Do you have mature filters on? I see at least one adult game on the front page all the time, if not a dozen despite having bought only two or three on my account (compared to the better part of 1k games on my list).

Lots of games with advertised screenshots blocked due to being mature, and lots more that don’t despite being obviously pornographic.

This article goes in circles and repeatedly contradicts itself. Basically saying that it’s not a failure of the markets, but one of exploitation.

Except, it is exactly a failure of the markets. It states that the exploitation comes from the ability of landowners to charge whatever they want, but they don’t address the fact that they can only charge high prices because of the lack of those who are willing to charge low prices. And nobody should be expected to charge a low price if they can charge a high price and still sell/rent easily.

It’s an issue of people treating homes as an investment, and that can only happen because the price of homes skyrocket far faster than inflation and wages. And that happens because of a lack of supply.

Sure, treating homes as an investment is fine for apartments and condos, but if the land itself ends up being worth a million for a single lot, there’s no way anybody can afford it without both a high wage and putting themselves into debt for a half century. And if that happen, the entire spectrum of housing goes up in price as there is a lack of competition to lower prices.

The only real way to lower home prices (from houses to apartments and condos) is to significantly increase competition, and that can only happen if supply actually comes close to demand, not falling so far behind that people share a single place, even to the point that they bribe the local authorities to look the other way that they have too many people in a single unit.

This summer? This winter was insane as well! (at least in my area). Two weeks of actually below zero, and virtually no snow outside of those two weeks this entire summer. The average temperature, once you exclude those two weeks, was like +5-10! It felt like we were living a good 20 degrees further south or something this winter.

Sure, I understand that the system failed him, or at least failed someone close to him. But what he’s doing is just generally raging against the leaders and using random excuses to justify causing chaos.

There’s no focus, no message. No way for anybody to respond in any way other than flat out rejection. How can you respond to something like this if when you try, it’s like “okay, I understand this this this, and this. But this one and these three others are unacceptable to us. But then there’s another sixteen that we can talk about. Please give us your side of the story and we can continue from there.” How do you form a conversation with that?

Not to mention that he’s trying to gather people from the widest spectrum he can, each with a different grievance. How do you talk when you have a dozen “I won’t budge on this one thing” when each one thing is something different? Just like the previous convoy, it’s just plain civil disobedience for the sake of letting out steam, no actual attempt at making change.

True free markets don’t exist here, or almost anywhere in the world (thankfully). But that doesn’t mean that free market tendencies don’t happen. Lots of companies take advantage of the countless loopholes and blind spots in the regulations that exist, and in those places act like a free market.

Two big examples are lobbying and lawsuits. Both are things that give you massive advantages just by having a lot of money to push around, and both that tend to be pretty consequence free if done right.

I don’t deny that the rich use blatantly illegal methods as well. You’d be amazed at how much sexual violence is committed in the entertainment industries. Lots of powerful people in that industry do that sort of stuff so they have blackmail material on up and coming talent in case they try to report on the stuff they witness. It’s one of the reasons why so many of them suffer from mental issues.

By law, lobbying isn’t bribing. Or else you wouldn’t see so much of it so blatantly in the States.

It happens in every government, here as well. Just not as obvious.

And while yes, theoretically these sorts of issues can be redressed in a completely free-market system, the degree the stars need to align for such a thing to happen, you might as well hope that everybody who makes more than $1000 a year in North Korea suddenly have a heart attack on the same day and the rest of the country come together and make peace with their southern neighbours.

Market forces always drive towards whatever is cheapest and pushes for the greatest profits, and a billionaire is going to be far likely to get their way than a few thousand people who combined still make less than 10% of that one guy. It takes a colossal combined effort to move a massive mountain of cash.

$15B a year subsidizing private for-profit corporations by cutting the budgets of all sorts of public institutions. Great.

And that doesn’t even mention that these corporations are double-dipping by charging the government then charging individual customers.

I do agree that the governments are just coasting, and have been for decades. Some parts of certain governments have had their wakeup calls and are starting to make the changes needed, but they still feel few and far between. Either that, or many of them are having trouble waking up the parts of the government that they need their funding or plans approved.

I don’t think much of those solutions would have much of an effect. Especially without addressing other issues first.

Taxing the rich doesn’t matter when most of the rich get paid through investment loans and juggling stocks with assets, rather than having an actual income. Minimum wage increases are a band-aid solution that would need to be addressed every decade, presuming that it doesn’t tank the economy during the adjustments. Basic income is nice, but if important things aren’t affordable now, it would have no real impact on making them affordable.

I’m not saying that they fundamentally don’t work, but that it’s just not enough.

The most important thing is to make the things needed to have a decent life affordable to everybody. And of those things, I think two are just plain necessary. The first is a minimum level housing. Some sort of apartment complex that is free and safe, no questions asked. Basically a shelter that has separated units. Without the minimum of being able to have a safe space to sleep and clean yourself up, there’s no way a person can get a job. But with this sort of safety net, no matter how bad things get, the future won’t look hopeless, and almost everybody should be able to get back on their feet without needing extensive interventions.

The second is a housing supply that suppresses prices. I don’t mind foreigners buying houses, as long as the supply can handle such things happening, and keep basic homes affordable. Apartments shouldn’t cost more than 25% minimum wage at full time, and condos should be easy to pay off in 5-10 years. As long as the supply is high enough, it would be impossible to make a real profit from treating it like an investment, as houses are a non-performing asset. It creates no more value than what you put into it, and should thus depreciate if anything, just like a car.

I never stated that any of this explicitly has to bypass the laws. In fact, the fact that they can be sued means specifically that they’re following the law. And that is exactly what is going on with these companies we’ve been talking about. Polluting the environment is well within the law, or else they wouldn’t be getting away with it, and because they are able to afford to lobby the government so that they don’t have to be responsible for it, that it’s the public that has to pay for the cleanup, rather than those who are responsible for the pollution in the first place.

I thought this sort of extremism was more of a feature of the States, but to think that it had infected our country as well to such a degree. The hilarious thing is that it was the religious figures that were originally pro-choice decades ago and were one of the deciding factors why abortions were originally legalized.

It’s hard to imagine that this is considered a right wing issue rather than something radical, but more and more it feels like the right are defining themselves through the act of degrading personal freedoms and rolling back the clock wherever they can to the Victorian era.

I think it’s ridiculous that the presumption that prices have stabilized means that costs have fallen and the companies are pocketing the difference. They probably are pocketing the difference, but there’s no evidence to say that it’s actually a significant amount. This author suggests that the companies’ costs have probably plummeted by a good 20-50% or something and isn’t passing that along when their costs probably only dropped by like 5%, an amount that virtually nobody would notice if the end prices have actually fallen.

I’ve noticed that several beers have fallen in price these last few months(hell, some have dropped in the last two years), yet nobody has ever mentioned it once. I know a guy who works with beer, and he told me that he hasn’t noticed any changes in spending habits regarding the changes in prices going down. Only when the prices go up do people notice.

There are definitely issues in the supply chain caused by a lack of competition, but this isn’t remotely a new thing, nor is recent phenomena evidence that the prices is especially worse now than it was ten years ago. Blaming the BoC for doing their job isn’t the solution, but actually identifying specific issues and proposing workable changes is how to make things better, not having a tantrum like a man-baby.

Inflation right now is at 2.8%, which is roughly in target, which I believe is between 1-3%.

We’re actually one of only a few countries that have managed to get inflation under control. I think there’s like 4 others so far, and we’re doing even better than the States at 3%.

Though immediately raising interest just because we reached the target would undo all the work we’ve put in so far, so I’m not surprised that we’ll have to wait a while before interest comes back down. That said, 2025 is definitely later than I had expected.

Anybody who complains about the interest rate not going down should be reminded of all the waves of people going to the hospitals two weeks after every time lockdowns stopped during COVID (and how high the infection rates are now that COVID is ‘officially over’). The second you let your guard down is the moment that everything goes to shit. Just because we’re under the speed limit doesn’t mean that the runaway engine has stopped, just that the brakes are working.

I believe Google announced that they’re doing the same thing, but haven’t actually pulled the plug yet. They’re probably just waiting until the law comes into effect and just drop Canadian news instead of negotiating payment.

It’s a free market because the guy with a bigger wallet gets to do whatever he wants until his wallet isn’t the biggest anymore.

The only way to stop speculation is either price fixing, or to make sure that there’s enough supply that market forces won’t bring any notable profit to those who treat land like an investment. The first one’s definitely the one that’s not going to help, as it doesn’t address the issue of a lack of housing, but it’s basically the one we’re getting with how subsidized housing is done right now.

Honest, if it’s possible for there to be a law that states the government is required to build and expand high density housing every time the prices go above something like 30% minimum wage, it would be a solid solution. Either that, or the housing bubble crashes so hard that everybody who invested in housing basically loses their entire life savings, like how it’s going on in China right now.

While I agree that it’s the municipal responsibility to actually get the zoning laws and passing new developments, it’s also the responsibilities of the governments higher up to do something when the lower governments are starting to fuck around.

I imagine that the provincial government is within its rights to force the change of zoning laws so that single residentiary zones no longer exclude townhouses and multiplexes. A simple change that’ll have radical effects in the long term, though admittedly limited effects in the short term.

Both governments are able to simply purchase land and build what the hell they want on them as well. Government subsidized housing doesn’t have to mean that the government has to subsidize the rent, but instead just subsidize the land sale and force multiplexes and low-rise apartments to be built on them.

It’s a brute force method that’ll piss off certain groups, but it’ll make others shower them with praise as the basics of living become affordable.

It is free market since those others are technically able to sue the company for compensation…presuming that they can afford to hire a lawyer for the five years it takes to settle the lawsuit because the company’s going to use every delay tactic and counter-lawsuit they can think of to just wait out the other guy.

Try saying that when your commute involves spending an hour in rush hour going a single kilometer that a subway does in five minutes. Your situation isn’t an argument against public transit, but for making decent public transit. Of course you’re going to chose a car if there’s no good public transit where you live. But what if there’s a bus terminal five minute walk from where you live, or a subway station in ten minutes by bike with parking, and the rest of the trip takes half as long as it does by car, at a fraction of the yearly cost (gas, insurance, maintenance, licensing), and you can even sleep on the trip because you’re not the one driving. Not to mention never having to worry about finding parking near your destination if you’re not paying for a dedicated spot.

This is the reality for those of us who are able to use transit on a regular basis, and we only pay like 15 minutes a day from our wages for this service, not a week’s worth every month to own a car. It’s even better in the EU, like in Germany or Spain, since high speed rail means that you can go pretty much anywhere you want, even on vacation, without a car. And for cheap. One guy ran the numbers, and for 10% the cost of owning a car, he was able to get a yearly pass for both high speed rail and city transit in two different cities for the cost of owning and operating a car for a year.

This is literally the reason why free markets are the bane of all that is good. Sure, it’s nice to get the shinies quickly and cheaply, but then you find out the cost of that is how the world is being torn apart because it’s cheaper to do it that way.

The only solution is government regulations to force companies to become responsible for their actions. And the only way to have that is for politicians who think about the country first and have the will to enact the necessary change.

I mean, down south the erosion of government regulations is bringing back child labour. Imagine a 15yo working in a steel mill, as it’s recently been legalized in some states.

The parents of the youtuber Technology Connections life on a farm, yet they own an EV, and apparently they never use charging stations as the range on a second hand one is more than good enough for regular trips despite going to an entire city over.

Modern EVs have a range starting at 400km nowadays, and I did say that highway rest stops should have charging stations. No matter how quickly you need to get somewhere, it can’t be so desperate that you can’t afford a half hour stop every three or four hours. And if it is, it sounds like something you probably shouldn’t be driving yourself for and instead be calling for an ambulance or helicopter.

In the end, my argument is that all this shit about not having enough fast charging stations is going about things backwards. Charging stations shouldn’t be concentrated in cities, but instead along the highway, as EV range is great enough that daily transit doesn’t require charging along the way, or even at the destination.