Dual use technology and infrastructure is an entirely uncontroversial topic in the defense procurement sector, so I don’t know what exactly you’re trolling for here.

You know what’s cheaper than building fucking castles and living in fucking fear all the fucking time?

Paying your taxes to fund a proper welfare state. Simple as.

You can’t piss in my tea and expect good faith engagement afterwards.

Did I debate the need of any of that capability? Like, I literally wrote “yes we need an update”. The point is “we should not be accepting anything at any price”. I can’t understand how that simple common sense statement is a “bad take”. The point of military procurement, or of any procurement really, is to maximize utility while minimizing cost. Ukraine has already shown us that the drone revolution means that modern wars are now back to being wars of attrition. And in wars of attrition, cost is a strategic resource.

Ой, извини, я больше не заинтересован в общении с тобой.

Rough morning? Pipe down bud.

EDIT: Like if you hadn’t written in such a rude and abrasive way, I might have responded with something like: yes we need an update, no we shouldn’t do it in a dumb way. We are notoriously bad at using military budgets, so we should not be accepting anything at any price, we should be doing it in ways that create investment in our industrial base and create economies of scale to benefit the civilian economy. But, when I’m being told to “stfu you fuck you have no field experience”, I’m going to respond in kind. So pipe the fuck down.

What a lazy, stereotypical response.

I don’t like Olympic bean counting.

With that kind of attitude any price is unassailable. Edit: why not 6.8 million per vehicle, why not 15.8 million per vehicle, did you ever buy one?

Look, that 1 billion is being taken away from my public services and climate change adaptation programs. At the very least, I get to demand my tax dollars are not being wasted the way the Estadounidenses throw money down the military industrial complex money pit.

170 vehicles. That’s about 5.8 million dollars per vehicle. That’s a bit steep isn’t it?

Our institutions are not talking about financialization of housing though! So it defaults to the “if all else remains the same, the factor to blame is immigrants”. If we don’t end financialization of housing, then even without immigration you’re still going to have the exact same problem of housing scarcity because the system requires housing to be scarce so it’s an asset that always appreciates.

Look, we can talk and argue about the rate of increase and it won’t be controversial, with two caveats: a) that people already here should be grandfathered in (none of the PEQ fiasco). b) the rights of immigrant workers should always be equal to those of established ones.

I have explained above why I don’t think the housing and unemployment crises are caused by immigration.

But I agree that if all else stays the same, a big increase in precarious immigrants exacerbates things. The point is that I don’t think that we should accept everything else remaining the same and then play the game of blaming the immigrants. Front and centre should be a program to address the structural problems of our economic system, and immigration only secondary. Think about it: the Liberals just aggressively cut immigration rates, while keeping other things the same. The results are only small dips in the housing market, nothing that actually makes housing genuinely affordable: we’re still in crisis but now we’ve run out of immigrants to blame.

Any politics that puts immigration at the forefront is just ceding the initiative to the (far) Right.

You’re not making any sense. Sanders is slamming precarious low wage temporary guest worker programs. Nobody is defending those. Look at the thing you objected to earlier. It was talking about empowering immigrant workers, precisely the opposite of a precarious work program:

“Gives workers real power — migrant workers will have clean path to permanency, open work permits, they can join unions and organize without fear, which means stronger unions and better wages for everyone;”

Edit: it also seems that Bernie Sanders has evolved in his positions over time: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/bernie-sanders-immigration-record-explained

And yes, I can see that you don’t want to be convinced by anything I wrote. You are not responding in substance to anything I’ve written. But you haven’t actually made any substantive argument to try to convince me or anyone. You haven’t tried to convince me in any real way. But you’ve accused me of gaslighting and bad faith arguing, when it’s clear I’m not doing either. You’re using inflammatory language (“sociopath”) to describe my views, when I haven’t. I think you’re just trying to make it look like you’re not losing the debate by desperately trying to making it look like the leftists are mean to you.

So what? It buys time, and makes them spend resources.

This is actual big-R Resistance like the Personal Liberty Laws before the civil war. Let them declare them unconstitutional and then pass new ones. Trump spit on the face of the Supreme Court anyway. Make the trumpists have to fight for every inch. Fight fight fight!

BMO is a seller of mortgages, and therefore heavily invested in the financialization of housing. About 15-20% of their assets are in residential mortgages and HELOCs alone. Of course they want to talk about anything EXCEPT the root of the problem that is literally driving their profitability. This is like bringing up a study from the oil and gas industry to argue that greenhouse emissions are not a problem. And just like Oil&Gas keep pushing an inefficient and outdated energy technology stack and standing in the way of common sense electrification, the real estate financialization industry is keeping Canadian capital in an unproductive and parasitic sector. Imagine if we instead used all that capital not to invest in inert land, but to build up the Canadian economy.

Why is housing inelastic in the current system? Because it is not treated as a universal right, but as an asset. It is being hoarded by Real Eastate Investment Trusts who quite literally profit from maintaining scarcity. The solution is breaking the back of REITs and building non-market infill development across the country. Build the missing middle and keep it the fuck out of the profit-driven market, make it coops and public housing. Oh and guess what we need to do that. That’s right, workers, of which we have a shortage, so therefore …immigrants.

Here’s what Avi Lewis’ platform has to say about housing: https://lewisforleader.ca/ideas/housing-full-plan

If you call this “gaslighting” and “bad faith” argumentation, I honestly have no idea what you would consider “good faith” argumentation.

These problems aren’t caused by immigrants no matter what the frothing-in-the-mouth Right wants you to believe.

Little Quebec data point: the vast majority of immigrants move to Montreal. Guess where the housing crisis is more acute: the regions. Immigrants are not causing the housing shortage. Stupid car-centric city planning, NIMBY zoning, and the financialization of housing is what causes it. Read the CCPA report.

Youth unemployment? At the same time when our healthcare system is buckling from chronic under-staffing? And at the same time when we are missing teachers, early childhood educators? At the same time when we are faced with a climate resilience crisis, a housing crisis, sectors that require actual trained labour? Gee I wonder if there are some solutions to that. Maybe some kind of, oh I don’t know Green New Deal, funded by the ridiculous wealth hoarded by parasites like Galen Weston over the past few decades of neoliberal orthodoxy?

Immigrants are a rhetorical scapegoat, sold to you by demagogues who dream of bringing Trump style authoritarianism to Canada. We know exactly where that leads. No thanks.

Anything is possible!

Try Metaxa with ice and orange juice, and maybe a maraschino cherry ;)

Agreed on all counts.