Machjo

I'm not suggesting giving them money, but rather not imposing our language on the international stage by promoting a neutral easy to learn second language. This way, all would be on an equal footing. What you seem to be suggesting is that we do all in our power to maintain our privileged position.

Bear in mind though that Liberal and Concervative idology seems quite authoritarian too. I don't mind the government saying I must give my fair share for society, but I'd like a say in how it's spent. Socialists want to spend it on parades, and Conservatives against imaginary enemies.

I fully agree. And their ideology isn't even consistent, even suspicious. If all they want is for the rich to help the poor, certainly making more taxes charity deductible could still achieve the same goal. After all, we'd still be required to give to a registered charity to get the tax break. For those of us who habitually give to charity, it would make no difference to us. But when the NDP insists that's not good enough, but that it must also dictate how that money is to be spent, then I get suspicious. If their only concern is that I do my share to help the less fortunate, then what should it matter whether the government or a charity get it? Is there some other plan? I think usually it's simply arrogance. They think they know best and we the sheeple sould just take it. Well, if that's the kind of socialism they have in mind, then let's go libertarian.

I should say too that I have a strong collaborative streak, totally anathema to the idea of a confrontational system. yet it would seem our structures are all based on a confrontational system. We even talk of the free market as 'competition' to win, not collaboration for the benefit of workers and customers. We talk of our political system as one in which politicians must 'compete' to win seats, not collaborate to create consensus. And in court, two lawyers are 'competing' to prove their case, not collaborating to find the truth. Competition is even institutionalized. Let's just think of the billions of dollars a month that must be wasted on competition, one act simply nrutralizing another with nothing to show for it. A highly inefficient system at best.

I've sometimes thought of the idea of 'free market socialism', whereby we could give workers more say on boards of directors, or expect the highest ethical standards from companies, but otherwise be free market overall. Or if we should have a high tax base with much government intervention, then ensure we have more say in how it's to be spent. Examples could include school vouchers. Socialist in the sense that society has a responsibility to fund them, but libertarian in that each parent has a say in how it's to be spent. Or alternatively, make more taxes charity deductible, still expecting society to make a contribution, but giving them more say in where that money goes. I like the socialist idea of caring for the less fortunate. It just seems though that oftentimes it's way too authoritarian too.

I agree with this. What I was referring to rather was how social democrats (unlike their labour-socialist variety), though they do support high taxes and more government involvment in the economy, also generally want to spend that money wisely, on bread and butter issues, not gay pride parades. Libertarians (as opposed ot your Harper Conservative who wants to militarize the Arctic against imaginary enemies as part of a grand stimulous package), not wanting to get involved in the economy, naturally don't need to even worry about how they're going to spend the money. Essentially, that's the comparison I was making, that when a socialist party runs amock like the current federal NDP, then even a rational socialist will likely park his vote with libertarianism until that socialist party smartens up and becomes more of a bread and butter socialist party focussing on education, health care, etc., not gay pride parades. Perhaps right. I'm more socialistic at heart, but so disillusioned with the current left, and right, that libertarian seems like a good temporary place to park my vote until they smarten up. No government involvment is neutral at least. It might not be my first choice, but at least it's neutral ground, a kind of reset button if you will.

And what would be so wrong with tracking? At least that way everyone would have a skill in the workforce when they graduate. If we train everyone as if they're going to go on to university, then if they don't go on to university, their skills are crap in the workplace. And not everyone can be a scientist, even if they were all smart enough to be one. The economy just wouldn't allow for that. As for unions, it's nice to see that teir unions did not feel threatened by school choice unlike ours seem to be.

I used to vote NDP before. In fact, I used to be a member of the NDP for a short time. I had this false image of the NDP initially, that it would certainly support freer trade with developing countries so as to give the poorest peoples in the world a chance to develop. That it would certainly support promoting more educational freedom so that all could have the education that was right for them, etc. Instead what I'd seen was a party that cared about one thing and one thing only: special interests, especially labour unions. So now it supports all kinds of ishy washy projects like 'arts and culture', gay pride parades, CBC-RDI, bailouts for unionized corporations, etc. etc. etc. instead of focussing on all citizens. At the provincial level, it even keeps quiet about discriminatory laws giving special privileges to Catholics in the school system, but not other religions. And of course it could never support anything like a school voucher system to help home schoolers and Aboriginal or other minorities because such parental freedom would break the back of the teachers' unions. And of course it supports tariffs against developing countries to protect our unionized workers. Who cares about the poor abroad, it would seem. So then I'd started exploring the 'centre' parties, like the Liberals and Conservatives (or Progressive conservatives at the provincial level), and at the federal level at least, they fared no better, also supporting corporate bailouts, tax-funded military industry, etc. But now if we compare the NDP to the social democrats of Europe, it's a whole different story, In Europe, the social democrats are moderates, willing to work with, not against, the private sector. They often support two-tiered health care, and Sweden even supports school vouchers! Imagine that coming from a socialist country! Sure they have teir socialist streak when it comes to high quality universal compulsory education and free higher education for all, etc. Yet even in Sweden, a bastion of socialism you'd think, an estimated 10% of compulsory schools are private! And sure they have quality health care and cradle to grave benefits, etc. But they don't squander their money on gay pride parades and ishy washy stuff so much. Education, health care, etc. are bread and butter issues, and that's what they focus on. And sure in some of those countries, workers get to vote on the board of directors. In canada instead, all the NDP wants to do is give workers more right to strike. How does that help non-unionists. Social democrats in Europe seem to be more universalist in that respect too. We find similar with libertarians in Canada. It's not interested in the military industrial complex so much as just getting government out of the way so people can get on with their lives. Again, they focus on bread and butter stuff unlike Libs and Cons. And I think this is why I often find myself able to switch easily between social democracy and libertarianism, yet am turned off by NDP labour socialism or special interest Liberal and Conservative parties. It would seem social democrats have focussed on bread and butter issues, as do libertarians, and not on ishy washy stuff that the 'centre' does. Why do we not have this kind of bread-and-butter party in Canada, neither on the right nor on the left?

I'm not saying management is necessarily any better. I've already mentioned above that, rather than go the labour-socialist way of giving unions more power to stike, thus encouraging more belligerance on both sides of the fight, why not do what they've done in some European countries and just give workers some voting rights on the board of directors, and promote a more collaborative rather than confrontational environment in the workplace.

Just look up the Swedish school voucher system. Not too friendly towards teachers' unions now is it. And dont' tell me Sweden is more capitalist than Canada. I think we all know its history as a very social-democratic country.

Sorry, i forgot about the British. I was thinking more continental. In Germany, for instance, workers have a vote on the board of directors of companies! This is not conditional on the company being unionized or not. This is just universal, thus making the union more or less redundant. Sweden has actively promoted the workers' co-op movement for years, again independently of whether they were unionized or not. The NDP just wants to give unions more power. Unions are not necessarily synonymous with workers, or people in general. They're just a special interest group.

And a point on 'scabs'. When a person decides to 'scab', do we know his story? Maybe he's trying to make ends meet, trying to get a foot in the door to better himself in the world. And what does the friendly union do? Spit in his face, push, shove, insult, anything to protect their turf. Unions are among the most capitalist ideas going today! No wonder even the European social democrats don't heed them too much anymore. Even Sweden has gone for the school voucher as a means of breaking the back of the teacherss' unions! And Sweden is known as a very progressive social democratic, even moderate socialist country. European social democracy is nothing like its NDP counterpart in Canada. The NDP is labour socialist, whereas most socialists in Europe are social democrats. They even have two-tiered healthcare. Essentially, they're moderate socialists, and that's probably why socialism worked in Europe but not here. Whereas the European social democrats were willing to accept moderation, the NDP is way too hard-nosed.

Many European social democrats are not particularly allied with unions though. It's not about giving unions the right to strike, walk out, etc. but rather about giving standards for both the public and private sectors. That's very different from the NDP, which is a labour party all the way.

On the contrary. The private sector must pay high taxes to maintain public sector wages! What is the economic value of shutting a business down? If the business is shut down, no one produces anything, which hurts the employer and the workers. They can't squeeze water out of a rock now can they? The market determines the wages. So yes, it have much to do with the wages. That's why I'd say scrap the minimum wage and just give workers voting rights instead.

As I've mentioned before, unions should have no legal recognition. If they go on strike, as far as I'm concerned, that's equal to not showing up for work as the contract requires, risking a few red slips.

This is another reason I oppose granting special recognition to unions. Tehy can have the power to even disrupt the lives of some who may be even less advantaged than them through legal strike action.

No. Just saying unins should have no legal recognition. Instead of forming unions, why didn't they just vote for the right candidates in elections? Instead of creating the modern labour-union system, whereby labour and management are always in conflict, why didn't they just give workers voting rights on the board of directors? Common sense: when workers are on strike, nothing is being produced for the economy. So obviously striking is not particularly efficient from an economic standpoint, with management losing production hours, and labour losing working hours. It really is a lose-lose solution. As for children, I can understand theat. They ought to be at school. As for convicts, on the one hand, I can certainly understand wanting to 'punish' them, but I also believe in respecting human dignity, and this coming from one who also supports capital punishment for certain crimes. I believe that all who are alive and want to work ought to have the freedom to do so, even if they are prisoners.

Sorry, I should have specified the elites and native English speakers. You do fall into that last category, and so may also potentially benefit unfairly in relation to others worldwide, depending on context. Piloting, for instance, would be one such context where you'd have an advantage. International business, international tourism too.

Time and money are stopping them. I agree that it was not likely some evil plot that made English the language of international aviation, but rather US air superiority immediately after WWII, just when the commercial airline industry was in its critical formative years. Plenty of trained US, British, and Canadian pilots retired from the airforce and were available to fly commercial airlines. That still gives us a distinctly unfair advantage over the rest of the world. You do realise that you're glorifying British and American imperialism here, do you not. Your comments above are extremely prejudiced to say the least. Are you for real? So you actually support government-legislated entrenchment of unequal outcomes? That's not very capitalist either. If anything, that comes awfully close to fascism or imperialism. A truly capitalist solution woudl be for governments to have no language policy at all. So even yu oppose capitalism here, but in favour of government intervention to entrench injustices. Now that's repulsive. Possibly Turkish. Still not as easy as Esperanto, but it does have a much more rational grammar than most languages. This is unbelieveable. You did state above that you do not beleive in God, yet I've met people saying the same as you who still managed to believe in justice at least. So you actually defend our government adopting policies that benefit Canada on the backs of other countries? That's just sick, repulsive that yuo can actually defend that and still sleep well at night. I'd be open to any language that the world's nations could agree to as long as it's relatively easy to learn. I speak Mandarin Chinese too by the way, so I certainly don't fear non-European languages. Though I believe Esperanto to be the best among currently existing options, I'd still be open to other languages. But why not go with the best we've got for now at least? Esperanto would still be much easier for a Chinese to learn than even Japanese. That was what a Chinese Esperanto-speaker who'd also learnt Japanese had told me. So that's a pretty high praise for such a language. So we should benefit from imperialism? Are you a troll? I'm well aware of the differences. You seem to be suggesting that a neutral second language would mean equality of outcome. By no means. What it would do though is increase equality of opportunity, if you believe in that of course, though somehow I think you're quite happy with the colonial inheritance. Interesting. Did he learn it by choice, and what are his thoughts on it? We're talking about unfair advantage here. So if my father shuld steal millions so that I may live a life of luxoty, I should feel no responsibility whatsoever to help others with that money? You do realise that part of our wealth came from slavery (even in Canada for a short time), exploitation of resources of former colonies (though the British were doing it, Canada benefitted indirectly through its ties to Britain), and now the worldwide advantage of English spread by conquest? But, hey, don't loose sleep over that. Finally something we can more or less agree on. No world government is possible until.

I'm not against classes per se, but access to certain information should be a basic right of all. Have you ever read the Official Languages Act? I have, and I can say that in Parliament, no interpretation in Inuktituk is required, in spite of the fact that at least 8% of Nunavut's population, according to Stat'sCan 2006, is functional in neither English nor French. So, how are they to participate in the democratic process at the federal level? Then how do you define 'capitalism'? Let's look at the aeronautical industry. English dominates there, and increasingly becomimg more officialized, to the displeasure of a few governments. Now in a free market, ther would be no official language and the pilots and ATCs could communicate in the language of their choice. Obviously, from a safety point of view, that's not possible, so a language must be decreed by the appropriate international and national bodies. At that stage, we turn to statism, not capitalism, yet I'm sure even the most fervent free-marketeer would support government intervention at least in this case. Now, if the language chosen is English (now that's not free markets anymore, but government intervention), it gives a disproportionate advantage to the 10% of the world's population that speaks it. Now I'm all for free markets when that's possible and no one's safety is at risk. But when a common language MUST be chosen for safety reasons, then the government should make a just choice, not further entrench an unjust playing field. And then we wonder why English-speaking countries are the wealthiest in the world. So if the government should not even try to promote justice, then what's the point of its existance? Lucky you weren't a Japanese tourist in sudden need of medical attention. By the way, not all languages are equally difficult to learn. English and French are among the more difficult ones, some languages being much easier to learn. There'd been research in China on Esperanto in the 1920's that had proven that pupils could learn much more Esperanto in 1year than they could in 3 years, with other research in some countries showing Esperanto to be from 5 to 10 times easier to learn than other languages, with pupils who start learning it by the age of eight for 2 hours a week being fluent in it within 6 years! And that'sjust through classroom instruction without any lerning environment outside the classroom, and that includes regular students, not just the bright ones. My God, I had to highlight that. You obviously don't believe in God (even if you think you do), and that is the epitome of imperialism! Now I definitely have to agree with the idea that they must stand to protect and defend equality. Some countries have done so, such as Italy, Poland, Hungary and Croatia as mentioned above. In 2004 a vote in the European Parliament in favour of using Esperanto as a default pivot language in the Parliament failed to pass, but got 43% of the vote. I do agree that, at least to some degree, other countries are responsible for allowing English this unfair advantage. I say to some degree because historical colonialism plays a role too. And native English speakers who don't believe in justice are equally culpable. Even the UK now allows for more freedom in this regard: http://www.springboard2languages.org/home.htm And I know of one school in Halifax that will experiment with it this coming September. In most of Canada, though, schools do not allow it. And the Official Languages Act is a sore spot for Canada's Aboriginal people too. But hey, we don't all believe in justice anyway, so what does it matter, eh?

Shouldn't the grassroots have access to knowledge too? I remember a debate I'd overheard a few years ago between a friend of mine, a professor from one university, and a student from another. The profesor was complaining of all the English words peppering the local newspaper, making it hard for the average local to follow. The student said it was fine because she could understand it. The professor, shocked, reminded her that she was attending a prestigeous university and that it was a local paper and not a a university thesis. The student argued that the locals needn't read the papers anyway as that's for more educated people. The professor, now quite incensed, invited her to step outside where in fact some construction workers were working, and pointed to one on his break readinga copy of the same paper the professor had in his hands, pointing out that even the locals have a right to information and that the paper should be entirely in the local language for all to understand. The student acquiesced only because she could see the professor was angry. This is en example of the psychological impact English risks having on the elite, thus restricting even some more basic information from the general population. On a wider scale, what about the intellectual working class who are intelligent but simply never had the chance to get a higher educaiton to to get sufficient exposure to English? You do realise, don't you, that intelligence is not limited to a diploma, and that all, not just th elites as exemplified above, should have acceess to knowledge. That is a basic point of justice. Very interesting point. The British, contrary to what many beleive, never imposed English n the general population in their colonies. They knew that if you impose it on the government, courts, and higher education, all else would follow. The psychological impact is significant on a mass scale, causing parents to spend significant portions of their savings on what essentially amounts to a gamble owing to the difficulties of English, with the teacher, publishing industries, and universities benefitting, especially those in English-speaking countries, subsidized by the tuition of poor families hoping that their child might stand a chance of success.

1. I was referring to likely long-terms trends, not necessarily come morning. 2. Yes, English may be beneficial for India's IT industry, but again, only the 4% who know English would benefit from it. For the rest, the time and money spent on English courses has been time and money wasted unless they enjoyeed learning a smattering of English for its own sake.

Then that's a quastion of justice. If we think that government's role is to just reinforce the market trend, then you're right. But if we think government's role is to try to rectify injustices in the market system, then certainly governemtns could gradually introduce such a language. With government backing, Esperanto would certainly grow. In 2004, there was a vote in the EU Parliament in favour of Esepranto as the default pivot translation language when direct translation was not available. It failed with 43% voting in favour. That may be a minority, but a significant minority none-the-less. Add to that that Esperanto is already being promoted by certain governments in their school system: http://www.internacialingvo.org/public/study.pdf Hungary, Poland, and Croatia have similar laws. People are not just going to roll over and let native English-speakers and theelites take over the democratic process.

Have you read books on the subject? Haave you seen the statistics? Teh rate of success in English-learning abroad (and I mean real success, not test-passing ability) is dismal at best. According to Ulrich Matthias well-researched book La Nova Latino, only about 6% of German students really learn English well, and this includes university graduates! And add to taht that German is a Germanic language like English. The statistics truly are dismal. In fact, just look at Stats Can to see how even in Canada itself, only about 45% of Quebecers claim to know English (and this is self-assessment, not objecitve tests which would likely drop it even further down), and this includes native English speakers and French-speakers living right on the Englsih bordrs in Montreal and Gatineau! English is becoming the world language of the elite, no more. It will never become a grassroots language for all. Statistics, even in Canada, have proven how dismal of a success it's been.

I remembre one statistic from the 1980s by Pattanayak, saying that, tests aside, the real knowledge of English (i.e. knowing to the level taht it could really be of use to you in your life to improve your quality of life, etc.) is at about 4%! As India's status grows, it's more likely to turn away from English with Hindi growing in value.