good news with the laptop hard drive: i was able to get it to boot up into windows 7 from the pc. i'm probably not going to get back online until tomorrow or the next day, but i know how to reconstruct the machine from here. 

i ended up flipping the process over, because i wanted to make sure there was an endpoint; instead of slowly inserting the working system hive into the broken one, hoping for it to eventually work, i copied over the system hive used by the setup disc, which got around the security descriptors and let me figure out where the error is. i quickly figured out that the 7xb error is actually being caused by a broken service, although i haven't figured out which one, yet. just realizing what was happening was good enough. so, i copied the broken system hive back into the config directory and imported the services hive that i copied from the fresh install, which brought me up to that chkdsk i had scheduled (the disk is fine). the thing is booting, but to a generic set of services; at least i know i can salvage it, though. the next thing to do will be to copy each service back into the registry until the blue screen comes back, fix the problem, and reimage the drive with the corruption reversed. the install should be exactly as i left it....

a corrupt service or driver shouldn't cause this kind of mess; windows is supposed to hold your last working configuration, but the error seems to have ended up in both control sets. very strange. but, the important thing is that i can salvage this.

and, i simply don't think that you're going to get this government to agree to tax imports, unilaterally. it's too globalist, in ideology - too neo-liberal.

so, we're kind of playing with fire.

to be clear: i don't think the thing is going to be powerful enough to reduce emissions, not even if it taxes imports. but, if it doesn't tax imports, it's really potentially somewhat harmful.

this is a more responsible article (excluding the silly reference to "what economists say", as though economics is a science, as though it analyzes facts, and as though economists all agree with each other), but it's not addressing the point that i've referred to, and that the american economists i referenced yesterday were pointing out, about the importance of taxing imports.

this issue is less pronounced in alberta or bc because the economy isn't reliant on manufacturing. in ontario, manufacturing is the dominant part of the economy - behind only real estate, by gdp. so, let's consider a manufacturing plant in niagara falls that has branches on both sides of the border, for illustrative purposes - it doesn't have to actually exist in the real world, it can just exist in the imaginations of people in ivory towers.

what a carbon tax is going to do is force firms to make one of the four choices when faced with rising costs:

1) pass the costs on, which it will do if it can remain competitive (ie everybody else does it)
2) move production elsewhere, like to the plant across the river
3) innovate a solution to cut costs somehow, as though businesses aren't already faced with incentives to lower costs, and wouldn't already reduce production costs if they knew how, in the first place.
4) downsize somehow.

as (3) is in truth absurd, and (4) is in most cases alarmist and only realistic in situations where a firm is already dying anyways, the real options are between (1) and (2).

now, even if everybody else does (1), (2) remains an incentive, if possible. and, then, once a few firms start doing it, everybody else has to do it in order to compete. so, what you've really done is create an incentive to move manufacturing to the united states.

further, when a consumer walks into a market and looks at the difference in price, they're really not going to be incentivized to buy the less polluting product, at least not so long as imports are not being taxed; what they're going to be incentivized to buy is the product produced in a different country that isn't being taxed, which could very well be, maybe even probably be, the more polluting product.

the way it's designed, it's really just a tariff on ourselves.

now, this isn't happening in a vacuum. there are other factors to consider, including the tariffs that trump is insisting on. the carbon tax may not be powerful enough on it's own, or it might be the breaking point, or it might not make any difference at all. so, there's no guarantee it will cause a recession.

but, it is a recessionary policy.

and, in ontario, there is some potential for some harm from it - if we insist on refusing to tax imports. so long as we allow foreign polluters access to our markets tax-free, it's simply a tariff on ourselves.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2019/01/23/heres-how-trudeaus-carbon-price-will-actually-affect-the-economy-according-to-economists.html

but, i mean...

do i want to take a side in a conflict between an entitled middle class and a centralized form of state capitalism?

i'm on the side of the squatters and campesinos.

the general american strategic policy objective is essentially never to install a bourgeois democracy in an area that it exploits, but always to instill a charismatic dictator that keeps the revolutionary elements of society in order, to keep the exploitation running smoothly.

as i said: what is happening in venezuela is rarely what it seems.

despite, or even because of, these movements of people you're seeing in the streets - and they are bourgeois, that is middle class, in nature - what the united states wants in venezuela is a government that keeps the impoverished poor in order, not one that opens up opportunity for the educated to exploit them. and, they're going to be more than happy to let the maduros of the world call them imperialists and gringos, so long as the poor are kept in check, and the oil and food keeps flowing out of the colony, and into the empire.

so, there's this bourgeois analysis coming from the north arguing that the middle classes are being repressed and maduro needs to go to better open the country to exploitation. but, the americans don't want to empower the middle class in latin america, they want to keep the country under their control. and, in a society like venezuela where the poor greatly outnumber the middle class, transferring power to the bourgeoisie is just putting in place another working class uprising - it's not a sustainable outcome.

so, wherever you stand in the class war, the reality is that maduro is the preferable option, from the perspective of american imperialist ambition.

i really think this is just theatre.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/world/americas/venezuela-protests-guaido-maduro.html