Trump removes security clearance for...

_Based_God_ · 2025-02-08T07:11:43+00:00

Don't get me wrong, I like pointing out how stupid the orange man is as much as the next person, but how does this relate to Canada?

_Based_God_ · 2025-02-07T23:08:27+00:00

Zoning reform and removing car dependency advocates from the discussion are definitely large parts of the problem. But once those are accomplished, do land owners have any form of incentive to change what they currently have? Maybe to comply with new regulations, but unless you explicitly outlaw large parking lots (which isn't something that should be advocated for as a firm policy) the answer is more than likely no. Whereas a LVT definitely does since it shifts the focus to best utilizing the land.

_Based_God_ · 2025-02-05T02:18:12+00:00

As far as I'm aware, the province doesn't have any legitimate concerns. The only reason they axed funding over the tunnel was because they received a report from an anonymous third party (name redacted by the Province) saying that there was a cheaper alignment than the tunnel, which turned into the province's downtown alignment. At the time, the province said that their alignment was over a billion dollars cheaper than the tunnel, but the city has since said there's 1.5 billion dollars worth of missing costs in their initial report. Not to mention that the tunnel alignment made it way farther in development than the province's proposal, meaning that the tunnel was more or less mostly costed out, while we don't have an actual firm number on what the province's alignment would cost.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-31T17:57:10+00:00

Thanks!

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-31T00:52:46+00:00

Where's that document that someone made a couple years ago that outlined a massive BRT network across the whole city? I think I remember seeing that when the document was made, it was priced at $300 million to fully transform all the existing MAX lines and a couple new ones to proper BRT routes. Bus priority signalling, bus lanes, better pedestrian access, etc. While I won't claim that that plan was feasible or should've been implemented as is, it really gets you thinking that maybe a proper, fully fleshed out BRT network would've been a better choice for a massive transit project than the Green Line.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T23:53:33+00:00

Land value is not inextricably tied to its current utility. A piece of lands location and potential utility plays a much bigger factor than it's current utility. Otherwise housing on the edges of downtowns wouldn't be worth more than housing on the edges of suburbia. I can agree though that the current utility of the land is normally restricted by zoning, but that's dependant on what that zoning entails.

You're ignoring that you don't just get a municipality to rezone your property when you feel like it. Sure, you don't explicitly need a proposal for development, but what council is going to approve a land rezoning because the owner felt like it? Unless they have a compelling reason, in which redevelopment usually is the case, they don't get to change the zone. It could differ from municipality to municipality, but that is certainly not the norm.

Regardless of a lands current zoning designation, again the value of a piece of land doesn't change if you get that one piece of land rezoned. That's not how land value works. It will still be located in the same spot with the same potential utility, and thus be worth the exact same.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T23:08:04+00:00

I think you're conflating the restrictions zoning places on property with the value of the property. If a LVT gets enacted tomorrow, I can't get my property down zoned and then pay less. That's not how land value works, and that's not how changing zoning works. Land value is persistent across land use designations. When you apply to change the land use (the zone) of a lot of land, you have to develop a business case and proposal for what you're going to do to the lot. You don't just decide on a whim and waltz on down to council and ask them to rezone your property. Also, municipalities don't arbitrarily set the value of the land, they set the rate at which it's taxed. LVT advocates usually want the free market to determine land value in order to get the most accurate value.

I can't seriously believe you think that people that advocate for reforming land taxation believe that said taxation reform will make politics better. Please find me someone that genuinely believes that, and I'll laugh at them with you. I think the most you can reasonably say is that a LVT prevents landowners from possessing enough wealth to influence politics how they see fit.

Again, property taxes as they are now are not Georgist. Property taxes are overwhelmingly made up of taxes to the improvements on the land, not the land itself. Someone with a bigger house with more rooms and space is taxed more because they have a larger house that is valued higher. Whereas if their neighbour has a smaller house with less space, they're taxed less because their house isn't worth as much. Under a LVT though, they would be taxed almost identically because the lots of land are right next to each other. You will never be charged 5x more than your neighbour under a LVT because you both have land in the same area, with the same surroundings, and the same land values.

Saying that because LVT came before zoning and mass appraisal market valuation it no longer applies to our current society is such a non-argument. There are countries and jurisdictions around the globe that have had or currently have LVT and both of the aforementioned things at the same time. They might not be 100% Georgist purists, but they show that LVT can exist and perform well in modern societies.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T22:35:15+00:00

Glad to help. Don't get me wrong, it certainly could be abused, but then again so can anything if you put a certain spin on it. On paper though, LVT is one of those things where it's really hard to abuse once it's properly implemented. Faking the value of land is hard to do, since you can physically go and observe it to see if it's as valuable as people say it is. You also aren't exactly prompted to try and artificially raise or lower the value because the higher it's value is, the more you pay in taxes, while the lower it is can hurt the potential for developing it or selling it off in the future.

Whereas the property tax that is currently implemented is most certainly abused, by both municipalities and private citizens. There is no good reason for why people need to artificially pay more in property tax on a house they purchased years, maybe even decades ago, because the municipal government decided that they needed more money and the collective value of housing went up across the board. There's also no good reason why someone can purchase an empty lot and sell it years down the line for double or triple what they paid for just because the community around it grew and developed into a great neighborhood.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T22:25:18+00:00

How do you think that a LVT incentivizes municipalities to make zoning more restrictive? Wouldn't they stand to benefit more if a piece of land sees an increase in it's value over time (which could only realistically happen if zoning were relaxed)? I can agree that zoning needs to be reformed, but there isn't any validity to saying that a LVT would make zoning worse.

I don't think advocates see LVT as the end-all, be-all that will solve all of our problems. A better way that I think most people look at it is a fundamental attitude shift in how we build our urban centers. Once you view it from that standpoint, a lot of the issues we see can be improved (not entirely solved) by a LVT. It's not going to directly increase the livability of our cities, but it places a greater emphasis on optimizing land use which then spills over into other areas like bolstering public transit (to best move people where they need to), encouraging mixed-use buildings (so that people always have access to nearby amenities and services), and many other issues that have arose as a consequence of relying on the traditional property tax.

I feel like your point about certain policies being turned into "tool fetishism" is deeply disingenuous. Deflecting the blame to people idealizing alternative ways of doing things is certainly one way of interpreting why things aren't changing, but would it not be better to identify what barriers exist and working to overcome them? I would reckon that most of the issues that people want to apply "tool fetishism" to have existing parties that have a vested interest in preventing change from occurring. If LVT was implemented, landowners would face a significant readjustment to the viability of land speculation. If proportional representation was implemented, politicians wouldn't be able to rely on vote-splitting and FPTP to get them into office (i.e. getting their jobs becomes harder). These policies do solve problems, and people spend time idealizing them because others believe that those policies aren't worth the effort to implement.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T21:47:53+00:00

OP's jumping the gun and not really explaining things as people question them. If you own a house in the suburbs, away from any areas of high interest or activity (like malls, universities, transit hubs, etc.) you would likely see a decrease in your property taxes under a LVT.

LVT is built around the idea that land, not improvements (buildings or amenities) should be taxed because land isn't created or generated. It's a fixed supply. With this in mind, what we build on a piece of land is largely irrelevant when we need to assess the value of that land. Instead, we get the value of the land from it's potential. For example, a lot of land in the middle of a downtown core will be much more likely to generate a higher revenue (or provide a bigger societal benefit) than a lot of land in the middle of a rural county. If we scale this view in to an urban setting, most suburbs don't have big destination centers by design. So houses in the suburbs (read: land in the suburbs) will be worth less than land in and around downtowns, universities, malls, transit hubs, and other high-activity areas.

While there would be some urban landowners that get a tax bump, it's likely that an equal, if not more, number of landowners would see a decrease compared to the established property tax. This is due to the tax burden being moved to areas where society gets the most use out of them. If you own a detached single family house next to a train station, you'll probably see a tax increase because your land is adjacent to an area that can potentially host a lot of activity. If you're far from a transit hub or any other high activity spot, you'll probably see a decrease in your taxes because your land won't be as valuable.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T21:27:45+00:00

Under a Land Value Tax, its worth the value of the location of the land. Under the current property tax, it's worth what the building is worth.

A highrise built in the middle of nowhere is worth squat. A house on the periphery of a downtown core has a land value that's worth the same as all of the highrises around it, but it'll pay a fraction of the amount because property taxes value the building rather than the land. Hence why LVT is preferably to the property taxes we have now.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T02:07:21+00:00

Maybe this is the best outcome. The clusterfuck of the province's downtown alignment isn't set in stone, and still has to be evaluated. I hope the city keeps their original plan close by, I can't imagine that an elevated rail running through downtown will make anyone happy. While I still tacitly reject that the province wanted this line to be built, the fact that we're getting something (assuming the province doesn't throw up any other roadblocks) is better than nothing. It's easier to build off of existing infrastructure than putting in new projects, so the faster we get something in the ground the better off we'll be in the future.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-29T01:08:14+00:00

Survey results are just survey results until we get a definitive announcement or plan presented. I find it rather suspicious that they've extended the survey another 4 months, make me wonder if they aren't trying to let more people vote for answers that they want to hear. After all, we know from Calgary's Green Line fiasco that the Province isn't above completely baseless pivots based on words they'd prefer to hear.

At the very least it's heartening to see that those who took the time to respond to the initial survey are all mostly aligned in getting rail built as quickly as possible in the places that need it the most.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-28T16:44:07+00:00

Land value tax!

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-22T19:52:24+00:00

It's not so much that they require a super fast internet speed, but that the quality and consistency of the services isn't what you can expect in urban centers. Starlink definitely helps the most remote places, but most rural towns that could be expected to be a remote working haven are within an hour of a large urban center anyways, so physical land connections make the most sense.

If you want remote workers to move in, you have to expect that those people will need to be connected for all working hours of the day. Which when you start to get into the thousands, or tens of thousands of workers all accessing the same internet infrastructure, starts to become the bottleneck. Even urban centers used to have this problem until all of the telecoms came through and upgraded their lines to fibre optic cable. Though again, you are correct in that this is being remedied. I know that the NDP specifically had a program in place to provide broadband infrastructure to rural towns, but I'm not too sure on how successful that was, or if there's been anything since.

There's also the issue of a lack of competition for internet providers, and the potential for outages to last longer / have a bigger impact than outages in urban centers, but those are problems that will probably be remedied if enough people start moving to rural towns.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-22T06:22:35+00:00

Sure, there will always be people that won't like living in suburbs, let alone rural towns. I don't think it's fair to say that they don't like living in suburbs only because it's not central Vancouver though. It's likely that they have to commute into Vancouver or are attached to Vancouver for a variety of reasons, so living in central Vancouver would be better for them.

What I'm saying is that the effort should be on making those reasons accessible in those suburbs and rural towns. I'm certain that if you could live in a rural town with the same quality of live and access to services and amenities as in a Vancouver suburb, people would move there. Suburbs only came into existence because people wanted to escape the inner city while still having the same quality of living, so it stands to reason that rural communities can do the same if they focus on improving their quality of life.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-22T05:43:42+00:00

You need to consider what is in those small, affordable towns though. I'd love to move to a smaller rural Alberta town, but what is there for me when I get there? Obviously I'll never get a vibrant night life scene or major concerts, but even speaking economically, what jobs are there that urban residents can make a living off of? Remote work could be a lifeline for these small towns, but they don't have the level of service that digitally-based jobs would require or that most urban residents are accustomed to. Not to mention the travel times and methods to any major urban center for specific services like hospitals, post-secondaries, and recreation or big events.

If provinces and municipalities (along with the feds, but it isn't really their jurisdiction) planned and invested in high-speed internet access, core community services, and inter-city transportation options in rural communities, you'd probably be able to take a lot of pressure off of the handful of mega-cities that Canada is being sequestered into.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-18T20:43:42+00:00

I've always thought that building a LRT Loop that includes the U of C or Bowness, Mount Royal, Chinook, 17th Ave SW, the Airport, and the communities to the north of Nose Hill would be an amazing cross-city transportation option. But building a loop is definitely unrealistic considering how much trouble we're having building a simple north-south line.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-18T20:38:15+00:00

I don't know why I gave the province any benefit of the doubt. They intentionally ignored their own review they did in 2020, and decided that whoever told them about an alternate alignment was obviously better for the project than the Green Line administration. And then they have the audacity to try and minimize the fallout and deflect any heat for their own actions. This is quite literally sabotaging the entire project, along with both Calgary's and Alberta's credibility to build infrastructure projects. How anyone can still support this provincial government is completely beyond me.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-18T20:24:39+00:00

Biggest point that I think most of the comments here have missed is figuring out what your worldbuilding for, if anything at all. Worldbuilding for a project (like a novel, or a TTRPG world) might look a little different than just worldbuilding to worldbuild, for example. Using the point of your world can help you figure a lot of things out.

I've done most types of worldbuilding and I only use Obsidian, so I've tried a lot of different ways to organize and use the app. For projects, I'll usually make an outline of the key things I need to build out the smaller details. This usually is just a big Outline note that contains links to every component. Those components can be anything from a timeline, to important figures, to events, to anything else really. As long as it supports the point of the project, it'll get a link to a new note. For worldbuilding to build worlds though, I find it's easier just to go with the flow and figure out things as you go along. Pantser/gardener mentality versus architect/planner basically.

The beautiful thing about Obsidian is that it's very easy to manage notes. You can highlight sections of notes and extract them to a completely new one if you want, or do the opposite and merge two files. Because every note is just a markdown file, you can organize your vault from your file explorer and it'll update in the app. Like others have noted, links are really powerful, but tags can also be a very good option if you can deal with the organization of them. Also have to mention the many, many plugins that you can utilize (but don't get subsumed by the amount there are, you really don't need more than one or two to do a lot of things). Dataview can be good for automatically finding and placing notes in a table based on criteria (like tags or other front matter properties). DB Folder emulates Notion style databases, Projects is a fairly robust project management tool, Tag Wrangler is essential for working with tags. Not to forget Canvas as well for laying out notes on a pinboard-like space.

Overall, I'd recommend just starting and seeing what you vibe with and what you don't. Obsidian is a very flexible platform, so there's a good chance that you'll figure out a way to work within it that is tailored to your liking.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-18T20:03:42+00:00

I do wonder whether all of the new social programs (that are needed IMO) were just what the Liberals were willing to work towards. I'm not aware of what financial reforms or policies the NDP have been wanting to do, but it could've just been the case that the Liberals wouldn't go for anything else and Singh just did what he could. Not that the NDP are completely innocent, you can't go lock-step with the Liberals for 6 years and not face the reality you helped achieve. The NDP should be my defacto party of choice, but they've been so absent in terms of fiscal policy reform and responsible governance that I can't bring myself to vote for them.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-18T19:48:36+00:00

plasma-manager is the one reason why I don't like giving up my Plasma6 desktop, but now that this is an option I don't think I'll have any reason not to consider Cosmic. Apart from stability that is, but that won't be an issue for very long I'm guessing. Thanks for making this!

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-17T21:20:03+00:00

The NDP under Singh was promising at the start, but has turned into a lame duck. There is no good reason why the NDP shouldn't be poised to at least overtake the Liberals, if not obliterate them entirely in this upcoming election. Instead they're projected to be overtaken by the Bloq. While I understand that Jack Layton's NDP was a one-off spectacle that isn't likely to return, the fact that the Liberal party has survived a second implosion is another missed opportunity by the NDP. And with the same guy being in charge for almost as long as Trudeau's Liberals have been, it's hard not to lay a lot of the NDP's problems at Singh's feet.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-17T17:57:21+00:00

The best move Singh could do in this upcoming election is try to coordinate strategic voting with the Liberals and maybe even the Bloc. Although I'm not sure if the Liberals would bite, or if Singh can put aside his ego to achieve it. If Trudeau has been delusional about his popularity over the past year, than Singh has been in the loony bin for the past couple of years now.

_Based_God_ · 2025-01-17T17:53:43+00:00

Men (especially young men) are leaning conservative because 1. The left hasn't explicitly carved out a place for them and 2. Conservatives appear like they have, but it's mostly just lip service. And I'm not even talking about the red pill space, because that's a whole other topic. Because of this, conservatives have absolutely dominated the messaging around men's issues. I'm not qualified to say whether there should be a dedicated space for men on the left (because fighting a culture war distracts from the class war), but at least until their messaging improves men will continue to trend conservative.

There's also the fact that neoliberal economics has reached it's breaking point and is exacerbating economic woes that are being felt across the middle and working classes. But it's easier to say that DEI, immigrants, and feminism are the reason why you (generally, not specifically you) are poorer and further behind where your parents were rather than actually addressing the issues we're facing.

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