ZenOps

In Kim Jongs defense: The other nations leader that gave up Nuclear defense strategy at the request of the USA was Khadafi. Look what happened to him. I mean seriously, just because the USA says it won't harm North Korea if it gives up its nuclear ambitions doesn't mean that 199 other nations might not want to try and take a stab at North Korea. The USA is not the only nation on the planet afterall. Would the US give up its Nuclear weaponry because Burkina Faso asked them to do it, and 100% guaranteed that Burkina Faso would never attack the US and forever be a friend and ally and give them free stuff? You tell me.

Someone suggested that the US should use its nuclear waste and bury it along the Mexican border wall. It does kind of make sense. There is a whole bunch of low grade nuclear material that could never be made into dirty bombs, and yet it still could be used to raise up the surrounding ground 10 to 20 degrees, making the Mexican border lethal during the day. As to the ethics of laying down something like that which is arguably worse than landmines, its not specifically prohibited by the Geneva convention.

Natural gas power plants are getting a huge boost from technology improvements. Every natural gas power plant made before year 2000 runs at about 32% efficiency, by 2012 North America was at 44% efficiency, the ultimate goal is around 54% to 60% efficiency. Coal power plants have actually become slightly less efficient since year 2000 to meet clean burning standards. Probably from 32% to 30% efficiency. So, technically places like Calgary will only get less expensive in the future, while those provinces without many natural gas power plants will probably continue to get more expensive.

There is less incentive for people to buy in many markets. Hawaii 36 cents per kwh, LA and New York 20 cents per kwh, Ontario, etc. Maybe that's because everyone who is looking at buying a passenger vehicle is not buying a combustion vehicle, hobbling along on repairs and pre-ordering an electric? Just a thought. http://bgr.com/2016/10/18/tesla-model-3-reservations-delivery-mid-2018/

Argument that 8 hour charges aren't a big deal for most people: Everyone needs to sleep, and the vast majority of drivers won't be some place so far away from a standard socket that they won't be able to trickle charge overnight. It would be a good idea to throw a fiver or a ten to a farmer though if you happen to need to beg to use his power socket because you forgot to top up the 215? mile battery (Tesla 3) before you started the trip. Its generally assumed that if you sleep anywhere near normal (and don't forget to plug in wherever you may be) you will always wake up to 215 miles of initial capacity. You have to think of fueling as *everywhere* instead of just gas stations when you need it. https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/models-charging#/calculator And don't forget to try and hookup to a NEMA 14-30 or NEMA 14-50 type plug (refridgerator, clothes dryer or electric stove type) plug if possible. Even a gas station uses electricity to run the station itself, or at the very least a couple generators to run things like lights and air compressors even in the most remote areas of the world. I mean you *can* use it as a cross country vehicle, but that's not going to be the core buyers of it on the first 500,000 or so they sell this year.

Darn foreigners. But to put it in perspective, California metro is going to pretty much be averaging $5,000 per month as pure rent (not even talking payments on ownership)

Unshaven and smelly just brings you closer to god - hippie motto.

You *could* blame foreigners. But I'll blame money printing in the US. I mean Kanye is $53 US million in debt, and yet still wants to borrow $1 Billion more. And the banks might just print up more money to let him have it. Out of all countries in the world only Germany seems to have some fiscal restraint when it comes to raw money printing.

I'm pretty sure you can just spend a day to dig a trench and run a wire from a fuse box on the inside of the building or you can pull down a fresh line from the pole, its not rocket science. If your house has a big round plug for the clothes dryer (usually on what is called a double fuse) that is the connector that will allow quicker charging than the standard socket. The reason that I like the idea in Calgary is that I know that the 3 cent per kwh power generated is coming from natural gas power plants that have been upgraded from 32% to 60% efficiency over the last decade. So technically, its still burning carbon, just all the carbon is being burned outside the populated areas. Benefits: Reduces local smog Silent motors, silent streets Hella cheap (combustion engine is 21% efficient at maximum, the rest is lost as heat) In Calgary, should be a solid 10x less expensive than gasoline. No maintainance. Electric cars have about 18 moving parts, manfacturers are debating whether or not they should include lifetime warranties. Combustion engine has 2,000 moving parts and various deadly liquids - all of which must be kept in a fragile equilibrium or it needs to be repaired. Hate to say it: Burning natural gas to extract oilsands, distribute it by the millions of barrels a day, refine it, then burn it seems very redundant when you can just burn the natural gas and then push electrons over an electric grid.

I always felt like federal politics was racist. I mean learning English and French is like expecting a European to fluently communicate in Chinese and Japanese to get a government job in Asia. One language - ok fine everyone needs to communicate with each other, but two? Extremely rare. You can go one in a million for that type of person, and when you do find that one person - they are unlikely to also be skilled in whatever the job *actually* needs.

Sure, but is it meaningful and productive employment. You can put 1,000 monkeys on a 1,000 typewriters and depending on who you ask - eventually they will create the worlds greatest novel. Alternately, can one robot do the work of 10,000 men for pennies worth of electricity and never complain?

The infrastructure is sort of there. My parking lot has a 110 volt standard outlet from the 1970's which was used for block heaters, its begging to be used (especially in 3 cents per kwh Calgary) The only thing missing are the fast charge stations, but by fast, its still about an hour charge before you make it to the next fast charge station if you are doing a long haul trip. I can imagine that a supercharging station is about the least expensive thing to build and maintain ever, its a parking lot with electrical lines that don't even need tanks or refilling like a gas station does. I could see places like Walmart putting them in their parking lots, maybe drop a $1 loonie for a 50 kilometer fast charge topup? Maybe even free if you show the barcode off a minimum purchase instore? https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/supercharger?redirect=no An 8 hour overnight trickle charge at 1575 watts on that standard NEMA plug should go 100 kilometers roughly.

Since Germany has decided to do it by 2030, should Canada consider it on a longer timeframe?

I don't believe in farmer subsidies. In fact, I believe that humans should be completely removed and things like grain farming be entirely done by GPS driven automated machines (like its very close to being done in other places around the world) When people say they are losing jobs to China, they are not losing jobs to *humans* in China. They are losing to the machine. We are on the cusp of something great - the electric car. Cars with 18 moving parts with full lifetime warranties (instead of 2,000 moving parts in a combustion engine that require maintenance every year and are thrown away after seven) Cars that take 84 cents (in Calgary) per 100 kilometers. Cars that can drive themselves. It will only further decrease the human need to operate "work" in these sectors of the economy. What will replace it? Who knows, but more is getting done with less human effort - which is always a good thing. Imagine if you needed to have a human flipping every single pixel on your computer screen, that is the insanity of trying to fight the machine.

Can Canada have a definable culture? Eastern Canada has been around for 150 years or so, but here in Calgary at year 1900 there were four thousand people and a wooden fort here (Fort Calgary) I mean sure, of course there is some early British influence mixed with native, but to say that that wooden fort somehow defines all Canadians seems a little off - especially considering the vast majority of us are all immigrants. I think the most defining culture that Canada has is that we are far too young to have a definable culture.

The really expensive homes that are being bought up are not being physically occupied by foreigners. Its such a huge problem, that Vancouver has instituted the "empty home tax". So on a $3 million home, you must pay an extra $30,000 in tax each year if its determined that it is unoccupied. Truth be known, you can not make a decent enough wage living in Vancouver to actually buy a house. Real estate for many is simply the Donald Trump version of investment, own a hotel that can house 3,000 people and then force everyone to pay rent to you. In which case, its the purest form of capitalism. Except that in the case of Vancouver and Toronto, its also a place to park money should the US ever make catastrophic mistakes in policy.

Calgary 3.0567 cents per kwh, all the time anytime. https://www.enmax.com/home/electricity-and-natural-gas/tariffs/rro And we *just started* moving my neighborhood over to LED streetlights, so I can imagine demand will get even lower. I even shut off my natural gas furnace and tried heating the house with just electricity. Its so much nicer, complete silence instead of that whoosh of hot air and banging ducts every hour. You Ontarioans are getting screwed on bills bigtime.

Civil war... Kind of for blacks anyhow. The first wars were fought to be free from British rule (white tax slavery to the crown) It all starts somewhere but the reasons are usually embedded in things like "British Superiority" "White Superiority" or "American Greatness". A gun is still a gun. The US burned 100% wood for fuel in 1850 so technically the energy grid was no better than caveman days, gives it a point of reference as to conditions back then.

Wars have been fought for crazy things. The American Revolution was pretty crazy. I mean sure, they put it down in the history books as people fighting against slavery, but that just means that the entire other half which only lost by a small margin, nearly 50% of the population was fighting *to keep* slavery. Locally here in Calgary, they shut down a park north of Princes Island. Totally messed up my pokemon hunt for the day. Found it odd that civilians were not allowed to watch the Vimy parade or whatever. Maybe they thought the cameras would catch too many bums and out of work pokemon hunters.

Forestry was considered ok for anyone and everyone up until the last few decades or so. Lets not forget, people needed to survive, even the US 100% burned wood for fuel in 1850, no different than the first cavemen. By the year 1900 the US burned about 70% coal and 20% wood for energy (about when electricity got its start) http://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-evolution-of-americas-energy-supply-1776-2014/ Afterall, land *needed* to be cleared to create farmer fields (mostly grain crops in Canada because of cooler weather) so that people would not starve. Nowadays however with wheat at $150 per ton its barely breakeven. For most immigrants from Europe and China, North America would have been a huge downgrade in quality of life before 1900 or so. You immigrated for hope of future generations having something, because there was nothing at that time - you were literally burning trees to survive each winter, and building cities like New York with wooden walls. Forestry is one of the first things that is heavily subsidized by crown corporations (doesn't matter if its Elizabeth or Aga Khan) so that food can be grown and roads built. Canada is definitely still in that early stage, we haven't even got a secondary emergency highway across the nation yet. I know people probably don't want to hear it, but to many more affluent Chinese - North America probably still is a downgrade in quality of life. Realize that in Europe and China you have thousands of years of built up wealth and infrastructure. Side note: Just for reference I believe that the US never landed a man on the moon, it just does not fit with the timeline of historical events of technological progress.

Probably the best descriptor of greater Canada is: Has been and still is owned by the British Crown Corporation. To say that anyone else owns it is just factually wrong. China does not own it, Canadians do not own it, Queen Elizabeth II never lost control of it. The easiest way to know this is to simply figure out who you pay taxes to: In Canada its the Canadian Revenue Agency, a crown corporation.

If you look at the raw numbers, and considering that China is well over a Billion people now. The raw percentage of Chinese immigration since 1850 is still absolutely tiny compared to European nations. What helped boost European immigration to the US specifically was the 270 million acres of homesteading land given away completely free to white races after they broke away from British rule. About 9 million square kilometers in Canada is still considered crown land, and although some was subdivided fairly early for British farmers, it to this day - is largely unused and owned by no private parties. This has limited even European immigration to Canada - we never had a free land giveaway like the US did.

I think it should cost $166,000 US to renounce a US citizenship (currently a bargain at $2,350) Depending on what generation you are from, you can either view a citizenship as a blessing or a trap. As time moves forward and at its current tradgectory, it will become a trap very quickly. Revoking a citizenship for free as a penalty? I don't understand the logic at all, anyone born in the last 15 years can probably see how citizenship can and is now becoming a huge liability and not an asset.

USA has a $724 Billion per year trade imbalance in raw and finished goods. Mexico afterall produces things like 14 million tons of Avocado each year mostly for export. Since the US does not really export finished products and consume to keep the economy alive, they must export the only thing they can - services. Primarily military "protection" services. Now, they can try to sell a few bombers for a couple billion apiece every few years - or they can simply bill other countries like South Korea to fly bombers over their air to "protect them" from the evil North. Thing is - South Korea is starting to figure out that the US sees both South and North Korea as just another bunch of Mexicans. Therefore: Billed military services will not be paid, just like Trump doesn't pay others when he is dissatisfied with services rendered - its only fair. And lets not forget, its Trump that is heavily pushing for the dismantling of NATO, not anyone else. He just seems to need an excuse to do it, and he seems to want to blame nations that are putting in 1% of GDP instead of 2%.

The Canadian mint is a Crown Corporation, very unlike the US mint. Once the copper is removed, it technically goes back to the Crown, who can then resell it to whoever they want. So the crown gets a few fiat dollars, but the physical metal goes to China.