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Opinion | Privatizing Canada Post would be a costly mistake
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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I was trying to think of a single example where it made the service better and I legitimately can't?
Because it is never the service that privatization seeks to make better. Private corporations make more money. That is the only target metric.
Yeah. The rich go from funding it as a service, via their taxes, to making income off of it, via dividends. Everybody wins!
So long as you're only counting the rich.
Depending on the market, providing better service is what makes you more money, and a malaise creeps in about management not caring about that anymore when government ran. Besides, all my packages come by Purolater now, a private company owned by Canada Post that doesn't seem to go on strike. They literally own their own competition and it's profitable.
So, the capitalist brainrot belief is that Adam Smith's invisible hand is going to make sure that money only goes to the people who deserve it, because people obviously will buy the best product at the cheapest prices and everyone else deserves to be pushed out of the market unless they do better.
Except we have consistant evidence that that isn't true. The raw existence of marketing and advertising completely undermines the core concept of what is supposed to make private business good. "We'll just make sure we're the name people know and appeal to their cultural wants" is a complete subversion of how businesses are supposed to function. And then there's the reality that once businesses have reliabily built themselves into the cultural needs of people, they don't need to care anymore: see the process of enshitification in the mass of new business concepts - streaming services, 2nd party food deliver apps, etc. - and this becomes obviously true.
On paper, providing a better service should result in higher income. In reality, there are a million manipulatable factors to undermine this concept, and as we continue to argue that wealth is an inherent virtue, we'll continue to give perceived moral superiority to the private businesses that will pull the plug on your grandmother's life support if it will save them a dollar. Fuck that. The more services we can keep our of the hands of greedy CEOs and venture capitalists, the closer we are to a genuinely just world.
This is a very long winded way to admit the existence of gullible and foolish people
So "gullible and foolish people" deserve to be abused by corporate interests? We aren't supposed to build a world that benefits everyone, regardless of how "gullible and foolish" they are?
Dumbasses deserve what they get.
Corporations should be allowed to lie and abuse people who aren't knowledgeable or practiced enough to avoid it, because they deserve it?THAT'S your take?
You know, I knew I recognized that name from somewhere. You're that one who was trolling around here pre-election spreading misinformation that I got into an argument about over your completely insane perspective on the Liberals destroying Canadian identity. I'm glad I get to share a message with you post election, so I can point, proudly, to the way Canada happily rallied together under a Liberal banner, sporting a national togetherness that we certainly haven't seen since the selfish, Conservative nutjobs started doing their damnedest to sow division and tear us apart to their benefit before and through the Covid era. I'm not shocked that, in the brief 5 minutes I gave your account to figure out why I recall your name, I saw a majority of your posts filled with vitriol and hatred, while you continuously deny objective reality and dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as being intellectually stunted. Losing the election and watching Canadian's rally together must really be shaking your world view, and since the only real responses are to adapt and grow, or lash out and blame the world, it really is no wonder you're here, spreading hate.
Your completely ethically bankrupt and sociopathic take on the topic at hand here doesn't even deserve a response, but I'm giving you one for the satisfaction of myself and everyone who works to make this world a better place while people with your perspective justify abusive practices and beliefs: fuck you. You should be embarrassed just thinking it, let alone typing it out. Get off social media, stop treating the people you interact with like garbage - if your posts here are any indication of how you speak to people, you are a truly reprehensible piece of shit - get out of your hate-filled bubble, and at least try to experience the world from a perspective other than the one that bred this abhorrent, inexcusable take. Or, just fuck off.
Privatization of liquor in Alberta has worked out amazingly well. Booze is cheaper and there's a liquor store every 100 meters, some open well past midnight. It's an alcoholic's dream.
I mean to an alcoholic in the small scale it sounds like it's working out great.
But Canada's recently done a study that shows the taxation gained from alcohol consumption is far less than the deleterious societal costs.
Effectively the government loses money on every bottle it taxes.
edit: This is known as Canada's alcohol deficit. It was first studied in 2014 which showed a taxation intake of ~11 Billion while the social costs were estimated to be ~15B resulting in a deficit of about ~4B. believe the 2020 study showed the alcohol deficit is up to ~6B a year now. I'm lazy, but here's one link for those who'd like to know more:
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/reports-publications/health-promotion-chronic-disease-prevention-canada-research-policy-practice/vol-40-no-5-6-2020/alcohol-deficit-canadian-government-revenue-societal-costs.html
Beer in Alberta is far more expensive than in any other province
TIL Alberta had state run liquor stores. I'll have to read about those when I get home.
At one point every province did.
Same with auto insurance, if you're a responsible driver. I've lived in BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan among other places the last 25 years, and Alberta is consistently far cheaper for auto insurance, if you shop around. A lot of people close to the AB border on the sask side do a little light fraud and pretend to live at their brothers house in alberta
I think Quebec has (or at one time had?) the lowest because you're not required to have collision insurance. You can have just liability, but if your car is a piece of shit you're not required to insure it for repair should an accident occur. I could be wrong, and I'd love to know if I am.
Are there places where this isn't the case?
In my city you are required to have both liability and collision even if the car is worth a dollar. That is true across all of Canada to my knowledge, with the exception of Quebec.
Absolutely false. You're not required to have collision on your own vehicle anywhere as far as I know. Collision on the other vehicle falls under liability, unless of course you haven't paid your vehicle off yet, but even then, that's a requirement of the bank, not the insurer. I don't know every provinces laws perfectly, but I do know cities don't determine insurance law.
I'd be curious what city, but obviously you don't have to answer that.
Then you would be misinformed, because collision coverage is certainly not mandatory in Alberta, and I doubt it's mandatory anywhere