of plausibility - and would also take quite some time to happen.

but, the increasing prevalence of asperger's type behaviour may very well indicate a type of variation in the human population that will both be with us very far into the future and create increasingly disparate types of people. and, we may end up face-to-face with needing to deal with a type of specialization that is genetic as much as it is economic. 

paul tidwell
+deathtokoalas The nerds won't outbreeed the jocks for the simple fact that they're rational enough to plan to have fewer kids because finance. 

Gea Vox
+deathtokoalas Evolution works in a disordered and uneven fashion, throwing up variants all the time. Those that give people who possess them evolutionary advantages succeed, breed and are passed on, those that do not, or even hamper, fail and their scions die out.

Gea Vox
+paul tidwell On the contrary, the "jocks" will not be able to keep up with the increasingly complex demands of the world the Neurodiverse are creating everyday. The "jocks" will end up being the farmers and labourers, instructed and guided by the Neurodiverse to build the world the NDs need and want. Endof. It's called evolution and Neanderthals - way sturdier and stronger then Homo Sapiens - became extinct, while the smaller but brainier HS triumphed... [Evolutyionary] History is repeating itself... Bye Bye Jocks! See you at the slave markets... 10 a penny! 

deathtokoalas
+Gea Vox well, i think the evidence actually suggests that sapiens absorbed neanderthalensis, and that it's kind of wrong to think of them as a separate species in the first place.

but, what you're describing has been tried and abandoned by various ruling classes, because you can't hold a slave society without it revolting. it's this model that humans keep trying to implement, and yet keeps failing.

it follows that your proposal of elite nerd dominance - while perhaps not unreasonable - does not lead to your outcome of nerd evolution. it just leads to a stratified society, with a growing slave base that will eventually tear that elite down.

you can't get around it. in order for this to happen, nerds have to get laid more often than jocks.

i'm just trying to imagine exactly how it is that north korea might ship arms to hamas, who tend to create their rockets from scratch because they're under comprehensive blockade.

i suppose it would have to go by ship; land and air routes would have to go through israeli checkpoints. that would mean it would ship out through the us blockade of china, through the islands, past india (maybe it would refuel at diego garcia), through the suez canal and finally land in a palestinian port.

or, perhaps, hamas has carried out every child's fantasy and managed to dig a tunnel to china?

when you find the shipments, let me know. i bet there's some of that oil that isis is selling on the same ship, too.