jadero

This is why aid needs to be delivered by military forces under the direction of aid agencies. Nobody really cares if a few civilians get killed, but when soldiers get killed, shit happens.

170k and still living paycheque to paycheque? That truly sucks. Honestly, I can't even imagine it. My heart goes out to you.

We live in rural Saskatchewan in a self-renovated 1968 mobile home on a leased lot. That is the single best decision we've ever made. If we had stayed in Saskatoon, we'd be either still be working, maybe full-time, or destitute. As it is, our annual rent and taxes is about the same as the monthly rent is in our old apartment. Some careful budgeting, a garden, and plenty of fish from the nearby lake means that we actually have a pretty decent lifestyle on <40k (combined income).

Maybe it's because all the younger generations really are smarter than mine (boomer). For most of my 50 years in the workforce, I was told:

• I was lucky to have a job (justification for low wages, small raises, and no raises)
• I had to go along to get along (justification for shitty working conditions, some of which contravened labour law and safety regulations)
• I had to work hard to get ahead (justification for perpetual short staffing, stupid shifts, and excessive overtime)
• I had to prove myself to get promotions (actually do the work of the next level up without the next level pay)
• Training and certifications were for my benefit or just the cost of getting in the door (justification for the gutting and even elimination of on-the-job and employer-sponsored training as well as not having higher pay to go with more training and education)

For most of my working life, I took my father's advice to demand both my legal rights and my human dignity at great cost to my employment success. The 15 years I tried it "the right way" just left me exploited and burned out.

If falling productivity is a result of people finally demanding that laws and human dignity be not just respected but honoured and advanced, then I say let it fall.

I've heard people say that maybe it's time to reset productivity expectations or even redefine what is meant by productivity.

I think they make good cases for those things, but maybe it's time for, I don't know, something so radical as to be unthinkable. Like maybe it's time for the business community to look inward for the problem.

Sears is the one that really gets me. In addition to full stores in big enough centres, they had depots everywhere and their own trucking network. And I mean everywhere. Suburbs, towns, villages: if there wasn't enough business to support a standalone depot, anyone could apply to set up a depot as part of another business. I even saw one once that was basically run out of someone's house. They moved into the top floors of an old boarding house and set up the main floor with a small museum, craft and thrift store, a bit of a cafe, and a Sears depot. I think they were also the bus depot. Any gaps in the trucking network were filled by sending stuff out on the train or bus, in the post, or with a small trucking company.

The logistics were handled and a very large fraction of their business was already mail order. All they needed was the online presence, and it's not like they didn't have customers practically begging them to do it.

Which I guess would mean that a whole lot of people would go hungry if we stopped doing that.

I'm not suggesting that there is something inherently evil about artificial fertilizers, but the scale of use is likely a problem.

And Scott Moe.

Here's an idea. Get the two of them a little love nest. Maybe it'll keep them away from the rest of us.

Edit: okay, that turned into a bit of a ramble :)

TLDR: at some point, we have to come to terms with the fact that Earth has not got infinite space or an infinity of resources. The sooner we start acting on that knowledge, the better for everyone.

Why would we ever want even more people when we struggle to properly serve the current population? And we've struggled for many years. Immigration is critically important, not for population, but for diversity. Monoculture in all forms is weakness.

I have no problem with urban lifestyles and actually miss some aspects of it. But we are rapidly losing our ability to support alternative lifestyles. Small cities that once thrived now struggle. Towns and villages are becoming less viable. Yet campgrounds are collapsing under the weight of demand.

I've lived my whole life, 67 years, in Saskatchewan. Our population grew by 10-20 percent during the time that Canada's population grew by 50 percent or more. In the 1960s an 70s it was rare to not be able to find openings at any campground on the spur of the moment. That started changing in the 80s and 90s when popular places would fill up on long weekends. By 2000, we had to start making reservations. Today, all but the most out of the way campgrounds require weeks or even months of planning and, often, all but the earliest of birds are shut completely out.

It may seem strange to focus on campgrounds, but I think that this demand is at least partly driven by the loss of non-urban choices in lifestyle. To a first approximation, it was never the villagers and farmers and ranchers who were driving campground demand, but the residents of cities. If everything is to be urbanised, what is left for those for who would choose something different? If we cannot serve the variety of human needs or even such a simple and basic human need to occasionally escape, what hope is there for anything else?

At some point, whether in 50 years or 500, we are going to have to find ways to deal with steady or even falling populations. Nothing about this little rock is infinite. The sooner we recognize that and start building our economies, societies, and institutions accordingly, the less aggressively we need to act. And the less aggressively we need to act, the easier it will be on people, businesses, and nature.

Fair point, and I don't disagree, exactly, but lots of people miss out as a result of similar kinds of rules without the flexibility to just work around it.

Based on this comment, I suspect that your real intention was to argue for the appropriate supports rather than applying sufficient effort. Fair enough, but let's more closely examine what you actually said:

... with some effort they could...

You did not say "with the right supports..." you said "with some effort..."

Further, "with some effort" implies that there had been no effort to date.

I appreciate that none of us perfectly express our true thoughts when speaking or writing off the cuff as we do here. If you are now saying that you meant "with the right support", I accept that without question. But if you actually meant that a suffering person must be expected to make efforts that would challenge the strongest of us, then I stand by my contention that you called them lazy.

I thought the idea behind high salaries was to attract the best talent. Turns out that it just floods the applicant pool with grifters and it's almost impossible to sort them out.

Also, did anyone notice that the "fixed" election date has been quietly put off for a week? I don't suppose that this has anything to do with the fact that the previous date would have left a bunch of MPs a week short of their 6-year pension eligibility? (Just a little tidbit dropped in the latest Sandy and Nora podcast.)

No problem. Next time, you can get me. :)

Some of this is going to come across nasty, but it's not, it's an honest exploration of something worthy of deep analysis and discussion.

Who put you in charge? Who puts anyone in charge? Why should anyone get to decide the arc of someone else's life? Why should someone else get to dictate the terms of anyone's life and death?

Whenever I hear someone expressing sentiments like "... with some effort they could live along and fulfilling life", it puts me in mind of all those busybodies who lament or even disapprove of my choosing labour over post-secondary education because I wasn't meeting my potential. No, I was meeting my potential just fine, even excelling. I've had a very fulfilling life, I just wasn't doing what others thought I should be doing. I was not being lazy by not putting in "some effort." I was making choices based on who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live.

What is within us that leads us to demand that others live up to our standards? What is within us that makes it so difficult to see that what is a reasonable effort for one may be an insurmountable obstacle to others?

To get mundane, I find it just about as easy to swim 5k as 2k and 10k isn't much harder, yet I get the impression that most people think of even 2k as beyond their capacity. Would it not be an insult to their very personhood to just call them lazy, the way you imply that this poor soul is just lazy?

We all have different capabilities and capacities. What is within us that insists that we are the standard by which others must be judged?

Some people cannot find the internal resources to continue. What makes the beating of their hearts so important to us that we ignore their own desires? That insist they fight, even after they have no fight left?