if you find yourself smoking so much marijuana that you barely even get high anymore, i'm going to suggest that you save yourself some money and just switch to tobacco.

at least it's filtered.

this is long overdue.

and, the current political climate around the sitting president could very well facilitate this getting through congress.

that 1973 act happened under nixon, remember.

wait.

you're not still talking about the philips curve in 2018, are you?

that was debunked like 50 years ago. which is laffier at this point?

listen: you can't get out of this by boosting interest rates and cutting spending, either. that's even worse. you'll get a recession in no time.

there's no reason for us to be paying interest on government debt.

i've posted about this at length elsewhere, but, just to clarify, if i wasn't clear: the problem that canada faced with the imf in the 90s wasn't actually about debt. it was about interest rates. it's not that we "spent too much" - that doesn't mean anything - it's that we borrowed it from banks at 15-20% interest rates.

then, chretien inherits this ridiculous debt (that ballooned under mulroney, not trudeau). but, the debt was not spurred by spending in the 60s and early 70s, it was all interest accumulated in the late 70s and early 80s...

what this did was give investors leverage over the government, because we owed them their pound of flesh. so, they started thinking they could tell us what to do.

and, thankfully, our government at the time didn't fold. it restructured, and it sold off some assets (oil, planes) but it didn't touch the social fabric of the country. harper would have. i think trudeau will, too, if we get there.

the solution is not to cut spending. that doesn't matter. and, it has it's own negative consequences, too.

the solution is to ensure that interest rates stay low, so we don't build up this external debt. or, if we find ourselves unable to control the rates, to stop borrowing from private lenders.

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/new-research-interest-rate-cuts-dont-shift-corporate-investment/

but, i mean...

i'm in favour of just using the bank of canada to print money interest free. then the market can do what it wants and i don't even care about interest rates at all.

if i was a conspiracy theorist, i might even suggest that the whole interest rate theory is just a ploy by investors to rip taxpayers off.

at the least, that is what actually happens.

trump isn't fixing something that wasn't broken.

he's breaking something that was working optimally.

and, no - a quarter percent modification of the interest rate doesn't lead anybody to change their decisions.

if interest rates have any effect at all - and i'm not even at this point - then it is purely on the level of statist brainwashing. this is gramscian theory, not economic theory.

but, what is bad about high interest rates is that it makes it harder for governments to run deficits, which just contributes to the downward spiral created by removing the stimulus.

liberals are not economic oracles, either.

but, conservatives do not understand economics.

at all.

again: you'll have to wait a few months to see what i'm saying play out. and, something else could happen to negate what i'm saying.

but, two major things happened with the market:

1) the end of quantitative easing, which should plunge the market by tens of thousands of points by the time it's done and is both structural and long term.
2) tax cuts, which should provide a short term burst that fizzles out, relatively quickly.

so, the tax cuts are having this kind of buoyant effect.

but, it's like putting a life jacket on the titanic.

or using an umbrella to protect yourself against a falling piano.

and, this is just what capitalism is.

the area we today call afghanistan was actually once the wealthiest and most advanced parts of persian civilization, rich in irrigation systems, and both at the centre of global trade routes (and perhaps of global trade, itself) and a distant refuge of learning and spirituality. those bamyan statues were perhaps the last relic of what was truly greatness.

white people right?

well, the persians kinda were white at the time, actually.

it was the mongols. they slaughtered entire cities, laying waste to the whole countryside, destroying irrigation systems, raping whatever was left and leaving desolated and expanding desertification in their wake.

it was so total, that it's never been rebuilt.

to truly rebuild afghanistan would be the legacy of a god-king. and, one might hope that that is one of the upsides of the expanding chinese dominance in the region, as they no doubt remember it as it was better than anybody else.

if you're curious, the stress i was under did lead to a nicotine relapse over parts of december and much of january. but, i turned it around at the beginning of february, and it's now been about three weeks since i had a cigarette. i'm comfortable in stating i'm back on top of this.

the last couple of days have been pretty brutal.

i've been unable to sleep for something like a week. an hour or two here and there. i've spent most of the last 15+ hours trying to sleep with no success...

this has left me with a headache and a stomach ache, both of which are being compounded by a large amount of second hand smoke coming up through a hole in the floor, which is going to need to stay open until i can get the plumbing fixed, and it is unclear when that will happen.

i feel like death.

in the mean time, i've been forced to leave every window open in the apartment, and i have no intention of closing them until i can fix the hole in the floor that's exacerbating the headache.

back at the old apartment, i pointed out repeatedly that there was no solution in moving to a different apartment, as i'd just recreate the same problems. up until last week or so, this place legitimately seemed  a lot better, but there appears to be a lot of marijuana coming up from the floors all of a sudden. i think i can fix this by taping over it. but, i have to wait until the plumbing is fixed.

i don't expect to be able to do much of anything useful until this problem is resolved, and it's unclear how long this is going to take.

but, as was the case before, there is no solution in changing apartments - as i've just demonstrated.

i really wish there was a law against smoking inside of apartment buildings...

as it is, i have no recourse but to slowly seal off all of the cracks, until they're all gone.

neither optimism nor pessimism are well defined ideas.

there is rather a choice between realism and delusional thinking.

listen, this is just a policy disagreement, minor in scope if major in consequence, and i'm not about to be bullied into quieting down on it via specious accusations or ad hominems because there are multiple horrific implications to continuing on the wrong direction with this.

hell does not exist.

but, you can follow that road lined with good intentions to it's endpoint of destitute failure, nonetheless.

now, will you acknowledge that this is a grounded, reasonable and obviously correct criticism, or will you stick your head in the sand and call me names?

(i'm aware that the majority of syrian refugees are not religious fundamentalists, but rather have been fleeing religious fundamentalism. but, special care is still required to ensure that the kids are properly integrated. and, the government isn't doing this...)

now, let's just hope their kids secularize properly, which may be difficult given how isolated and ostracised they're going to end up.

looking at the facts would have concluded that these people don't speak english, don't have marketable skills and are consequently not going to thrive here - no matter how much they really, really, really want to.

magical thinking doesn't work, kids.

as we can see...

i guess that, if you can't see that then you can't see that.

history will see that.

this is just another example of how faith leads to irrationality and poor decision making.

....and this is very much at the core of why it's so important to eliminate all religious influence from public decision making.

again: i don't care about what your opinion is, or about how something makes you feel inside. and, you shouldn't either.

what i care about - and what you should care about, too - is what the facts are, and about how the facts should guide you to make reasonable deductions.

i mean, it's nice to pat yourself on the back thinking you did something good, for whatever trivial reason, but it's really only your ego that's benefiting if an objective factual analysis concludes that everybody is worse off by your supposed act of beneficence.

and, a rational agent is just going to conclude that you're all completely insane.

see, i don't have any contempt for these people.

but, i just want you to read the article and ask yourself whether it made sense to bring them here, at great expense, and for little gain.

i'd have rather have sent the assad regime weapons to help them fight isis.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/syrian-refugee-update-1.4545226

do i seem like i want to deal with a fucking character limit?

i have to remind people once in a while that i do not and never did have a twitter account.

that's not me.

sorry.