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IMHO - The federal Canadian government needs to become the secretariat for a collection of villages, across the country, which exercise all control.
The villages will decide what they will work together on, to achieve something non-local.
Make all politicians "local"; and they will be paid according to the will of the village and its taxation. Corruption.....they'll have to face the neighbours they live beside, and who elect them........good luck.
IMHO - The federal Canadian government needs to become the secretariat for a collection of villages, across the country, which exercise all control.
The villages will decide what they will work together on, to achieve something non-local.
Make all politicians "local"; and they will be paid according to the will of the village and its taxation. Corruption.....they'll have to face the neighbours they live beside, and who elect them........good luck.
Bob A (Democratic Marxist)
Bob,
How many 'villages' you think would constitute Canada?
I don't know that......but I would expect that a "village" would be a modest sized city (Maybe the size of Owen Sound or Collingwood, Ontario [20-25,000]; bigger cities, like Toronto, would be de-amalgamated. I fear that villages bigger than that cannot achieve the "Localness" of character to affect the main areas of life and politics.
The Democratic Marxist Party of Ontario (See its Fb page) believes that a transition would best start by villagication of one province to start, and to show the benefits to the rest. DM has picked Ontario as the possible test case.
Thanks, Bob. You rightly pointed out earlier that neighborliness is essential between the common man and the person representing him. However, that is unlikely to be achieved with a village size of 25000. That is where the circles within circles set-up excels, as it makes the highest politicians in the world easily accessible to everyone!
The other aspect one has to remember is that the 'villages' or 'circles within circles' could work only if 'laws' are kept to a minimum, otherwise if the villages around you insist on electric vehicles and you have a gas powered one, you are stuck! Luckily, the only law we really need {besides maybe very few others like common-sense traffic and easy access to finance laws}, is the Natural Law!
Meaford, where my hobby farm is, would likely function better, as you say (10,000). But I fear there would be a practical problem in the transition period getting people to accept that size.......it is not a totally mature town.....lacks a number of common city amenities.....cooperative moved out; Canadian Tire moved out; a major manufacturer, Amerock, moved out. There is no supermarket downtown for seniors who don't drive, etc.
Yet it is a lovely place to live, admittedly. But for me, maybe not for so many others.
It may be that it will be an incremental devolution?
I liked Frank's post too. I'm not sure if it's the Constitution itself that is antiquated or the framers' implicit expectation that under stress, basic human decency would prevail. In 2024 it seems that to be President or a cabinet/senior member in the incoming executive branch, you must be civilly liable for, or under investigation for/suspicion of, sex crimes. Now I suppose we can expect the comedy to continue as Trump's big Chesstalk supporters, Sid, Vlad, Dilip, and Tom, slither out to tell us why Matt Gaetz will be an excellent Attorney General.
Yes, basic human decency is an antiquated concept in today's world. It has probably happened in every great civilization. Even the Biblical Old Testament is full of stories of God / Yahweh having to punish man for sinful ways (Sodom and Gomorrah, Noah's Ark, etc etc etc). I"m sure Roman and Greek and Egyptian civilizations had the same issues leading to inevitable collapse.
The cycle never stops.
In the case now of the Trump victory, I believe we may see the fruition of the old Marx adage that if you give a capitalist enough rope, he will hang himself. He didn't have enough rope in his first term. He will this time, I am very sure of that.
The US Constitution is no guarantee of anything anymore.
Unfortunately politics does not generally attract decent people. No matter the party.
What does attract decent people? I don't know if there is a singular answer to that. But true enough, politica definitely is not the answer.
I propose a new definition of voting; voting with money. But you just can't get enough people interested because money is their lifeblood. Not enough people will commit to using money as a powerful lever. Besides that, it is a double-edged sword.
I just fall back as I always do on the inevitable ... that great societies must collapse, always, due to the role of human nature. Dilip Panjwani imagines a utopian Libertarianism where everyone is dedicated to the common good. That is as silly a concept as I've ever heard, totally against human nature.
.... The smaller the federal government, one that only deals with things that are critical and can't be performed by the private sector, the better.
Arguments that capitalism is bad because some people are corrupt ignores that government is also made of people.
The difference is that if I don't like the way that say WalMart does business, I can avoid doing business with them. The same cannot be said for a federal government.
No, the solution is not the SIZE of government being minimized ... because so many things government does give us a civil society, which no private sector member cares about.
The solution must involve the idea that individual members of government don't PROFIT from having that role. They must be totally altruistic. But as I just wrote in another post about Dilip's Libertarianism ideals, this simply cannot happen.
The real answer is that THERE IS NO SOLUTION. Cycles will happen regardless of how we feel about it. Therefore .... prepare for the cycle. If you know it's going down .... prepare for that. We live very short lives, even if we live to 100. None of us can create utopia on Earth. Don't even think about that. Give what you can to others, and enjoy the satisfaction in that.
... a utopian Libertarianism where everyone is dedicated to the common good. That is as silly a concept as I've ever heard, totally against human nature.
It is Bob's Marxism where everyone is expected to be dedicated to the common good, and you would be right in calling such a system "as silly a concept as I've ever heard, totally against human nature". Libertarianism is the opposite, being totally aligned with human nature, where everyone works for their own good, without harming others. Everyone benefitting from that is the expected outcome...
Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Donald Trump's fraud case (the payoff / hush money case) which led to 34 felony convictions, recommended today that the sentencing in the case, already postponed several times, be postponed further, until president-elect Trump has completed his presidency.
Overseer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (the massive federal health care bureaucracy that covers more than a third of Americans): Mehmet Oz, a celebrity heart surgeon turned talk show host and lifestyle guru.
Oz dispensed nutritional and lifestyle advice on his show, portraying himself as a trusted doctor capable of explaining health matters in an engaging and approachable way. But his show also blurred the line between medical advice and advertising, failing to make clear to his audience just how closely he worked with the companies he pitched. He made a fortune as a salesman.
Agency
If confirmed by the Senate to lead CMS, Oz would oversee Medicare, Medicaid, children’s health insurance and the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare.” The programs cover more than 160 million people, from newborns to nursing home residents.
CMS also plays a central role in the nation’s $4.5 trillion health care economy, setting Medicare payment rates for hospitals, doctors, labs and other service providers. Government payment levels become the foundation for private insurers. The agency also sets standards that govern how health care providers operate.
The agency has more than 6,000 employees and a $1.1 trillion budget.
Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, who oversaw Donald Trump's fraud case (the payoff / hush money case) which led to 34 felony convictions, recommended today that the sentencing in the case, already postponed several times, be postponed further, until president-elect Trump has completed his presidency.
There are no felony convictions until he is sentenced. He has not been convicted. The point of putting this case into suspended animation is to hold this Sword of Damocles over Trump's head. Trump cannot appeal until there is a sentence. This case will be reversed on appeal .This resolution is also illegal as under New York state law, sentencing must happen within one year of the conclusion of the trial.
Apparently there is a path forward for Trump and his lawyers absent a conviction as outlined by Alan Dershowitx.
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