I won’t deny the utility of macroeconomic theory. But it is also abundantly clear that tracking the flow of money, goods and services in an economy is only one small part of a much larger and more complex domain.
Macroeconomics
Paying for News
s true that the news industry in Canada is suffering, but it’s not because of the search engines. It’s because of a failed business model that depends on tolls on data, paywalls, tracking and spyware, and content that privileged the perspective of corporations and the wealthy.
The Snowbird
When the finance minister doesn’t follow the rules, he is showing a certain disregard for the people who die. And it leads us to suspect that this disregard applies to other aspects of his work and life as a finance minister.
The Greenbelts
Decisions on protected land belong in the public spotlight, where the interests of the entire community can be heard, and not only those of developers looking for a windfall.
Greenbelt forest scene in winter.
A Clean-Energy Hatchet Job
I won’t be renewing my subscription to the logic. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this publication is practicing advocacy journalism, pushing a pro-business perspective while ignoring interests and issues that represent the broader concerns of the community.
On Justice and Open Debate
I think the case against invasion, torture, racism, fascism, sexism, and LGBT rights opposition has advanced far beyond “ideological conformity”, because I think there are no longer (if there ever were) any good faith arguments to be made in favour of those positions.
The Logic
The Logic’s authors need to be held to account, and right now there is no obvious way – other than this relatively obscure and unused Slack channel – to do that.
The Covid Response
In these early days of the Covid pandemic in Canada my estimation is that our government has been doing the right things, taken the right tone, and made the right response.
The Shareholder Primacy Rule
I have no particular desire to actually listen to CEOs, as they tend to be among the most conservative of thinkers, but I object strenuously to the existence of a structural mechanism that eliminates even the possibility that they might contribute to the social good in a positive way.
The Mailing List
The convention system of party governance should be abolished, the delegate system ended, and mechanisms put into place for the membership to reach agreement, point by point, on a comprehensive platform and strategy.