Perhaps considering that the world is on the precipice of spending $3 trillion annually on defence. It makes no one safer, robs us of food, shelter, education and medicine. Increasing our military spending is going to cost us social programs, (delay climate actions) and will benefit the military industrial complex’s increase in authoritarian tendencies rather than addressing the root causes of conflict and instability. Our economy and social fabric is inevitably less resilient when political power is prioritized over societal equity and climate stability.
"Hundreds of thousands of housing units have to be retrofitted, and where is the money going to come from? Where are the trades who can do the work? Where will the materials come from?".
My evergreen questions to which there is no Canadian answer: how much, where, who and the question that isn't addressed, changing the Laws to do it all. At least the questions were raised but I'm really interested how Canada is going to up the trades population -
And that doesn't even BEGIN to address the 3.2 to 5 million NEW housing units that Lloyd has posited. Canada doesn't have the money, doesn't have the financial base to BORROW the money, and as I pointed out before in another post, lacks the tradesmen just to build (which, given the number of units and the population of Canada, would need at least 25% of its population to be hammer-bangers and such.
And they don't exist.
"just committed to 2% for defence, If only he would commit that to climate."
You and I have already discussed this topic before in which you didn't have an answer then and now simply wish to ignore it.
Canada already possesses an underforced military of only 64,000 under arms. Using the standard ratio of 1:10 of warfighters to overhead, only has about about 6,400 active warfighters that can be put into the field to do the actual fighting. Adding in the reserves ups that door-kicker number to just over 8K.
While 2% is still an increase from the current paltry 1.39% it's been coasting on (believing that the US would save its Canadian bacon in case fighting started). However, NATO nations are upping the ante to 3.5% now and soon 5%. How's that going to work out for Canada?
With its elderly aircraft and other hardware, Canada can't even defend itself right now.
And you want that 2% spent on things other than your military with both Russia and China knocking on your Artic border? And Carney is now talking about pulling out of NORAD to boot? Talk about poking yourself in the eyes and go blind?
Smooth moves...a country that refuses to defend itself but expects others to allow it to free ride on them doesn't deserve to exist.
I'm betting that Ukraine wishes that it had much more money for its military that might have deterred Putin from crossing the border back in 2014 and then 2022.
And given the increase of military spending spree that China has been on, and acting like the bully it is in the South China Sea against the much smaller countries in the area, want to rethink your thoughts? Certainly, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines aren't laying down their arms in the face of this.
So let me ask:
"rather than addressing the root causes of conflict"
What would you be doing to tell Putin and Xi their to deflate their"conflict problems" and telling them to cut out doing the "Conquest Conga"?
Let’s all just check in on our ego’s for a change. Everyone wants a revolution, but do you want to do the dishes.
I’ve washed a lot of dishes to support my life goals, but if what you say you want is more war and destruction, you can count me out" it’s easy to resort to sociopathic nonsense and cruel violence but not that much harder to make the world a safer and better place.
We could start with cleaning up the mess we’ve created and quit blaming everyone else for everything.
"...but if what you say you want is more war and destruction..."
That's not what I said. I have two boys that served (1 in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan; the latter so damaged we had to adopt his son), so I, by proxy, know its outcome. I wish it on no one. However, war has not passed into the mists of time and, given human foibles, never will.
What you wrote was not realpolitik and accepting of human nature. Most people don't want war but there are those that do - they want your stuff. What I was trying to point out, and you missed the point, that a country must be ready to defend itself against those that don't care about social programs and such but DO care about conquest - we are seeing that happening in real time. Your approach seemingly denied that arms are irrelevant.
So either one prepares for war or ignores it. Decisions have consequences - sometimes very grave ones. Holding onto the demilitarization one at this time, IMHO, makes one ripe for the plucking.
Please forgive me I didn’t really mean for you to take it as an attack on you personally, I’m not that naive or ignorant about the tragedy of our current circumstances, indeed we all suffer the consequences and I sincerely apologize for the pain that you must have suffered for your family. I can’t speak for others who have a different perspective, I just think we also need a philosophical approach that encourages better conflict resolution. Mine revolves around waste management across five waste streams, solid atmospheric liquid energy and biodiversity, as a vector to re-built and shared environments. It continues to amaze me that we can do so much with such abundant waste resources and the real tragedy of the commons is that it can only guide us going forward.
"We could start with cleaning up the mess we’ve created and quit blaming everyone else for everything."
I AM, however, very interested in your solutions in "cleaning up the messes" given that not everyone holds your outlook. Not meant to be snarky - just trying to continue the conversation.
"Hundreds of thousands of housing units have to be retrofitted, and where is the money going to come from? Where are the trades who can do the work? Where will the materials come from?" Please watch the documentary "Finding the Money" (https://findingmoneyfilm.com/) or read "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton so that you don't ever string these sentences together again. The latter two are the issue, finding the money is the easy part.
I'm working on an expansion into a 110+yro 2storey commercial building with a 2nd floor apartment. Demolition reveals 100+ years of bodged "handyman" junk & what appeared to be a 1hr fire separation doesn't exist. Just to bring this close to Code is going to cost the client more than double his original estimate. Any suggestions that we'd discussed about making this building more resilient not to mention more comfortable or safe is out the window. Having had my share of working on these early 20th century commercial buildings gives me pause when I think of how these structures get repurposed & improved.
But I do have a thought. The late Wil Alsop's amazing "walking building" @ Toronto's OCAD might serve as a model of how to pay for what needs doing. If 2-4 storey commercial buildings were allowed to sell the space above them to developers to add, say 4-6 storey's "floating" above several of these buildings, the money could be used to enhance the exiting commercial / residential ground & upper floors.
Perhaps considering that the world is on the precipice of spending $3 trillion annually on defence. It makes no one safer, robs us of food, shelter, education and medicine. Increasing our military spending is going to cost us social programs, (delay climate actions) and will benefit the military industrial complex’s increase in authoritarian tendencies rather than addressing the root causes of conflict and instability. Our economy and social fabric is inevitably less resilient when political power is prioritized over societal equity and climate stability.
Yes and Carney just committed to 2% for defence, If only he would commit that to climate
"Hundreds of thousands of housing units have to be retrofitted, and where is the money going to come from? Where are the trades who can do the work? Where will the materials come from?".
My evergreen questions to which there is no Canadian answer: how much, where, who and the question that isn't addressed, changing the Laws to do it all. At least the questions were raised but I'm really interested how Canada is going to up the trades population -
And that doesn't even BEGIN to address the 3.2 to 5 million NEW housing units that Lloyd has posited. Canada doesn't have the money, doesn't have the financial base to BORROW the money, and as I pointed out before in another post, lacks the tradesmen just to build (which, given the number of units and the population of Canada, would need at least 25% of its population to be hammer-bangers and such.
And they don't exist.
"just committed to 2% for defence, If only he would commit that to climate."
You and I have already discussed this topic before in which you didn't have an answer then and now simply wish to ignore it.
Canada already possesses an underforced military of only 64,000 under arms. Using the standard ratio of 1:10 of warfighters to overhead, only has about about 6,400 active warfighters that can be put into the field to do the actual fighting. Adding in the reserves ups that door-kicker number to just over 8K.
While 2% is still an increase from the current paltry 1.39% it's been coasting on (believing that the US would save its Canadian bacon in case fighting started). However, NATO nations are upping the ante to 3.5% now and soon 5%. How's that going to work out for Canada?
With its elderly aircraft and other hardware, Canada can't even defend itself right now.
And you want that 2% spent on things other than your military with both Russia and China knocking on your Artic border? And Carney is now talking about pulling out of NORAD to boot? Talk about poking yourself in the eyes and go blind?
Smooth moves...a country that refuses to defend itself but expects others to allow it to free ride on them doesn't deserve to exist.
"It makes no one safer"
I'm betting that Ukraine wishes that it had much more money for its military that might have deterred Putin from crossing the border back in 2014 and then 2022.
And given the increase of military spending spree that China has been on, and acting like the bully it is in the South China Sea against the much smaller countries in the area, want to rethink your thoughts? Certainly, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines aren't laying down their arms in the face of this.
So let me ask:
"rather than addressing the root causes of conflict"
What would you be doing to tell Putin and Xi their to deflate their"conflict problems" and telling them to cut out doing the "Conquest Conga"?
Let’s all just check in on our ego’s for a change. Everyone wants a revolution, but do you want to do the dishes.
I’ve washed a lot of dishes to support my life goals, but if what you say you want is more war and destruction, you can count me out" it’s easy to resort to sociopathic nonsense and cruel violence but not that much harder to make the world a safer and better place.
We could start with cleaning up the mess we’ve created and quit blaming everyone else for everything.
When ever I see these type of comments, I first think of the TV show "Major Dad". The first episode explains things nicely.
"...but if what you say you want is more war and destruction..."
That's not what I said. I have two boys that served (1 in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan; the latter so damaged we had to adopt his son), so I, by proxy, know its outcome. I wish it on no one. However, war has not passed into the mists of time and, given human foibles, never will.
What you wrote was not realpolitik and accepting of human nature. Most people don't want war but there are those that do - they want your stuff. What I was trying to point out, and you missed the point, that a country must be ready to defend itself against those that don't care about social programs and such but DO care about conquest - we are seeing that happening in real time. Your approach seemingly denied that arms are irrelevant.
So either one prepares for war or ignores it. Decisions have consequences - sometimes very grave ones. Holding onto the demilitarization one at this time, IMHO, makes one ripe for the plucking.
Please forgive me I didn’t really mean for you to take it as an attack on you personally, I’m not that naive or ignorant about the tragedy of our current circumstances, indeed we all suffer the consequences and I sincerely apologize for the pain that you must have suffered for your family. I can’t speak for others who have a different perspective, I just think we also need a philosophical approach that encourages better conflict resolution. Mine revolves around waste management across five waste streams, solid atmospheric liquid energy and biodiversity, as a vector to re-built and shared environments. It continues to amaze me that we can do so much with such abundant waste resources and the real tragedy of the commons is that it can only guide us going forward.
"We could start with cleaning up the mess we’ve created and quit blaming everyone else for everything."
I AM, however, very interested in your solutions in "cleaning up the messes" given that not everyone holds your outlook. Not meant to be snarky - just trying to continue the conversation.
"Hundreds of thousands of housing units have to be retrofitted, and where is the money going to come from? Where are the trades who can do the work? Where will the materials come from?" Please watch the documentary "Finding the Money" (https://findingmoneyfilm.com/) or read "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton so that you don't ever string these sentences together again. The latter two are the issue, finding the money is the easy part.
"Smooth moves... A country that refuses to defend itself but expect others to allow it to free ride on them doesn't deserve to exist"
You want us to speak with you in good faith when you think we don't deserve to exist?
in us was not too expensive :
https://www.phius.org/sites/default/files/2022-09/Cost%20Memo%20Sept.%202022.pdf
I'm working on an expansion into a 110+yro 2storey commercial building with a 2nd floor apartment. Demolition reveals 100+ years of bodged "handyman" junk & what appeared to be a 1hr fire separation doesn't exist. Just to bring this close to Code is going to cost the client more than double his original estimate. Any suggestions that we'd discussed about making this building more resilient not to mention more comfortable or safe is out the window. Having had my share of working on these early 20th century commercial buildings gives me pause when I think of how these structures get repurposed & improved.
But I do have a thought. The late Wil Alsop's amazing "walking building" @ Toronto's OCAD might serve as a model of how to pay for what needs doing. If 2-4 storey commercial buildings were allowed to sell the space above them to developers to add, say 4-6 storey's "floating" above several of these buildings, the money could be used to enhance the exiting commercial / residential ground & upper floors.
Not a magic wand, but a place to start.