Matt’s bleeding heart-friend and others like her are some of the biggest internal threats to the proper functioning of this Country. Her reasoning is catastrophic for two reasons. First, it necessarily leads to bad outcomes because there is no reason to ever have any confidence in her diagnosis of any problem. The subway story is emblematic. The guy ranting on the subway IS the problem. Full stop. And this is true no matter the demographic characteristics of him or the other passengers. This is simply NOT a debatable point. And the minute you lose sight of (or worse, simply deny) that indisputable and fundamental point, your ability to correctly identify a solution to the problem is fatally compromised.
Failing to properly diagnose an actual problem is bad enough. It is compounded when it becomes obvious for all to see that the reason for the mis-diagnosis is the application of a double-standard driven by demographic considerations. The corrosive effect of the oppression Olympics on society as a whole cannot be over-stated: people who are paying attention can see what is happening. And it gets worse when someone points out to the bleeding heart that no, actually, the ranting dude is the problem - and the bleeding heart responds by accusing the person making this self-evident observation of being a [fill-in-the-blank] ist of some sort. Condescending/insulting people are annoying enough when they are right. They are downright infuriating when they are wrong.
Anyhow, this is exactly how you wind up with drug addicts masturbating in front of kids. We would rightly imprison any straight, cis, white, mentally-healthy man who did this (well, this is Canada, maybe we wouldn’t – but we should, so play along). We should do the same to any gay, trans, black, mentally-healthy woman who did this. And we should mandate medical treatment for any mentally ill/addicted person who did this.
And let me endorse Jen’s aside – men should never compete against women in sports unless and until we as a society decide to abolish separate competitions for the two sexes.
Matt: The feeling that historians have when warnings of possible futures are ignored and/or actively insulted was addressed well by Sophocles long ago.
Teiresias: Alas, how terrible is wisdom
when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!
This I knew well, but had forgotten it,
else I would not have come here.
- Oedipus the King 316-9
Spoiler alert: It doesn't end well for Oedipus, although to be fair it works out basically ok for Teiresias.
P.S. - Is it really a spoiler if the play is 2500 years old?
Japan is the counterpoint to the "military name" discussion: they don't have a "military" either but a "self-defence force" instead; however, said "non-military" has one of the biggest armed maritime fleets in the world with "helicopter carriers" capable of landing and launching F-35 fighter jets.
The lack of funding for military, infrastructure, etc comes about honestly. We chose circuses over bread and stuff like universal old age security and universal no-fee health care over "hard" stuff.
In just the last year we chose free dental care for well to do boomers over military. We chose cheap day care for upper income white collar workers over decent housing for our folks in uniform.
We need to address why Canadian chose this if we are to figure out our priorities as a nation. My hypothesis is that Canada is a synthesis of Scottish and French values and we get both the god and the bad of that.
One thing though for is sure. As the #22nd richest country in the world per capita GDP we can't afford both the cradle to grave nanny state and a real military and infrastructure build out. Unless Canadians start taking pure ambition and earning money in a free market more seriously.
I have a friend who in the late 2010s took a sabbatical from Shopify to work at Canadian Digital Services to see if he could help the organization fix some of the issues you complained about at the beginning of the episode. After 3 months it became clear to him that there were so many organizational problems that it would be impossible to have any impact so he went back to Shopify.
The thing to understand is that Canada do things badly is not always about a lack of investment. It is that we have organizations structured in a way that they can’t succeed. But because they are a part of government they can never fail enough to be dissolved.
If you’re interested in interviewing this friend, please let me know. I’ve not talked to him in several years but I can ask him.
The term Jen is looking for is "technical debt". This is when a suboptimal technical decision is made for short term benefit, usually to save time or money, but will have to be paid back and then some at some point in the future. Accumulating technical debt is typical IT practice as optimizing the entire stack with every change is not feasible. Successful IT organizations carefully track tech debt and plan to resolve it before it becomes overwhelming. Perhaps the Government of Canada manages tech debt the same way it does fiscal debt.
The Economist article was only online for a short period of time, so it must have contained inaccuracies.
Kanananaskis Country encompasses 4,000 sq km of provincial parks and protected areas between Calgary and Banff with multiple access points. Kanananaskis surrounds Canmore on three sides, with Banff forming the western boundary. Kanananaskis consists of several valleys (Elbow, Sheep, Highwood, Kanananaskis, Spray and part the Bow). The G7 is being held at Kanananaskis Village, which is in the actual Kanananaskis River valley. It contains a through road, highway 40, that branches off the TCH and loops around to Longview south of Calgary. Kanananaskis Village consists of a hotel, Nordic Spa, a large and very elaborate campground, 36 hole golf course, a hostel and the Nakiska ski resort. As highway 40 is the only way in or out of Kanananaskis Village, it is easy to secure.
Perhaps Jen could have created an animated GIF that cycles through the pages of her various arcticles.
you can access highway 40 ( during the summer ) from 940 starting in the Crowsnest pass in the south as well. Gravel road but beautiful views. Jen you really need to get out of the city for all kinds of reasons.
Hey. Jen has recently switched to a headset. There appears to be a significant volume discrepancy between her and Matt. In order to hear her I have to crank the volume - but then Matt is screaming at me. :) Would love it if Jen went back to the system she used a month ago.
Liberalism means many things to many people today but, from the Scottish enlightenment writers, it means a democratic system whereby the government gets its authority from the base unit (bottom up) that possesses liberty... namely, the individual. It is with the citizens of a nation that a government makes its compact (voting) and, from that compact receives the consent of the governed. It is from the collective of individuals that our shared civil rights derive. Without that first principle - government that respects the primacy of the individual in law (legal autonomy) - we can have no liberal democracy. The emphasis is on 'liberal'. Without the 'liberal' element, democracy is simply mob rule.
Now here's the thing about Canada: our legal system has morphed (devolved). It has moved backwards (called 'progressive) to a top down system of authority that assigns legal privileges (mistakenly called 'rights' by 'progressives' who support such regressive actions with no sense of irony) to certain group identities. These identities form the membership of them. It is government who determines the constituency of these groups and it is government that assigns certain legal privileges to them. This breaks the liberal compact. The liberal compact is broken when we no longer share equal rights as citizens; rather, we are granted by government decree (often, and also ironically, at the behest of these so-called 'human rights' commissions and tribunals) certain privileges and legal discriminations based on assigned group identity characteristics.
This kind of legal system is correctly and accurately called 'illiberal' (it neuters legal respect for the primacy of individual authority) and it reverses the social contract between individuals who have the same inherent liberties and a top down authority that will assign by fiat who gets what legal protections for which 'liberties' that the government deems "acceptable" for that group. This is how we get competing 'rights'... because in this inversion of liberalism, groups are awarded legal privileges that automatically create groups from non members (like Quebec's 'distinct society' that Trudeau Sr quite rightly asked "Distinct from what? Distinct from whom? Distinct in what way?"). Equal legal treatment of individuals - liberalism - is literally impossible when groups - formed by selecting certain criteria for membership - are granted legal privileges that are then mistakenly called 'rights'. They're not. They are privileges. Legal privileges. If a criteria is not shared by all individual citizens, we're no longer talking about rights and we're no longer talking about a liberal democracy. We are talking about socialism. And this is why political experiments based on socialism eventually fail (a house divided, yes, but a house built to be divided and divided and divided again... divided eventually right down to what truly IS the common base unit that cannot be further divided by group ideology, namely, the individual. Go figure. Hence, we eventually arrive at First Principles of what constitutes individual rights and the freedoms we share. We call this 'liberalism'.).
Matt and Jen, great piece as usual. I like your CERAAFRDP acronym. That said, the idea expressed by your acronym is not new. Twenty two years ago when my brother was given command of a CMBG, I joked with him that the formation he then commanded was in reality a FGTF (Force Generation and Training Formation) and not a combat ready mechanized brigade group.
Ya’ll were in the zone this episode with some solid LOL moments too. Somehow you make our Canuck political mess fun to listen to. Godspeed at the G7 Jen. Been hearing and seeing all the mucky-mucks fly and drive in. I’m about 40km away as the crow flies. It’s weird to think of all the people who are usually in the news meeting ‘just over there’ in my general ‘hood.
Fascinating podcast - there is a lot to ponder. Words are powerful and perhaps the word 'harm' is so infused in our communication style that it can and must be everything out there can cause harm. A lot of organizations do outcome measurement but what is an outcome compared to a specific data-based question? When we say 'harm' what are we talking about specifically?
Probably two levels down on some Government of Canada website they are still referring to citizens being able to request more detail about "The Information Superhighway" by sending an electronic mail message to cangov@aol.com
The history cycle thing might be the Strauss–Howe generational theory: per Wikipedia, "The Strauss–Howe generational theory, devised by William Strauss and Neil Howe, is a psychohistorical theory which describes a theorized recurring generation cycle in American and Western history. According to the theory, historical events are associated with recurring generational personas (archetypes). Each generational persona unleashes a new era (called a turning) lasting around 21 years, in which a new social, political, and economic climate (mood) exists. They are part of a larger cyclical 'saeculum' (a long human life, which usually spans around 85 years, although some saecula have lasted longer). The theory states that a crisis recurs in American history after every saeculum, which is followed by a recovery (high). During this recovery, institutions and communitarian values are strong. Ultimately, succeeding generational archetypes attack and weaken institutions in the name of autonomy and individualism, which eventually creates a tumultuous political environment that ripens conditions for another crisis." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Keynes also described the 80 year interval for economic crises as well for the same reasons in the podcast. It is/was not just a far right crackpot theory.
Matt’s bleeding heart-friend and others like her are some of the biggest internal threats to the proper functioning of this Country. Her reasoning is catastrophic for two reasons. First, it necessarily leads to bad outcomes because there is no reason to ever have any confidence in her diagnosis of any problem. The subway story is emblematic. The guy ranting on the subway IS the problem. Full stop. And this is true no matter the demographic characteristics of him or the other passengers. This is simply NOT a debatable point. And the minute you lose sight of (or worse, simply deny) that indisputable and fundamental point, your ability to correctly identify a solution to the problem is fatally compromised.
Failing to properly diagnose an actual problem is bad enough. It is compounded when it becomes obvious for all to see that the reason for the mis-diagnosis is the application of a double-standard driven by demographic considerations. The corrosive effect of the oppression Olympics on society as a whole cannot be over-stated: people who are paying attention can see what is happening. And it gets worse when someone points out to the bleeding heart that no, actually, the ranting dude is the problem - and the bleeding heart responds by accusing the person making this self-evident observation of being a [fill-in-the-blank] ist of some sort. Condescending/insulting people are annoying enough when they are right. They are downright infuriating when they are wrong.
Anyhow, this is exactly how you wind up with drug addicts masturbating in front of kids. We would rightly imprison any straight, cis, white, mentally-healthy man who did this (well, this is Canada, maybe we wouldn’t – but we should, so play along). We should do the same to any gay, trans, black, mentally-healthy woman who did this. And we should mandate medical treatment for any mentally ill/addicted person who did this.
And let me endorse Jen’s aside – men should never compete against women in sports unless and until we as a society decide to abolish separate competitions for the two sexes.
This is what happens when we allow the classes that can indulge in luxury beliefs have gatekeeper powers in our society.
And people wonder where populism comes from?
Matt: The feeling that historians have when warnings of possible futures are ignored and/or actively insulted was addressed well by Sophocles long ago.
Teiresias: Alas, how terrible is wisdom
when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!
This I knew well, but had forgotten it,
else I would not have come here.
- Oedipus the King 316-9
Spoiler alert: It doesn't end well for Oedipus, although to be fair it works out basically ok for Teiresias.
P.S. - Is it really a spoiler if the play is 2500 years old?
Japan is the counterpoint to the "military name" discussion: they don't have a "military" either but a "self-defence force" instead; however, said "non-military" has one of the biggest armed maritime fleets in the world with "helicopter carriers" capable of landing and launching F-35 fighter jets.
The lack of funding for military, infrastructure, etc comes about honestly. We chose circuses over bread and stuff like universal old age security and universal no-fee health care over "hard" stuff.
In just the last year we chose free dental care for well to do boomers over military. We chose cheap day care for upper income white collar workers over decent housing for our folks in uniform.
We need to address why Canadian chose this if we are to figure out our priorities as a nation. My hypothesis is that Canada is a synthesis of Scottish and French values and we get both the god and the bad of that.
One thing though for is sure. As the #22nd richest country in the world per capita GDP we can't afford both the cradle to grave nanny state and a real military and infrastructure build out. Unless Canadians start taking pure ambition and earning money in a free market more seriously.
I have a friend who in the late 2010s took a sabbatical from Shopify to work at Canadian Digital Services to see if he could help the organization fix some of the issues you complained about at the beginning of the episode. After 3 months it became clear to him that there were so many organizational problems that it would be impossible to have any impact so he went back to Shopify.
The thing to understand is that Canada do things badly is not always about a lack of investment. It is that we have organizations structured in a way that they can’t succeed. But because they are a part of government they can never fail enough to be dissolved.
If you’re interested in interviewing this friend, please let me know. I’ve not talked to him in several years but I can ask him.
The term Jen is looking for is "technical debt". This is when a suboptimal technical decision is made for short term benefit, usually to save time or money, but will have to be paid back and then some at some point in the future. Accumulating technical debt is typical IT practice as optimizing the entire stack with every change is not feasible. Successful IT organizations carefully track tech debt and plan to resolve it before it becomes overwhelming. Perhaps the Government of Canada manages tech debt the same way it does fiscal debt.
The Economist article was only online for a short period of time, so it must have contained inaccuracies.
Kanananaskis Country encompasses 4,000 sq km of provincial parks and protected areas between Calgary and Banff with multiple access points. Kanananaskis surrounds Canmore on three sides, with Banff forming the western boundary. Kanananaskis consists of several valleys (Elbow, Sheep, Highwood, Kanananaskis, Spray and part the Bow). The G7 is being held at Kanananaskis Village, which is in the actual Kanananaskis River valley. It contains a through road, highway 40, that branches off the TCH and loops around to Longview south of Calgary. Kanananaskis Village consists of a hotel, Nordic Spa, a large and very elaborate campground, 36 hole golf course, a hostel and the Nakiska ski resort. As highway 40 is the only way in or out of Kanananaskis Village, it is easy to secure.
Perhaps Jen could have created an animated GIF that cycles through the pages of her various arcticles.
you can access highway 40 ( during the summer ) from 940 starting in the Crowsnest pass in the south as well. Gravel road but beautiful views. Jen you really need to get out of the city for all kinds of reasons.
Hey. Jen has recently switched to a headset. There appears to be a significant volume discrepancy between her and Matt. In order to hear her I have to crank the volume - but then Matt is screaming at me. :) Would love it if Jen went back to the system she used a month ago.
First principles: liberalism.
Liberalism means many things to many people today but, from the Scottish enlightenment writers, it means a democratic system whereby the government gets its authority from the base unit (bottom up) that possesses liberty... namely, the individual. It is with the citizens of a nation that a government makes its compact (voting) and, from that compact receives the consent of the governed. It is from the collective of individuals that our shared civil rights derive. Without that first principle - government that respects the primacy of the individual in law (legal autonomy) - we can have no liberal democracy. The emphasis is on 'liberal'. Without the 'liberal' element, democracy is simply mob rule.
Now here's the thing about Canada: our legal system has morphed (devolved). It has moved backwards (called 'progressive) to a top down system of authority that assigns legal privileges (mistakenly called 'rights' by 'progressives' who support such regressive actions with no sense of irony) to certain group identities. These identities form the membership of them. It is government who determines the constituency of these groups and it is government that assigns certain legal privileges to them. This breaks the liberal compact. The liberal compact is broken when we no longer share equal rights as citizens; rather, we are granted by government decree (often, and also ironically, at the behest of these so-called 'human rights' commissions and tribunals) certain privileges and legal discriminations based on assigned group identity characteristics.
This kind of legal system is correctly and accurately called 'illiberal' (it neuters legal respect for the primacy of individual authority) and it reverses the social contract between individuals who have the same inherent liberties and a top down authority that will assign by fiat who gets what legal protections for which 'liberties' that the government deems "acceptable" for that group. This is how we get competing 'rights'... because in this inversion of liberalism, groups are awarded legal privileges that automatically create groups from non members (like Quebec's 'distinct society' that Trudeau Sr quite rightly asked "Distinct from what? Distinct from whom? Distinct in what way?"). Equal legal treatment of individuals - liberalism - is literally impossible when groups - formed by selecting certain criteria for membership - are granted legal privileges that are then mistakenly called 'rights'. They're not. They are privileges. Legal privileges. If a criteria is not shared by all individual citizens, we're no longer talking about rights and we're no longer talking about a liberal democracy. We are talking about socialism. And this is why political experiments based on socialism eventually fail (a house divided, yes, but a house built to be divided and divided and divided again... divided eventually right down to what truly IS the common base unit that cannot be further divided by group ideology, namely, the individual. Go figure. Hence, we eventually arrive at First Principles of what constitutes individual rights and the freedoms we share. We call this 'liberalism'.).
Matt and Jen, great piece as usual. I like your CERAAFRDP acronym. That said, the idea expressed by your acronym is not new. Twenty two years ago when my brother was given command of a CMBG, I joked with him that the formation he then commanded was in reality a FGTF (Force Generation and Training Formation) and not a combat ready mechanized brigade group.
Ya’ll were in the zone this episode with some solid LOL moments too. Somehow you make our Canuck political mess fun to listen to. Godspeed at the G7 Jen. Been hearing and seeing all the mucky-mucks fly and drive in. I’m about 40km away as the crow flies. It’s weird to think of all the people who are usually in the news meeting ‘just over there’ in my general ‘hood.
Fascinating podcast - there is a lot to ponder. Words are powerful and perhaps the word 'harm' is so infused in our communication style that it can and must be everything out there can cause harm. A lot of organizations do outcome measurement but what is an outcome compared to a specific data-based question? When we say 'harm' what are we talking about specifically?
Probably two levels down on some Government of Canada website they are still referring to citizens being able to request more detail about "The Information Superhighway" by sending an electronic mail message to cangov@aol.com
The history cycle thing might be the Strauss–Howe generational theory: per Wikipedia, "The Strauss–Howe generational theory, devised by William Strauss and Neil Howe, is a psychohistorical theory which describes a theorized recurring generation cycle in American and Western history. According to the theory, historical events are associated with recurring generational personas (archetypes). Each generational persona unleashes a new era (called a turning) lasting around 21 years, in which a new social, political, and economic climate (mood) exists. They are part of a larger cyclical 'saeculum' (a long human life, which usually spans around 85 years, although some saecula have lasted longer). The theory states that a crisis recurs in American history after every saeculum, which is followed by a recovery (high). During this recovery, institutions and communitarian values are strong. Ultimately, succeeding generational archetypes attack and weaken institutions in the name of autonomy and individualism, which eventually creates a tumultuous political environment that ripens conditions for another crisis." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Keynes also described the 80 year interval for economic crises as well for the same reasons in the podcast. It is/was not just a far right crackpot theory.
Seriously, 20 min start with personal journalist anecdotes and content planning…. Maybe do that before you start.
I appreciate the information you collect as journalists and your commentary on that topical info.
Disagree, this is part if them using the entirety of the content cow to serve us up.