It’s not that extreme, that’s the thing. This stuff isn’t that complicated, we as Canadians are just overwhelmingly terrified of doing anything of substance. An extreme views are those which lack nuance, but that’s it. Asking for us to have a few more very basic protections for the working class and to not have a government which serves only the rich is not extreme. In many instances we already had these things and we weakened them.

I’m really not asking for a lot, here, and the alternative is continuing down this path of “just let the corporations and owner class do whatever they want” which is far more extreme than what I’m suggesting.

[–] maplesaga@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I think it could work however I blame a lot of the problems on zoning laws. For instance Loblaws doesn't make much from grocery sales, they make a lot from real estate.

We use real estate to fake economic growth as productivity languishes. The government would do what, join the cartel, or overhaul the fundamental problems?

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

I mean, a bit of a strange question to ask because yes, a non-conservative government would be seeking to do foundational overhauls because our foundation is fully just rotted away at this point and we desperately need to stop pretending anything is ok.

Things like the local grocery stores you brought up aren’t connected to real estate like that. Real-estate speculation requires a lot of buying and selling, and doing so with the express purpuse of trying to make money without actually doing anything of value. These grocery stores are smaller options to put pressure on the larger chains to lower the prices, similar to how Vienna’s 40% “market rate housing”(social housing but with a different name so people who can’t think so well aren’t afraid of it) keeps rent prices low because there’s sizeable competition. It’s a good way to push policies aimed at helping society at large while existing in a capitalist system. I imagine they would also exist like Canada Post, where they would serve places that large chains don’t deem profitable enough. Canada Post and Radio Canada make sure that remote communities stay connected in ways that FedEx and other radio stations completely fail at because they’re seeking to serve communities, not take money from them.

Zoning laws are big, sure, and absolutely need an overhaul, but they’re not the reason why Loblaws does shit like price-fixing. That’s just pure greed with no consequences because the centrists and the conservatives have very little interest in truly punishing them.