Riverwind

That's wrong. Markets with prices create the environment in which people can cooperate anonymously. The only rules markets require are property law (clear ownership) and contract law (trading conventions). When people speak of the "rule of law", this must be what they mean. Markets fail to function properly when ownership is not well-defined or enforceable contracts can't be signed. Your key word in that statement is 'enforceable'. At someone level markets cannot function unless somewhere the is a coercive entity that can send out 'goons' to rectify whatever situation was created by someone who refused to follow the rules. Governments are one way to control the 'goons' and ensure the act reasonably. You could have a mafia style world where the different trading entities handled their own enforcement, however, I do not consider this an acceptable way to run a society. In other words, markets cannot exist without gov't. However, not all gov'ts allow markets to work properly. It is a mistake to say that markets do not need gov't simply because SOME gov'ts prevent them from working. Africa operates much like the mafia style free market where the people who control the enforcement mechanisms set the rules. There is no trust because the rules change depending on how many thugs with guns are available. In fact, I would argue Africa is what you get if you allow free markets that are unregulated by any stable government agency. Corruption is endemic in China and India, however, the gov't maintains a monopoly on the enforcement mechanisms and, as result, you have functioning societies even if people have limited freedoms.

What the CPC would have to do to get my vote red tory/blue liberal: 1) Make it clear that the CPC leadership would not raise any so called social issues during their first term in power. If back bench CPC MPs insisted on putting bills forward the CPC leadership should commit to not supporting them because 'they promised the electorate not to table these issues'. 2) Make it clear that significant tax cuts, no matter how desirable, will not be introduced unless there is a surplus at the end of the fiscal year. A pledge to continue to use the conservative accounting rules that have given Canada many years of surpluses would help. Perhaps the CPC could promise to distribute any surplus as one time rebates to Canadians instead of program spending like the Liberals. Basucally, I want to be certain that the CPC will not insist on Bush style ideology driven tax cuts that create huge deficits. 3) Table a vision for addressing the overlapping jurisdictions for the country that still allow the federal government to be a meaningful institution in the lives of all Canadians (i.e. reducing the federal gov't to managing defense and foreign affairs is a evisceration not a vision). 4) Table a vision that will allow the private sector into health care but subject to very strict rules designed to ensure that everyone still benefits from the public system. P.S. I agree with Kimmy on Harper's judgement - he would likely have to go before the CPC could get my vote.

That description easily describes some Albertan's as well.

Because he would have been critised for staying in power without a mandate from the voter - that is what always happens when parties change leaders in mid term. Furthermore, Martin had planned a spring election long before the sponsership stuff exploded so you cannot accuse him of suddenly deciding on a spring election - that was his plan all along.

It doesn't need to be decided. When you initiate force or fraud against another person or his property, that's an encroachment of rights. If someone builds a meat rendering plant next to my house which reduces the market value of my home then that person has 'stolen' from me. If you disgree then you have proven my point that what constitutes an encroachment is a matter of opinion not fact. Democratic gov't is a means to achieve consensus on what encroachment is. It is not perfect and, at times, unfair, however, it is a better system than any other I have heard of. This is untrue. A deliberate lie is fraud. Anything else is caveat emptor. Again, lies can be a matter of the opinion. The recent financial scandals at companies like Nortel were not out right lies in the minds of the people who perpetrated them: they were more like exaggeration and wishful thinking. It takes a complicated court and legal system to figure out where exaggeration ends and fraud begins. All institutions with a monopoly can seem coercive. If eBay was the only way to sell goods online then it would seem just as coercive as government. Unregulated free markets in essential goods like food, electricity generally produce coercive monopolies. It is only the power of govt that can keep these free market monopolies in check. The constitution and the courts keep the gov' t in check. Balance and moderation is the key. I would also argue that none of those institutions that you gave could exist without the stable predictable foundation provided by the government structures. I gave you the meat packing plant example. The only way to discover a meat packer that sells diseased meat is to wait until a large number of people get sick or die. On the other hand, a government can set rules for handling meat that minimizes the risk and prevents people from getting sick in the first place. I suppose you could have a 'voluntary' industry association which would certify plants for consumers. However, this voluntary association would become an effective coercive monopoly if consumers refused to buy meat from anyone who was not certified. Why would it do that? Make an argument. Don't just make stuff up and expect me to believe it without proof or logic.? It should be self-evident. There are many examples of poor people flocking to areas which they believe to be rich and creating huge slums with all of sewage, crime and pollution that goes with it. There are 5 billion people in the world that would see Canada a rich place, if a mere 1 or 2 million per year arrived it would overwhelm the infrastructure of our cities.

Why must they?. You said it yourself. No one has the freedom to encroach upon the freedom of others, however, who decides what is 'encroachment'? One person's fraud is a another person's caveat emptor. What I am taking about are social structures with well defined rules that all people who choose to be part of these structures must follow or be punished/exiled. Perhaps the biggest difference between a 'government' and these organizations is the fact that participation in a government structure is mandatory where these organizations are purely voluntary. Other than that I would say governments and these organizations are the same. Yeah, because nobody ever died where there were government regulations. Just because government is not perfect does not mean it is useless. As I said before the best situation is a combination of the market based self-correcting mechanisms that you advocate and government regulation. I don't believe that gov't has all of the answers, however, I have less faith in the 'invisible hand' of the marketplace. For example, you said people should be allowed to move anywhere they want which would have the effect of making life better for some people but worse for others. Allowing unrestricted immigration into Canada would create massive slums in our cities and have huge negative environmental and social consequences. You could make an altruistic argument that Canadians should sacrifice their standard of living in the name of giving freedom to others, however, I don't know many people who would be willing to do that. So we need the gov't to guard the borders.

My original comment was in response to someone who claimed that Canada was somehow undemocratic because the views of Alberta were not reflected in the gov't of the country. You right, Harper needs to appeal to the people of Ontario and Quebec if he wants to get elected. If the polls are any guide, he has a lot of work to do.

The ratio aid to GDP is a rediculous measure to use, particularily for Canada where the federal goverment budget is only about 18% of the GDP of the country (in other countries the national gov't budget is closer to 30%). What this means that if the economy grows faster than the government budget (a very good thing for all fiscal conservatives out there) then the commitment to 0.07% of GDP will eat an ever larger percentage of the federal government budget. As it stands today, a 0.7 of GDP commitment is equal to 4% of government revenues and would require a 2% increase in the GST to pay for it. I am sure 90%+ of Canadians would say forget about foriegn aid if given a choice between a 9% GST and the 0.07 of GDP target. Personally, I hope this is a sign that PM PM has found his backbone again. However, it will take more than once such announcement to convince me of that.

Government structures are the opposite of individual liberty and choice. This is like saying that living must be tempered with some murders. You like to push things to the absurd extreme. Each individual must give up some liberty and choice in order to live in a society with others. The only question what framework is used to decide what the rules are and how they will be enforced. Is this a government, then? How about this? What about this? This? All the examples you give represent quasi-government organizations where the individuals partipating in the system give up their personal freedom. In each case, the quasi-government agencies (ebay, the law merchant, the ieee) set the rules and have the power to punish people who fail to follow them. The internet rife with fraud and scams. The only thing that make the internet a useful commerical tool is that the majority of the transactions take place in juristictions where there are enforceable rules. I will put it another way. I don't want to depend on market forces to put a meat packer out of business who sells diseased beef because that usually means many people have to die in order to demonstrate that a specific supplier has problems. I want to see a system where the government regulates and inspects meat packers and puts them out of business before people die. The problem is they have no concept of a civil society. Corruption exists at all levels of government and the police largely because the people working in these jobs have no belief in the system and act only out their self interest. Western countries don't have a serious problem with corruption in the civil service and police largely because the people working their believe in the system and believe that people who break the rules will be punished.

Take a look at Figure 1 in this document: http://www.bus.ualberta.ca/wcer/pdf/14.pdf The revenue from resources gave the Alberta government huge advantage compared to other provinces from 1975 to 1985. This advantage came at a time when all other provinces were racking up debt. This meant that by the time the oil prices dropped in the 90s, the Alberta provincial debt situation was significantly better than all other provinces (see Figure 4). Even though Alberta debt situation was the same as other provinces by 1995, no other province had a huge trust fund to draw upon. In short, without oil, Alberta would be no better off than Saskatchewan today. It all comes down to how much revenue/person the oil generates for Saskatchewan. I suspect it is much smaller than the Alberta gov't and was not developed until later which meant Saskatchewan did not get the huge boost that Alberta got from 75 through 85.

Canadians are split 50-50 on this issue and the majority of urban voters are in favour. In other words, this issue will only outrage voters in places where the Liberals had no chance anyways. That said, I could see it making a difference in some atlantic ridings where there was a close race between a lib and a conservative in the last election.

Well in the case of same-sex marriages we certainly don't need to worry about children, now do we, because that is not biologically possible. Thank you God for the natural order of things. Not true, gay woman can still have children and often do. People sometimes have children in straight relationships before they realize they are gay.

Thanks entirely to oil revenues. Smugness is hardly appropriate - an idiot could balance the Alberta budget.

Add Spain to that list. What SSM opponents don't seem to get is there is a culture shift going on. In the 60s-70s, people argued quite strenously that allowing women to be equal to men would destroy the family. Today such arguments are considered absurd. In 10-20 years, the SSM marriage debate will be forgotten as the opponents fade away.

It is not surprising that businesses would have misgivings given the gross over-reaction to the sponsorship scandal in Quebec. What people seem to have forgotten that there is nothing wrong with government advertising. Nor is there anything particularly wrong with spending federal money to counter the never ending stream of pro-sovereignty propaganda that comes from the PQ, BQ and a lot of the French language media. Remember the BQ MPs that refused to give out Canadian flags to veterans? This is but one example of how sovereigntists use the power of their political offices to promote sovereignty. Accusing the federal gov't of doing something wrong is pure hypocrisy.

Nothing wrong with good polictial paraody at Canada Day celebrations. I am assuming the song is primarily anti-Liberal not anti-Canada.

This is an argument for Communism. The USSR, North Korea and Cuba prove that Communism is not a good way to look after the needs of most people at all. That is taking the argument to extremes - most stable systems create a balance between opposites. Government structures need to be tempered with some degree of individual liberty and choice. Governments create the framework that allows individuals within a society to trust each other even if they do not know each other personally. They do that by setting rules and standards which everyone is expected to follow and punishing those that fail to meet those standards. That said, the framework could be provided by something other than government such as religion, however, in our modern multi-cultural society, government is the only institution that can provide this role. Societies fall apart if there is no longer a basis for mutual trust between strangers. That is what is going on in Africa. Nobody trusts anybody else to act fairly so the powerful use violence and fear to look after their own interests first.

Turn that argument around bit. When the Europeans colonized the world there discovered two types of cultures: 1) De-centralized Cultures (Africa, NA Natives, Aboriginals) 2) Structured Cultures (India, China, Japan) It was much easier for the Europeans to take over the structured cultures by simply replacing the people at the top of the pyramid. This re-enforces the point you were making. However, the structured cultures were able to throw off colonialism and take/start to take their place in world society. The de-centrilzed tribal cultures which were not wiped out by disease are basket cases with little or no chance of meeting the basic needs of the people belong to these cultures in the foreseeable future. Therefore, I argue that even if gov't structure does have some inherent weaknesse, it is utimately the better way to look after the needs of most people in the society.

August, thanks for acknowledging that being obsessed with power is failing common to many politicians. I feel our system is set up to encourage those kinds of people to become involved but that is another thread.... Our fundemental protection is not the provincial gov'ts. It is the constitution, the queen (via the GG) and ultimately the people. Hilter was able to seize power because the people let him do it. What is frightening is Bush is working hard to create the environment of fear that existed in 30s Germany. He is using the war on terror to gradually take away the rights of US citizens. He is able to do this because people will sacrifice freedom for security. I don't know were it will end up or why Bush is doing it. I suspect the neo-cons that are setting policy are obsessed with keeping power so creating an environment of fear helps maintain that power.

That is the most ridiculous argument because: 1) Every respectable parlimentary expert agreed that the motion voted down was not a confidence matter. This is not a technicality since our parlimentary system could not function without clear rules regarding what is and is not a confidence motion. 2) The CPC screamed about their sick MPs missing the vote a week later but they did not really care that two sick MPs supporting the libs were missing for this so called confidence matter. Conservative hypocrisy at its best. 3) There is nothing undemocratic about waiting a week to confirm that the gov't had the confidence of the house. Waiting until after the Queen's visit was the appropriate thing to do. 4) If the tables were reversed the Conservatives would have done exactly the same thing.

Just because the gov't does something that you disagree with does not mean it is undemocratic. I am sure that Harper and crew would do the exact same things if they were in power with a minority and you would be cheering them on. Whose fault is this? The CPC has been tying up the debate trying to make it a wedge issue. Many people do not share your opinion that the country is going to hell in a hand basket- it does not make them apathetic. In fact, a lot of people care about the country a lot which is why they are not willing to hand power over to bunch of people that frequently sound like a bunch of right wing extremists.

I did refute each one of your points in my first response. You responded with something like 'you are an idiot for not understanding me.'. Re-read the thread.

Well, I have to add myself to those people because I find gay pride parades distasteful as well. However, that has nothing to do will whether or not gays should be allowed to marry. My main argument: if SSM opponents are really concerned about the sanctity of marriage why aren't they protesting the fact that common law couples can live together and enjoy the same benefits of marriage without being married? It seems to me that accepting common law couples is a much greater threat than a handful of gays getting married. That is why I believe the objections are more based on fear andloathing of gays than on belief in marriage as a institution - and, as a result, I feel I have to speak against hate based policies.

I would agree that I am not happy with everything that Martin has done. But what should I do? Vote for a party that promises to do things that I oppose? I am like you in the sense that there is no political party that truely represents my views. As a result, I am forced to choose the less of all evils which for me happens to be the Liberals at this time. What you can't seem to get out of your head is all of the mud you are throwing at the Liberals is not fact: it is partisan opinion. Most importantly, people who are not willing to buy into your version of the reality are not deluded or stupid: they just have different priorities.

Sorry, exaggerating facts to suit your own political objectives is not 'truth'. And you keep calling Liberal supporters morons because they do not share your opinion. I have made it clear on this forum that I would consider supporting Harper and company, however, every time I get my hopes up Harper goes off on some useless ideological crusade instead of providing a positive vision for the country. I am more than willing to criticise Martin and crew when they make mistakes, but I will not buy the 'all liberals are corrupt' crap that the conservatives want to shove down everyone's throat. If the conservatives want to be gov't they they have to give people a reason to vote for them. 'The other guys are crooks' argument does not get votes when most people realize such statements are gross exaggerations.