A nice theory, but what seems to happen from my perspective is all this encouraging of investment just has governments racing each other to the bottom in terms of selling off OUR resources and rights while corporations shop around for the best deal w/out much regard for the long-term consequences.

Call me a conservative, but I think government should get the hell out of business and concentrate on its true main role, recognizing and protecting the rights of individuals, providing infrastructure, and ensuring public safety (as much as is possible).

Whoring out its citizens and resources for a brief tryst until some other whore with lower prices and less self-respect steals the corporate John away does nothing but fatten the wallets of the pimps.

All Campbell & Co. have done is sell out BC to his/their corporate friends. The once great province of BC has now been denuded of assets, sold off in dubious ways.

History will not paint a good picture of Campbell, nor will it of any political leader since the Bennet days!

But of course! Remember what Gordo said, when he was first elected: it's our turn now. BC need not question who 'we' are, and what it's 'our turn' to do. Rip and run? you got it.

Excellent analysis, clear and logical. As a result, when I run into a self congratulating Liberal support, I will be able to refer them to the facts. Otherwise, I'd be left with a sense that it seemed ludicrous to ascribe BC's economic growth to Campbell's mean spirited polices, but with no facts to back up this concern. Now we know. Thank you.

The BC economy is not booming, it is in a very poor shape, totally dependent on foreign markets buying BC's real capital, resources. The stupidest economy any government, or business can pursue.

Some European languages have specific words for this, translated into "robber economy". E.g in German it is called "Rauberwirtschaft", etc.

Our economy is now controlled from abroad through the so called "investments" of non existing, imaginary capital, while formally self sufficient rural people are forced into mega cities so they must rely for every bite and service on the multinational corporate mafia.

The biggest problem for any economy is overcapitalization that strips the environment and society of its real capital.

Human labour doesn't cost anything to an economy, because survival is a human right. This is why theft and murder are serious crimes, except when they can be obfuscated with religious and ideological claptrap. Future generations will pay very high price for today's fraudulent "boom".

A very difficult concept to understand by the "faithful".

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

And just whom more than doubled the provincial debt in their tenure? Interestingly, the author blasts his NDP buddies for just this in a Tyee article two years ago:

http://thetyee.ca/Views/2004/08/09/BCDebt/

There is no doubt that rising commidity prices have fueled BC's economy. However, speaking as a business person, it is much easier to do business in BC than it was say, six years ago, due to the scrapping of "Fair Wage (which was anything but fair)" and the "Corporate Capital Tax" which taxed borrowed money such as project finacing.

What is this becoming...the Red Herr-ing hour?

Canada has always been dependent on exports....there is not enough of an internal economy to make us self- sufficent. That further implies that we are subject to world economic conditions, ie the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Maybe global warming will eventually make BC California North,....and we can accomodate the 30 million + Californians who may wish to re-establish here and then we can talk about greater economic independence.

Can't have it both ways, which is unfortunately a lesson continually lost on the NDP and Co.

Sadly this boom seems to be having little impact on providing tangible infrastructure and social development. Instead we have an explosion in the homeless population, and a series of fantastically wasteful Olympic related vanity projects, including RAV. Those projects suck up what little extra money the public does receive from the corporate near theft of our resources.

What's more is there has been a rash of deaths in the resource sector due to poor safety practices. What better evidence of the rapacious nature of these corporations, that during boom times of massive profits they continue to maximize profitability with the lives of their workers. It's disgusting, and the provincial government has virtually ignored these crimes.

...furthermore, those vanity projects are about to bleed the taxpayers dry. Since their budgeted costs didn't account for rising prices fueled by the so-called boom, their principals are now coming back to the taxpayers, cap in hand, for bailouts.

We're going to be left on the hook for all this stuff, while the govt's pals line their pockets and move their capital elsewhere.

Maestro....Canada, with Australia, are the richest countires on Earth, even by World Bank standards. Huge natural resources and low population

This means, we're is the best situation for self sufficiency. Now comes the propaganda lie "Canada is rich in resources, but poor in capital", or "We need wealth creating foreign investment to develop our resources", spread by crooked business executives, brainwashed economists and stupid politicians lining up for directorships.

WHEN YOU HAVE RESOURCES, YOU HAVE CAPITAL

I've been in independent business for 49 years and know how capital works.

We're also set up for the greatest degree of self sufficiency and are able to live very well on our pensions, where people in cities are forced to eat dogfood on the same income

The same applies to local societies and especially countries.

Get rid of the middlemen and become well off with self sufficient economic systems

In other words, I speak from long established personal experience and not from book idiocies.

Get rid of the neocon politicians and the neoclassical economists and live happily ever after

Ed Deak.

I see housing starts are down in the US, builders' confidence levels at a 15-year low and inventory skyrocketing. Lumber prices are already on the way down and commodities won't be far behind.

Inventories and time to sale in Victoria, the market I watch most closely, are already attenuating seriously. You can't judge what's happening to prices yet because of the way the real estate board records sales and final price asked vs received - but, there is no doubt there is at least the scent of recession in the air.

Did you see my message on the Fish thread, Ed?

"Canada has always been dependent on exports...."

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that maybe, just maybe, times and situations can change. And further, that we can choose to encourage the changes that would benefit us the most.

Oooh, crazy talk. Anybody know where I can get a trepanning? I have spirits that must be released from my head. Cuz, you know, that's the way it's always been done.

Ed:

In a recent topic, likely now in the TYEE archives, you alluded to some investment ie you could create jobs with approx. $15,000 or thereabouts..ie the investment is not that overwhelming to create jobs and thus the positive ripple effect in the economy (again in your view, if I interpreted your past comment properly.)

I respect your views and opinions, but perhaps you may expand on them more with a " FOR EXAMPLE__________". That would most certainly help in the discussions and debate.

Alcibiades is right on the money here. If the BC Liberals can take credit for high commodity prices, they'll have to take credit for the fallout that is coming in the lumber industry.

Easier to do business in BC Working Man? No doubt! With all the deregulation that the BC Liberals have done in the past few years (along with the changes in WCB and Employment Standards), businesses are running around taking advantage that no one is looking into their proverbial cookie jars. Currently, there is no accountability from auto dealers or private colleges. Self-regulation is a license to do whatever you want it seems.

Another well-researched analysis of BC's economy - sadly something missing in most of the rest of our provincial media.

For NDPers, it's equally sad that the party's infrequent periods in power here - as in Ontario - seem to coincide with world-wide economic downturns.

The 1996-2001 term saw some good years followed by the Asian and dot-com meltdowns and massive Jean Chretien Liberal government cuts to transfer payments - by Finance Minister Paul Martin.

As to the right-wingers who give all credit to the BC Liberals, remember the 2002 tax grabs, the 50% increase in MSP premiums and the 0% growth while posting the largest deficits in BC history.

The liberals have taken credit for everything but the blame for nothing. Not child deaths , BC ferries, the deplorable condition of the highways and all other services in health care that are deteriorating outside the lower mainland.They pander to where the power is , the rest of us can go away and quit whining about the big Oww olympics draining the spending from the rest of the Province.

Maestro, I had almost the whole thing written, when we just had a power blip and wiped it out.

Apologies, but now I have to go and do my chores, and will get back to this later.

I can assure you, when I say, or write something it is based on facts I can prove and not on harebrained ideologies.

Ed Deak.

I think it's time for a revolution!

Ed:

No problem...sorry to hear about the ill-fated first attempt....and I look forward to reading it.

To me the real questions are as follows:

1) Who's profiting?
2) Who's paying the price?

1) The profiteers in this scenario are certainly not ordinary working families in British Columbia. They are foriegn and domestic private exploitists who cleverly snaffued most of B.C.'s most valuable assets, encouraged by a short-sighted group of political whores otherwise known as the Campbell Clan.

2) Working families in this province are paying the price for the Liberal governments short-sighted policies of selling us all down the river. The ever-burgeoning number of working poor in this province are a testiment to that - 10%+, double the national average. Look at the average wage in this province in comparison to the cost of housing and living expenses - they are completely out of wack! This is a sure indicator of a governement hell-bent on selling our provinces most valuable assets to their cocktail buddies and friends. Most of whom own million dollar homes that have been paid for by their exploitive ways only to leave them empty whilst they live elsewhere and simply have all of their exploitive profits funneled into there bloated bank accounts overseas with the help and encouragment of Campbell and his cronies.

This is not what makes a healthy economy where the benifits are realized by everyone and anyone that works hard and participates. This, as is to be expeceted from these elitist SOBs, is an economy designed for few that are positioned to exploit the many. - We are long over do for our own Bastille Day here in BC. Gordies head should be the first to roll!

Stump

There's a pretty good chance for the actions in the second part of this statement to conflict with those in the first part. As a Conservative which do you think should win out?

I'm not a Conservative. Note the small 'c'. My point (poorly made obviously) was to note that there seems to be a disconnect at times between the professed views of conservative thinkers and their real world application vis a vis the role of government. Call it the lobbyist factor.

As to your comment, I'm unclear as to how there's a good chance for the rights of the individual to conflict with the provision of infrastructure. Perhaps you could provide an example? I'd be happy to provide an opinion on a specific set of circumstances. Offering one-size-fits-all solutions is rarely the best approach in theory or practice.

working slog

B.C. Mary has been saying all along let's get to the bottom of the Legislature Raids of 2003 and follow the money!
Gordon Campbell and his liberals (little cowardly yes man/women) who will all go down in infamy for selling off our children's and our grandchildren's future prosperity!
Three plus million people in British Columbia, I'd think of that would be enough to throw the whole works of these bums out and quite possibly bring criminal charges against them!
Politicians Provincially and Federally seemed to have forgotten who put them there US, THE TAXPAYERS!

Well,

is a pretty broad spectrum item which can cover such items as pollution control, hours of work etc. It's not just crime prevention unless that's what you meant.

Anyhow I gotta run. Be back later.

That was the third item in my statement btw. As I say, provide an example and I'll provide an opinion.

McMartin states the obvious for those too thick to figure it out (well represented here). But he continues to take gratuitous potshots at the lovely and talented Carole. This is unseemly. It is unworthy of him.
Can it be McMartin as a thing for her and seeks to hide it with his gratuitous slander? Let us rise to her defence. She is, after all, no Belinda, and the pomp-poms are well behind her. Shame.

Tieleman and Ed's first comments point to something that is very worrysome. The problem is not only, as is pointed out in the article that BC's fortunes ride on commodity prices but that our economy adjusts to the prices. In the so called "bad old days" of the NDP and their predecessors, the Socreds, commodity prices were not rising and we saw the start of development of a range of industries in BC (film, software-Vancouver is a world leader in gaming software, biotech, fuel cells just to name a few). BC residents seemed to pine for a time when there was a behive burner in every valley, logs floating in every estuary and mines under every mountain and high pay low skill (although pretty miserable and unhealthy) work abounded (somehow some people think of this as the good old days). The BC libs (Conservatives by another name) promised that we could get back to that and they sure got lucky (just like Ralph & Co. next door).

Today, where is the development of new industry? Where are the entrepreneurs in sectors outside of resource extraction? Where is our future?

I have lived in Alberta, not very long ago, during a bust. I have lived in BC when commodity prices have fallen. It is not pretty and unless we plan and work toward a future building on and away from our resources we will be in trouble in the not too distant future. Commodity prices do, unfortunately, have a tendency to fall.

Given our current provincial tax structure, we now really do have a structural deficit that will become apparent once the commodity price upswing slows.

lovely----> maybe once upon a time!

Talented-----> could we see a little evidence?

Personally, Ms Taylor appears more like a very skilled opportunist...for the whole of her career.

Once more let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt - it may even wear a dress shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing that people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.
T.C.Douglas

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20060916233655368

"begins the moment a ruling class, fearing that people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.
T.C.Douglas"

sounds like the gang that runs the BC Fed

Here is another Great site!
http://www.cfoss.com/milligantax.html

I'm totally disgusted with Our Justice and Political system!
Delay after delay of 28/12/2003 Legislature raid "Old Boyz Club"
They have sold out True/Real justice for payola, SHAME.
May you rot in hell as the money you helped scam will keep dante's fires going!
"Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today" : Mahatma Gandhi

"Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation." -- Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: We, The Judges, 1956

oops wrong thread

Will the Liberals take credit for the highest rate of Child Poverty in the country at a provincial 23%?

The fluke that gordo cartel has taken credit for.
And Can('t)West has/is giving gordo credit for. Despicable
Canwest is guilty of Complicity in the Scandal of the Century

Here is another Great site!
http://www.cfoss.com/milligantax.html

I'm totally disgusted with Our Justice and Political systems!
Delay after delay of 12/28/2003 Legislature raid on the "Old Boyz Club".
They have sold out True/Real justice for What? SHAME.
May they rot in hell as the money you helped scam will keep Dante's fires going!

"Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today" : Mahatma Gandhi

"Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation." -- Justice William O. Douglas (1898-1980), U. S. Supreme Court Justice Source: We, The Judges, 1956
bye 4 now.

http://www.kitcometals.com/

This link is a complimentary link that reflects a portion of today's commodity values complete with historical charts. In short, metal & oil commodities are screaming. When we have commodities that are worth 4 to 5 times what they were worth 10 years ago, you have a boom economy, especially in mineral and metal rich BC. In this climate, even fools can generate surplus's in government. High commodity values have quite simply, saved Campbell's ass.

But what goes up, does come down. While demand for metals has increased, especially with the industrialization of China, commodity values that haven't adjusted for renewed recycling and high numbers of new mining startups attracted by high values, face serious corrections in the longer terms (save three metals, zinc, lead and within 5 years, copper).

In the end, it comes down to supply and demand. In British Columbia, a number of key topics do need to be looked at, but with a different government than what we see today. We can't expect positive results from dealing with inept criminals.

More than ever, property rights of individuals and corporations, the privatization of crown lands, and the current monopolies the governments in BC hold in certain sectors of the economy, need to be looked at from all points of view. The view of being bought out by foreign investment to watch corporate profits and taxes end up in the pockets of other nations... the view of the ordinary Canadian being cut out of the loop in terms of ownership of surface, mineral, oil and water rights...

If and when the time does come where the citizens of BC looks at these issues more seriously, the time will also come for us to recognize that our soveriegnty is decided not solely by corrupt governments that pursue the provincial sellouts of provincial assets such as our current Campbell government, but by the legislation and regulations put forth by honest federal and provincial governments that regulate or de-regulate the ownership laws and restrictions that come with foreign investment and M & A's within this country. And to that end, the Federal Conservatives and their Republican Harper's latest on the subject is?

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2006/11/15/berniervoip.html

We just handed over an entire sector of our own economy to silicon valley.

At this time, we have a corrupt provincial and federal government that need to be replaced so that British Columbians can talk about the future of collective ownership of our province in the environment that promotes the most responsible long term approach to the growth of our economy... "as stewards of our lands and resources."

The time has come to take back what was always rightfully ours.

Thanks to Will McMartin and the Tyee for presenting us with another good article, and a good forum for debate.

Many of us are reading Tyee because we're tired of the lame-ass big media's habit of hand-holding with the Cambell government and always giving us their best corporate perspective. There are also some Tyee readers who are surfing neocons, here to see how the right gets kicked around. (Similarly, I frequently listen to CKNW to see how the left is getting a good thrashing).

Anyway, as long as Global and the Sun are the main propaganda tools in the province, we will have trouble getting the libs out of power. The enemy of freedom is ignorance and apathy.

"our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
- Martin Luther King

Will, as usual writes good articles. They must be good as the right of center folks start calling him a left winger.Freind of the NDP!

Most folks know will used to work on the other side of the spectrum.
Governments tend to brag when things worldwide are coming on like gangbusters and take all the credit. when the cycle swings the other way, hell blame somebody else, or cut a few more programs. The thing that really drives the right wing is that his stuff is well researched. we hear the premier telling us about BC being the best place in the world and a few other bests. we all know child poverty here is about the woprst in canmada. many social programs got shut down or greatly reduced. And by Gosh if those pesky municipalities want anything built and epect teh rpvicne to get into the deal it better be 3P's, if over a certian amount of money. Before Gordo's proclamation on how Municipal Governemtn are to operate, whistler simply decided they wern't doing a project as a 3P so it isn't going to be built. I always thought our taxes went for things like infrastructure, social programs , education, court houses and a host of other things a modern society expects to have. Almost forgot. To pay some MLA's as well.

A world leader in creating software for computer models of anti-social behaviour and violence that rewards the development of cyber-skills for same and inures the senses to its real world variants. Meh, a dubious honour IMO for creating a product of little real value.

Thanks loggie, use Douglas's words anytime.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

I'm sorry Brain, I don't follow you at all. Everything that's happening in Canada is happening all over the planet. Economics is man made and only obeys imposed duties and protectionism from within it's own man made borders. Softwood Lumber for example. But a better one would be water rights and oil/energy. Just what is the ordinary Canadian going to do with these new found rights when we take back ownership of our own minerals. Act like an Albertan? Pay down the debt? Give aid to those less fortunate? It must be very apparent that the earths resources belong to no one and everyone at the same time. How they are spent now better change drastically before we profit ourselves into extinction. It matters not who burns the last barrell producing widgets for Wal-Mart shelves, we are all complicit. Fortunately we have this little fella called global warming that snuck up on us faster than we expected. Personally I thought we'd have polluted ourselves into mutants by now. So here is a little test of our resolve, the first of many I'd risk to say. So how are we poised to tackle it? Good start with Kyoto, but we know that cuts must be much deeper. So you see it matters not who owns the resources if there is no one left to sell the widgets to. Even GE must have figured that out by now. Remember "limits to growth" still apply. The timelines may have been off, but the principle is sound.

The theory you are so in favour of, Ed, is merchantilism. It has also been largely discredited as a realistic economic theory or practice.

Grumpy, just because you do not understand something does not mean it is bad. Gaming is by far the largest form of entertainment in the world.

Well, there is a deep dark secret attached to that statistic that is largely out of provincial jurisdction. Anyone have enough guts to address it.

Spoken like the true hack he is. Maybe it has something to do with their electoral policies? Naaaawwwww, gotta blame someone else! And besides, the Ontario NDP created most of its own misery. Further, while Ontario boomed, BC languished. Take some responsibility for your electoral failures and you might form a government or at least a reasonably good opposition!

Not one mention that the BC NDP doubled the debt.

Merchantilism = self sufficiency? Where did you go to school?

Self sufficiency has not worked for any economy that has tried it. Have a look what it did during the Great Depression.

Nice idea on paper. Too bad it does not work.

Merchantilism - that isn't even the right spelling. The proper spelling is Mercantilism. The definition has nothing to do with self-sufficiency - it has everything to do with trade.

The appropriate definition is:
2. Hist. The economic theory that trade generates wealth and is stimulated by the accumulation of bullion, which a government should encourage by promoting exports and restricting imports.

Excuse me, but didn't the NDP have a moratorium on mining for their entire rule? Didn't the NDP make BC a hassle to do business in?
Just think how much richer this province could be if never had the NDP?
Give me a break.

Ron, Did you actually read the essay?

DO you know how to interpret a graph?

GIve you a break?

Never. You're the same guy who believes Bush's lies and still thinks the Yanks are going to find WMD in Iraq.

Working Man:

I think your comment re: gaming should be directed to me. To respond, I'm not so sure it IS the largest form of entertainment in the world. While I have no figures to cite, I'd suspect more kids play unorganized and organized sports than play video games worldwide.

And, I certainly understand it. Like most guys, in my callow youth I spent my fair share of time and money stabbing at buttons on a console in an attempt to master various video games.

What I don't understand is why we are so keen to heap praise on people wasting their talents by giving us games that mimic the absolute worst aspects of our culture. While there are some games that might be considered rewarding of positive actions, or educational in nature (titles like Tetris or Simcity spring to mind) the Grand Theft Autos, Halos, SoComms, and such have little redeeming value IMO.

Watching grown men spend hours playing these games is even more disheartening.

Maestro.....

When I read somebody's opinions, I always want to know how the person arrived to certain conclusions, so I'll start with mine........

I landed as a destitute, starving refugee in a foreign country, without family, or language, or worthwhile education, at the age of 18. Seeing all the destruction, starvation and horrors, I realized that they were nothing more than the constant repetition of history and that there must be a common denominator. So I set out to find it. It took me 40 years of research, till 1985.

It was also the time when I met my wife, a refugee girl with her parents. We started adding things up and came to the conclusion that farmers always had something to eat and skilled tradespeople always could look after themselves and find some work. The academically trained professionals were at the bottom, nobody wanted. So we decided that one day we'll learn trades and get a farm.

I received my academic training while living and working on a farm, 5 miles from Cambridge,in England, but the last thing I ever wanted to do was working in an office. I only did it as a learning experience, still continuing to this day.

We came to Canada and crossed by motorcycle, from Montreal to Vancouver in 4 weeks, as we wanted to see the country
and meet people.

I learned custom furniture, cabinetmaking in Vancouver, working with an old English craftsman and started my first business in 1957. Later I learned more trades and continued with my research.

I'm a workaholic, but never for money, only to learn and make things work. Never had a holiday and still work 7 days a week.

We bought our ranch in 1975 and moved here in '79. Started building a large house, spent all our money, when we realized that we won't get paid for our shop we sold in Vancouver. The buyer was a good capitalist with great capitalist advisers.

He set up a dummy company and was buying the products from my shop at bankruptcy prices and resold them at double. He wanted to keep the well established name and reputation, but when the arbitrators, Coopers and Lybrand, contacted him, he told them that if I push him too hard, he'll put the business into bankruptcy and we won't get anything.

He offered .20 cents on the dollar, which we had to accept. It is a common business practice, perfectly legal with limited companies and as we found out, used by some of the "most respected" names in BC and around the world.

So, here we were, the 3 of us, with our teenage son, living in 2 small cabins, 16x8 and 8x8, without a penny, no electricity, no phone, no refregration, no running water, with the skeleton of a large house looking at us, for 8 1/2 years.

We had our tools and so started building custom furniture with a small generator and doing all the odd jobs we could find to build our house, penny by penny, and we did it. Also developed a large organic market garden, raised cattle, pigs, chicken.

I started reading economics in 1982 and from the first page on was shocked about the complete nonsense and fraud of the theory that runs and destitutes the world.

This is all for today. The conclusions that came from this experience will come tomorrow. As I wrote before, my laws have now been used in many economic forums and in PhD dissertations and remain unbroken, but hated by all true blue economists. And I love to hear their yammerings.

Ed Deak.

"Self sufficiency has not worked for any economy that has tried it. "

The Inuit are on line one for you Working Man and there's emissaries from other indigenous cultures filling up the waiting room. They're starting to argue with the early colonial settlers of North America, the dude who claims to be from 18th century Japan, and a bunch of yeomen from pre-industrial England.

Which is not to say that we need necessarily emulate those economies (esp. the fuedal nature of some), but it does point out to me that self-sufficiency can and does work on some levels.

IAMC, The NDP had no moratorium on mining, only strict environmental laws controlling it. The Polley Mtn. copper mine, up the Likely Road from us, opened under the NDP and closed under the BCLiberals, because the prices were lousy. Now both the Gibraltar and the Polley mines are working full blast, poisoning the area, their overloaded trucks breaking up the roads because the prices and the profits for the foreign owners, are high.

Try to think first and find out the facts before making silly statements. You can find all this out on google, where the facts are listed.

In any case, the sale of resources is not an income, apart from a very small part, only in the fraudulent accounting systems used by economists and politicians.

Ed Deak.

Much agreed with your points, but at the heart of the degradation of our environments, is the question of "ownership", a question that will not go away until we deal with the "domains" of ownership in relation to shared "environments".

The jest of what you say is that the worlds populations will peak and recede with continued polluted environments and if these things are left unchecked, i.e. expanding populations in declining resource scenario's, then most obviously we will face certain peril and doom that usually invites war and the further degradation of the environment that comes with the territory of such dead end scenario's. But guess what... we've got a ways to go before we get there.

Look at the numbers of people China is sustaining, while on the brink of environmental disaster. It could be a franchise of things to come world wide! Timelines, scales, I hate to break it to you, but this world has room for anther 3 to 4 billion, barring another spanish flu... can you imagine what will happen to the world if populations continue to climb and resources continue to dwindle from such wayward wasteful consumption of resources? And need I remind the readers that we don't consume anything, just change it, leaving finished product and "waste"? What about the waste? There's shit everywhere.

And the saddest thing of all is that we know how to prevent it. Its the widgits that are killing us not so much because of their purpose for being (other than profits), but because of how and what they are manufactured from and by.

And if Canadians want to turn a blind eye to "where they got their materials" and "cheap labour to build the finished product" and why poor environmental standards for manufacturers to save a buck exist in other countries, and the corporations that push such agenda's of wrecking the earths environments for greed... then we are just as responsible, perhaps moreso, because we are supposed to know better.

Our environments will suffer until we get a firm grip on just "who" owns "what" and until that time comes, the ones who own the most on paper will continue to rule and recklessly damage the environments for the sake of more fleeting power propped up by their surreal paradigm that manifests the belief that "money can buy you anything, including wealth, fame, prestige and power".

It begins with what we bring into our homes. The plastics and shit foods, the gas guzzlers and energy consumers... more to the point, it begins with what we are truly aware of.

Total self sufficiency is an impossible dream, except for very primitive societies. Obviously, we can't do and make everything, as we can't have the knowledge, tools and resources.

But families and communities should do their best to become self sufficient to the highest possible degree. This can only be done by self investment, the elimination of foreign ownership, and the middlemen.

Ed Deak.

"...furthermore, those vanity projects are about to bleed the taxpayers dry. Since their budgeted costs didn't account for rising prices fueled by the so-called boom, their principals are now coming back to the taxpayers, cap in hand, for bailouts."

- Since this wasn't hard to figure out, even while the 'games' were still on the drawing board, my great perplexity is over, where the Heck did they get the 60% or so majority that jumped on this bandwagon? Do BC'ers have a thing for self-torture, or are there so many who think it will dribble a little bit on them, that they're included in 'the real people', or what?? I just don't get it! Please help clear this up if you can...

So true, Ed. Self sufficiency can be achieved at any scale, with enough of a land and resource base to work with, and what stands in the way of this is foreign ownership of our property rights. If we can't own our water, our lands, and the rights to all that lies beneath it, (including the responsibilities that come with stewardship) then we will never be free to look after whats best for our nation and its lands and waters. To that end, we will just be slaves.

As long as the poison doesn't reach the IAMC's areas; as long as the chemical residues of China's "boom" don't taint our shores, why then the WM's thin that "doing business" in BC is great!

Fiat lux

Dream on.

When governments like Gordon Campbells liberals slash and burn the social fabric of this OUR British Columbia then time for action!
Giving our Crown corporations away at Fireside sales. These Corp are the People's Hold against the Corporate Greed That Is Becoming a Daily Routine.
I'd Say Just Stop Buying and If You Must Buy, By Local don't become a sheepall in other words don't become a consumer of junk we don't need!

http://www.iwtnews.com/node/2816?from=70&comments_per_page=70

http://www.labourstart.org

I believe the Third World countries are much better at survival than we are with all of our widgets, flat screen TVs, Expresso coffees, Hummvies to tour around the city's, or in limousines, European holidays, designer clothes, we spend more on dogs than we donate to the food banks.
Now talk about banks every bank has posted first-quarter 2-5 $billion earnings/house foreclosures in other words people's dreams the shareholders must really sleep well at night. I personally don't think these people have any conscience or feelings just me, me, me.

Stump

The third item is part of the second part. The first part is "I think government should get the hell out of business.

Also "the rights of individuals" have long clashed with those in business and even "providing infrastructure" can work for or against individuals. A better road provides a more reliable means of getting your produce to the market but if that road winds up running through the middle of your farm it can screw things up real fast.

I can remember when it was called - BC ELECTRIC, then BC POWER COMMISSION - and now BC HYDRO AND POWER AUTHORITY. I do think that the Gov't should not sell off everything. For example; ICBC should not be a Crown Corporation. That is only one that I have mentioned. That is my opinion.

Fiat; why would anyone trust Google? There employees political contributions go 98% to the Democrat's. Ever heard of a Google bomb? Just go to the words "ass hole" , exactly like that, ass hole, click on the "I'm feeling Lucky" window, and see what you get. Fair and balanced, right? Educate yourself on Google bombs. I know I have.

For the Campbell apologists on this thread. The kind of BS being peddled out of Victoria at present led to the Argentinian and Chilian nastiness that was inflicted on the opposition. (To name just two.) When our betters start to tell the population what is good for us watch out.

Well bring it on Burgess. Where is the left wing in this Province? They have are so placated on the public trough, they are no longer a threat. To me a bigger threat is the liberalism of the BC Liberal Party. As I am not satisfied with them, your side is weaker, and has no plausible future.
Even in the recent US midterm election, the Dem's are about to to toast the Moveon.org, extreme leftists, and become more of a conservative alternative to the Republicans.
I think that we all agree on 96% of issues, and it's that thin margin that carries the victory.
We are all friends, aren't we?

I agree. Get on the voter's list and vote in 2009.

Strangely, Ed, many of your ideas were also advocated by the Nazi party.

IAMC
In a word, 'NO'. We are not all friends. Get used to it.

Chew their legs off Ron.

Working man
Relative to Ed's ideas, could we have some examples? Nazi expansionism does not exactly fit the normally understood idea of self-sufficiency.

In fact, quite the contrary. The Nazis wanted to enslave the peoples of the East and were desperate to conquer the oil fields of the Caucasus - not exactly my idea of promoting and practicing self-sufficiency.

I think you’re running on empty.

I love to see the bi-partisan spirit exhibited by Alcibiades and others. It's truly heart warming. It's a paradise we live in. Imagine that we are able to communicate in the way that we are right now. Life is good.
What is MSM in the Us going to do now. They can't tell us the the world is about to end for a two years period, while they pretend that liberals are now running the United States.
Alci is pissed right now.

I hope you all listened to mike Smythe and Carole Taylor on brandxxx I could only take a few minutes of his fawning and cheerleading. She says the Lieberals can takes all the credit for the Economy. Or as Mike says this booming Economy.

Alcibiades

All the Nazis were doing was expanding self so they could then practice self-sufficiency over a larger territory.

Further to this, if you reduce people to the same level as livestock and use them as slaves aren't you still using the resources at at hand to be self-sufficient?

Doesn't make it right but it happened.

Where does it say that self-sufficiency excludes expansionism?

snert
Have you been following the conversation?

Alcibiades

Are you?

The point, quite simply, is that working man was trying to make the point that Ed Deak's philosophy had parallels with Nazi ideology. I think such an idea is both offensive and absurd and was pointing out just a couple of the discontinuities to HIM.
Enough already.

WM, every ideology, religion, prophet, dictator, criminal etc. has had some good ideas. It is their overall philosophy, or ideologies, that stink.

I've seen the nazis at work and just escaped hanging by accident. At the same time, while the Austrian and religious propaganda was shedding crocodile tears, after WW2, on how terrible the nazis were, in my 3 postwar years in Austria, all I could hear how wonderful the nazis were. In any case, the nazi party was put into power, financed and maintained by big business, who were also the biggest promoters of the nazi colonization and slave labour plans, called Lebensraum, or living room.

In short, capitalism can not thrive in true democracies, this is why the USA its satellites are sinking into fascism to protect the "wealth creation", or rather robber baron plans of the mighty.

As far the Churches were concerned, they were sending their priests and clergy into the nazi armies willingly. The Waffen SS had thousands of Christian clergy as padres and I have known at least 2 Catholic priests who were SS padres with the rank of captains, or Hauptsturmfuehrer. Religion is another field that doesn't recognize democracy.

IAMC...you have problems kiddie. When you read articles on google it doesn't mean they were written by google. Haven't you figured this little fact out yet?

There are all kinds of mine, for example, also from all sources, even the Fraser Inst. It saves a lot of time and effort to be able to read newspapers, articles and studies from every angle, from all over the world, with the touch of a finger. E.g I certainly don't believe anything I read from the Fraser, or CD Howe institutes on google.

Ed Deak.

Alcibiades

You offend too easily.

doesn't matter if mcmartin's right or not. the electorate will vote with their pocketbooks, which means that the socialist hordes don't have a chance. which is all that really matters anyway.

Mr. Brain sir, that's exactly my point. Imagine what would happen with another 3 or 4 billion people. The limits to growth kicked in at 2 billion with everyone trying to build a better widget. Exponential growth has been upon us for a few centuries now and the course is a fatal one on more fronts than any of us realise I'm sure. Global Warming will just be the first major challenge until the next one kicks in. Pollution, Nuclear Waste, Loss of Bio Diversity, No More Fish and every possible permutation of a thousand other variables are going to come into play as population rises and resources dwindle. Obviously there will be skirmishes large and small over what's left. Total greed of individuals and nations have left us little hope that society as we know it will be sustained. What does the future look like then? Lass than a billion will carry the legacy forward, guaranteed. What did Paul Erlich say, maybe 500 million would be sustainable in a reasonable facimile of what we have now. Of course humans as Ed mentioned could sustain themselves in primitive society's. But it's too late to go tribal from here. At some point you just have to admit we are a failed experiment that just wasn't ready to join the universal society. Time to admit the Dolphins are the the real treasure of this earth and lets get out of their way. If we dedicated ourselves to preserving the dolphins and our ecology we might just find a few of the values those primitive societys knew instinctively. The more I think about this the more I go back to my theory that there is a defective gene in human development, one that has become prevalent like the one that tells us to walk upright. Only this defect leads to greed and stupidity. How else do you explain an entire society wallowing in their own feces.
So explain to me now how taking ownership of our minerals land and water within our borders solves this? What difference does it make which humans hold the deeds to those resources? Are we Canadians better stewards of our own futures if we take back our mineral rights? I'm sure on a political scale it makes sense, but I really don't understand your point and how it would apply. I would appreciate a better example of how this would work. Convincing those on the treadmill to consider this as a real option toward controlling our own destiny. Otherwise I think we're probably singing the same hymn.

Just about all booms in wealth are luck, because it is very hard to have a boom thru simple hard work, since hard workers are easy to find in the form of hungry humans.

From Jed Klampett striking oil with his axe to Bill Gates being IBM's 2nd or 3rd choice for DOS, it's either luck or exploitation.

The myth of self-sufficentcy is also just that, a myth, because even anti-social mountain-men and native north americans were entirely dependent on the resources of the earth and sun.

Knowing this, becoming it a good human being lies not in useless ideology, but simply using the earths resource in a way that actualy enhances it, or failing that, causes a minimum impact, as opposed to maximum profit.

In Ed's case, he would have to use sustainably grown trees and hand tools to make his furniture, no power tools allowed. The generator has to go, Ed.

Actually the only practitioners of nazi tactics are snert and working man. I mean what better way to call into question those you disagree with by comparing them to something unrelated that is yet despicable or distasteful. It's a tactic the nazis regularly practiced with the jews.

Unless the two of you are prepared to declare that anyone seeking greater self-sufficiency to be a nazi, I'd say your crass comparison is simply a pathetic rhetorical tactic you're employing, because you're too damn lazy or unintelligent to come up with a cogent response to Ed's ideas.

An increasing number of your comments comprise knee-jerk bitchy retorts. All that demonstrates is a poverty of imagination, and an inability to think, so you rely on distractions from the subject at hand.

Typical of the faithful....jump from one extreme to the other and wave flags of righteousness.

Please try to use your brains.

I buy and use all the tools I can afford and need and have more now that I had when I was in business. There's a tremendous difference between tools that enhance human capability and genuinely save time and energy and automation that uses incredible physical and energy inputs to replace people and steal their wages to feed the artificial entities of company shares.

If you don't understand and have no experience in how trades and industry works, please try to learn something before talking nonsense.

Ed Deak.

James Burns

You seem to have adopted this very same tactic.

I was not responding to Ed who by the way seemed to respond on his own without suffering a breakdown and dragging the Holocaust into the conversation.

To the best of my knowledge the world is not like a Harry Potter novel where you have deal with "He who can't be named."

Just because the word 'Nazi' is used is not reason enough for the world to stop turning.

Ed;

My tongue in cheek comment was meant to (sarcastically) illustrate the worst ideology - that someone else is causing the problem and oneselve's activities are acceptable.

And while I do also own enough tools to turn a tree into furniture, I recently chose to purchase furniture instead. That the company could produce a better quality product with less resources than I could (and probably you), made the decision easy, and so their "shares" should reflect that fact.

But given the fact that the electricity your tools use, and the natural gas heating your shop, and the tools themselves will profit foreign corporations, I fail to see how you can wave the self-same flag of rightiousness.

How would your product be different that the one I bought ?

JW.... No automated industry should be permitted to use the dwindling hardwood stocks of the world, like Honduras and Guatemalan mahogany, Teak, Black walnut, etc.

Furniture made by skilled cabinetmakers increases in value as it grows older, I know mine did and does. It is recognized even by insurance companies who often pay much higher prices for handmade items lost in fires, than what the owners paid for it.

At the same time, massproduced furniture from the rarest woods becomes garbage in a few years, therefore it is a waste of money\, energy and resources.

If you, or anybody on this blog, still has the copies of the Wood Cuts magazine, published by Lee Valley Tools in the early '90s, I had several articles in them and also have drawn all the "Shop Tips" illustrations.

Trade is an important economic fact, but it should be done without the middlemen, who distort values at both ends. We can not grow many hardwoods in Canada, so we must trade in real physical and not in monetary values. As I have done with my tradesmen friends over many years and still do with my neighbours.

As far tools are concerned, I get what I can and as our manufacturers are forced out of business, I'm forced to buy whatever I can, as it improves our sustainability and self sufficiency.

By the way, did you know that machinery, from closed Canadian factories, sold to Mexico, or China, is accounted as "machinery exports" by StatsCan? I checked this out with them. No wonder such "exports" have increased after NAFTA.

Ed Deak.

Ed:

Power went out late YESTERDAY morning....and just got turned on late THIS morning....ie almost 24 hours...so I have a lot of catching up to do. I will read your comments and the others, and comment later.

( However, I like your opening comment about effectively how we each individually come to formulate our views, opinions, philosophies, prognostications etc. about the big picture via our own life experiences which shape and influence each of us in different ways. As a first generation Canadian,.... your own journey hits home, very much like my own parents, now in their golden years).

Well, one piece of news - won't say good, that would just be crass, - Milton Friedman, 94, has just dropped out of the picture. No more painful lessons on the virtues of the unfetterd market from that source.

While the Liberals can't take credit for the commodity price boom, they can take credit for a much more businesslike approach to approving investment decisions.

For example, under the NDP it was not uncommon for them to take five years to say "No" to a development proposal. That's what destroyed business confidence under the NDP: they were hostile to investment and did not underderstand that all businesses need certainty and understandable processes.

If there had been a commodity boom under the NDP, they would still be pondering about whether to grant mining approval 5-years into the boom.

Ed;

The problem is that few people can afford high quality machine-made furniture much less hand-made furniture like yours. My selection was to buy from a 100-year old Canadian maker,from a Canadian owned dealer.
http://www.durhamfurniture.com/home.php

It actually took quite a bit of searching to find a Canadian maker that I could afford. It may not be heirloom quality, but it cost less for solid cherry peices than the veneered Martha Stewart crap.

When you scratch the surface, you may find that custom furniture costs very little more than the massproduced stuff and, like I said, it increases in value.

It is a miracle that you found a Canadian factory. The large and most small producers were wiped out by the FTA and their mercy killing by the NAFTA.

The same goes for organic produce. I can sell organic beef for half the supermarket price, but nobody buys. They rather go to the store and waste their money on crap meat filled with antibiotics, hormones, steroids and grain to make it fat, quick.

Ed Deak.

Clap, clap for the powerful insight into the bloody obvious snert. I notice you get all persnickety once the shoe is on the other foot. Don't be so easily offended. But then again I shouldn't be surprised to see that reaction from someone in love with their manipulation of semantics merely for the pleasure of ad hominem attack.

No you were just being bitchy, and twisting the notion of self-sufficiency to serve those ends.

LoL! Nazi is used constantly in commentary on the net. Implying or directly calling someone a nazi in a comments section is often the first sign of a losing argument and a poverty of imagination. That poverty was, if you'd care to pay attention, the nub of my point in my criticism of you and working man.

Maybe you should read something other than Harry Potter, hmmmm? It might provoke a little more thought on your part.

I had a very busy day cleaning up....

Tbe Nazis were all about self sufficiency and totally against the cartels that ran, and still run, Germany. They campaigned on these issues and one of the major planks for their platfrom was closing department stores. The whole idea was to seize materials and labour from their neighbours and enslave their people to reduce Germany's dependence on foreign raw materials. In many ways they were classical merchantilists and thier drivel is very similar top the drivel I hear from the lefties here.

Unfortuately, we all can't live on ranches and clothes ourselves in bear skins.

And Ed, you make some very good points about the Austrians. They were more Nazi than Germans. Many of the Einsatzgruppen were staffed by non-Germans including Austrians.

Remember Kurt Waldheim?

Working man
You need to do some more basic research about the industrial and chemical cartels who supported Hitler and the Nazis.

The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty that Armed Germany at War by William Manchester would be a goog place to start.

Industry and Ideology : IG Farben in the Nazi Era by Peter Hayes would be another good choice, as would Hitler's Banker, John Weitz's new biography of Hjalmar Schacht.

If you want more, let me know.

James Burns

Ahhhhhh, "He who can't be named."

I prefer expanding but if twisting suits you by all means twisting it is although it wasn't Ed's notion I was dealing with.

Funny, neither myself nor Working Man called anyone a 'Nazi' so is it possible to that you felt you were losing an argument you hadn't even started yet when you implied? Rats! I'm being bloody obvious again.

I only get "persnickety" when I get subjected to "ad hominem attacks."

BTW the assertion was that the Nazis were "seeking greater self-sufficiency." I believe history bears that out.

Declaring "Anyone seeking greater self-sufficiency to be a nazi" is an interesting concept. How did you come up with it?

This is what working man said,

And I still think it was not meant as a compliment.

BTW working man, you still need to 'work' on your spelling.

I remember Kurt Waldheim very well. Such people should consider that they can't keep their secrets forever.

The Austrians were beating their chests about their anti nazi activities, when I was working for the US Army in Wels, Austria in 1946/47. The local communist party had their head office on the main square and one day they put a series of photos out in their window, showing the local VIPs, cheering their heads off as the German troops were marching into the city in '38.

However, let us also remember that in the prewar years nazi Germany was the envy of depression ridden Europe, with strong nazi parties in every country.

Of course, it was also a false economic boom, like Campbell's here and now, as people found out later, but at the time a lot of people were jumping on the bandwagon, desperately hoping for a miracle, again, as they are now.

Ed Deak.

Great article as always Will!

And I agree with you clubofrome that there won't be more than a billion people left on this planet at the end of the 21st century.

One other thing for sure is that if there's a banker left, all those people will still be in debt.

Jwstewart -- Jed discovered oil with his squirrel rifle ( shades of Iraq?)
Gates (and Apple) got his start up codes from Xerox not IBM.

And isn't if passing strange that to comment negatively on our Frazer Institute shills who post (as kind of a Tyee watch,) they immediately brand one "left wing" ? Amazing how they use the tactics of a certain propaganda minister of the last big unpleasantness. Quizling seems to fit here.

Just a few lines on the self sufficiency idea that seems to upset so many people, especially those filled with various, sick ideologies.

As I wrote before, total self sufficiency is an impossible dream but any degree of it is beneficial to individuals and communities, because it means real freedom.

Reliance on somebody else is always a loss of real freedom, even when fraudulently promoted by ideologies like communism and capitalism, the biggest enslavers in history, apart from religions.

While a certain degree of specialization is necessary, it also creates incompetence. It and forced urbanization are promoted by economists
because specialists and urban people living in shoeboxes are forced to buy everything needed for their survival, which in turn jacks up the phoney GDP.

We discovered this many years ago and have been working on to set up a self sufficient living system to the highest possible degree to regain and maintain our personal freedom.

Maestro asked how I came to the figure of $15,000 investment per job. I started my first business in Vancouver with a $500. bankloan in 1957 and within a few months I was employing 8 or 10 skilled tradesmen.

The old economic textbooks demanded no more than 1 wage year investment per job to avoid overcapitalization, which is used to strip people of their livelihoods and divert the benefits into the pockets of the artificial entities of corporate shares.

20 odd years ago the Cariboo had hundreds of small, privately owned sawmills, now virtually all gone on account of the loss of the ability to buy logs. I know a couple of brothers, both with university masters degrees, who run a small mill and are capable to make a decent living with a truckload of logs per week. The large, overcapitalized mills use 10 to 20 loads per worker per week.

So which system is more efficient? But they can do it, because they have their own logs they can harvest themselves. Freedom.

In our case, when others were spending their monies on holidays in Hawaii, we bought land, tools and equipment. Today, I can paint in my studio, my wife in hers, or go out to my shop and make just about anything from wood and metal with equipment with an overall cost of less than $10,000.My wife has about 5 sewing machines in her studio and being 55 km from the nearest town,which means a $50. trip, we have enough supplies at home to fill stores, so we go to town twice a month. We have 3 large freezers full of the best organic vegies and meats.

Our usual Hydro bill for 2 months is under $70., our propane, used for cooking and water heating, is about $20 to 30/month.

Being able to do and grow most things for ourselves we can live on our OAP very well and also subsidize our cattle, on account of the losses suffered and loans we were forced to take out during the BSE crisis, by about $300/month. for another year.

This is what self sufficiency is about. In our childhoods we lived in communities where hardly anything came in, apart from raw materials and were full of a great variety of self employed tradespeople. When we could afford a pair of shoes, we had them made and so on.

When you look at the architectural wonders of the European palaces, the brocades, the intricate carvings, remember that they were all made by human hands, without any machinery, electricity and ready made paints and supplies.

It would be crazy to go back to such extent, but with the universally usable small tools equipment, computerization, and energy sources we now have available , most goods necessary for good life could be easily made locally by independent trades and craft people.

100 businesses employing 10 people each are far stronger economy than one employing 1,000. , while blackmailing to community for taxcuts and handouts.

Enough for today. So, is this a "leftie" talk when somebody advocates individual ownership and personal freedoms?

Ed Deak.

This was exactly my problem with the policies of the World Bank where they had a real attitude against self-sufficient farmers because they didn't register on the GDP. The World Bank actually looks better on the balance sheet if they can force farmers off the land into low wage ghettoes where they have to buy what they need even though their calorie intake and quality of life worsen.

I don't share the pessimisiom. Man has progressed and will continue to progress. We will figure it all out, as we have always done.
California alone can feed the world. Canada can supply enough water to feed the world.
We can't do everything inhouse. We never have and never will. Provincial idealism is dead.
Mankind will continue to amaze us.
And Fiat, I didn't expect you to admit to knowing about Google bombs. It might upset your motis operendi. For those who missed it, simply go to Google and type in ass hole "ass hole" and then click on I'm feeling Lucky window. You will see how biased this search engine is. I prefer to use Meta Crawler.
I have more advise. If you get an update notice from Microsoft to update to Internet Exployer 7, don't do it. It's silly and slow. You can try it , but if you don't like it, and I'm sure you won't, go to your programs an click on accesories and do a system restore to a date before you did this, and all will be well.
If you do insist on using Google to access information, go to page 60 or 70 and you will get some fair information, maybe.

What are you talking about Ron? The update is much faster, has a cleaner desktop with tabs and Google nicely placed on the upper right corner of the desktop.

Are you still using a coal-fired steam computer?

And, if you haven't already disabled automatic aystem restore it's not too surprising that your machine is holding you back. Using that system is like driving your car with the emergency brake set.

Also, if you're googling 'ass hole' you are suffering from some kind of a strange syndrome anyway.

Too much rush limbaugh, Ron, you're becoming a ditto head.

Alcibiades:

Old Milton could likely hardly wait to shuffle off this mortal coil, watching as he must have, the bastardization of his unfettered marketplace dreams. In the news today, he was mostly closely linked to Ronny Reagan, who alledgedly thought Milton's ideas to be top drawer.....except of course when it came to the State spending on the military, something Milty would surely have disapproved of most vociferously. As was mentioned in the movie "Syriana", the US with 5% of the world's population generates 50% of the world's military spending. Now a free and unfettered markeplace would demand that spending of this sort be financed privately, and not be state-sponsored, as that is a socialist trait.

The US has been held up as the premier example of free enterprise. Yet how could it be when about half the so-called "prosperity" it has enjoyed in the last 50 years+ has been a direct result of state expenditures on military technologies? Friedman must surely have admonished successive presidents for not letting private capital fund a private military. He must also have had apoplexy regarding the public funding of education, and the building of highways and other infrastructure. Oh sure, private contractors bid on many of these works, but private capital should also have funded them, and it did not.

Firefox, Epiphany, Konqueror and SeaMonkey are all that I'd use.

Copyleft beats copyright :-)

Ron, so how often has mankind actually improved the world's environment?

From the MotherJones article linked to by the Tyee on their main page

You're right about browsers of course Frank. Moving Ron from Explorer 6 to 7 ought to be within his competence though, don't you think?
DID you see the Denial Machine on CBC last night? Repeats on Newsworld several times over the weekend.

While my family was eating Chinese food (Japanese food for the daughter) by candlelight?

Nope. Is the program pretty funny?

There probably would have been no difference in the BC economy in the last few years if a chimpanzee had been running the province. We might even have been better off- at least chimpanzees can show compassion.
Welcome to the "New Error".

You didn't have your mini generator running?

It's worth watching, actually. 5th escape (Estate) but not funny at all. Mind you, if you'd has to use a generator to watch it, that would have been very funny.

We didn't lose power on the Island - no trees through the roof either.

Global warming is quite fun though.

Deny, deny, deny inspite of the obvious insinuation. What, are you taking lessons at the feet of Rove et al. Oh but wait you haven't finished.

Awww come on please try to decide which side of the fence you're sitting on. I mean the flippity floppity can get a little tedious. You attach insinuations, and then deny them and then reattach them. Are you just blind to your own behaviour or are you just dim?

The nazis were all about using whatever tropes they could dream up to create whatever associations suited their purposes in their drive for power. They weren't "for" anything other than their own power. They used whatever notions popped into their heads to suit just those purposes. What they pretended is totally unimportant next to the dynamic of their actions.

You, snert, have clearly demonsrated an complete lack of interest in substantive debate, and a rather intense fixation on using language to harass and bedevil. Thus the parallels. I'm just pointing that out. There certainly is a diffence between you and working man. He is a dyed in the wool ideologue. You just enjoy being a vacuous pain in the ass.

James Burns,
on that note, I'll head, laughingly, to bed!

Nope, I was all out of both uranium and coal. I hate it when they run out at the same time.

When you throw in the US gov't and the oil industry its hard not to get a little giddy at the prospect of some serious comedy.

James Burns

You wanted a debate? It's pretty hard to tell with all the "ad hominem attacks."

as opposed to a gaseous one. Yeah, I guess your right.

Frank:

Why, with every golf course built, of course! Or with every forest razed and replanted into more efficient monocultue.........

Anybody who doesn't like google, or other search engines, doesn't like libraries either, because there might be some books they don't like.

All I know they never changed anything I wrote. Try to type in my name. It is a quick search engine, saving the trouble of buying newspapers, books, and going to the libraries.

Our friend IAMC Ron & Co are bombs themselves, but we still appreciate blogs like the Tyee and Vive. They all feature planted progandists, or the faithful nuts, who try to persuade the world that
"Faith conquers all".

Sure does. Especially rational thought.

Ed Deak.

Rick, most of those replanted forests last about 3 years, then they die. I know areas that have been replanted 3 times, each time counted as "so many millions planted". They're always caounted in 1 or 2 years and report "success". Ask the people who do the counting.

I live in the midst of them and watch them die. We also received some trees for planting in our forest, although we never would use clearcuts, but wanted to have some more in certain areas. For all practical purposes they all died.

It is a bloody GDP racket to pacify the sucker public like our trolls.

Now I have to go to town, a $50. trip

Ed Deak.

Ron reminds me of the frog in the pot of water set to boil....

Fiat Ed:

Interesting stuff, many thanks:

What never seems to amaze me is today's youth. They come home from school and spout off all sorts of touchy feely enviro saving lectures and healthy living ie "don't eat THAT" , then are amongst the most conspicious consumers out there.

My nephew who is close to 30 has no problem shopping at Value Village and admitting it...and buying items like a good quality leather jacket,.....but those a few years behind him are the ones that will likely line up overnite for PlayStation 3 and turn their nose up at a good hand -me -down.

I see people with " FREE" signs attached to items left on the curb that used to actually be snapped up for a few bucks where the buyer and seller both win.

Personally, and along the lines of your furniture building experience,...I tend to invest in antiques...if it lasted 100 years it'll last another 100, or passed onto my great grandchildren. The amazing thing is the antique prices are far from outrageous, almost on par with new, yet they never go out of date.

Like many things new, quickly and poorly built..and often end up out on the same curb,FREE,... yet broken.

Electronics are the worst....the cost to fix them makes tossing it and buying new the new economic reality. Makes no sense in the long run....but those of us from the old school have less competition to access and acquire the quality that still remains.

Fiat Ed:

I agree with much of what you say.

Economists are interesting creatures...but one cannot rely on the so-called wisdom of "one" economist....life etc. in general is not a "controlled experiment".

I think the issue is the economic transition many of us have experienced if we are of the boomer generation or older.

Some economists have attributed the shift due to labour was once cheaper "at -the -time" than the machinery that replaced labour. "Cheaper" Union wages were accepted as the normal cost of doing business at say the old sawmill.

Then that same mill worker's kid went to University..ie "Son, Mill is no future.... get an education"....so the son went and got his B.A.Sc.(Engineering degree) and designed more advanced mills and made mills more efficient = less need for manpower). This father /son paradox- parable was laid out in the 1980's movie "Wall Street".

However, I agree, the overcapitalization creates a situation where the so -called highly mechanized mill may never reach full production capacity(if that is your inference) and thus the financing costs etc. make it a dubious proposition. Then we have consolidation and more mergers etc.

What is also not mentioned much is the pine beetle problem,...and the transfer of infected logs over more and more greater distances , which subsequently infects new areas....etc etc. this is a no brainer, but closures mergers and consolidation of mills simply exacerbate the pine beetle infection.

Also.....I often pass by the Boston Bar mill, which was apparently the most efficient mill of its day not long ago...the log yard is often empty...I do believe its over and no longer in operation, certainly not much activity. So what happened??? or is it obvious???

Otherwise...We're on the same page on many issues and concerns.

Just got home.....
I set up a whole slew of laws and definitions 15-20 years ago that remain unbroken and can not be broken, because they're based on long established and unbreakable physical laws. In other words, I didn't invent anything, only applied well known physical laws, we all learn in highschool, to economics.

"Wealth can not be created only taken from other sectors, the environment and the future"

"Costs can not be cut, only transferred on other sectors, etc."

"The lowest energy and resource inputs will be the lowest cost of a product."
etc. for about 65 pages, killing neoclassical economics, endorsed by world class scientists.

"Monetary costs are not realities, but often violence induced temporary perceptions, therefore econmic calculations can not be based on them"

Such things make economists foam at the mouth, but that's all, because they can't prove them wrong.

Not even the World Bank's economists could, and I still have a note of congratulations from the Office of the Chief Economist of the WB, who then was Joseph Stiglitz, but without a signature.

Shortly after he resigned from the WB in disgust.

On a more mundane subject, I'm a fully qualified antique restorer, although retired and I have to tell you that where many antiques are really worth the price, many are garbage, with shining fronts and the cheapest junk behind. I repaired truckloads of them dumped into my shop by the wife of a well known, now deceased, dept. store owner, who used to go to Europe and bought junk, so she could write off her expenses as business trips.

Some years ago I bought 4 mid 1800 excellent quality rosewood dining room chairs with the intention of restoring them, but so far haven't. I'll be busy this winter, but perhaps I'll get to it next year. If you know the prices, how much would they be worth expertly restored and finished, but without upholstery.

Ed Deak.

Ed:

I have an example to put past ya....re your wealth creation premise....in a subjective/relative context.

Gotta head our for a bit..

Ciao.

Fiat lux

Do you have a link to all of your laws?

Snert, I have published only small parts of it and sent scans of the complete handwritten text to a few friends. A professor friend in Australia started editing them some time ago.

If you go to google and type in my name you can find some of the discussion on various lists, or type "Thermodynamic economic efficiency" or "Thermodynamic economics", or "Ed Deak Big Lake, BC, Canada". In other words the stuff is all over the Net. and sometimes I get notes from people in towns in Africa and Australia, I've never heard of, commenting on the article I wrote in their local paper ??????

One of these days I'll have to sit down and write some kind of a detailed article on the main points. I've had many requests for books and a few offers to publish, but have no time, or intention ever to write a book, as I it could ruin our peaceful life.

Ed Deak.

Thanks Ed, I've already googled you and found some. It would be an interesting read, no doubt, if one didn't have to wade through other peoples opinions whether they be for or against.

Ed,
It's about time that economics is connected to the fundamental laws of science i.e. thermodynamics. The principles you refer to are fundamental to science. Science attempts to explain our universe. Thanks for doing that for us. Economics tries to explain how we should behave to be financially successful.
Mohammad Yunus,the "banker to the poor" and winner of the Nobel Prize, says "We lend money to the poor" and "If you have nothing, you should get something." He also said, "Banking is based on the principle - the more you have, the more you should get." These comments are from the Jon Stewart Show on nov. 16, 2006. The links are
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=78402
and
http://www.comedycentral.com/sitewide/media_player/play.jhtml?itemId=78400
I hope these links work?! If they don't, Google Mohammad Yunus and Jon Stewart.

Ed:

Perhaps this is the crux of the matter. Ain't no one learning much in highschool nowadays.......

"In our case, when others were spending their monies on holidays in Hawaii, we bought land, tools and equipment."

- We have told our children: Invest in your own skills, the means to use them, turf; in that order. Only after you have that is there any such thing as 'discretionary money'. And even then, you should never lose sight of those original foundations being secure before anything else. We are urban dwellers of necessity, as the main breadwinner in our family has become too specialized to go out and work in the boonies. But I agree with everything Ed says, and it is time and again, that our economical situation has been grossly misunderstood by neighbours and others, because we clearly have priorities on spending, which are vastly different from those of most other people. For our kids, the important question was: Is my spending on this going to make a diffrence ten years from now? twenty years from now? We never spent on passing fads, but on the fundamentals with long-term consequences. And youre right, RickW, the high and elelmentary schools both were singularly unhelpful, as they are commissioned to bring up our kids to be life-long serfs, helpless spenders, who will deliver the last dollar in their pockets to the Illuminati and never try to build anything for themselves.

"motis operendi" ? Where does that organ sit in the body?

“Strangely, Ed, many of your ideas were also advocated by the Nazi party”

“All the Nazis were doing was expanding self so they could then practice self-sufficiency over a larger territory.

Further to this, if you reduce people to the same level as livestock and use them as slaves aren't you still using the resources at at hand to be self-sufficient?

Doesn't make it right but it happened.

Where does it say that self-sufficiency excludes expansionism?”

A couple of misunderstadings need clearing up. The most prominent feature of the Nazis were not their ideologies, which were mostly ancient tribal codes of behaviour, co-opted by them for their political ends, but without the most important entity, the ethics. The Nazis were lying right, left and centre; they never intended to live by the codes they espoused; their propoganda masters just knew what would make people buy into their evangelium, and once they had the dictatorial power (emegency laws), they didn’t care any longer.

Therefore, people who ‘sound like the nazis’ span a whole spectrum from those who even now are nazis, neo- or otherwise, and to people like Ed, who has grasped the old tribal values, including giving it all away in a meaningful manner, when you no longer need it. Why do you think the governments in Canada and elsewhere did everything they could in order to corrupt and ultimately forbid, the potlatch institution and its counterparts? Because it is the balancing feature in the old tribal custom, from Siberia to Jotunheim to Skidegate, the wealth re-distribution by gift-giving was a communal foundation thing. But, it runs contrary to the idea of every little consumer isolated in his own room, left to get everything through spending money, a notion so well supported by the modern desert religions, as obsession with the saving of one’s immortal soul is equally a solitary pursuit. It all serves to set every man, woman, and child (the ‘person’ designation is part of the same dirty plot – refuse to use it!) up for maximal fleecing, and any interference with it will be harshly dealt with.
‘Sounding like a nazi’ in Ed’s case is totally a red herring, and we should get finished with it for good.

I would like to point out, as I mentioned several times before, that I spent 40 years searching for the "common denominator of history's tragedies", when I found it in a university economics textbook in the fraudulent definition of economic efficiency. Now defined as the biggest profits for the least monetary inputs.

I followed this up for 6 years, consulting with scientists, a long process before emails and faxes, before I could establish that through history, in all empires and theories, economic efficiency has always been defined as the
stealing of wealth from other sources, with the biggest thieves and criminals crowned as heroes and examples to follow.

Blessed by the particular religions and Churches, of course, as the Will of God.

Ed Deak.

Fiat Ed:

I did the Google search, interesting stuff,and I love your Thermodynamic theory. I'll comment on that later.

You most certainly have lead a fascinating life.

PS You need an agent and begin to negotiate a deal for Movie , TV and Book rights. Also,....Movie Making is apparently quite enviro-friendly. Then you can retire to warmer climes.

Finally WHO would you like to play the role of Ed Deak ???

.....Chat later.

Maestro, we're very happy where we are and wouldn't move and inch if we'd win the 6-49.

As far we're concerned the Cariboo is really God's Country and we love every minute here.

Could do with a few extra bucks, but the last thing I need is fame. The problem with writing books is that you're committed to travel to sign copies, which I don't do any more, virtually to any long distance. Also if the book is a failure you've wasted your time, if it is a success you lose your peaceful existence. So to hell with both.

If anybody wants to use my notes, they're
welcome. I took out the copyright on my Efficiency Principle in 1991 to establish the date and origin, but have no financial interest.

Now I have to go to feed the chicken and cattle and unload the bags of feed from the truck, then get back to my painting. Not too bad for 79.

Ed Deak.

Hi Ed:

Speaking of the devil....Our local paper has an article by a local author Giles Slade, who has a Ph.D.in Englsih Lit who has written a book called
" Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America ".

Slade spent some time in the Middle East , left via the 9/11, but his book was influenced by the differences between the Arab and U.S cultures.

Slade discusses consumers thirst for durability has been shrinking. Such ideology was created in the 1920's. Disposability was created for convenience, "Branding" , then consumer loyalty. This consumer-based cycle was born about the time of the Depression.

FORD first built a car designed to last 8 years. GM then designed cars to last 3 years. FORD noticed its market share shrinking and spent $100 million revamping its vehicle.

Other manufacturers took note and switched to this new method.

Hence the modern economy.

I'll continue in the next post with what the article says re: Electronics Industry

Have you noticed what's happening to Ford and GM stock lately maestro.

I drive a 1987 Toyota Camry, I'd say it's likely I'll still be driving it when it's twice as old as it is now.

It would break their hearts to hear that I drive a 1980 Chev, 3/4 ton pickup, which I rebuilt into a flatdeck 4 years ago.

I also have an approx 67 year old Ford 9 N tractor and an approx 38 year old David Brown. All going very well and will last indefinitely.

Early this year when I heard that they make computers to last 1-2 years now, I had a guy build me a super heavy duty machine and will last indefinitely and cost less than the store bought crap.

Built in obsolescence is one of the reasons we have climate change, incredible pollution and mass illnesses.

But it jacks up the GDP and the profits of the multinational mafia, so our politicians and economists are in heaven and report a phoney "economic boom".

Ed Deak.

Re Planned obsolesence(cont'd) from the article

With the Electronics industry,it(ie the obsolescence cycle) taken as a measure of how quickly information technology is advancing and what a wonderful industry it is.

Manufacturer's radically underbuild their components so they are basically timed to last 18 months. CELL PHONES were once built to last about 5 years...now it's 18 months. This is based on the assumption most will trade them in in about 18 months, thus why build them to last longer???. In the U.S. 100 million CELL PHONES were trashed last year.

APPLE'S iPOD is designed to last 11 months.

Personal Computer's were once designed to have a life expectancy of about 5 years(1997)...in 2003 its now about 2 years.

In 2004 about 315 million personal computers were retired in North America ".....for no other reasons than a century of advertising that has conditioned us to want more, better and faster from any consumer product we purchase ".

TO BE CONTINUED....

Electronics and Planned Obsolescence (Cont'd)

From CD player to PlayStations to cameras..toxic wastes are piling up....to the point of leaching into groundwater.

"Sooner or later, we'll have to do as they do in Silicon Valley,...and just pump out all the old groundwater and pump new ground water in,for the whole continent." Until recently, the U.S shipped much of its toxic e - waste to China, Bangladesh , India and Pakistan and other poor developing countries.

In China, a river where acid is dumped to reclaim copper, gold, and lead from electronic items, a copper penny will dissolve in less than a day.

Many of these weigh a fraction of the overall weight,and time consuming to recycle,.. yet regardless a toxic time bomb waiting to enter the water table.

MEANWHILE, THE LARGEST SINGLE OBSOLESCENCE EVENT IN HISTORY IS A FEW YEARS AWAY, GILES PREDICTS "

THE U.S. GOV'T HAS COMMITTED THE COUNTRY TO HIGH -DEFINITION TV BY 2009...meaning analog TV's in the U.S., at least 300 MILLION, will instantly become obsolete - unless an adapter is purchased .

Each TV contains 5 - 10 POUNDS OF LEAD.

Final comment by Slade...."We've monkeyed with forces that we don't understand really and taken a lot of traditional material like Lead, Copper and Mercury that we have a long history of using and understand how to manipulate very well - we've registered the fact that they're toxic.

We haven't registered the fact that once global consumption happens to these things, the waste will kill us."

PS : I guess much of this fits your ECO-nomic Thermodynamic theories eh Ed ???

Of course, I've been working on this since 1985.

All economic activities are tied to the highschool versions of 4 physical laws:

The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics and Newton's Laws on Speed and Reaction.

Of course, when we say this, economists come back that Einstein said that economic laws can not be tied to physical laws. With due respect to Einstein's genius, he was wrong on this point. As all geniuses before and after him were wrong on certain things. But in Einstein's time the world had 2 billion people and nobody ever heard the word "pollution". He died in 1955 when we were at sea on our way to Canada, when nobody could imagine the deterioration of values we live under now, forced on by the corporate mafia and their political pimps.

If we don't make mistakes, we don't do anything, but it is important to realize when we make mistakes and correct them.

Ed Deak.

I don't buy " name brand " computers...simply go to my own Ma and Pa computer store and get a great deal and great service. Never paid more than $30 for a tune - up.... or virus fix.

(Most Problems seem to be overheating-based ,...on cleaning the dust out of the "Tower" and the cooling fan's efficiency being compromised).

Other scams include the BC Hydro " Kill the Beer or ANY old Fridge " campaign...even a BC Hydro engineer agreed with me over the phone that the fridge campaign was of rather dubious "true benefit" if viewed with the Big Picture lenses.

Frost Free fridges are really a pox to mankind....use up more power and dehydrate one's food,...designed to please the "fairer sex" so they can tie up the phone lines...or wear out cell phones faster,.... or watch Oprah, Soaps, Dubya,...or boo Clinton etc. on High Definition TV....or buy new iPODS...

Terrible eh ??? It's a good thing we "other halves" are tolerant .

Ed:

That's interesting you mention that Einstein felt that Economic laws cannot be tied to physical laws. Isn't this the same brilliant person seeking the all - encompassing " UNIFYING THEORY" ???

Like most people, Einstein was a product of his times and that the modern economic laws were still evolving and formulating. He had escaped a major war, the cold war was heating up, and Einstein was perhaps sitting on his theories like one wearing a comfortable old sweater.

However, he wasn't a total abstract theorist, and had much common sense to balance his brilliance. (One amusing anecdote was his cussing up a storm in front of the British Monarchy via his frustration in trying to play the violin).

(i) Thermodynamic principles and (ii)Economics in my view are within a "Unifying force" , the former compliments the latter.

dorothy

In the narrow context that these remarks were made I don't see them as being misunderstandings. That context is only a portion of the much larger picture in which your assessment is certainly valid.

"Unfortuately, we all can't live on ranches and clothes ourselves in bear skins."

I believe the point was that you can't do this AND have a comfy pad where someone else deals with the 'utilities', the nitty-gritty, and never have a cold, wet day grubbing in the mud when your pump fails, etc., etc.

The flip side of self-sufficiency is that you're it. There is no 'them' you can call. Some people think it's worth it, others don't. Each to his own. But if you get self-sufficient, make sure you can defend your turf. Those who didn't think ahead aren't going to take it lying down, when they find out they will be on their own for far longer than 'the first 72 hours'.

G West:

How's it goin'???
We're ya been dude...???

I think its not a very well - kept secret that Japanese cars are some of the best out there...

However, from what I gather...via their own inherent planned obsolescence , when they are done, they are done...it all goes down the U - know - what, not worth fixing.

Otherwise....Keep on truckin.

Obviously, we can not all live on ranches and in the country, but this doesn't give the right for any ideology, or economic theory to go out of their way to depopulate the rural areas and jam everybody into cities and incompetence.

Here in the Cariboo, schools are being closed down and school districts are losing hundreds of kids every year. Little children are bused long distances, with the government doing their best to close down communities.

This has been going on since the depression and moving into highgear now.

Back in the sixties I was involved in long distance car rallies and apart from crossing the county by motorcycle in '55, have crossed on 5 Shell 4000 Car Rallies. Even then, 40 years ago, it broke my heart seeing the ghost towns right across the country, especially the Praeries.

And nobody can tell me that the people were driven out because they were "inefficient". To the contrary. That was exactly the reason to devastate them, so that agribiz corporations can get hold of their lands and cover them with chemicals to make more profits.

This is going on all over the world. In Mexico the criminal conspiracy of the NAFTA threw millions of farmers off their lands and into city cardboard slums so that the corporate mafia can confiscate their properties, waiting for Canadian waters secretly promised to them by our governments.

Ed Deak.

You've gotten to the heart of it.
How does our world wide populations put a freeze on growth... how does our province, our nation, our continent focus on the regulations needed to manufacture products "safely"... how do we shift our focus from profit feeding coal fired power plants to geo thermal, or solar and wind?

Or tides... Or become more energy efficient in Canada at home or in transport... Or allow and promote mass scale self sufficient power generators for those who wish to remain off of grid or contribute to it? How do we slow down the exploitation of BC's resources, tighten environmental standards, break monopolies from all corporations, private or crown, and look at the serious mass scale development of geothermal? How do we increase Canada's ownership of resources, Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and not go broke? Through good timing and regulatory legislation of land, resources, manufacturing, M & A's and foreign ownership.

Politically, we need to be more protectionist with how our resources are exploited and used, more regulatory in how the widgets are manufactured and that means putting the breaks on globalization, through the U.S. and Canadian corps bringing their manufacturing jobs back to the nations they file their taxes in... or face further taxes.

We need regulatory governmental standards aimed at increasing the fuel efficiency of all North American built cars and trucks throughout the industry, standards that need to be at par to compete with the rest of the world auto manufacturing industry. It means raising royalties and corporate taxes substantially for the entire mining and gas industry. It means ending all subsidies to the oil, gas and mining industry.

It means, clubofrome, being what every righty con fears... increasing energy efficiency and emissions standards (lowering energy demand), higher corporate taxes, no kickback breaks, a higher cut of the profits through higher royalties, and major regulatory changes to the way things are manufactured in the U.S. from food to cars with much tighter environmental standards and thats not all! We need a substantial land base reduction within BC that will not be developed through the conversion of crown land to park land. Certainly, this would not please resource and manufacturing corporations at home and abroad.

But we need this. And, BC needs to seriously look at the possible flooding of privatized crown lands to accomodate population expansion in BC, and to put a brake on real estate inflation by privatizing more BC crown land in strategic places throughout southern BC where resources are more eco sensitive but unfeasable for parks. And we have to do it when the time is right.

BC can't flood the real estate market at a time when its at a bubble. The best time, in fact, is when real estate has gone through and climbing out of a recession, propelled by population growth, and valuations are more realistic and affordable for the average Joe.

If a society is not "expansionist" it is self - sufficient and vice versa. However, I think we have debated and concluded that no society is self sufficient, yet even less so as modern society advances. Expansionism can be "soft" version ie sequestering needed resources etc. through non military meansie TRADE...or simply invade and take them over by force. Perhaps when the Europeans came to North America, simple trade with First Nations worked at first, but then it shifted to more of a gunpoint diplomacy as the demand increased and negotiations otherwise were slower.

Nationalizing internal assets within a country has been tried...back when nation states had the luxury to do so. However, the problem is that they become too politicized , ie patronage etc. and they don't often fill their original mandate.

The "reservation model" towards real estate is basically a failure, individual ownership is the way to go... in the context of grassroots and individual(non corporate) rights...I think perhaps Ed Deak would not want to be a leasing-serf on publically owned land, the fact he owns it encourages far better stewardship.

Re: Brains' idea Any publically owned land at least within the GVRD is likely tied up with parks, eco sensitive lands etc...I can't see there being much that would be or could be used for housing for many reasons. The rest is in the "crown owned" ALR, but the majority of land contained within the ALR is privately owned. Gov't would have to purchase any other land at market price(ie high) and then try to make it affordable , which implies subsidy....and most Gov'ts have no appetite to do this.

In my view, its all simply becoming a global village and trade is more seemless. The only joker in the deck is protectionism...depending on how the world ie "global village" economy unfolds and evolves,...and how some countries may have to resort to this depending on their own internal political climate.

hey if things are so good here, then why am i cashing the same size paycheck as in 1992? for a carpenter it doesn't seem fair.

johninkits
You're aboslutely right. Since 1976 the average industrial wage, adjusted for inflation, has hardly moved, in some respects it's really less now in terms of buying power.

On the other hand, the sharks at the top of the food chain have increased their take somewhere between 200 and 300 times - measured in the same terms.

It's not only not fair, it's criminal.

In the past 35 years living costs increased about 1,000% and wages stagnated, perhaps doubled. In the first 25 years after WW2 livig conditions in North America improved 47%, but have been going down since.

So much for neoclassical market capitalism.

The power has been out for hours and I'm writing by my built in generator's power. How is this for self sufficiency?

Ed Deak.

This "Cost of Living" debate and the various boogeymen responsible is always interesting.

What is often left out of the equation is the "coincidence" of dual incomes in many households that became more and more the NORM in the post -war(WW II), as well as the baby boomers were becoming a dominant force as they entered the workplace.

If one has dual income...doesn't the given market respond in the bidding process...commodities like housing are often based on the purchasers ability to pay...dual income = increased bidding ability ???

Not sure GM or FORD or GE or IBM had much say in that, though I am sure they would love to have control over THAT sort of power/force.

Then when the dual - income family breaks up...ie divorces( ie 50 % of marriages ??? )... discussed in another recent TYEE topic...the Ex's now need two separate residences...correct? ...and thus it simply exacerbates the situation.

The General Public is often its own worst enemy. Gov'ts manipulate the housing market...as there is little if any evidence that "the other side" does...or can....and thus people are left in this ad infinutum paycheque stretching exercise of which HOUSING is one of the biggest fiscal black holes for the individuals who collectively comprise the General Public.

Agreed. There are too many people who ought to know better. Like you micetro.

They keep electing cats.

Fiat lux

I hope you have backup capabilities. Hard drives have a tendency to fail no matter how heavy duty they are.

I agree and from what I understand, everything is doubled.

We were out of power for about 5 hours in the night and then fron 8:30 amd till 4 pm.

Must have been some helluva damage somewhere. Good thing we don't have any climate change, according to the powers, imagine what would happen if we did ?

Ed Deak.

Alci:

Micetro....cats....ooohh... clever....who wrote that for you?....your SIMS Game social engineering Version 2000 ? Otherwise ...How's the ticket sales to revolution going...and who's the opening act ?

Yes I think we've gotten to the heart of it, but the point I tried, (and failed!) to make is that people are people, no matter the borders. Those things we need to do and have to do, slow down the economic wheel. All the things that Ed has explained in his system. All the production, the built in obsolesence, food shipped from South America and California, pollution and inefficiency make the GDP look good and corporate criminals rich. Robbing you and me and any future our offspring had. In the truist sense of globalism we are all responsible for cause and effect. No one lives there but were all responsible for the polar caps melting or the pollution in the oceans from agricultural run off etc. I think we could offer local solutions under a Kyoto model approach. All nations go home and build local plans to meet global standards.... It's just the scale of the project. Some say local some say global, I think it's a united effort and all levels. Tough problems tough solutions!

And this, just for you micetro - from 1848.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1oGIffyVVk

And here's some more, very entertaining for someone with a visual fascination:
part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hentIFNmZFo&mode=related&search=

If you're interested, parts 2 - 5 are available...check 'em out too.

maestro do you really believe in the garbage you spew on here?
I was a journeyman carpenter during the heydays of 70/78 and making a very comfortable living ($12.00 an hour) with a mortgage, two cars, two kids, a dog, the dream!
At that time I could buy ten cans of Pacific canned milk for a buck, I'm only taking one example.
The price on one of the same brand of canned milk today is approximately one dollar eighty five cents ($1.85)so who makes all this excess profit?

maestro
I'm not a mathematician but if wages went up at the same inflationary rate as this one commodity wouldn't tradespeople be making (today's carpenters wages are approximately $27.00 dollars an hour) approximately rounded off at about $12 then times 20 = $240.00 an hour just to keep up to inflation! I rest my case

During 1970/74 I took a four-year Carpenters apprenticeship course starting wage was 50 percent of carpenters wage or $1.75 with six-month increments of ten percent.
I was married with one child, it was a tough go but we were making it with rent and a car payment.
When I left the trade in 1978 because of health reasons I was making $12:60 an hour.
I'll just take one “for instance” in “78” I could buy ten cans of Pacific evaporated canned milk for a buck!
Today when I go to the store I see the same cans for a $1.85 a can?
I'm not a mathematician but if wages went up at the same inflationary rate as this one commodity wouldn't a journeyman carpenters be making (today's carpenters wages are approximately $27.00 dollars an hour)
$12.60 times 20 = $252 dollars an hour just to keep up to inflation!
and I rest my case

oops sorry for double entry, my mind is thinking about this screwed bc gov

Fiat:

Why, Vancouver might just run out of drinking water.........gasp!

G'Ster, BC Dude et al.

The point (AGAIN ad nauseum)is the seeds were set in motion years ago... that the cost of living had myriad contributors,and many of them were domestic - based .

I can vividly recall the era of the late 1970's / early 1980's when housing prices and interest rates skyrocketed, but I don't recall it due to nothing more than internal/domestic influence.

However, a few years later our little GVRD village became prominent on the world scene,ie Expo 86, and the market forces were more global inclusive .

That's where we are at now...and likely in the foreseeable future.

I am simply adding more history to the overall discussion, which of course some of which continually flies over your so-called "critiquing heads".

Thanks for the AutoBiography , BC Dude, but again what's your point...??? The cost of living has gone up, much of it is due to the Housing market /real estate appreciation.

MUCH OF THIS MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO INFLATION ie " HOUSING COSTS " IS DUE TO GOV'T POLICY...Not anything else...think DeBeers ...capisce'???