the russians are far too far behind to call this an "arms race".

but, good job, guys. that's just what the earth needed

fwiw, i bet russia would be keen to fall in line on the inf if you'd exchange it for your own obligation to the abm.

what's that? nevermind? well, you have no argument, then.

the way it works in canada is that the local companies have a monopoly on the line, and they rent the services - as thom suggests. i pay $30/month for 150 gb a month over 6 mbps through a third party. that's about 50% less than i'd pay if i went directly through the monopoly, partially because they would force me to upgrade both. what that reflects is the underlying monopoly.

international observers have concluded that canada gets less for more money than virtually any other "advanced" country.

in truth, i really only need about 20 gb/month and the reality is that essentially nobody on the actual internet (services like netflix notwithstanding) is going to let you download even at 6 mbps. i'd be happy with 4.5, really. this is one the biggest scams out there: download rates are set by the server, not by the user. the big companies sell plans at 300 mbps. that's a ridiculous number that doesn't come to close to existing in any sort of reality - and won't for decades. netflix' suggestion for "ultra-hd" is 25 mbps. you'd have to be watching netflix simultaneously on 12 screens...

canadian observers are focusing on "competition" as a solution to the problem. yet, they won't look at the root of the problem: which is the private monopoly on the lines. so long as the lines remain controlled by private interests, there will be regulations on them that will work against consumers.

in order to get a really competitive system, we need to look at communications lines the same way we look at roads. this isn't some far leftist diatribe, it's basic liberal economics. it's infrastructure. we want to hold this in common. any serious discussion of this topic needs to begin from that point - despite it currently being outside the spectrum.

how we go from there is open to a little more discussion. there's a few different models:

1) if you don't care about competition, and i really don't, you could have a single-payer type system, where we basically get "free" internet access that's run by tax revenue. the guy on the phone talked about customer service. who needs customer service from their isp? if the system is stable, you don't call them at all. further, the costs involved in running a cable network are really pretty negligible; you're not talking about a hike in taxes. if you take the profit out of it, the whole country would end up paying $5/year or something in taxes - which is a dramatic cut for absolutely everybody. even with a mild revenue stream, costs are down dramatically across the board.

2) we could be literal about the smith analogy and set up a usage-based toll system. this could work in two ways:

a) let the government collect it. i'm paying $0.20/gb per month. that could only possibly come down under public ownership.
b) rent the lines out and then let third parties collect it.

it's only the third option that can provide for real competition, if that's really what you want. it's the only way to create a truly level playing field. i can't see any reason why that's a good idea, it's just creating an unnecessary bourgeois level of bureaucracy, but it's the only way to actually do it. otherwise, you've always got somebody owning the lines, and you've always got unfair restrictions to access.

i should take a mild step backwards.

the necessary condition to allow for competition (and, again, i see no value in this) is not necessarily state ownership of the lines, but merely a neutral party to operate the lines. if we refuse to accept the arguments of foundational capitalist philosophers and insist on reaganite nonsense, we can get around that by passing a glass-steagall type act (or a trust-buster, if you'd prefer) that separates isps and line companies. a firewall that separates running lines from running isps would allow for the same kind of level playing field.

i think it would be inefficient and wasteful, but it would at least get to the point where a competitive market is possible.

the current conditions make that outcome impossible, and there's no use in pretending otherwise.

as usual, calandra gets thrown to the wolves.

it may be hard to figure out where this is coming from. but, the increasing ubiquity of netflix is a legitimate bandwidth issue that is driving up rates for third party isps and forcing low bandwidth users to subsidize high bandwidth users.

i'm on the internet all the time, but i'm a low bandwidth user. on average, i use around 5 gb/month - mostly 240p youtube streaming of lectures and alternative news sources while i'm eating. yet, i'm forced to pay for 150 gb/month - as the lowest, most introductory package. my isp recently raised prices, and compensated for it by doubling my bandwidth from 75 gb to 150 gb. but, this is useless to me - i'd actually rather pay less for less bandwidth. what i'm doing is subsidizing heavy users to deal with the way that the third parties have to interact with the local monopolies, and that functionally works out to a redistributive tax.

i figure i'm paying about $0.20/gb. if i was actually charged for what i'm using, i could take my internet bill down from $30/month to around $1/month.

do the conservatives have any ideas to break up the cable line monopolies, stop the subsidies to netflix users and allow for usage-based billing - to force netflix users to pay for the strain they're causing on the system?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCIxFnkI7SQ

it's the kind of thing where the limits of competitive market theory are exposed. it's hard to know what an adam smith might have said about cable lines, but i think we can take a few guesses.

i think there's an argument that cable lines are kind of like roads. you can't lay two roads beside each other and then let the owners compete - it's absurd. so, it makes sense for them to be built and operated by the state, and for everybody to have equal access to them.

the conservative party wouldn't have an opinion on that, would it?

get real.

trudeau made it crystal clear that he has no business running for this job. he came off as a wind-up doll repeating pre-programmed catch phrases. the traditional target audience for the liberal party has never reacted to that kind of candidate with anything less than utter contempt. there's a small base on the left that will fall for this (layton tapped into it) and a slightly larger base on the right (harper has tapped into it), but in order to win like that you have to set the entire concept of the "liberal brand" on fire.

that debate made it clear that liberals will vote for mulcair in large numbers. mulcair had the subtle, centrist policy nuances that liberals have traditionally fallen all over themselves over - he transcended the slogans and catchphrases. wherever trudeau is able to draw support from, it will not be from traditional liberals.

his answer to the question "can canada act militarily outside of the un?", or whatever it was, likewise set fire to the liberal party's traditions. the answer a liberal is supposed to give to that is "no".

i literally laughed out loud when he said "my number is nine!". i thought he was going to say something about gordie howe, or maybe go into a loop while strange static noises and burbles rose up around him.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-election-2015-debate-takeaways-aug7-1.3182332

we're in the midst of finalizing a long political realignment in canada.

traditionally, canada has supported four parliamentary parties: a quasi-fascist party, a moderate right wing party, a left-leaning centrist party and a social democratic party. these are closer to european definitions than american ones, and our political system has traditionally been more comparable to the united kingdom (or perhaps a country like sweden) than to the united states.

in the 60s and 70s, the spectrum was (from right to left) composed of social credit, progressive conservatives, liberals and new democrats. this was a stable configuration, stretching back to the days of the labour movement. the socreds were generally ignored, leaving a functional three-party system. this resulted in a real-life, functioning hegelian dialectic - with the liberal party acting as a synthesis. this dialectic is the reason that the canadian government was such a strangely enlightened institution over those years: it had a functioning means of balancing the right with the left. the liberals often governed with ndp support, which meant they had to work left-wing ideas into their centrist approach. but, they could not move too far to the left or they would lose power to the conservatives. when new ideas were developed, they were consistently compared to their anti-thesis and synthesized into liberal policies.

as this is a stable system, any collapse should eventually work to reconstruct it.

the collapse began in 1979, due to a tactical decision by the short-term conservative prime minister to not form a coalition in a minority government with the socreds because they were quasi-fascists; the result was that the socreds collapsed, and most of their votes swung to the conservatives. that in turn allowed the conservatives to win majority governments in 1984 and 1988 by absorbing socred support (and taking a little from the liberals). canada uses a first past the post system.

however, while that was happening, the former socred base (mostly in western canada) began to organize itself into a force that could overtake the ruling conservatives. the election of 1993 broke the conservative party into three parts, recreating the socred party (under the name "reform party") out of a base of very right-leaning westerners and also a quebec separatist party called the "bloc quebecois", in addition to the remnants of the party. further, the liberals found themselves in greater competition with the ndp and reacted by campaigning much further to the left (they opposed nafta, for instance). this domination of the ndp, combined with the collapse of the conservatives, created an astoundingly large liberal party majority - with the bloc quebecois (which had no seats outside of the province of quebec) as the official opposition.

this created an unstable spectrum: there were now five parties in a country that has traditionally supported four, none of the parties were much aligned with where their voters were and there was this hubris of promises flying around that nobody intended on keeping. that meant two things needed to happen out of the systemic collapse of 1993: five parties had to recombine into four, and they had to realign into the traditional spectrum: quasi-fascist, moderate conservative, left-leaning centrist and social democratic.

the power vacuum that the liberals found themselves in from 1993 to 2000 gave them virtual free reign over policy. the synthesis was abandoned, to be replaced by the friendly dictatorship of jean chretien - a man that was widely admired, but that nobody admired for his intelligence. the fact that they no longer needed to rely on the ndp to prop them up allowed them to move as far to the right as they wished, in stark contrast to their election promises. and, they did do exactly this, to attempt to dominate the conservatives before they could get back on their feet. this had the effect of pushing the other remnant of the conservative party - the bloc quebecois - much further to the left, to differentiate itself from the increasingly right-leaning liberals. the liberals in this period are not yet a moderate conservative party (they remained left-leaning in social policy), but are no longer a left-leaning centrist party. they are merely a centrist party.

this also allowed the ndp to move further to the centre, but the movement did not truly begin until the mid 00s.

the first merger that occurred was between the old quasi-fascist party (reform/socred) and the old moderate conservative party (progressive conservatives), and was done under the direction of the socreds - much to the chagrin of the prime minister of 1979, who had came out of retirement in the mid-90s to fight them. it combined socred social policy with neo-liberal economic policy. the election of 2004 saw the first canadian election with a reduced spectrum, but a fifth party emerged to fill the void left by the merger: the green party, who did not hold seats but managed close to 5% for the first time.

in 2006, the quasi-fascist/conservative merger actually won the election with largely the same coalition that existed in the 80s, but with a reversal of leadership - this time the quasi-fascists were in the driving seat. their consequent sharp turn to the right opened up a political vacuum that pulled the liberals further away from the center, and the ndp further into it. the liberals realized that they could attract moderate conservative support by criticizing their extreme policies, and the ndp in turn realized it could attract centrist support by criticizing the liberals' newfound conservativism. the greens remained somewhat distant, but began to define themselves as a party of the intellectual left - taking climate change and alter-globalization positions, which the ndp were sometimes questionable on.

there has been no synthesis in this period, merely a strong rightward pull with almost nothing to balance it. slowly, however, the electorate has adjusted by moving in the opposite direction: conservatives have been becoming liberals, and liberals have been becoming social democrats.

in 2011, the quebec party collapsed and it's support swung decisively to the ndp - the social democratic party. however, it's leader promptly died, which brought in a former liberal as party leader. he has seized the opportunity to move the party staunchly to the right, into the space that was vacated by the liberals in their attempt to chase conservative voters escaping the quasi-fascist tendencies of the conservative party. the current election is the first opportunity that voters have had to seriously examine this right-ward swing of the ndp, and it appears to be exaggerating the leftward flow of voters to compensate for the rightward shift of the parties. liberals are switching to the ndp in large numbers, which is making the conservatives seem increasingly extreme. in turn, traditional ndp voters are become increasingly alienated - and looking to the greens for a more principled means of political expression.

this has produced the pieces of what will likely construct the next stable, dialectical system - with the ndp as the synthesis in the middle. but, the process of voters shifting leftwards will likely need to wait another election to stabilize.

the current polling results are something like this:
quasi-fascist ("conservative party"): 30%
moderate conservative ("liberal party"): 25%
left-leaning centrist party ("ndp"): 35%
social democratic party ("green"): 5%
others: 5%

if i were to predict a result, it would be something like this:
quasi-fascist ("conservative party"): 25%
moderate conservative ("liberal party"): 20%
left-leaning centrist party ("ndp"): 40%
social democratic party ("green"): 10%
others: 5%

and, if i were to predict a result two-three years from now, it would be something like this:
quasi-fascist ("conservative party"): 10%
moderate conservative ("liberal party"): 30%
left-leaning centrist party ("ndp"): 35%
social democratic party ("green"): 20%
others: 5%

this is another stable alignment. and it could stay put for fifty years.

it would suggest that the ndp would require green support to govern, but must also listen to the liberals to prevent themselves from losing power.

harper is known for his targeted tax credits. it's not widely understood that this is the social credit idea of "dividends". if you look at his economic policy closely, many parallels begin to develop.