I don’t think Canada has an Alabama. As conservative as they are, Alberta is wealthy, highly educated, and they frequently vote for women and POC. They like “small government”, but also have some of the highest paid government workers in the country. I just don’t see much similarity.
I think the comparison to Texas is more apt because they’re both conservative petro states with center left suburban sprawl cities.
Oh please, your modest increase in registration fees do not cover all the externalities of cars. Cars still enjoy TONS of subsidies, including free parking, free highways, etc. In fact, 60% of the surface areas of most cities in NA are devoted to cars.
It’s hilarious that you think you’re fighting “Big Corporate Lobbying” by defending EVs. I don’t know where you get that I’m in favor of ICEs. I am against car dependence entirely. You’re being brainwashed into thinking environmentalism is just about buying another expensive product instead of fighting the car lobby entirely.
Honest answer: no. What about me sounds like a bot? Because I use jargon?
Yeah you’re subsidizing other people to drive their car more, and you’re being incentivized to drive more.
That sounds sensible. Car use is heavily subsidized, so someone is paying for those miles. It makes sense that a greater proportion of that cost falls on the driver.
There is obviously a LOT of car infrastructure that is not used by commercial trucks: residential streets and parking lots account for most road surface area. There are also many other externalities besides maintenance like pollution and accidents. By not properly taxing distance driven, we are essentially subsidizing car use.
Distance based taxes are economically better because they internalize the externalities of driving. That is, driving more benefits the driver but is paid for by the general tax pool. This means people are encouraged to drive more than they should because the true costs are borne by society as a whole (including non-drivers) and not the individual driving.
One thing to note is that car infrastructure maintenance (e.g. upkeeping roads and bridges) is often paid for in substantial part through a gas tax. Electric cars don’t pay the gas tax, so they are essentially freeloading. In the future, this may change, but this is one reason why EVs are currently cheaper than ICEs.
I would go further: the idea that great research comes out of the private sector is a myth perpetuated by self-aggrandizing corporate heads. Even most AI research is the result of decades of academic work on cognitive science coming out of universities. (The big exception is transformer technology coming out of Google.) mRNA vaccines are based on publicly funded university research too. All the tech in smartphones like GPS and wifi comes from publicly funded research. The fact is, science works best when it’s open and publicly accountable, which is why things like peer review exist. Privatized knowledge generation is at a disadvantage compared to everyone openly working together.
The private sector is very good at the consumer facing portion of innovation, like user experience, graphical interfaces, and design. But the core technologies, with rare exception, almost never came out of the Silicon Valley.
“Instead of seeking happiness, save money with misery”
Americans support a lot of things they don’t vote for. Most Americans want universal healthcare, higher taxes on the rich, more government services, etc. But many famously “vote against their interests”. Abortion is turning out to be the surprising exception.
Riffing off of another comment, I think it’s ok to have terms specific to each platform, and then a term for all platforms.
Platform specific:
Overall:
What are the controversies with DuckDuckGo? I’ve never heard of anything.
Can someone explain this to me?
Edit: haha of course BotW. Didn’t make the connection. Thanks.
Saskatchewan is the birthplace of the NDP (Canada’s social democratic party), universal public healthcare (ever heard of Tommy Douglas?), and historically one of the pillars of the labour movement. It’s now the most conservative province, but still has tons of new immigrants, racial and cultural diversity, good education, and well funded government services. The SK NDP ruled almost continuously from 1971 to 2006.
SK is much more like midwestern farm states that were formerly pro-labour pro-union hotbeds but are now more moderate or conservative, like Iowa and Wisconsin.