Gray

100% agreed on all your points. I think a lot about government structure and what structures lead to the most efficient and ethical governments. To some degree there isn't a "perfect system" that will keep the fascists out and prevent the suppression of minorities. At least not a system that allows for healthy change. People will always be persuaded by those ideas unfortunately. Our biggest job is to fight these issues at the ballot box.

With that said, there are some major thinngs we can do systemically to prevent people like Trump from making it to the head of government. The biggest one would be ranked choice voting or one of the other alternative voting methods. Those systems tend to make fringe candidates unlikely to win.

The other big and interesting question I've had specifically in my move to Canada is deciphering whether a parliamentary system is fundamentally better or worse than a presidential system in these regards. On the one hand, a presidential system can turn a presidential election into a cult of personality. On the other hand, parliamentary systems by design always hand executive power to the majority party in their legislature. That means split government isn't an option in a parliamentary system (unless the majority is formed by two or more parties). I thought moving to Canada that I would find the parliamentary system better, but I've honestly started to change my mind on it. I think not directly electing the executive here just means people do it through their single vote for a representative. As a result, the representitive as a concept is valued less. Beyond that, people have less direct control over the executive and people like Trudeau have less incentive to represent the nation as a whole. I think I prefer America's system with a separate election for each position of government. If a country is divided then maybe it's not bad for its government to also be divided. I appreciated having a Democratic house when Trump was president. It felt safer to have more views represented. This is in contrast to say, Ontario, where once the conservatives won, they had full control of both the provincial legislature and the premiership together, allowing them to get involved in all sorts of nasty business. If the government had been divided, Ford would not have been able to do things like invoke the Notwithstanding Clause.

My brain is powered by memes. Memory? More like memery.

I answered most of this in other comments, but long story short:

Housing prices and cost of living are insane compared to incomes here. And I work in STEM. Think California COL and housing prices with a midwestern salary.

The healthcare system is underfunded and struggling. You can spend a day on the phone calling every family doctor in an area and not find a single one accepting new patients. We did exactly that. Called 32 offices and nothing. The ER has nightmare wait times and walk-in clinics are not able to provide the care people need because they have such a large volume to work through.

No major political figures are offering good solutions to these problems. In fact, they're using wedge issues from the US to stir up their respective bases instead of even looking inwards at Canada. Conservative leader, Pierre Pollievre, recently called Trudeau a marxist! I've heard comservatives ranting and raving about trans people instead of caring about doing anything productive. Meanwhile, Trudeau's admin was focused on a toothless gun ban when guns aren't a major problem here like they are in the US. The lack of a gun culture is actually one of my big positives here, so I don't know why Trudeau is focusing on things like that when there are major crises at hand here related to the costs of living.

There's a lot of corruption too. Trudeau is in the pocket of big businesses including the telecom triopoly (Rogers, Bell Canada, and Telus). Trudeau placed a former telecom big wig in charge of the CRTC, the Canadian equivalent of the US FCC. They have refused to allow MVNOs into Canada. Those are those third party cell companies like Mint Mobile that allow cheaper phone plans in the US. This refusal is despite Canada famously having overexpensive internet and cell phone plans due to the tripoloy. The insanity creeps into everything related to cell phones and the internet here. As an example, I am allowed only 3 voice mail messages in my inbox unless I pay more. I also have to pay long distance for calls to the US, something that isn't true with US telecoms for calls to Canada. As someone who works in telecom, I can tell you that these kinds of fees are bullshit and cooked up given how modern cell networks work. I have had to pay $50 for an accidental one hour call to the US.

Anyways, that's all not even to mention Trudeau's scandals. Namely the SNC-Lavalin Affair and the Aga Khan Affair.

And all of that is just the liberals. The conservatives are no better. Particularly in Ontario, the premier (governor equivalent) here, Doug Ford, has been inundated with scandals. These include his scheme to give away preserved lands through under-the-table deals, his decision to put his unqualified nephew into a ministerial position in government, and an attempt to use an exception in the Constitution to freeze people's rights to strike.

These scandals are all so frustrating, but what makes them unbearable is that there just isn't the political willpower here to scrutinize these politicians and bring them to justice. Both Doug Ford and Trudeau were reelected despite their scandals. Parties aren't offering good alternatives and the candidate selection process for parties in Canada is far less transparent than it is in the US, so political activism is that much harder.

Unless Canada gets its shit together soon, you're going to be hearing negative big item stories coming from here not too long from now. Right now the conservatives are winning federal approval polls and there looks to be a good chance that their leader, Pierre Pollievre, could be PM come 2025. As much as I am not a fan of Trudeau, Pollievre would be even worse. Canada really needs there to be a political movement that realigns the current toxic party dynamics. People here just seem so disengaged from politics that I don't foresee anything changing anytime soon.

Pollievre called Trudeau a marxist the other day. It's the same empty rhetorical bullshit that Republicans in the US love to throw around. The CPC is headed on the same exact path that US Republicans were on a decade ago or so.

Housing has been one of the top issues for me. That mixed with comparitvely low incomes. I have a bachelors in a STEM field and I struggle to find places offering more than $60k/yr CAD. In US dollars that's like $40kish/yr. Whereas I'm looking at close to a million dollars CAD for a house in some parts of Ontario. It's absurd.

The other big thing has been the healthcare system. It was the big draw for me. But it's severely underfunded and bursting at the seams. My wife called 32 family doctor's offices the other day and couldn't find one that would take us as patients. ER waits are a nightmare and walk in clinics are crowded and overworked.

There are also issues with government corruption and poor candidate choices in the major parties. I went into that in another comment so I won't right here.

The best thing about Canada has been the lack of a police state and the lack of a gun culture.

If you're worried about the stripping of rights from other humans and unadulterated corruption, then I would caution you about Canada.

Quick history lesson: Canada only created their constitution in the 80's after centuries of British rule, both direct and indirect. When creating their constitution they ran into some major issues with provinces needing to get on board, just like the drama that the US faced with their Articles of Confederation and getting the states to get on board. As a result, some exemptions to the constitution were put in place to strengthen provincial power and weaken federal power. Specifically relevant right now is something called the "Notwithstanding Clause". This clause allows provincial premiers (akin to governors in the US) to freeze certain rights in the "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" (akin to the US Bill of Rights) at will until the next election. The current premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, has openly thrown this ability around to attempt to suppress strikes. That's right, to end strikes that he didn't like, he attempted to remove the literal right of the workers to strike. And this was a constitutionally enshrined power. So be wary, democratic backsliding is a problem everywhere and Canada is no safe haven from it.

Right now, Trudeau is exceedingly unpopular in Canada because housing prices and the cost of living is absolutely spiraling out of control. The conservative party is offering a horrible and corrupt man, Pollievre, as an alternative. He will only be worse for Canada. The third party, the NDP, has not been being taken seriously here (though they have my support). The NDP has been part of the currently formed government, which has caused them to take a hit to their approval. As it stands now, polls are favoring conservatives.

In terms of provincial politics, most of it is a shitshow here with the possible exception of British Columbia. Ontario has been especially terrible with our premier, Doug Ford, getting caught up in scandal after scandal. His administration was recently caught up in a corruption scandal of trying to use underhanded deals to sell off parts of the Greenbelt, a giant preserved belt of natural lands snaking throughout the province.

The only thing Canada has been noticeably better on for me has been the lack of guns (I don't fear for my life walking around my city at night) and the greatly reduced police state. Even the healthcare system that's so renowned in the US has been going through its own shitshow lately, with it being majorly defunded by conservative parties. It's been put through a major stress test and it's ready to snap. My wife called 32 family doctor's offices the other day and we couldn't get in to see even one of them. There are nightmare stories of 45 minute waits for ambulancea or several nights spent in the ER waiting to be seen. The walk in clinics are the best thing I've found, but those doctors always seem stressed out and very quick to get you in and out the door.

Moved to Canada a year and a half ago. They made the process pretty smooth and easy all told. With that said, I haven't had a good time here and I regret moving. There's a lot of "grass is greener" rhetoric in the US right now, especially from the left. Be warned that a lot of that is misguided. I was underprepared for the host of unique issues that Canada itself has. Leaving the US will not fix all your political problems. It'll just reveal new ones that you aren't familiar with. But, after saying all of that, I certainly would never discourage anyone from trying to move. Seeing the world and opening your mind to new cultures are never bad things. For all my misery here, I have learned a lot about myself. Just make sure you go into it with open eyes. Have realistic expectations. Visit the places you want to move before you move to them.

From what I understand, some degree of nuclear power is always going to be necessary. This is because while we tend to think of excess power in the energy grid as being stored away, this in fact is not the case and we only use power as it's actively available. Excess power is wasted. The major downside of renewables is that they're circumstancial. Solar energy is only available during clear days, wind power is only available on windy days, etc. Until we massively improve our energy storage capabilities we're going to need some kind of constant supply of power backing the other ones when they aren't available. Without adequate nuclear energy available, that's going to be fossil fuels. And when compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear energy is unbelievably better for the environment. The only byproduct is the spent fuel which is dangerous, but we have control over where it ends up which is more than can be said for fossil fuels.

I've always found the Bible to be so arbitrary. A bunch of old dudes at a few councils 1000+ years ago decided what they wanted their core beliefs to be. And then they decided what books they wanted to recognize as legitimate in the Bible. The only difference between which books are "apocryphal" or "heretical" and which are "inspired by God" is which books those old men chose and which they rejected. Why is the fever dream that is Revelations considered legitimate when other more coherent books aren't? Understanding how arbitrary it all is played a big role in my deconversion from Evangelical Christianity. The people who tout the Bible as the "one truth" rarely understand how arbitrary the process that got them that book was. They would spin some tale about how "God spoke through those men" or whatever, but it's all just bullshit excuses. You can imbue any event with supernatural backing when it conveniently fits your narrative.

And I'm not even someone who thinks that "all religion is poison" or whatever. Just the "Bible based" belief system that treats the Bible as infallible. I think logic and emotion are just as important of tools when talking about morality and religious guidance as the Bible is.