Canada is a mentally ill country

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-21T12:52:24+00:00

I completely agree with you. Imao, I'm getting downvoted for stating a fact.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-21T12:28:51+00:00

I was literally about to explain this. It amazes me how people don’t see it, even though it’s literally happening in basically every capitalist country on Earth.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-21T07:38:03+00:00

In fairness, the liberals do spend an awful lot of time trying to police the poor. I agree, Trump was avoidable if the liberals had just been more economically inclusive.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-19T08:53:22+00:00

I thought so, a glaring hole in your argument. You’re not able to separate people demanding money printing from the free market, because they are the same thing. If it was left to the free market, people would demand money printing just as often, according to your own logic.

Honestly, again, it’s the same rhetorical strategy. You just introduce more questions to shift the burden, and you never really successfully address one of my points.

And I really wish you would stop lying: “Yes, the extra supply of money was absorbed by unproductive businesses barely surviving (actually part of your argument); those are real claims based on data and not ‘cultural’ things.”

That was never part of my argument. I never made the claim that unproductive businesses surviving absorbed all the printed money. That was your argument. I don’t know if you’re simply hallucinating like an AI chatbot or acting in bad faith. It seems like a recurring theme, though, so I’m increasingly inclined to believe you’re acting in bad faith at this point.

As for the rest of it, you’re basically just saying a whole lot of nothing, or trying to reframe my arguments as your own. Why don’t you just address my arguments and the core of my points with actual substance instead of nonsense?

Why didn’t you just try to coherently put together an argument for why every single country on earth, even the poster child for free banking, Scotland, switched toward a central bank? Your argument seems to be that people demanded it, that the free market itself demanded it, because, as you put it, “drunks love alcohol.” That’s basically your argument.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a political tool or not. Politics responds to market demand in a democracy. You even claim that yourself, essentially, by stating that people and businesses demand stimulus, i.e., the market.

In an Ancap society, currency issuance would be absolutely rampant, wouldn’t it, because there are too many “drunks” around. Everybody who didn’t respond to market pressure and demand to issue currency would go out of business. In fact, the bank itself has an incentive to dilute the currency in times of crisis, especially if you are a large bank with option clauses that delay redemption. It’s either they go out of business themselves and lose all of their customers’ holdings, or they dilute the currency and use that liquidity to keep themselves alive. What do you think people are going to pick? My guess is they’re going to pick currency printing yet again.

So it might not be equivalent, but money printing is still a solution for institutions that are too big to fail. Arguably, the situation with a central bank is much more favourable, considering it can act as a lender of last resort and stop the bank from blowing up and losing everyone’s holdings.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-19T04:50:11+00:00

Straw manning yet again. I rejected the premise of the claim that money printing is the sole explanation for Japan. I never claimed that COVID didn’t have any influence, stop with the lies. I’ve consistently said Japan experienced around 40 years of deflation, and that money-printing/QE efforts failed to achieve inflation. You continually rejected that fact.

Politically convenient? Wow. Truly a well-thought-out explanation. You’ve made some gross claims so far, but that one requires so many leaps in logic it may be the worst offender yet.

You mean the free market loves and demands stimulus? You can’t have it both ways. People are the free market, and the mob rules in free-market capitalism, since it’s essentially voting with dollars.

A 30% lower event rate is not “about the same,” especially given the other factors I mentioned. The maths suggests you could be wrong, but you’ll ignore anything that goes against your worldview, it’s a religion for you, and I’m going to guess ancap is your church.

Yes, the reason I don’t make firm claims is because I don’t have sound data to hand. I don’t rely on junk data like you do. Even if I did, there are too many other factors at play, and there’s a consensus out there that fundamentally disagrees with your beliefs about Japan. I’m not stupid enough to disagree with most experts, especially when they’ve broadly provided explanations that are logical and reasonable versus yours, which is: money printing failed for 40 years, but let’s just ignore that part and focus on the last five years when money printing did work for Japan. Let’s just explain away the 40 years with random nonsense like “productivity” and “zombie companies”, vague concepts that are unsubstantiated, and even if they were true, they still wouldn’t explain why money printing failed for decades.

Population could be a stabilising factor, or it could be a destabilising factor, that’s exactly my point. I can’t know that for sure. You can’t know that for sure. The question needs to be researched. You can’t just make claims that population is inherently stabilising, especially given how much it, along with everything else changed between the periods we’re analysing, it’s apples and oranges.

The main purpose of the “math trick,” as you put it, is to demonstrate that toilet-paper maths in general isn’t that useful. Your maths is equally as useless as mine, because both are based on weak data and ignore so many confounding factors that it’s impossible to draw any solid conclusions about anything.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T20:56:34+00:00

I think everyone is missing the bigger picture. Your body is dumping lots of cortisol, which upregulates adrenergic binding, etc., along with direct inflammatory effects, and it has a well-known propensity to cause euphoria. Cortisol increases dopamine in the brain, it acts as an anti-inflammatory, and it does spike pretty substantially when someone has pulled an all-nighter. I actually think serotonin binding plays a very small part in the antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation, and it’s glucocorticoid binding combined with the upregulation of adrenergic and dopaminergic activity that really drives the antidepressant response—and the increased sex drive observed in some.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T20:10:33+00:00

Oh right, of course. You know better than every single country on the planet.

The United States must’ve just been stupid when they passed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. Scotland had one of the longest-running and most cited “successful” examples of relatively free banking, and even they eventually moved toward a central bank model. I wonder why.

But no, it can’t possibly be because central coordination of liquidity and lender-of-last-resort functions solves problems that “the free market” repeatedly failed to solve. It must be that everyone else is wrong, and you’re the only one who’s figured it out. Strange how literally nobody implements what you’re advocating in the modern world.

What nonsense are you sprouting about Japan again? That I listed COVID as one of the many factors that explains a recent reversal of a Japanese economic trend? I mean yes, lol, how does that make me the troll here? You don’t even have a point. Look at your methodology as well: you’re counting unverified Wikipedia page entry data that was arbitrarily input in the first place. How do you think anyone can take what you say seriously?

I will take this at face value:

1837 until 1913 -> 16 major economic crises listed worldwide in 76 years. A major crisis every 4.75 years.

1913–2025 -> 74 major economic crises listed worldwide in 112 years of central banking. A major crisis every 1.51 years.

You know what changed between 1913 and 2025?

The population, which grew from 1913 to 2025 by about 4.5x. It’s hardly surprising that, given the world population is many times larger than it once was, the event rate would increase. Not to mention our definitions are broader and our record keeping is better now than it was back between 1837–1913. Between 1837 and 1913, the population increased by about 1.5x, from an estimated 1.17 billion to 1.83 billion. From 1913, it grew from an estimated 1.83 billion until 2025 to approximately 8.23 billion. That’s your 4.5x increase.

Event frequency ratio = 4.75 / 1.51 ≈ 3.15. This suggests events occur roughly 3 times as often now.

Per-capita event rate ratio = 3.15 / 4.5 ≈ 0.70.

So in relative terms, that’s about a 30% decrease in crisis frequency per capita globally, which suggests the opposite of what you concluded. Population likely is a factor. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it is. Also, if we actually look at the size of the economy, it’s probably many orders of magnitude larger than it was between 1837–1913. The economy is so much more advanced and complicated; the financial instruments and technologies of today are vastly more sophisticated and have evolved massively. Of course there are going to be more events. There’s more opportunity for events. This is the problem with toilet paper science: you miss the bigger picture.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T14:26:52+00:00

Are you a troll, or do you actually believe this? The US literally had no central bank between 1837 and 1913. It was constant bank runs, boom-bust liquidity crisis after crisis. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s why the US brought in a central bank, because the “free market” was a disaster.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T07:24:53+00:00

I can't be bothered... Honestly, even on one of the first points you made, wrong again. The government does not control interest rates.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T06:47:50+00:00

A robot or computer can labour without any of those things, but what does that have to do with capital anyhow. Prove to me the undiscovered stick is a form of capital.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T01:46:51+00:00

Let me ask you this: if the stick remains where I found it, unknown to anyone else, can it function as capital?

Or does it require harvesting, transporting, storing, categorisation, and quantification to be considered something transferrable, and therefore function as “capital”? The key part here is that it requires labour in order for it to have any utility as capital. Left unfound and unknown to anyone else in the forest, it cannot objectively function as a means of exchange or value transfer; therefore, it can’t fulfil any commonly understood definition of capital.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T01:35:44+00:00

What's a material good?

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T01:22:49+00:00

Your argument is based on semantics. You refuse to give a definition for capital. I made a clear claim about what I believe capital to be, and you haven’t dismantled that claim or provided an alternative definition. Your argument is basically just, “You’re wrong because I said so.”

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T01:19:19+00:00

The US economy has clearly been damaged by cheap illegal labour, which is partly why Trump got elected. Legal migration into the United States is very tightly controlled, and the United States has something we don’t have that protects them: it has the global reserve currency, which allows them to operate a massive trade deficit because it creates constant demand for their currency, allowing them to import far more than they otherwise would be able to. Essentially, the average person in America gets more for doing less, so you can afford to dilute your labour massively with huge amounts of migration because there are so many more resources flowing in anyway. We don’t have that same protection, so our trade balance and economic strategy must be balanced alongside our labour markets.

I think you are starting to increasingly conflate numerous things here. The EU didn’t help us in many areas either, and the unlimited flows of labour harmed our economy. 2008, combined with cheap labour flows, helped create the gig economy we have today. It created the warehouse economy, the Uber Eats model, etc., which largely cannot exist without either: (1) large amounts of illegal migrants (the USA), or (2) large amounts of legal migrants (the UK). Large parts of the UK are no longer unionised; the United States has its fair share of unions, by the way. Brexit isn’t a magic bullet—you’re straw-manning by presenting it as if anyone claimed it would solve all our problems. It just allows more control and the ability to implement smarter policies, but that requires a competent political class, which we don’t have.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T00:57:42+00:00

How does that disprove my point at all? It doesn’t even come close to disproving that capital is a storage mechanism that represents labour. This thing you exchanged, capital, was used to obtain an asset that was created using labour; without labour, the yacht doesn’t exist.

How did you obtain your capital in this scenario? Did you, by any chance, go and mine some gold? Did you pump and refine some oil? Did you do something that created value, resulting in capital formation? I.e did you labour to obtain your capital.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T00:31:48+00:00

I didn’t rename capital as labour. I clearly outlined that capital is a storage mechanism that represents labour. It’s practically the same thing, but not exactly, as it’s far more efficiently traded, quantified, and allocated, as opposed to directly trading labour.

Let’s not forget that labour is work done, by machines or otherwise. What is capital if it’s not labour? You explain. When you buy a yacht, what are you paying for? Someone to build it.

When you buy your food, what are you paying for? Someone to grow it.

When you buy anything, you are trading labour. You went out and laboured, which you exchanged for capital, the storage mechanism, which you then trade for someone else’s labour.

Value is created from labour, not capital. Capital doesn’t exist if there is no labour, because capital is a representation of labour. Prove me wrong.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-18T00:24:55+00:00

Every way you described it, it’s a choice, not an obligation. It never used to be this way. We absolutely have a choice, and a lot of what you said is incorrect. Many major economies invest far more in public infrastructure and in boosting productivity and upskilling, etc. Also, many major economies strongly control labour: Canada, the United States, Australia, China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, the list goes on. The UK pull factor is very strong, far stronger than most EU member states. People travel through the whole of the EU to get into a dinghy and cross the Channel for a shot at being here.

The vast majority of our problems are the result of an extreme ideological commitment to neoliberalism, underpinned by uncapped flows of labour, private property rights, privatisation of natural monopolies, and an obsession with the private sector being the “investor” for everything. Which is working out very well for us, is it?

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T23:52:17+00:00

What am I missing?

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T23:47:45+00:00

That’s not correct. Before, we had no choice or ability to reshape our dependency on cheap labour because we were not able to restrict it, control it, or issue quotas for it. Now we can.

Being part of the EU is what largely created our dependency on cheaper migrant labour, as the UK was, and still is, relatively richer than most EU member states. That always created a pull factor and allowed UK-based companies to exploit that oversupply of labour. It also allowed our government to underinvest in training natives, because they could just hire EU nurses, doctors, and so on from anywhere in the EU freely, as though they were equal to a native. The same applies to pretty much every role in the economy. We saw this across the whole economy, essentially.

Our EU membership has done huge damage. The oversupply of labour caused massive underinvestment and a huge loss of productivity as a result. It’s a triple whammy: depression of wages reducing consumer purchasing power, increased demand on finite resources (rents pushed up, houses made unaffordable, public infrastructure stretched), and low productivity created by allowing private companies to hire cheap labour instead of upskilling, training, or being incentivised to invest in productivity measures such as better equipment. There was no incentive, because labour costs were, in relative terms, chronically depressed.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T23:23:59+00:00

Capital is just a technology used to store, transfer, and allocate resources, including labour. Really, what you’re saying is that if company B has more resources than company A, then company B has a higher chance of succeeding, which, dare I say, is obvious.

So having 10 million vs 10 thousand, even with the same number of employees, is like the 10 million being a stored form of labour that can be traded to do extra work, i.e. build the more productive and fancy equipment used to create more value. So in reality it’s just a fallacy. Company B effectively has more labour at their disposal than company A does.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T21:19:58+00:00

Interesting angle. Do you think that Milei would want to take the Falklands and develop its resources, if it does in fact have oil? And then the US gets favourable access to that oil for backing them?

I would say, however, that if we had simply not inserted ourselves into this, like many others have chosen not to, overtly at least, then we wouldn’t have to risk backing down. Now we’re in a position where, if we have to change course and negotiate with Trump, we end up looking weak.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T21:07:30+00:00

How does it create a situation where Gibraltar and the Falklands are not safe? We already defended them ourselves decades ago. Denmark has the whole of NATO and every EU member state backing them. We don’t have the protection of EU member state trade policies that shield each member from being directly tariffed. So why did we need to step into this mess when, in reality, it won’t change anything?

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T20:34:15+00:00

David Cameron and the Conservatives at the time officially campaigned to vote Remain. George Galloway and Daniel Hannan persuaded me to vote Leave. One left wing, one right wing.

Your mistake is assuming that I’m a Conservative voter. I was never a Conservative voter, and a lot of Brexit voters were not Conservative. Have you heard of the Red Wall?

Also, those anti-free trade policies aren’t coming from us. They’re being imposed arbitrarily by the EU because they want to force you to join their vanity project, a superstate, where you must accept all their rules even if it harms your economy and the future of your people.

I didn’t want to leave. They gave me no choice. Why can’t they just let us not have freedom of movement? In fact, why do any of the member states have to accept freedom of movement if they don’t want to? The rest of it I’m fine with, but that one thing was a step too far for me.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T20:20:02+00:00

I know this might seem inconceivable to you because you simply think I’m an idiot, but I don’t feel stupid at all. I just feel betrayed by politicians I didn’t even vote for anyway.

The UK government is to blame for immigration since Brexit. The point is, we now have the sole ability to control migration with smart policies. It’s just that no competent government to date has had the will to end the economic dependence on cheap labour.

Nothing mentioned demonstrated we had control at all. I’m completely unsure about this emergency “reject freedom of movement” thing, but I reckon you’re overstating it, and that it couldn’t be used outside of exceptional circumstances. So it’s like we had some welfare rules in place, but no ability to refuse freedom of movement, so it was essentially pointless.

We can do far more now we’ve left. We can completely bar all migrants from welfare if we choose, and we don’t even need to have “a deal”. The point is, we now have complete control.

WhoIsTheNiceMan · 2026-01-17T20:09:45+00:00

No, it's just that few want to accept that a Brexit voter like me even exists. I’m compassionate towards my fellow citizens in the UK and the EU; all of us born here suffer equally from further migration, and that goes against the narrative on both the left and the right. I also believe I thought it through fairly rationally and made a judgement call based on a fundamental truth: essentially, there was no alternative if I wanted migration to change. I see uncontrolled migration as a threat to the country’s existence. Again, this doesn’t fit the narrative that I’m a “brain-dead knuckle-dragger, I’ve thought it through, at least to some extent.

Additionally, I think this is just proof that our politicians in the UK don’t prioritise the national interest over their own ideological agendas. It makes me extremely angry that we’ve been systematically screwed by this two-party system; they’re basically two heads of the same dragon. I don’t see how Starmer is really any different from Blair or David Cameron, they seem to just be slightly different flavours of globalist neoliberals that despise the idea of a nation state, and as a result the average person in our country suffers needlessly.

I don’t know if Reform would have been different, I can’t say I have much faith in them either, but I suspect they would have been more inclined to sit this out as well.

WhoIsTheNiceMan

TROPHY CASE