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Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

washingtonstatestandard.com

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Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#131

Post by cmrdporcupine »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #83
adamgordonbell wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are calling for the invasion of your own country? Surely you realize that is a very fringe view.

There are lots of Canadians who have felt under attack from within their own country. The ruling regimes of Canada have over time implemented certain policies and ideological values that are a deviation from what was in place before. Not everyone shares those new values, and they feel like the real principles and political culture of Canada has been broken. They’re rather have change, and they see that in America’s r…

Culturally "left" wing and especially socially liberal policies are incredibly popular in Canada, enough so that there's enough of a block of an electorate that holds those opinions that two whole political parties can exist along the continuum and still one manages to hold majority power.

And our Conservatives have suffered electorally drastically when they've strayed too far into culture wars and socially conservative territory. If they're sick of being out of power, they should properly learn that lesson.

TLDR the "new values" you speak about are actually incredibly mainstream and not any kind of imposition from some radical regime.

Likewise with environmental issues. The Albertan oil industry is very vocal, and very powerful, but still the majority has strong concern about climate change enough that the plurality of voters are very much in favour of regulation of that sector -- even in Alberta -- much to the chagrin of the ruling political "regime" there.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#132

Post by rrr_oh_man »

throaway1987 wrote: post #85
rayiner wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

isn't annexing another country based on it being merely an economic client state a...fascist rationale?

Not when we do it. And, also, look at all the other countries doing it!

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#133

Post by ForTheKidz »

hcurtiss wrote: post #129
ForTheKidz wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we've only been a true "liberal democracy" for the past sixty years or so. Before that we were a de-facto apartheid state. Maybe at a stretch you could say 105 years if you go by the 19th amendment. And frankly i'm still skittish to call America pre-Trump a democracy with my full chest given the electoral college, completely bonkers division of the country into states, the senate, complete lack of a right to vot…

I don't believe any of the founders believed they were creating a "true democracy," or even that it would be desirable. Read Federalist Number 10. The modern fetishism of democracy will lead bad places.

Yes, pretty much all claims of democracy come from the 20th century. I hardly think we were a more functional country at the time, though—it's only through the miracle of rampant exploitation we didn't all just immediately start killing each other. Thank god for the civil war to kick us to continue booting up a democracy.

One day we'll finish the job, I swear. Pinky-promise.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#134

Post by rayiner »

wwweston wrote: post #123
Trasmatta wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you reconcile that idea with the fact that the United States is the oldest country with a continuously running democracy?

Full franchise democracy in the US is arguably younger than living memory. So are a lot of things we take for granted as civil rights (and some of powers that be seem determined to roll those back). But even assuming the premise, it’s not hard to see how generations who’ve enjoyed a privilege might be more likely to take it for granted than societies that have more recently gained it, and are within living memory of…

Civil rights is orthogonal to democracy. Creating a democratic country like the U.S. is the real achievement. Most countries never come close to accomplishing that.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#135

Post by phkahler »

throaway1987 wrote: post #89
phkahler wrote: post #78

Totally off topic, but after reading some comments here I got curious and went to Google and typed "population" and autocomplete offered "of Canada" with an answer of 40.1 Million already there. Of course that's what I was going to type, but but but... I'm in the U.S. so there's no reason to know what country I was going to look for unless Google (or this MS browser) knew I was just reading this in another tab. Reall…

people keep looking up the population of Canada to see where it would rank as a state

+1 plausible!

BTW it's very close to California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#136

Post by overfeed »

psychlops wrote: post #104
andy_ppp wrote: post #7

I’m surprised all the countries the US is trying to bully aren’t considering moving to the Euro as the reserve currency (even China might go along with this). It would be so damaging for the US they might actually understand they have been benefiting from a win-win situation since the end of the Second World War.

Consider that this is the point of all the machinations. The US having the reserve currency is a liability in many ways and the direct reason why it's a consumer not producer economy. Losing reserve status will be damaging to some parts of the american economy and create a boom in others. Take a look at what current tariffs are across the world. The US isn't necessarily bullying as equalizing.

> Losing reserve status will be damaging to some parts of the american economy and create a boom in others.

Which parts will benefit from higher inflation?

The only reason the US has been spared from >20% inflation after engaging in what would be called "money printing" by American press when practiced by a 3rd world country is that there are deep pools of unused reserves slowing the overall velocity. Americans don't know how good they have it.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#137

Post by soco »

ForTheKidz wrote: post #108
FredPret wrote: post #56

I've seen two apocalyptic North American scenarios in fiction, and have previously dismissed both as ridiculous. 1. In the Fallout universe, the USA annexes Canada 2. In at least two Neal Stephenson novels (Snowcrash and Termination Shock), the USA has collapsed. I've never before thought that either of these would have a semi-realistic path to actually happening.

I think "annexing" Canada seems a bit ludicrous still. I have no doubt Trump wants to expand, but I suspect such expansion would be deeply unpopular in a country proud, seemingly for the grace of simply not being the US (as, let's be honest, Canada is far more similar to the US than it is to any other country in north america).

It would be fairly difficult to be similar to any other country in North America, innit

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#138

Post by DaSHacka »

drpossum wrote: post #44
nullorempty wrote: post #36

[flagged]

[flagged]

> In Comments

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> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

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From: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#139

Post by fmbb »

Trasmatta wrote: post #93
diggan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> dismissed both as ridiculous I think this idealism/naiveness is why you're now sliding further and further away from democracy. Older countries already had their democracies stress-tested, but seemingly this is the biggest test so far for the "checks and balances" in the US, and I feel like many other countries learned to always live with idea that democracy can slip away really quickly unless you always pay attent…

How do you reconcile that idea with the fact that the United States is the oldest country with a continuously running democracy?

Those are just words.

The world has many old countries. Most of the world’s most democratic states are constitutional monarchies, with centuries of history of not being a settler colony like the US.

How do you reconcile your comment with the fact that the US in the democracy index (from The Economist) is a flawed democracy, and considerably less democratic than a whole bunch of monarchies.

It’s just words.

Re: Canada considering charging for road access from USA to Alaska

#140

Post by Brusco_RF »

SonicScrub wrote: post #67
soperj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans-Canada regularly closes? That's news to me. The reason google maps goes through the US is that it's significantly shorter. We also don't haul things regularly across the country in the same way they do in the US, we use the trains, and the majority of things would go through ports. If you're on the eastern half of the country (which is the majority of the country) they use the great lakes.

The parent comment is likely referring to Highway 17, which is the only road connection between Manitoba and Ontario. A boulder once fell on this highway leading to its closure for a period of time. https://www.ctvnews.ca/winnipeg/article/how-crews-cleared-a-... I've seen this incident be the subject of hyperbolic clickbait articles and YouTube videos discussing the complete cutting off of East and West Canada (conve…

While you make a strong point, I'm not ready to cede it. Canada has winter storms that will close that road, albeit for shorter periods of time than the boulder situation. Being able to re-route through the US is critical during that time.
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