We have a mixed market economy with strong socialist safety net in Canada and it IS the best system because other systems have failed miserably. If you work hard in Canada, you CAN make a lot of money. But even if you are born an orphan in a poor family you won’t die of hunger, because we do take care of the poorest. I worked with street kids in a major Canadian city and NONE of them were completely destitute. They didn’t always have stable housing (often because of their own choices) but they had shelter and they had enough to eat and clothes to wear and a surprising number of them had enough for cell phones and cigarettes despite not having jobs. You cant say that about countries that dont have safety nets.

https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/reports-publications/health-promotion-chronic-disease-prevention-canada-research-policy-practice/vol-44-no-11-12-2024/distribution-hunger-canadian-youth.html

Overall, one in six (16.6%) survey participants reported experiencing hunger.

But they didn’t literally die from it so we’re in the best system. Please.

Wealth inequality is at the highest level it’s ever been in Canada. Our system is currently failing.

Compared to what? Things are better for the poor in China? Venezuela? The US? What are you comparing to?

Will it? I’d say the land I own looks a lot more cared for than the thousands of acres of Crown land that’s right up against my yard. My land gets tended to regularly, the trees and grass are cared for, the weeds are taken out and the deer and bears still get to walk across it and the birds and squirrels still live in the trees. No strip mines in sight.

Food insecurity is currently decreasing in China (source) while it’s increasing in Canada (source). So maybe there is a lesson on central planning and land distribution for us to learn.

“which is impossible”

I beg to differ. In Alberta, three years ago I bought a home for 65,000. Two months ago I bought another one for 60,000. The second one needs some love but it’s livable. I’m currently building a small alleyway home by combining two used buildings and the final cost will be under 30,000.

It IS possible - with some sweat equity - but not in Toronto or Vancouver, thats for sure.

So you buying places where nobody wants to live and doing all the construction yourself is somehow proof that it’s possible to build affordable housing for everyone?

Give your head a shake.

Nobody wants to live in Alberta? Did we mention that Alberta has the HIGHEST interprovincial migration of any province in Canada? We’re building as fast as we can cause there are so many people moving here.

And yes, all the skills Ive learned over the years are now on youtube and can be learned by anyone. My first house gained about 25% in value because I painted it, cleaned up the yard, and built a tiny 4 x 8 front porch and then waited a couple of years to sell it. Not rocket science, just takes some work.

I’m not promoting private ownership of land, but I fail just fail to see how allowing a single entity to manage land would be better than a more decentralized one. Having one dickhead who owns some land trying to gouge others is bad, but we can go somewhere else. If instead, we have THE dickhead who “owns” ALL of the land trying to gouge groups of people they specifically don’t like (oh you know that those racists and neo-Nazi’s will try to get into government), then where the hell are people supposed to go?

Sure, there may be a handful of landlords who own a lot of land and it’s hard to avoid them, but that’s more telling of an oligarchic society and its problems, and not that private ownership is a problem.

Some of those examples from history weren’t great. If anything, they (aside from the tribal ownership of land) more-so exemplify things that seem to frustrate you: few people own the lands and they’ve dickheads about it, but we are left with no choice.

And just because it never happened in the past, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Personal property isn’t private property. You can use a piece of land how you wish, but you don’t own it forever: you can use it as long as you’re still using it for your personal needs. This “you” can expand into a group, eg a family, and as long as this group still continues to use it directly, it’s “theirs”. No small private group of people can “own” a piece of land and demand those on it to pay for it.

As for saying that tracking private ownership of land is bureaucratic, that doesn’t sound too different from how it’s inherently bureaucratic that the government owns it all.

You must be in ON, cause I can assure you that in provinces where the Landlord-Tenant board actually functions, like Alberta, thats NOT happening. Its not a Canadian problem, its largely an ON and BC problem and the reason its a problem in those two provinces is because of their restrictive rent controls. They SOUND like a good idea at first but when the rubber hits the road, you cant tell a landlord they can only raise the rent by 2% when inflation has been rising by 4% to 8% and expect them not to use any means possible to raise the rent. Maintenance goes up, supplies go up, appliances go up, trades go up, taxes go up, insurance goes up, but the landlord can only absorb so much and then something’s gotta give and 2% doesnt cut it.

Here in Alberta we can raise the rent by any reasonable amount we like and it works. Rents go up in times of shortage but they also go down when there is an oversupply. So in the last year, the rents in Calgary have DROPPED by 9% because there have been a lot of new rentals come on the market. It works. Rent controls do not.

I’d only want this if we did election reform to any variant of ranked choice voting federally, mandated it for provincial and municipal elections as well and somehow enshrined this in the charter that no subsequent government can change this. We should also have ten year terms mandated. 4-5 years is too little for proper long term planning.

Would of course need a couple more safeguards preventing that I can’t think of, but either way, I would not want a dictatorship to take away land for itself with malice.

BC.

Rent controls don’t work, I agree. As do most economists.

The rents in Calgary haven’t dropped because of new rental supply though, you have that idea wrong, the rents have dropped because the economy is down. Rents are down in Vancouver too by almost 7%. The supply has barely changed in either location.

Everyone keeps talking about supply solving the issue, but the market keeps actually changing because of demand, it’s impossible to build enough supply fast enough to impact the markets significantly, only by changing the demand can you have a significant impact.

Which is where the government owning the property comes in, the demand for housing isn’t actually coming from people needing places to live. It’s from investors who are buying up properties because they know that people HAVE to live somewhere. If the government owned the land, that speculation goes away almost entirely because it’s no longer profitable. The land values all drop off a cliff, and housing becomes affordable again.

If there’s one thing we don’t lack in Canada, it’s space. The problem is the allocation of it, when Bob and Jane own 3/4 of an acre downtown, and live in their 5 bedroom place by themselves now that the kids all left. That’s the problem. Fuck them, force them to either pay to have that privledge or give up the property so it can be redeveloped to fit 8 families. If they want 3/4 of an acre they can live outside the city.

You sure as shit didn’t buy a property for $60k in Calgary or Edmonton, which is where most of the jobs are, and where people want to live.

And, on top of that, housing prices are STILL rising in those two cities compared to last year.

I will say it again, we CANNOT build ourselves out of the housing issue we’re in right now. It simply isn’t possible.

but we can go somewhere else This is where you logic breaks down.

A) People tend to like to stay in the city they’re already in, and B) With the current system we have right now nobody who doesn’t already have a home can afford to do that

If the government owns the land, and you vote in some fucking nazis, then the people have decided that’s what they wanted. That’s how democracy works. It’s not some sort of Utopian system of government, it’s a popularity contest.

No small private group of people can “own” a piece of land and demand those on it to pay for it.

Yes they can, that’s literally what a landlord is. If the only options are Landlord A, Landlord B, or Landlord C… you have no options. At least with the government you can vote.

Oh you know that people will vote for Nazi’s on a long enough timescale. The fact that we have fascists becoming governments around the world right now, and the fact that there’s some far right multinational organization working on all sorts of disinformation campaigns around the world, is already showing us the limits of democracy: if there’s a large enough group of people with that will (however small they are relative to the whole population), they will exercise everything they can to get into power; start small, underfund education and public welfare, create the environment for public anger, and then feed on that anger to make themselves government.

Anytime anyone tells me that “the people have decided”, I wince, cause people can be gullible, simply overwhelmed by (dis)information or just keeping themselves afloat, be pressured into following suit, etc. Democracy relies on the fact that people can be rational at the voting ballot, but that basis is being undermined.

And sorry, but you’ve misread that paragraph and sentence that you quoted, mostly cause of my wording (now that I look at that), and I apologize for that. I said that in the context of an anarchic society, not our current one.

Calgary and Edmonton are the two main centers but not everyone wants to pay the price for living in a big city. There are lots of jobs in smaller centers.

But here’s the thing. You can move to Calgary but you’re going to need to buy a house for at least 600,000. OR you can move to a smaller center and get a house for one tenth of that price.

Now look at the difference in mortgage payments at 5.25%. The Calgary house is going to be 3400. The small town mortgage is going to be $340.

Which means in the small town, you can buy a house paying your mortgage working a minimum wage job and still have money to spare, but in Calgary you better be making over 100k if you hope to qualify for that 600k house.

Sometimes small town living just makes far more financial sense. Especially when youre in driving distance to a bigger city.

Nope. Its not the economy. Its supply. There are charts that track available units for each type (apartment, main floor, basement suite, whole house, etc) on the landlord menu of Rentfaster.com. I can look at almost every category and see that the supply is up from what it was a year ago.

eg. Last year on Sept 1 there were **1066 **two bedroom apartments available This year on Sept 1 there were **1468 **two bed room apartments available

Therefore, average rent for those apartments last year was 2335. This year its **2251 **and dropping. Currently the average has now dropped to **2137 **as of last week. Thats down 8.4%

The rental market is pretty simple. When there’s more supply prices drop. When there’s more demand, prices go up.

You’re right about disinformation and stupid voters.

However, you are not proving that’s worse than the current capitalists which are literally bleeding everyone dry right now.

I see a lot of comments are proposing for the nationalization of whole industries, which is somewhat concerning. There needs to be some balance, not to fatten the checks of those billionaires, and not to make the government too powerful.

For example, instead of (re-)nationalizing CN, nationalize the tracks themselves. The government can lay down tracks for places that need to be reached, and companies can then run their trains on them. It’s no different from how roads are public really. Companies can then focus on serving section of the tracks for areas that they understand best. Of course, there will be cases where there’s a need to consider if the investment from the government is worth it, cause what if they laid the tracks but no one’s willing to take advantage of that? Well, they can let companies bid, and there’s no bidder, they can choose to not take on the project. Of course, there’s always the option for the government to have its own train company to serve certain areas.

For telcos, instead of nationalizing the entire vertical, nationalize cell towers and cable paths. Allow companies to build their own towers if they so desire, but the main draw is that different providers can rely on shared infrastructure, and none of this Robelus bullshit that we have right now. Cable paths is probably odd, but these sorts of technology get changed quite often. The government can still own some cables, allowing smaller players to take advantage of those, but it would level out the playing field by a lot.

For the Internet and whole businesses within it, having our own cloud infrastructure, or AWS alternative, would be best. People can then run whatever on those. There is, of course, a concern of the government not respecting people’s privacies, and so it needs to be run somewhat independent of the government, allowing the government to set directions but not what exactly to do; sort of Crown-corp-y if you will.

In all my examples, the idea is simply this: nationalize the stuff that serve as the basis for a particular service. Think roads instead of cars.