do service workers deserve living wages, benefits, time off, holiday pay and all of the other things you get through unionized labour? of course they do.

and, do they owe us a living? of course they fucking do.

but, does it make sense to seize the mcdonalds and redistribute the hamburgers? it very clearly does not. you want to shut these kinds of things down altogether, actually, tell the customers to make their own fucking sandwich and tell the workers to find something better to do.

so, if you think you can just redefine socialism for a service economy, you've lost the plot. we should be focusing on something else, and that something else is an emancipation of our time.

the old paradox was that you need somebody to run the machines that make our lives easier, but this has largely eroded and flipped over: the existing economy enslaves us rather than emancipates us, and we consequently don't just not need anybody to run it, but would be better off shutting it down altogether. when conservatives yell about dismantling the economy, my reaction is something like "yes, please!".

i've made this point before. if you live in an agrarian society, where almost everybody owns property and produces their own products, then a free market system is the best way to maximize freedom. but, if you live in an industrial economy where class is a much more defined concept, then the socialization of production is a pre-requisite for any meaningful discussion of freedom. the problem with really existing capitalism is that it is applying free markets to an industrial economy, which by definition doesn't make any sense. so, now that we are moving into a post-industrial economy, we need to ask the question: what is the best way to maximize freedom? and, it seems to me that the answer must lie in a system, perhaps as yet unnamed and undefined, that focuses on alleviating the necessity of work. that is what is in front of us, and should be the economy we want to try and build: one where people are truly free to spend their time how they actually want to.

i haven't written this. i doubt i'll be the one that does. but, to do this, you need to start talking about redistributing resources in a way that collectivizes ownership, but not through the worker co-operative. if we end up with restaurant co-ops while the banks keep demanding their rent, we're just spinning in circles.

if the left wants to regain control of the ndp, it's going to have to organize and do it. an article like this merely states the obvious.

but, i'd actually advise against it.

the ndp is dead; the economy has changed, and organized labour is not the political force it used to be. let's move on to a post-industrial society, and let's take control of the green party in order to do it.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/07/08/Moderate-NDP-Has-Not-Worked/

i mean, if you want a really scary comparison, the fact is that maxime bernier has more in common with emmanuel macron than justin trudeau does.

i don't think we're walking down that path.

i don't think it's implausible that we might, though.

if the conservatives were actually in power, it might be a little different.

but, in this election, where the conservatives are in opposition, bernier is a much greater threat to the liberals - and the numbers are starting to show it.

i know the liberals try to present a specific idea about what they call "multiculturalism", and then viciously attack anybody that challenges them on it.

but, if you look at historical data from actual liberal voters, you're going to see a different reality than the party likes to project. these ideas that the party wants to define itself by are only going to get 60-70% from actual liberal voters, meaning there's a big opportunity to poach liberal voters by appealing to their hidden or not so hidden racism.

but, what i actually think - and i've pointed this out over and over again - is that race is not an important issue in canadian politics, and certainly not the way that it is in the united states. immigration is an issue, and maintaining a secular identity in the face of so much religious immigration is an issue, but race itself is not very important to most canadians. bernier consequently doesn't really offer anything different to most conservative voters. it would be a different story if he was appealing to things that conservatives actually care about - like lowering taxes - but he actually isn't doing that. however, he is appealing to pro-market liberals, that may want to do things like break up supply management, and that tend to lean towards secularism over religious identity, but may perhaps simply be looking for a protest vote - and unwilling to give it to the greens or ndp because they're too far left for them.

i mean, it's not such a crazy thing. really. to look at bernier as a valid protest, all you have to be is a capitalist, centrist liberal that doesn't like the direction that trudeau is taking the country in, but knows the conservatives are even worse. that's a potentially large demographic, actually.

if the trends continue, the libertarians are going to get stampeded and swallowed.

i don't know how likely that is. but, if even the leader of the libertarian party thinks it's time to cooperate and stop competing, there must be some cannibalism happening in the libertarian party - or at least more than usual.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bernier-libertarian-party-merger-1.4827241

in canada, we now have, on the left,

1) liberals (in name only.).
2) socialists (in name only).
3) greens.
4) libertarians.
5) quebec nationalists.

the socialists (in name only) are in big trouble for october, and the libertarians could very well exit parliament at that time as well, while the greens and french nationalists are trending upwards.

together, these parties will get upwards of 70% of the vote.

on the right, you have one party: the conservatives, and they're to the left of what americans call centrist democrats. they'll get around 30% of the vote.

i need to reiterate the point.

maxime bernier is not swinging anti-immigrant conservatives.

what he's swinging are right-libertarian liberals.

....because, in canada, the libertarian movement is in coalition with the left, not the right. or, was, anyways.

this narrative is complete bullshit.

reliable polling has held the parties within the margin of error the whole time, which is an advantage for the liberals because they have a far better shot at the undecideds. support has not flowed from the liberals to the conservatives over the last few years, but rather from the liberals to the greens - and increasingly from the liberals to the people's party.

what the tory media tried to do here was set their party up with a lot of gramscian conditioning around something nobody actually ever cared much about. it's now realizing that the approach has failed, and trying something else.

it's a good demonstration of the limits of media power, and the fact that it can't always shape the voting decisions people make; while it may have succeeded in denting the liberals pretty badly, it has completely failed in propping up the conservatives. and, now it's dealing with the possibility of giving the greens the balance of power, as blowback.

i'll take it.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/suddenly-the-ndps-money-woes-make-sense/

listen: i actually don't think that a person's wealth is relevant in analyzing their politics. if a really rich person came out with politics i support, i wouldn't have a problem supporting them.

but, i don't want to support somebody that is entering politics because they think they're on a mission from god - that's scary, backwards stuff.

i'd be checking louisiana for chem trails, though.

haarp.

clearly.

https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/whats-behind-the-weird-track-of-invest-92l-and-other-july-tropical-storms

ok, not really - but if they were going to test a system, this is what it would look like.

In his late 30s, Steyer had "a revelation" and began an involvement in the Episcopal Church, the religion of his mother (his father was a non-practicing Jew). He has stated that during this time he became much more interested in religion and theology. This new interest reportedly galvanized his political advocacy.

nope.

next.

lots of baggage, there.

i wonder how tom sawyer would do in the south carolina primaries, though.

i'm actually not sure if tom sawyer is too young to run for president, or too old to run for president, at this point.

oh. tom steyer.

never heard of him. needs to work on name recognition.

this was completely organic, and i was just reacting to a guy falling on top of me.