You’re essentially taxing people for a convenience. You could do the same with streaming services, gyms, and all manners of things.

Privatization of liquor in Alberta has worked out amazingly well. Booze is cheaper and there’s a liquor store every 100 meters, some open well past midnight. It’s an alcoholic’s dream.

Same with auto insurance, if you’re a responsible driver. I’ve lived in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan among other places the last 25 years, and Alberta is consistently far cheaper for auto insurance, if you shop around. A lot of people close to the AB border on the sask side do a little light fraud and pretend to live at their brothers house in alberta

Depending on the market, providing better service is what makes you more money, and a malaise creeps in about management not caring about that anymore when government ran. Besides, all my packages come by Purolater now, a private company owned by Canada Post that doesn’t seem to go on strike. They literally own their own competition and it’s profitable.

Public services are also required when providing a service to service level expectations wouldn’t be profitable otherwise. We expect and demand that the post office deliver to every remote outpost in the country for whom there is no alternative, regardless of expense. Those deliveries could be anything, including something like medication. If you privatize it, a private company would immediately and naturally cut loose those unprofitable routes.

So in that way, it is an awful lot like healthcare. If you consider postal service a right, then it’s functionally no different.

TIL Alberta had state run liquor stores. I’ll have to read about those when I get home.

No need for an opinion tag if you’re spitting straight facts

So, the capitalist brainrot belief is that Adam Smith’s invisible hand is going to make sure that money only goes to the people who deserve it, because people obviously will buy the best product at the cheapest prices and everyone else deserves to be pushed out of the market unless they do better.

Except we have consistant evidence that that isn’t true. The raw existence of marketing and advertising completely undermines the core concept of what is supposed to make private business good. “We’ll just make sure we’re the name people know and appeal to their cultural wants” is a complete subversion of how businesses are supposed to function. And then there’s the reality that once businesses have reliabily built themselves into the cultural needs of people, they don’t need to care anymore: see the process of enshitification in the mass of new business concepts - streaming services, 2nd party food deliver apps, etc. - and this becomes obviously true.

On paper, providing a better service should result in higher income. In reality, there are a million manipulatable factors to undermine this concept, and as we continue to argue that wealth is an inherent virtue, we’ll continue to give perceived moral superiority to the private businesses that will pull the plug on your grandmother’s life support if it will save them a dollar. Fuck that. The more services we can keep our of the hands of greedy CEOs and venture capitalists, the closer we are to a genuinely just world.

I was talking to someone about this very same postal issue, and his example was DHL. “Privatization turned them around! They’re now an international company!!!”

Why the fuck does canada post need to be competing internationally? Just deliver the mail and have a gov’t presence in small towns to provide other services.

Just spend the money to service canadians… It doesnt have to be profitable nor an international competitor

Also, DHL sucks…

Had privatization ever worked out? Like, ever?

Yes. It works out really nicely for our oligarchs.

Why stop there? Clean water is a convenience isn’t it? What about fire departments? That’s a convenience. People could do these things on their own. They should be rugged individualist and always take care of themselves right? Why do we need roads? People should just pave their own roads right?

This is a very long winded way to admit the existence of gullible and foolish people

Shipping via Canada Post has not improved my life one bit over using other companies.

Why stop there? Clean water is a convenience isn’t it? What about fire departments? That’s a convenience. People could do these things on their own. They should be rugged individualist and always take care of themselves right? Why do we need roads? People should just pave their own roads right?

I believe water is done privately, as are utilities. Roads are obviously difficult to do when managing the various tolls, and eminent domain, an issue package delivery would never run into. Fire department I think you’d run into issues with housing density, given you can just let peoples house burn down without affecting others.

But I can understand the desire I suppose, I just feel like we are subsidizing private corporations. I’d at least like a law that required it was free shipping only for Canadian companies or maybe Canadian product.

Beer in Alberta is far more expensive than in any other province

You could do the same with streaming services, gyms, and all manners of things.

Yes I agree!

So “gullible and foolish people” deserve to be abused by corporate interests? We aren’t supposed to build a world that benefits everyone, regardless of how “gullible and foolish” they are?

I mean to an alcoholic in the small scale it sounds like it’s working out great.

But Canada’s recently done a study that shows the taxation gained from alcohol consumption is far less than the deleterious societal costs.

Effectively the government loses money on every bottle it taxes.

edit: This is known as Canada’s alcohol deficit. It was first studied in 2014 which showed a taxation intake of ~11 Billion while the social costs were estimated to be ~15B resulting in a deficit of about ~4B. believe the 2020 study showed the alcohol deficit is up to ~6B a year now. I’m lazy, but here’s one link for those who’d like to know more:

The alcohol deficit: Canadian government revenue and societal costs from alcohol - Canada.ca

Canada runs an alcohol deficit of about $3.7 billion per year, when accounting considers both government revenue and societal costs from established sources.

(www.canada.ca)

TIL Alberta had state run liquor stores.

At one point every province did.

I think Quebec has (or at one time had?) the lowest because you’re not required to have collision insurance. You can have just liability, but if your car is a piece of shit you’re not required to insure it for repair should an accident occur. I could be wrong, and I’d love to know if I am.

you’re not required to have collision insurance. You can have just liability, but if your car is a piece of shit you’re not required to insure it for repair should an accident occur

Are there places where this isn’t the case?