China produces the bulk of rare earths the US uses for things like military production, which puts the US as dependent on China as Canada is dependent on the US. The reality is absurd no matter which way things go.

Europe is doing carbon border adjustments to attempt to do something similar if I’m not mistaken, though its still early stages.

The reason Trumps idea appeals to people for those unaware is that free trade destroyed a lot of union jobs, which were outsourced to emerging markets. After the industrial revolution unions fought for worker rights and salaries, and they were then shipped away to places that didnt have those rights, and they want to see a reversal of this.

Not sure if its right or wrong, but you cant fault them for holding out hope, its actually a left wing ideal I would say, large government protectionism interfering in the free market. Saying that all factory jobs are bad is a silly retort, there are many factory jobs in the US already that people are happy to have; even ASML making advanced semiconductor fabs is a “factory job”.

They misattribute monetary policy that bids up home and asset values using cheap debt and facilitates massive bailouts with federal government policy. The CPI doesnt include asset prices so cheap debt can flood into asset prices without slowing down the devaluation of their salary, it also does subjective inflation deductions to goods based on perceived quality changes, and excludes much of the shrinkflation thats happens to goods and service quality.

Something as basic like getting support for a flight is now talking to a chatbot with perpetually larger than expected call volume, you pay extra for seating, you pay extra for baggage; and your seat is so small now you also may as well be standing. Free range chickens used to just be called chicken, and eggs could be eaten uncooked since they werent swimming in ecoli, but according to the CPI you’re significantly better off now; so the nominal value of a boomers house is now worth significantly more due to all this perceived wealth.

The US has never had free trade, look at the patent system they force other countries to abide by, whose length and terms are dictated by the US.

This is just a continuation of the same. Apple even had a patent on rounded corners on rectangles.

The further you get from the gold standard the worse life you’ll have. Though you might have more social media and gadgets you’ll have a smaller house and worse quality food/services, as everything is financialized through debt in a futile attempt to force the elderly who own all the assets to consume every greater amounts, as automation progressively decreases the costs and companies find more advanced ways to shrinkflate products.

Well I mentioned France, who are using nuclear as a backup to the rewables they implemented.

You’re also burning lignite coal now, which you take from Africa who is now having blackouts. But it went pretty poorly overall phasing out nuclear for renewables.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany

Key to Germany’s energy policies and politics is the Energiewende, meaning “energy turnaround” or “energy transformation”. The policy includes nuclear phaseout (completed in 2023) and progressive replacement of fossil fuels by renewables. However, contrary to plan, the nuclear electricity production lost in Germany’s phase-out was primarily replaced with coal electricity production and electricity importing. One study found that the nuclear phase-out caused $12 billion in social costs per year, primarily due to increases in mortality due to exposure to pollution from fossil fuels.

This study disagrees after taking into account storage.

https://advisoranalyst.com/2023/05/11/bofa-the-nuclear-necessity.html/

Storage and production of renewables is also done by shipping in Chinese products created burning coal and ignoring environmental concerns. This all hinges on exporting emissions and labor to areas that don’t care about pollution.

I’d also argue that nuclear tech can likely proceed faster than storage, given the dangerous nature of energy storage. Even something as basic as storing water can cause deaths given what happens when dams break, stored energy is volatile by nature.

Well we have a negative productivity growth as well at the moment. Hence the BoC ringing the alarm bells. That makes it harder to pay our growing debt load even with spreading it out to more people.

Well wind farms won’t help, if you need 100% reliability. Storage I figured was more expensive than nuclear after adding all the costs together, creating enough hydro for backup is extremely expensive as well.

You’re essentially building a hydro power plant, water storage, pumps, and wind turbine at that point.

Why do you need to force industrial users off during the day, and how do you decommission your backup nuclear power with intermittent wind, when all you did was move from 100% uptime nuclear to variable uptime wind and solar?

I’m just saying if you really want to be green you’re building nuclear.

Making room for the intermittent nature of solar imposes upon the grid a large cost for backup power, adding to the levelized cost of electricity, yet this cost is never ascribed to the cost of the solar panel. The more solar you have the more idle backup power you need.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity

In France 70% of their power came from nuclear and they added renewables, they then need to throttle the nuclear power plants which is not an easy task, and they then make less money and require tax funded bailouts.

Canada has had 0.7% per capita GDP growth since 2015. Which puts us 2nd last only to Luxembourg in all 38 countries of the OECD.

We elected a person who said oil needs to stay in the ground in their book, who wants to grow population at more than 450k a year (1% cap, plus births) to prop up GDP despite the current high unemployment and the severe housing shortage, and who wants to join Germany and the UK in spinning up solar and wind which clearly did not go well for either of them.

https://newsletter.doomberg.com/p/let-ed-run-it

Through that lens I could see how they could be fearful of Canada’s demise, especially if we have another 10 years like the last. Gross government debt also somehow doubled since 2015 as well to achieve this lethargic growth, before subtracting pensions to create the net debt figure the government generally uses.

Then theres yesterdays Alberta separation fear with bill 54, and the fact Alberta contributes significantly more to Ottawa than any other province. As tariffs have a chance to wipe out manufacturing and you’ll be asking Alberta to contribute even more to fund unemployed auto workers and the like, after some provinces block Alberta’s access to new trade routes, I could see some clear catalyst for separation. Which would put Canada in a deeply negative current account balance and would be the end of Canada as we know it now.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/understanding-albertas-outsized-contribution-to-confederation-infographic-thb.jpg

Ah I figured the monolithic kernel would make it opposite to the unix philosophy.

Someone needs to hire an external party to paint the walls directly before the directors walk through the branch office. Who else would hire a company to do all the work, a secretary who can issue a PO?

Anything you put into your search box in Windows will be used in marketing against you.

Why would it be?

Firefox VPN is cheaper isn’t it, and funds the Firefox nonprofit?

The problem I see with wind and solar is you need backup power, to handle the sinusoidal nature of production. So you need to duplicate your power production, and that costs a lot.