The entire point of trade, the very purpose of it, is to gain access to the imports. Those things which Johnny Foreigner makes cheaper or better than we do. To tax ourselves because he makes things cheaper or better than we do is simple idiocy. […] Over and above this stupidity there’s the depressing point that trade and trade protection really is a spiral. Here we’ve got the two largest economies on the planet tripping over themselves to punish their own citizenry for their temerity in buying foreign. And as we can see, it is a tit for tat spiral. A little bit of sabre rattling, a response, a larger amount of shouting, a response, then truly impoverishing levels of rock throwing into own harbours and off we go into making our own people less wealthy.
The true sadness here being that the spiral works the other way too. But hugely, vastly, more slowly. GATT was founded in 1947, it became, the process was transferred to, the WTO and it has taken them since then, that two generations, to reduce tariff levels to where they’re not really all that important in trade matters. Something that is being undone in just a couple of months of foolishness. GATT being something of a response to the economic demolition work done by Smoot Hawley of course.
Trade protection does spiral up and spiral down, the sadness being that here’s an asymmetry to the process. The reductions that make us richer take very much longer than the nonsenses that impoverish.
Tim Worstall, “The China, US, Trade War – It’s All Mutual On The Way Down As Well As Up”, Continental Telegraph, 2018-07-11.
November 5, 2020
QotD: The idiocy of tariffs
November 2, 2020
Federal government to web giants: “BOHICA!”
Michael Geist provides an unauthorized backgrounder on the Canadian government’s quixotic attempt to shakedown the likes of Netflix for money to give to “struggling” Canadian media companies:
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapure from CPAC video.
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault is set to introduce his “Get Money from Web Giants” Internet regulation bill on Monday. Based on his previous public comments, the bill is expected to grant the CRTC extensive new powers to regulate Internet-based video streaming services. In particular, expect the government to mandate payments to support Canadian content production for the streaming services and establish new “discoverability” requirements that will require online services to override user preferences by promoting Canadian content. The government is likely to issue a policy direction to the CRTC that identifies its specific priorities, but the much-discussed link licensing requirement for social media companies that Guilbeault has supported will not be part of this legislative package.
These reforms mark the culmination of a dramatic reversal in government digital policy. After then-Heritage Minister Melanie Joly unveiled her 2017 digital cancon strategy that focused on market-based solutions and emphasized exports of Canadian culture, extensive lobbying gradually let to a major policy flip flop. The CRTC reversed its prior position on Internet streaming regulation in 2018 with a regulate-everything approach, the deeply flawed Yale report released earlier this year provided the blueprint for CRTC-led regulation, and Guilbeault jumped on board with a declaration that his top legislative priority was to “get money from web giants.”
On Monday, the government will undoubtedly line up the lobby groups that supported the reform to provide positive quotes, suggest reforms will lead to billions in new revenues, and claim the bill ensures regulatory fairness by requiring that everyone contribute. Yet much of the policy is based on fictions: that this levels the playing field, that there is a Cancon crisis, that discoverability requirements respond to a serious concern, that this will result in quick payments to the industry, that this is consistent with net neutrality, or that consumers will not bear the costs of reform.
None of this is true. But beyond those issues – each discussed in further detail below – this most notably represents a significant new source of speech regulation. We do not require government authorization to publish newspapers, blog posts, or to simply voice our views in a public forum. That we require governmental authorization in the form of licensing for broadcasters was largely justified in furtherance of cultural policies on the grounds of limited access to scarce spectrum. That justification simply does not apply to the Internet, no matter how many times Guilbeault refers to the inclusion of Internet companies within the “broadcast system.” This is not a matter of Internet exceptionalism. Laws and regulations such as taxation, competition, privacy, and consumer protection are all among the rules that apply regardless of whether the service is offline or online. But speech regulation by the CRTC should require a far better justification than the lure of “free money” from Internet companies.
October 29, 2020
How to fix the CBC
… aside from cutting off the massive subsidies from the federal government, which would be my preferred solution if “nuke it from orbit” isn’t a viable choice. Let it sink or swim as a purely private media entity — I’d be betting on the “sink”, personally because they don’t currently have to compete thanks to their funding from the feds and are not noted for their quick adaptation skills. However, Peter Menzies isn’t quite as anti-CBC as I am:
In a recent piece here at The Line, I lamented the current status of the CBC. That’s easy enough to do, but it’s fair to ask what can actually be done to fix it. These ideas don’t provide all the answers but, implemented with conviction and speed, here’s where to start. Because there are some things that can be done, and relatively quickly, to revitalize the institution: the CBC may well be hell-bent on its own destructive dualism but clarifying its role and purifying its soul are still possible by getting it out of the advertising business and turning it into a proper public media.
Right now, the CBC is neither fish nor fowl. Sometimes, as with radio, it is a popular public broadcaster. At others, with its television channels, it fancies itself a commercial broadcaster, albeit a publicly-funded and relatively unpopular one. It plows both of those personalities into its commercial online operations and supplements them with reportage of the kind traditionally associated with newspapers. Like a creature of mythology, it shape-shifts through all of these roles as best suits its needs and moods.
On top of that, its OMG obsession with Trump’s America has drawn it far away from its content mandate to ensure Canadians learn about each other wherever they live in this vast and beautiful country. While its performance indicates otherwise, CBC’s purpose is not to secure a large audience share in the GTA or, in French, in Montreal, in order to earn more revenue. Nor is CBC News Network’s mandate to compete with CNN. The Corp’s raison d’etre, as defined in legislation, is to tell Canadians each other’s stories — even if the GTA and Montreal don’t care.
The only way to purify the CBC then, is to ban it — once and for all — from collecting advertising revenue from domestic consumption of its product. As its radio operations are already advertising-free this means no more ads on its TV or websites. Done. Finished.
October 27, 2020
QotD: Trader Joe’s
Jim Treacher, “Trader Joe’s Apologizes for Being Racist”, P.J. Media, 2020-07-20.
October 22, 2020
Carbon taxes may be the most efficient way to address GHG emissions, but no government has implemented them properly
I was persuaded by the economic arguments in favour of a carbon tax to address the externaly of greenhouse gas emissions, but I’ve long been skeptical that governments would actually implement them in a way to minimize economic distortion. A report from the Fraser Institute this week shows I was right to be doubtful, as none of the 31 OECD countries in the study have managed to introduce some form of carbon pricing without political “tinkering” … rather than replacing inefficient regulations, taxes and mandates with the carbon tax, they’ve generally just added carbon pricing on top of existing rules, making the carbon pricing scheme merely another tax grab that fails to achieve the stated goals:
Most economists consider human-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions an unintended negative externality of production and consumption. A negative externality occurs when the effects of producing or consuming goods and services impose costs on a third party which are not reflected in the prices charged for said goods and services. In the context of GHG emissions, this negative externality is calculated using the “social cost of carbon,” which is the future damage to society (adjusted to present value) of one additional tonne of carbon emitted to the atmosphere today.
Governments have a wide variety of policy alternatives to address the negative externality of emissions depending on the degree and depth of the policy intervention. They can either mandate individuals and firms to change their behaviour through command-and-control regulations, grant subsidies and tax credits to foster cleaner energy sources, or use market-based mechanisms to correct the misalignment of incentives. It is widely acknowledged that carbon pricing, one of these market tools, is the most cost-effective policy to reduce emissions, as it relies on price signals and trade to provide flexibility to economic agents as to where and how emissions mitigation occurs.
[…]
This report includes thirty-one high-income OECD countries, where each country has either implemented a carbon tax, an ETS [emissions trading system], or a combination of both pricing mechanisms. Carbon taxes are being implemented in 14 of them whereas 25 of these countries have their emissions covered by an ETS. Our analysis finds that, on average, 74 percent of carbon tax revenues in high-income OECD countries go directly into their general budget with no earmarking for any specific expenditure, while 12 percent are ring-fenced for environmental spending, and only 14 percent for revenue-recycling measures. This means that most governments are using carbon taxes as a revenue-raising tool rather than a mechanism to internalize the negative externalities of emissions in a cost-effective manner. Additionally, the vast majority of ETS revenues are being used to artificially accelerate the use of renewable energy sources, infrastructure, and technology.
The study also finds that no high-income OECD country has used carbon pricing to repeal emission-related regulations, but instead have introduced new ones following the adoption of the carbon tax or the ETS. Emissions caps, mandated fuel standards, technology-based standards, and renewable power mandates are just some examples of these regulations that undermine the cost-effectiveness of carbon pricing mechanisms. The majority of high-income OECD countries have a combination of support schemes for renewable energy sources, carbon pricing tools, and command-and-control regulations.
Overall, no high-income OECD country is following the textbook model of an optimal carbon pricing system, undermining their theoretical efficiency by design and implementation.
October 17, 2020
Actually, his photo has that effect on me too …
… except that I still keep the beard. David Warren, on the other hand, is clean shaven:
“Jack Dorsey, Twitter and Square founder, in a London cafe in November 2014.” by cellanr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
Every time I see a photograph of Jack Dorsey, I want to wash and shave. It is seldom that another human being has such an hygienic effect on me; especially one I have never personally met. Thanks to him, I may report to gentle reader that, up here in the privacy of the High Doganate (surrounded by jackhammers), I am quite clean-shaven this morning. I was able to resist the temptation to bathe in Dettol, but my shower was the next best thing.
I’m going out on a limb here. I am assuming my reader knows who Jack Dorsey is. (It’s not hard to find his picture.)
The boss of Twitter is among the “deep tech” executives who have, in a less ambiguous way than ever before, shut the accounts of the Trump campaign, within three weeks of a national election, and are blocking those (rather numerous) subscribers who are trying to forward the meaty revelations appearing in the New York Post. Those, incidentally, unambiguously show that one of the presidential candidates (Biden, of all people) is seriously fraudulent and corrupt. Who’d have guessed it? (Well, I did.)Now, when I write “deep tech,” some reader will accuse me of touting a conspiracy theory. I use this expression on the analogy of “deep state.” Curiously, I don’t think this is a conspiracy at all. In the District of Columbia, where the bureaucratic institutions of the Merican Nanny State are chiefly located, Democrats routinely take well over 90 percent of the vote. Republicans do not necessarily finish second, however. That the labour pool for these institutions is overwhelmingly “progressive,” is something I infer.
Ditto for Silicon Valley. The residents do not need to conspire, although the speed at which identical editorial decisions are reached, is amazing. This I attribute to their electronic hardware.
Some seven years ago, under the influence of well-intended friends, I did a three-month experiment of “being on Twitter.” They said it would immensely increase my “hits,” and it did — while dramatically decreasing attention to them. I was flattered by all the fan-mail I received, because I am a shallow person, but when the three months were up I got off. For I do not covet a mass audience, or that kind of fame. Engaging in live-time battles of wits with other Twitterers is fun for a while, but sooner or later one recovers one’s self-respect. Or at least some people do.
October 8, 2020
Fallen Flag — The Pacific Electric Railway
This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is southern California’s iconic Pacific Electric Railway Company, whose streetcars, interurbans, and buses served the vast area in and around Los Angeles and San Bernardino from 1901 until the passenger services were sold off in 1953. The electric service was converted to bus and the last electric rail line was discontinued in 1961. At its peak in the 1920s the “Red Cars” service was said to be the largest electric railway system in the entire world.
G. Mac Sebree covers the origins of the line in the late nineteenth century:
The story begins in 1895, when a line was completed from Los Angeles to Pasadena; a mere 10 years later, the system was virtually complete. To a great degree, PE was the brainchild of Henry Huntington, nephew of one of the Central Pacific’s “Big Four,” Collis P. Huntington. An active real-estate promoter, Henry needed the Big Red Cars and the transportation they provided to help sell lots and homes in the hinterlands.
His uncle’s Southern Pacific took control of the PE in 1911 in a deal that left the Los Angeles Railway, the narrow-gauge intracity system, in the nephew’s hands. The PE was built to standard gauge, and SP saw a brilliant future in freight for the interurban.
Pacific Electric route map.
Original data from http://sharemap.org/public/Los_Angeles_Pacific_Electric_Railways_(Red_Cars) via Wikimedia Commons.Interurbans were not considered Class I railroads (or any other class — they were not “steam railroads”), but from the very start, PE was big business. The California Railroad Commission said the property was worth $100 million in Depression dollars. Atypically for an interurban, the system served as a gathering network for carload freight shipments from citrus groves, manufacturing plants, oil refineries, warehouses, and the harbor at San Pedro. The three line-haul railroads serving southern California — Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and especially SP — depended on the Pacific Electric to some degree.
Yet in its heyday, PE carried huge numbers of passengers. As late as 1953, 50 percent of its revenue came from riders — but absolutely none of its profit. An all-time list shows that PE operated 143 distinct passenger routes. Despite the so-called “Great Merger of 1911,” in which local and interurban services were supposedly separated, the heaviest PE passenger lines largely served the L.A. urban area. An example was the street-running L.A.–Hollywood–Beverly Hills line, in which two-car trains rumbled down Hollywood Boulevard at 10-minute intervals.
At one time or another, PE single-truck Birney cars plied local lines in Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Redlands, Santa Ana, and San Pedro, although the 1920s were not far along before management sought to sell off or abandon these albatrosses.
After World War 2, the writing was on the wall for the Red Cars, as urban expansion and greatly increased car ownership cut at the economic basis for rail passenger service in southern California, especially as the new freeways were built.
After the war, though, things went downhill rapidly. As soon as buses were available, Pacific Electric began wholesale rail passenger-service abandonments. The new freeways were regarded as the rapid transit of the future. PE President Oscar Smith saw one possibility for saving rail service — if the state would pay. Just before the war, a short section of freeway between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley had been built, with the PE tracks relocated to the center of the new highway.
Why not replicate this all over the basin? The PE would cooperate, but public officials turned a deaf ear, and that was that. Freight service, meanwhile, prospered, but by the mid-1950s, PE began replacing its electric locomotives and box motors with diesels (a few steam locomotives also had been used during the war). Over the years, PE rostered about 100 electric locomotives and at least 75 box motors — big business, indeed.
In 1953, PE sold its passenger service (four rail lines out of the 6th and Main station, two out of Subway Terminal, and many bus lines) to Metropolitan Coach Lines. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, first formed in 1951, bought MCL on March 3, 1958, and the end for electric passenger service came in 1961. SP continued the freight work with diesels, and merged PE away on August 13, 1965. Today under the Union Pacific shield, a good bit of the old PE freight lines remain in service, unique survivors, busier than ever.
A veteran Pacific Electric “Big Red Car” already lettered for successor Metropolitan Coach Lines in the 1950s.
Photo by Voogd075 via Wikimedia Commons.
October 5, 2020
Winchester Lever Action Development: Model 1866
Forgotten Weapons
Published 7 Jun 2017While the Henry Repeating Rifle had been an serious leap forward in firearms capability, it was not without problems. The biggest single weakness of the Henry was its magazine. The tube magazine was open to dirt and debris, the follower could easily come to rest on the shooter’s hand or anything used as a rest and stop the weapon from feeding, and the while system was rather prone to being damaged.
These problems would all be addressed with the addition of Nelson King’s new loading gate idea, which allowed Winchester to omit the exposed follower entirely, solving a bunch of complaints all at once. The new system was more durable, more reliable, and allowed the rifle to be loaded without the awkward manipulation required by the Henry. The King improvement also allowed the addition of a wooden handguard, which was a welcome addition — it does not take very many black powder rounds for a barrel to become uncomfortably hot to the touch.
At the same time that these improvements were being made, company politics were taking shape to end Benjamin T. Henry’s involvement with the company. Henry attempted to take over ownership of the company because he felt he was not profiting as much as he should, but he had assigned his patent rights to Oliver Winchester in exchange for his contract to manufacture the guns. As a result, Winchester was able to create a new company (the Winchester Repeating Arms Company) with full rights to the design patents and sideline Henry.
The 1866 rifle, which was formally called simply the Winchester Repeating Rifle would continue to use the .44 Henry Rimfire cartridge, but would be made in a wider variety of configurations than the Henry had been, including carbine, rifle, and musket barrel lengths. It would prove to be a very popular rifle, and opened the path to further improvement, as it put the Winchester company on excellent financial footing.
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October 2, 2020
QotD: Price “gouging” in emergencies
In spite of the fact that per capita, there were more emergency responders sent to Puerto Rico and more funds sent to Puerto Rico than Texas, their problem persisted while the Texans very quickly received aid. The answer to the question why is: because of price fixing.
The free market, in seeing the price jump recognized the shortage of supply and responded quickly supplying Texans with an abundance of water cases because of the excessive profit margins – the increased supply eventually caused market competition and the price quickly dwindled to a more reasonable price.
Meanwhile, the market ignored Puerto Rico because the market was asked to ignore them by their own leaders through price fixing. Texans received water, quickly, and at reasonable prices, while Puerto Ricans didn’t.
If water is selling for $99/case, by the end of the day someone will have airlifted water into the region at $50/case, and the next morning water will be selling for $30/case. This will go on for a day or so, and the water crisis is quickly resolved. This was never permitted to happen in Puerto Rico.
Brandon Kirby, “Why Women Generally Aren’t Libertarian”, Being Libertarian, 2018-06-27.
October 1, 2020
Far from being in trouble, Canadian film and TV investment has nearly doubled in the last 10 years
The Canadian government — particularly Canadian Heritage minister Steven Guilbeault — is eager to pass legislation to “get money from the web giants” and their primary justification is the claim that Canadian TV and movie funding has been shrinking. As Michael Geist explains, that’s a pants-on-fire lie:
CMPA Profile – Financing, Sources: CMPA Profile 2019, 2016, 2013
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault has said that his top legislative priority is to “get money from web giants.” While much of the attention has focused on his ill-advised plan to require Facebook to obtain licences for linking to news articles, his first legislative step is likely to target Internet streamers such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney with new requirements to fund Canadian content and to increase its “discoverability” by making it more prominent for subscribers. Based on his comments at several town halls, Guilbeault is likely to also create new incentives for supporting indigenous and persons of colour in the sector with a bonus for those investments (potentially treating $1 of investment as $1.50 for the purposes of meeting Cancon spending requirements). Much of the actual implementation will fall to the CRTC, which will be granted significant new regulatory powers and targeted with a policy direction.
Guilbeault’s case for establishing new mandated payments is premised on the claim that support for the film and television sector is declining due to the emergence of Internet streaming services, which have resulted in decreased revenues for the conventional broadcast sector and therefore lower contributions to Cancon creation. In fact, Guilbeault recently told Le Devoir that without taking action there would be a billion dollar deficit in support in the next three years. He says that his objective is to actually generate a few hundred million more per year in local production by the Internet streamers. In other words, he’s expecting roughly $2 billion in new investment over three years in Cancon from U.S. entities due to his planned regulations (moving from a billion dollar deficit to a billion dollars in extra spending).
While Guilbeault frames these regulatory requirements as a matter of fairness and “rebalancing”, industry data over the past decade tell a much different story. Indeed, there has been record setting film and television production in recent years, much of it supported by companies such as Netflix. CRTC chair Ian Scott last year said that Netflix is “probably the biggest single contributor to the [Canadian] production sector today.” While that is not entirely true – the data suggests that Canadian taxpayers are the biggest contributor with federal and provincial tax credits consistently the largest source of financing – the claim that there is a billion dollar deficit coming or that foreign streamers do not contribute to film and television production in Canada without a regulatory requirement is simply false.
September 26, 2020
QotD: A visit to Pyongyang Department Store Number 1
What few consumer products he finds are of the very worst quality, with packaging that provides as little information as possible and that destroys all confidence in its contents. Even the material shortage of these products has its uses to the state, however, as they remind the comrade that it is only by the good grace of their leaders that they eat, and when one spends all afternoon queuing for an item that turns out to be unavailable, there is little time or energy left for revolution. Besides, isn’t the desire for consumer goods artificially created by capitalists to enslave the proletariat?
Nowhere is the dishonesty of this last belief (as well as the sheer insanity of modern North Korea) better illustrated than in Daniels’ description of his visit to the creatively-named Pyongyang Department Store Number 1. He wanders into the store without a minder and is dumbstruck by his eventual realization: the entire store is a fake. Although it is a frenzy of activity and is filled with beautifully packaged and artfully arranged consumer goods, no one is actually buying anything. Daniels watches individual “shoppers” go up and down the escalators or exit and re-enter the store in a continuous loop of simulated shopping. At the line for a cash register, cashiers and customers stare aimlessly past each other, unmoving. Under Daniels’ gaze some of them realize they are found out and cast about nervously, wondering what to do next. “I did not know whether to laugh or explode with anger or weep,” he says. “But I knew I was seeing one of the most extraordinary sights of the twentieth century.”
Arnold Beichman, “The Wilder Shores of Marx: Journeys in a Vanishing World”, National Review, 1991-10-21.
September 20, 2020
The CBC’s latest bit of “mission creep”
At The Line, Jen Gerson wonders what the hell the CBC thinks it’s doing with this move:
Let us take a moment to leverage a little credibility under the CBC’s ass.
What the fuck is the CBC playing at, here? The corporation receives a cool $1 billion in public funding per year and it’s using taxpayer funds to, yet again, horn into the revenue streams of private communications outlets. No one — literally not a single Canadian taxpayer who isn’t already employed by the CBC — wants to throw money at a public broadcaster so that it can: “Help Canada’s strongest brands shape and share inspiring stories across our platforms and across the country.” Vomit.
No one asked for a taxpayer-funded advertising firm, you goddamn loons.
This is yet another classic example of one of the most dysfunctional habits of the MotherCorp: mission creep. A massive and rudderless operation unfettered from the practical limitations of profit-seeking has proven itself unable to restrain its own boneheaded impulses.
We, at The Line, can hear the pitiable defences already: “Oh, but they’re already underfunded. Of course they need to, uh, use their incredible taxpayer-funded competitive advantage to eat into the dwindling revenue streams of failing private media outlets just to survive!”
No. No. No they do not.
When faced with a dysfunctional hydra-headed cultural behemoth that is demonstrably incapable of keeping its mandate in its pants, the first impulse should not be to shovel ever-more taxpayer funds into the ever-widening maw. The CBC could respond to *cough* “inadequate funding” by narrowing its scope and focus to the things that make it most necessary to the Canadian public that it serves — radio, news, documentary, serving regions and topics that the private sector cannot adequately penetrate. Instead it goes off and does weird shit like this, and CBC Comedy, and CBC Music.
CBC. Guys.
You cannot be everything to everyone. You shouldn’t be everything to everyone. Canadians are not well served by a monopolistic government-funded one-stop #content communications shop. Figure out what you do best and stick to it. Focus on supplementing — rather than crushing — private-sector journalism. Maybe even consider ways to support private-sector start ups and independents, especially in local markets. “Revenue generation” is not the place where a public broadcaster should demonstrate self-defeating, industry-following innovation.
September 16, 2020
QotD: Firearms apocrypha
People like to repeat the myth that the tiny M-frame .22 “Ladysmith” was discontinued because a puritanical D.B. Wesson heard that it was popular with “ladies of the night”, because that’s sexier than the fact that it was selling poorly, expensive to make, and constantly broke when people ran the then-new .22 Long Rifle cartridges through the fragile little guns.
Similarly, there’s a legend involving Mr. Wesson that’s attached to the final iteration of the .38 Double Action […] In this case, the story goes, D.B. heard the tale of a police officer who, while arresting a miscreant, had the offender reach over and pop the latch on his top-break Smith, dumping the rounds on the ground, like Jet Li with the slide of a movie prop Beretta. The officer, goes the legend as it was told to yours truly, was killed in the ensuing struggle.
Moved by the fate of the dead officer, the apocryphal tale has Mr. Wesson designing the Perfected Model top-break. This model features a Hand-Ejector style cylinder latch that must be operated in conjunction with the more normal “T”-shaped barrel toggle in order to break the revolver open.
This origin myth is almost certainly, to use the technical term, a load of hooey.
Tamara Keel, “Sunday Smith #60: .38 Double Action Perfected Model”, The Arms Room, 2020-06-14.
September 11, 2020
Canadian government heading toward “the worst of all worlds on Internet regulation”
Michael Geist on the bull-headed determination of the Canadian federal government — and specifically Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault — to “solve” a problem by introducing savagely anti-consumer internet regulations:
Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapure from CPAC video.
The harm that will come from these policy choices is difficult to overstate. By focusing the tax burden on sales taxes rather than technology company revenues, consumer costs will go up and the company profits will be left untouched. The CRTC powers will lead to years of hearings and follow-on litigation, yielding few tangible benefits for creators. The mandated Cancon contributions will spark trade wars and make Canada a less attractive market for new services leading to fewer choices and less competition, while the link licensing requirement will result in blocked sharing of news articles on social media sites that hurts both Canadians and media organizations. All the while, the issues that really matter – privacy, anti-competitive behaviour, online hate, misinformation, a fair share of tech corporate profits – are left largely untouched.
How did the government end up with the worst of all worlds on Internet regulation?
The starting point was the 2015 election in which it committed to no new Netflix taxes (prompted by a Conservative pledge on the issue) and subsequent consultations on everything from copyright to digital cultural policy. The result was then-Heritage Minister Melanie Joly struggling to honour the no-tax commitment, while satisfying increasingly vocal demands from some stakeholders for one. Those calls increased after the results of her cultural policy consultation were released, which largely focused on a rejection of new Internet taxes and support for net neutrality.
In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, worries about Russian election interference, and Christchurch massacre broadcast live online, the policy winds shifted and the government was clearly looking to become more active on the Internet regulation file. That led to Election Act provisions that were generally viewed as successful. It also paved the way for a 2019 election platform that was far aggressive on social media and the Internet, with commitments to address everything from privacy to hate speech online.
[…]
If the government were to address the real concerns, there would be long-overdue privacy reforms, a more aggressive approach on competition issues, measures to address online hate and misinformation, and pursuit of a global agreement on fair taxation of technology company revenues. If it wants to support increased film production from indigenous groups or help the news sector, it can make those policy choices and use general tax revenues without creating a massive regulatory infrastructure.
Instead, it is turning to the harmful policies noted above that raise consumer costs (digital sales taxes), regulate online Cancon with mandated spending requirements (even though the industry has record production led by Netflix), dispense with any pretense of maintaining net neutrality, lead to blocked sharing of news articles (mandated licence for social media sites merely for linking to news content), and result in services avoiding the Canadian market (market interference in payments from services such as Spotify). Much of this will be overseen by the newly empowered CRTC, leading to lengthy hearings that primarily benefit lawyers. After having badly mishandled Canadian digital policy, the government now seems content to take a pass on the important issues and leave the controversial non-issues to the regulator and the courts.
September 4, 2020
“They have insurance”
Brad Polumbo debunks the notion that it’s somehow “okay” to loot and vandalize businesses “because they have insurance” and that somehow means that nobody suffers.
A building burning in Minneapolis following the death of George Floyd.
Photo by Hungryogrephotos via Wikipedia.
Since the death of George Floyd in late May, violent riots and looting have broken out in many major cities, eventually overshadowing peaceful protests and calls for criminal justice reform. From Portland to Chicago to Kenosha, rioters have smashed windows, lit fires, attacked government properties, assaulted people in the streets, and looted storefronts.
In Minneapolis alone, vandals have destroyed at least 1,500 properties, many of them minority-owned businesses, and caused billions of dollars in property damage. Many people have been injured or killed during the chaos.
[…]
Even if all the affected property was fully insured — and it wasn’t — rioting has taken a vast human toll as well.
Consider that at least 15 people were killed during the initial riots after Floyd’s death, and that more have died in the unrest since. When arson and looting consume the streets, people inevitably get hurt and caught in the crossfire. That’s why the Minneapolis police found a burnt corpse in a pawn shop days after arsonists had passed through.
Insurance might fund that property’s restoration, but it can’t bring a dead man back to life.
[…]
Big companies like Walmart and Target generally have expensive, premium insurance plans. But many of the mom-and-pop enterprises and small businesses targeted in the riots didn’t have expensive insurance plans. In some cases, their more modest plans don’t cover damage from riots or don’t cover it in full.
“Situations where there’s a lot of devastation like this, a lot of times people find they’re underinsured and don’t have enough coverage,” Illinois Insurance Association Hotline President Janet Patrick told CBS Minnesota. “And so once the damage has been done, it’s too late. You can’t buy more coverage.”
According to Insurance Journal, 75 percent of US businesses are under-insured. And according to the New York Times, about 40 percent of small businesses have no insurance at all.
