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We have a similar problem in some downtown places here - Investors / rich-folk buy them up for reasons, and then when they are done (or 'disused') they sit empty for ever, driving prices up.
I believe I saw a motion (but no action) to tax empty condos at a higher rate than fully-occupied ones.
Captalist democracy is not real democracy
Can you really have 'true democracy' in a species that has such a strong herd mentality as humans do? True democracy depends on 'free will', 'independent thought', and 'knowledge'. When the population in general can be so easily swayed to go along with one person's dogma or another, willfully ignorant and politically unintelligent, what is the meaning of 'democracy' except that it is about 'best at intimidating, charming, or marketing'? In a herd species, the 'election' is all about 'who do you want to be the dictator?'
We have the technology to switch from representative democracy to direct democracy. There would also need to be major changes to educate everyone on the topics being voted on. That would be a huge improvement if we can keep that education less corrupted by monied interests.
A true democracy would be incredibly easy to implement.
Our government could literally just make an app that sends us everything to individually vote on instead of our reps getting to vote.
That still leads to the 'herd mentality' problem. The impressionable voter is still too easily persuaded to vote 'dogma/cult' than 'informed decision'. Human adults, unfortunately, by and large prefer someone else to make their decisions for them, and they tend to vote in alignment with the decisions made by these 'influencers'. Look no further than the last Canadian election - the Catholic bishops in Canada (under the direction of a foreign power - the Pope) all told the Canadian Catholics how to vote (in the last weeks of the election), and it almost swayed the election to PP.
Steve Jobs famously had it absolutely dead-on when he said, about consumer input into his Apple products: 'Consumers have absolutely no idea of what they like and want until I tell them'.
There is no herd mentality problem, this is propaganda from those who seek to rule.
You either have tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the minority
Democracy is tyranny of the majority
It has been pretty much ascertained, even at the neurological level, that humans are a herd animal. For instance:
https://academic.oup.com/book/11486/chapter-abstract/160205905?login=false
The fact is, those who completely understand this, and have learned how to manipulate it, will be the ones who rule.
I'm saying it's not something we should sacrifice individual influence for
We have learned that even in representative democracies the representatives often ignore the people who they are supposed to represent, and that is far more damaging.
It really comes down to: do the citizens want a collective socially responsible leadership or an individual rights dictates all leadership. Socialism or Libertarianism. You cannot have a system that continuously waffles from one to the other, like the Americans are trying to do. The problem with 'democracy' as it is practiced in American society is that they insist on using a two-party (socialism vs libertarianism) adversarial system that keeps battling back and forth, winner take all. In that system, the 'election' only determines which side gets to tyrannize the other side. No matter who wins, the other side feels threatened by 'terrorism from the other side's dogma'.
Our neighbour unit is sitting empty since we moved last july. It is a 3 bedroom unit.
Carney was actually just asked about the housing crisis, here it is at 20:30 into the video:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q_C9a5BWiTE&pp=ygUQY2FybmV5IHF1ZXN0aW9ucw%3D%3D&start=1227
Carney must be the first PM that I can remember, who actually fleshes out answers, rather than avoiding them. Impressive, to say the least, as it shows a clear understanding of the subjects he's being asked about.
He's still skirting around the real issue which is allowing property owners to keep increasing rents and buying up housing with no oversight.
That's one part of a many part problem.
Housing (including rent) isn't solely the responsibility of the federal government, but I'm glad to see that they are getting more involved.
Provinces and municipal/regional governments play a much greater role, so we need to pressure all levels of government to step up their efforts.
Exactly. It's great that the feds want to fix things... but the Provinces hold most of the levers being directly responsible for letting things devolve so far.
Here in BC Christy Clarke threw gasoline on the fire in 2016'ish and I watched condo prices jump 50% in months. I was lucky to have a condo to sell, but I also couldn't afford that same condo for the price I sold it. It's bonkers how much prices have gone up.
The NDP here has done something, if not enough.
In the end it's a pretty intractable problem. As a country we bet on housing as an investment and now we're paying the piper so to speak.
Same problem in Montréal, thousands of empty condos, they are small and expensive. And condo fee kill the deal compared to owning a house...