this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Step 1: cut healthcare funding
Step 2: watch healthcare system flounder
Step 3: criticize the system for being incapable of meeting healthcare needs
Step 4: cut funding more
Step 5: watch system implode
Step 6: privatize even though no one wants this
Step 7: record shareholder profits!
That’s exactly what’s going on in all conservative run provinces aka. most of the country. It’s going to be insane when all the boomers, who spent their whole lives voting blue, are definitely going to need a quality healthcare system but won’t be able to afford it.
To be honest, I don’t think the Liberals would have improved the system but I doubt they would’ve purposefully caused it to implode.
But they definitely can’t vote orange because brown man === bad and like 30 years ago they gave teachers an extra 6 days off to prevent the education system from collapsing. Oh the humanity!
My parents voted blue their entire lives, including from the nursing homes they got to spend their final years in, where they complained about how bad healthcare and seniors care were and why weren't they funded better and why were there so many immigrants doing the work instead of real Canadians - and then dutifully voting as blue as possible because what else are they going to do?
Canada's 3 major nationwide political parties, from right to left:
Cruelty
Complacency
Idiocy
I reject this “both/all sides!” thinking.
The NDP have the best policy proposals overall. It’s amazing that we have been so thoroughly brainwashed into believing the narrative that the NDP are incompetent or unrealistic. Meanwhile, their policies are similar to those of centre left parties in Scandinavian countries, which are some of the happiest, healthiest and most economically competitive countries in the world.
Oh, I'm not "both sidesing" because I think myself an iconoclast that's better than everybody. I think NDP are dumb because I strongly support market-based solutions to policy problems and the NDP tends to come up with dumb populist solutions for policy problems. Like, I'm firmly a deregulation/YIMBYist guy when it comes to the housing crisis, and the NDP has the closest relationship with the left-NIMBYs in city councils that are trying their damnedest to worsen the problem by blocking market-based construction.
The only good and inventive NDP policy ideas (not just their typical "expand the social safety net" stuff like pharmacare -- which is good! But not really innovative) is pushing for more taxes on wealth accumulation, like a wealth tax or a lower capital gains exclusion.
When it comes to hard problems like housing? They tend to come up with dumb, knee-jerk solutions instead of enabling the public to solve problems bottom-up.
Like, if unions didn't exist and somebody invented unions today and the Liberals proposed modern union laws? The NDP would be out there screaming "wait, you want to take a cut of our paychecks"? Because any level of indirection or systems-thinking in policy solutions is too abstract. The NDP worship at the political altar of "if you're explaining, you're losing" and so they always come up withe dumbest and most populist solutions to every problem.
My dream political party would be "What the NDP and the Conservatives think the Liberals are". Like, if we had a party of woke neoliberals that want to tax-and-spend on providing a strong social safety net but also want to use free market globalist solutions to implement policy (eg. carbon taxes, YIMBYist housing, open borders)? That would get all my votes. I would volunteer for them.
But instead, the liberals are bumbling, flat-footed and low-energy.
Those criticisms of housing simply aren’t true. Take BC, the only NDP provincial government (until MB very recently) are the most aggressively YIMBY and pro supply: municipal supply minimums, cuts to regulation, standardized housing plan approvals, etc. Meanwhile, the conservative housing solution is hyper NIMBY and anti-market: more suburban sprawl and expensive highways like Ford’s plan in ON.
It’s a myth that conservatives are champions of a well functioning market. That’s why they use terms like “free market”, as if cutting taxes and deregulation is enough to magically create wealth. That’s not how the economy works. Externalities exist. Market failures exist.
The NDP are not socialists, but democratic socialists, which is a middle way approach similar to Scandinavian countries. These countries are considered the most competitive and successful in the world, not despite, but because they have strong regulations and high taxes. They are pro-market, but not pro-capital. In fact, often, mindlessly protecting capital is anti-competitive, which is why conservatives favor oligopolies and oppose functioning labor markets. e.g. All the poorest unhappiest US states are conservative, and the only exceptions are petro-states.
I love what the BC NDP is doing on housing, but the BC NDP is a special case because they're shifted to the centre compared to other NDP parties since there is no BC provincial Liberal party to speak of. Same as AB (although I'm not fond of their necessary oil-boosting, but that's the reality of AB).
And nowhere did I support the Conservative attitude on "free market". My ideal "free market" solution to a problem is the Carbon Tax, where we use pricing signals to internalize an externality and make the free market solve the problem instead of causing it.
You're clearly a smart knowledgeable person, and we probably don't disagree as much as this discussion makes it seem. But allow me to respond.
What is the evidence that the BC NDP are a special case? Just look around the world, especially countries with similarly car-centric NIMBY housing problems. At every level, only (not to say "all") progressive governments, like BC, California, Massachusetts, New Zealand, Portland, Edmonton, etc. have enacted serious reforms. Supposedly "free market" conservatives have been failures on housing regulation reform everywhere. I have zero hope for housing reform under PP, despite his promises. His wealthy older voting base is pure NIMBY.
The national NDP are the only major party proposing massively increasing public and co-op housing, like we used to do when housing was affordable. Like healthcare or education, relying solely on privatization to solve housing is just magical thinking. And yet, that free market dogmatism is the failed direction under decades of Liberals and Conservatives.
So why does "idiocy" describe the NDP, and not the other two parties?
For example, Singh wants to subsidize mortgages of people facing rising payments. This encourages rising prices since it's feeding demand instead of supply. That's trying to douse a fire with gasoline. And likewise, there are many affordable-housing builders who will tell you that the chief problem isn't funding but rather the extreme requirements city halls have made to prevent construction. You can't build public or co-op housing if City Hall says you need every building to be narrow 3-storey mayan step pyramid set back 60% from all sides of the lot.
And when we talk about that period of "like they used to"? Most of that rental housing was market-rate. A big "subsidy" was tax benefits on private landlording. The idea that Canada can build housing top-down instead of empowering the market to do it bottom-up is ridiculous since our governments' capacity to get anything done top-down has absolutely cratered.
I agree that subsidizing mortgages is a bad solution. The other two parties are even worse in this regard. Conservatives have proposed massively extending mortgage terms, and removing or lowering stress test requirements. Conservatives implemented many of the existing subsidies for homeowners. The Liberals introduced a brand new tax free account for housing (FHSA), which only helps those who have already maxed out their TFSA (less than 20% of the population). A tax break for the already wealthy to increase demand for housing. Idiocy. These are all way worse. So are Liberals/Conservatives even bigger idiots?
The NDP obviously endorses a private housing market, so I don't know who that criticism is supposed to apply to? Do you mean there should be no public housing at all? It's not "market vs. government". It's simply delusional to think you don't need both. Every other functioning rich country, from Japan to France, Singapore to Switzerland, has public and co-op housing, including Canada. And yes, we used to build a lot more of it.
Here's the thing: like healthcare, minimal shelter isn't a choice. It's a necessity. (i.e. Demand is relatively inelastic.) So when you make it so that people cannot live without entering the housing market, it makes prices soar. Imagine if buying a house was a choice, because there's always high quality public housing if necessary. That's how it is in most Scandinavian countries. Literally no country has affordable housing provided purely by the private sector. No housing expert or major economist endorses a pure market based solution this extreme.
Alas, the sensible moderate solution of the NDP, the thing done everywhere else in the world, endorsed by experts and evidence, is seen as "unrealistic" in Canada. We are thoroughly brainwashed.
Honestly, I'd vote for shit in a bucket compared to the three main candidates we've got.
Regardless of which party you think is (4), they're either not nationwide or not major.
And regardless of how you feel about "signalling", that's not the problem with the NDP. You might agree or disagree with their opinions on social justice, but it's not their social justice platform that's ruining them, it's their inability to come up with any decent ideas or get any real traction on bread-and-butter issues.
Historians are not going to be looking back at them very nicely.