So… at about 9m16s, he admits that it’s not just the conservatives that do this sort of thing / have authoritarian undertones. And he’s right… but it’s a point that’s downplayed. Most political parties are marching to an authoritarian drum at this point.

I disagree, especially when focusing on Public Sector Unions. Making arguments about the cost of a service compared to the wage, is nonsensical when discussing public sector employment – 80-90% of the cost is the wage, and the ‘value add’ is nebulous and undefined, removed from regular market pressures. Trying to equate the job security provided by public sector unions to private sector business realities is also not convincing – in private sector, if business is stagnant/declining due to a recession, you fire people – doing so may allow you to increase wages for those who remain, though they may also need to increase efficiency/productivity. The OPs article is basically about unions wanting to ignore market realities… something that public sector unions do all the time, as they don’t need to look at the ‘cost’ side from a market perspective. They just yell at the government to tax us private sector workers more.

Unions have a purpose and a function, yes. But in public sector they are detached from market realities, and have skewed public sector employees into a position where they are the subject of private sector anger. It sets the stage for Republican style/Musk style cuts to gain support amongst the voting electorate – so regardless of whatever high horse pro-union people want to perch themselves on, its folly if they don’t take this disparity as a serious risk.

Even the Ops article belies that unions are no longer about ‘regular’ working class people – the letter is specifically saying that the unions are petitioning to provide better Employment Insurance options for “high earners”. So these salaries, that are well above the Canadian average need our government to increase the payouts to help protect those unionized workers from potential job losses? If their high pay is justified by high demand, they should be able to get other employment quickly in their field… but that whole letter sure isn’t about protecting the ‘regular’ common workers, and its the sort of statement that’s just going to antagonize private sector workers who earn “regular” wages. Why should even more of a waiters paycheque go to paying taxes, so that an Airplane Pilot can have an easier time if they lose their top 5% salary job?

pot -> kettle

That was the brits. People always say it was Canada, but it wasn’t. The guys in charge of that raid were in Canada for less then a year, and died later on in the same year they burned the WH - the leaders had spent most of their time on campaigns in EU / northern africa. The troops were all trained in the uk. Canada wasn’t even a ‘country’ for decades after that event – there’s no way we had our own trained army/generals involved. Hell, the (great?) granddaughter of one of the two generals who did it, is Olivia Wilde – from her scottish roots (Cockburn). So not even the guys kids/descendants were Canadian – they became US people in Hollywood.

Lotta Canadians like to take credit for it though, but realistically it wasn’t us.

It’s starting to seem like Canada should issue a travel advisory against going to the USA.

In some ways I hope it doesn’t come to that. In others … I mean, I’d win a friendly bet if it happened, so there’s that.

The states has been moving towards authoritarian corporate control for a long time though. The freedom cities controlled by big tech, setup in whatever country they want, operating outside ‘local’ regulations, with services via satellite and protection via US military, very much fits with what Starlink has done. Techs push for ‘rare earth’ (uranium) is likely about powering these sorts of cities, without needing to rely on a ‘countries’ power grid – to make them autonomous and impervious to local issues.

A few big military powers to allow for the “constant enemy” setup similar to 1984, with a corporate backend to prop up oligarchs that can act based on the whims of the oligarch without fear of repudiation.

Authoritarianism is on a big upswing lately, and egalitarian ideals are busy eating themselves alive – mired in demographic politics. And the conspiracy gremlin in me says it’s been intentional on the part of the democrats/progressive sorts, as they’re just as beholden to ‘rich’ authoritarian leaning tech people as the right wing/republican sorts.

I recognise the benefit and purpose of unions, but recently I have to admit I’ve been a bit conflicted over them.

We frequently see stories about pending cuts / budget shortfalls here in BC, for things like Teachers and Transit workers. The news releases always phrase the issue as the amounts the govt gives these orgs having ‘failed to keep up with inflationary pressures’. They’ll very rarely also note that a huge % of that budget goes directly to salaries… where we’ve heard unions in past years negotiate fairly huge wage increases. Leads to a fairly simple conclusion that the “inflationary pressures” that are causing things like after school programs to be cut, are the union’s negotiated salary increases.

The wage increases that they negotiate, are also way higher than most of the increases I’ve seen / heard of in the private sector. The economy’s so bad, some jobs have even been unable to provide regular CPI increases… yet union workers still get their ~20% increase over 3-4 years or whatnot. The bank of Canada had cautioned people not to setup high-multi year increases due to the market uncertainty around the time covid restrictions were easing – private sector generally listened, unions/public sector did not.

The public sector also now employs more people than ever before – skewing statistics significantly. A recent stat I saw placed it at about 1 in 4 workers in Canada work for the public sector, where these sorts of increases are more standard. As a result, lopsided increases in public sector wages skews national numbers in regards to aggregate stats on wages. However, public sector funding comes from private sector taxes – and without gains in the private sector / productivity to fuel increased tax revenue, how exactly do unions / govt think we’re going to pay for those “inflationary pressures”? The private sector workhorse can only survive so much flogging.

When I was younger, govt work was viewed as lower pay, but far greater job stability. Now, it’s higher pay and greater job stability. And the amount of govt workers has increased dramatically, making it all the more obvious that it’s a golden ticket. When interacting with govt workers, there’s also a sense of ‘waste’ from the private side – like seeing 6 workers at a govt dispensary just standing around with no customers for hours, as they collect higher pay cheques than regular retail + have better job security. This creates animosity towards what’s essentially a privileged worker class. Govt workers in the states faced a huge backlash from the public, in part because of this sort of disparity, I imagine. I hope that the progressive folks are keenly aware of that gap, and are mindful of what may result if they leave it to fester. It’s the sort of situation that makes people vote in favour of things like DOGE, and allows more extreme folks to co-opt that message for far more nefarious purposes / more extreme actions. There needs to be an alternative, or a shift to more practical budgetary sanity.

Russia’s objective isn’t tariffs – it’s to splinter/decouple international coordination and cooperation amongst western nations.

So, yeah. The faster Trump can accelerate that, the happier his boss’ll be.

Like the buy[local] type campaigns are most likely getting a bit of a bump from Russian propaganda agents – even if they are ‘real’ sentiments to some extent too.

Reddit’s seeing membership outflows resulting from their more draconian policies. Reddit boss restarts a competitor platform so that he can try and recapture users by owning his own competition, while trying to pretend like there’s no conflict.

idk. Seems pretty suspect to me. Lemmy seems ‘ok’ for news aggregation, and it has a more community / local vibe to it. For example, I can have more confidence that the feeds I see on Lemmy.ca are more controlled / accountable to Canadians, rather than the heavily Americanized subs that exist in Reddit. And I can pick and choose which other subs to see, with better understanding of the likely biases that I’ll encounter. This sort of end user transparency is really refreshing, especially given the burbling propaganda war being waged by the Americans at present against Canada.