Social Issues – blog@davemckay.ca

Low Flow Toilets

You will probably immediately think of precious-water conservation. But that is in no way how we got low-flow toilets. In an age of ever-growing Conservative economics philosophy municipalities with increasing populations were facing a demand for more water. But that would have required spending on public utilities, which would have jeopardized ideological tax cuts. So the solution was that more people needing more water infrastructure investment would just have to do with less.

Which was tricky. Because, if you have even a very basic understanding of wastewater management, you will understand that solid waste is carried through the system by the volume of water flushed with it. Less water, less push.

And so, in the subsequent years and decades after this superficially “Green” conservation measure was enacted, the very same municipalities found themselves spending large sums of money on, for example, replacing or relining sewer laterals which were failing as a result of low water flow.

And the critical lesson here was that more people need more resources. That just telling each individual to make do with less, that does not work.

And so it is with every existential problem we face today. Be it a crisis in energy or resources, sustaining a higher population will always increase the demand we make on this finite system we live in. And unless you are blind, you ought to see that we are depleting this world at a rapidly increasing rate which is not sustainable. And fundamentally, at the base of that is the number of people we are multiplying our individual need for resources by.

People do not want to deal with population. No, that is not it. People are actively aggressive toward anyone discussing overpopulation. It is a taboo subject. “More people good!” is the orthodoxy. But no matter how you want to believe otherwise, THAT is not going to work out.

Four OH Onederground!!!

Firstly, building another highway UNDER the 410 would be a geotechnical and logistical nightmare. Try to think about all the buried services and such that would be cut and need replacement. Such a project could disrupt and make traffic much worse for decades. More than that, it would be a construction nightmare for anyone or any business along the route the whole time.

Tying in a tunnel with the above lanes would require much much larger interchanges where there were connections. This would require taking land, much of it in use, away from surrounding homes, businesses and industry. Remember this mega-farce would be cut right through a dense cityscape.

A many kilometres long tunnel would be a hazard when any accident happened in it. If it is meant to be a super-express, then exits would have to be widely spaced. Have fun sitting in a 14 km backup for four hours, underground.

But here is the real thing. Induced traffic demand is, at this point, well understood. Although obviously not by DoFo. No matter how many lanes you add to the 401, be they beside above under or bypassing the existing lanes, this can NEVER reduce congestion. That never works. That never has worked, which if you drive, you must have actually noticed. No highway expansion in our history has not made traffic worse. It is inevitable. DoFo, in a spectacular display of ignorant stupidity, is just showing us that he doesn’t know anything about transportation planning, or doesn’t care (which may be more likely) and is also not capable of listening to his own experts.

And OMG the cost. Based on the Big Dig (Boston) a 401 tunnel, if it were ever completed, would cost something like $29 billion. But it almost certainly would not be completed because the project would take so long and be so problematic, that a subsequent government would certainly cancel the folly. But in the mean time I suppose, it would be a giant quid pro quo cash-cow for OPC donors.

And here it the real bugger of the matter. Even if the cost did not skyrocket above my estimate, that amount of investment in transit around Toronto WOULD improve traffic congestion significantly.

And as every sensible person looks at this delusional fantasy bullshit and says, “what the fuck,” there are a legion of chair-leg chewing gullible short-sighted ignorant deplorables, sitting in traffic, shouting the old lie, “Hell ya! Just one more lane will fix it.”

ROM

There is a fundamental problem with, “Ontario philanthropists are world-class supporters of educational landmarks like Royal Ontario Museum.”—Save Ontario’s Science Centre

First of all, philanthropy is a symptom of social dysfunction where for anything good to happen, we have to rely on the fickle charity of the rich to bless this or that project or needy individual on a whim. Robust social services and investments for all Canadians are replaced with begging for scraps. This is aristocracy, not democracy.

Secondly, the people rich enough to be philanthropic at the level that pays for the kind of thing that happened to the ROM, they are the same people who are “Conservative” party donors. They are the people who put the corrupt government in power that undermines public services and privatizes community assets to create profit opportunities for those same rich donors. They are the real estate profiteers who are snapping at the land the OSC is in the way of. They got rich enough to be able to play at philanthropy through the very mechanism that makes that philanthropy seem like a remedy to the lack of investment in social programs that their political sock puppets perpetuate.

And thirdly… OMG! The ROM rebuild that resulted in those lopsided black pyramids was a rich family’s folly that made itself ridiculous at every turn. The design was not fit for purpose. It wastes so much space. Somehow they started to build it without considering that the design would have allowed light to damage objects on display, so on the fly during construction they had to replace many of the windows with opaque panels. They literally had not considered if that “space” was suitable for housing the ROM collection.

If you have ever been visiting the ROM when a wave of “philanthropists” is showing up at your museum for a gala, and been part of the crowd of peasants being herded out of the building, while the aristocracy arrive to claim their space, then you have had an object lesson in who principally benefits from “world-class,” 🤦🏽‍♂️ tax deductible, philanthropic investment.