29
submitted 1 year ago by Beaver@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] sbv@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago

Cardy laid out five policy planks on which he says the new party will be campaigning: reforming government programs, increasing Canada's defence spending to two per cent of its gross domestic product, reforming immigration through "better gatekeepers," making life more affordable by "dismantling protectionism" and increasing competition in the airline, telecommunications and agricultural sectors.

Climate change? Cost of living? The housing crisis? Collapsing healthcare?

"Increasing competition" without lowering prices is meaningless. Protectionism is fine, so long as we generally benefit from it.

[-] girlfreddy@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

Government-controlled protectionism is supposed to be good - and in a functioning democracy should benefit the people over businesses all of the time. The problem we have is far-(self)-righteous parties whose members only care about themselves and those who pad their pockets with bribes and "donations".

[-] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago

Increasing competition adds downward pressure on prices and forces our domestic oligopolies to compete.

That's how markets work.

There's value in promoting a strong local industry, but when that industry fails to compete that's a market failure. The smaller the market the more likely it is to fail.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The two things are only loosely connected. The unprecedented wealth and income disparity shows that there are no improvements in efficiency that cannot be clawed back and stolen from the public purse.

[-] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

If the market isn't performing its function then that is when the government needs to step in and change the rules.

In this case our grocers aren't competing on price enough, so they'd be adding more.

[-] jerkface@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There are other options. If the government operated a store where there were guaranteed prices on certain goods and they were available in sufficient quantities, it would effectively peg the price of those goods in the rest of the market as well. This could be a cooperative or something similar.

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

"Increasing competition" without lowering prices is meaningless.

Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics. The effect of increasing competition in a heavily monopolized industry is to lower prices.

Edit: I slightly misread the quoted text. I had assumed that "increasing competition" meant breaking up Canadian monopolies, not opening the floodgates to other markets. I'm really surprised that a party called "Canada future" is against protectionism. I still stand by my point here, but I see where you're coming from.

this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
29 points (100.0% liked)

Canada

10809 readers
644 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS