Subscript5676

Seriously, for all the shade Westerners throw at the Chinese government for their surveillance of their people, we’re just gonna do the same? WTF is wrong with our governments? Who are the people giving these advices if it’s not their own idea?

Believe he talked about that in a bit more detail in another video about trams. I think that video was titled “Trams are the G.O.A.T” or something to that effect.

But essentially, and iirc, trams and subways serve subtly different purposes. Sure, at the end of the day, they move people between points, but the difference lies in what you can get between those points. Running trams at ground level close to shops means that they facilitate local foot traffic, and makes it easy for people to just get off and go get what they want to easily, sometimes at the moment they see what’s on their way. They can do that without the need to get up and down via stairs / escalators / lifts. Sure, you could check out a map to know where you wanna go, but where’s the serendipity in that?

Subways are great for faster point-to-point travel, especially if you don’t need to visit any of the areas between those points. Trams are generally slower than subways cause, at the end of the day, even if you give it priority on the surface, you are still close to humans on foot traffic, and there are points where you’ll have to slow down to not make people feel unsafe, even if their path is predictable.

Let’s make us all feel worse… courtesy by NJB https://youtu.be/HhQxNHrD6fA

I know some people absolutely dislike the guy for essentially dumping Canada and emigrated to the Netherlands, but seriously, if I go through the episodes he did: trying hard at advocacy and planning hard to improve the city, only to be met with unreasonable car-brained suburbanites throwing absolutely ridiculous arguments against the plans and essentially pouring cold water all over everyone, all in the face of facts, and you end up having to just watch things go to the shitters like you expected, you flip the table, and you leave. I can say that cause I’ve went through something similar. You end up not being able to just stay at that place anymore, no matter how much you loved it.

I wonder how much of it is Shwitter (yeah, Shit Twitter) feeding them all sorts of blatantly biased and overtly rosy image of tRump. The Japanese is excessively hooked on Shwitter after all, and they don’t typically follow US news too closely.

I’m adding this as a sub comment cause I think this would be extra points, but I guess it might be interesting for some, if they’ve never really read or thought about it.

But do first note that I’m no expert of governments or foreign trade relations. I’m just an observer.

You might be wondering if tariffs is the only way for governments to protect local industries, and you’re most probably thinking that that shouldn’t be the case. And you’re right. That said though, keep in mind that a tariff is a pretty simple tool for governments to use, and fairly good too: you fork out some money upfront to set up the tariff and all its supporting processes, and you get to earn money for the country. What actually happens is that you’ll tax any imports on the exporter, but what ends up happening is that exporters just add that to their cost and thus increase their prices, so it is typically like a tax on your own citizens. There are exporters who do just sort of eat that cost themselves, but that’s not common afaik.

Another option you could support a local industry is by providing subsidies, which can be done in a myriad of ways: materials, procurement, research, labour, etc, and you can even mix and match some of them. The problem here, though, is that the government has to fork out that money — that’s why it’s a subsidy. The Chinese government loves doing this for any industry that they deem strategic, and they can do so a lot more freely than most democratic countries, because, well, they just don’t have to worry about an election if people aren’t happy with where the investment went. Here in Canada though, people do get mad when subsidies are offered for industries that they don’t like, and that affects the polls.

You could also outright ban the import of certain products from certain countries, but that usually triggers very negative reactions from the affected countries, unless you have a clear law that literally bans the consumption or use of that product; people want to make money after all, and you’re literally making it impossible to do so. Examples of “okay” bans that most countries have over Canada are like cannabis, cause that’s deemed illegal in their country, and Canada doesn’t really have the desire to make those exports. It’s definitely a strong tool though, with potentially negative consequences.

Tariffs are used by countries very commonly and isn’t a Turnip original (yeah I spell his name however I’m feeling like).

The reason why tariffs are used is generally to protect a local industry, typically one that’s weak, either because they’ve fallen behind, or that it’s a new budding industry and fierce competition will just obliterate its chances of even growing.

Think of, say, our EV sector, which is essentially in its infancy. Sectors like these tend to have higher prices on their products because they’ve not reached a critical point and can enjoy the benefits of economies at scale, where they’ve can operate efficiently while mass producing their products; they’re still trying to figure out what works and works well, and so their stocks are limited, which usually means that their means of production is also not as efficient as an established company or sector. Now imagine if we don’t have tariffs against Chinese EVs, which is a mature Chinese industry at this point, and still enjoys massive government benefits to subsidize a lot of its production processes, i.e. their costs are low and they can sell their EVs for cheap. Imagine them just exporting a bunch of EVs to Canada. Without tariffs inflating their prices, most people would probably just buy Chinese EVs cause, well, that’s the economic thing to do individually in these unstable times. Our local EV companies would easily be beaten by cheaper Chinese rivals, especially when our own quality is not even close to competing with Chinese standards, i.e. they can’t make enough of revenue to cover their business operations and ongoing developments, and so the local industry would either die off because people may be discouraged to work in that sector, or it’ll take forever to grow.

If you look around what other sane countries are doing, you’ll see that a lot of them have some level of tariffs in various industries levied against enemies and allies alike, because, well, you, as the government, generally have an incentive to protect your local industries, or people would have a hard time finding jobs and earning money, and if they can’t do that for a long enough, you can kiss your government seat goodbye.

Sorry if my comment was vague (I didn’t find it vague when I commented).

I was merely lamenting the fact that the author states that trains, ferries, and buses as slower modes of transport as if it’s simply a fact and not just a lamentable general truth in Canada.

Slow travel — a movement which favours ferries, trains and buses over traditionally speedier modes of transportation and moments of pause over action-packed sightseeing — has been gaining steam as of late.

… *sigh

Hey @Davriellelouna@lemmy.world, that article’s paywalled, and TorStar seems to explicitly say that it’s Subscribers-only.

Mind putting a summary or share some quotes, if that’s allowed?

I know where I’m looking for these next. Thanks for sharing!

I’ve asked before and nobody showed me a single news source that says that, nor could I find anything that points to it being protected thanks to the tax being cut, other than Trumpet being muppet about not being able to export US dairy and poultry to Canada with impunity.

Could somebody please share a reliable source with us here?

Otherwise, could we let this argument die? The US is mad about Canada keeping an import control that’s been in effect since tRump 1.0 and is very limited in scope, and we sacrificed a tax that was supposed to earn the government money on June 30th, 2025, which is its supposed first collection, just to have Mump continue complaining about the import control? We got nothing out of this.

Optics. He can claim to be a victim of “Canadian oppressors” and try to convince more people that there are “Canadian oppressors”.