The Blame Game

   As you will remember from my last post, the dog at our current abode is somewhat of a challenge. Just a couple of days ago I had to, for the third time in ten days, restrain him from killing a fellow canine that had the misfortune of coming within earshot. This time it was the other dog's owner who was entirely to blame, letting his pet wander the streets unleashed. With Magnum, "unleashed" translates to "dinner".

  Although his behaviour is inexcusable from a dog-training perspective we were made aware that he might be a challenge when we accepted the assignment. Why did we accept it? The dates and location were ideal and far outweighed any concerns we had about the dog. We like to blame the owner for not properly socializing Magnum but we happily accepted the responsibility when we agreed to stay here.

  I'm focused on "blame" today as it seems to be the central focus in all our lives these days and I want to know how we got here. Think about it. While you do that I'll continue.

  Yesterday Penny and I went to dinner with friends. While we were driving I spotted a badge on a Mazda declaring it had "Skyactiv Technology". Some kind of earth-shattering thing only Mazda was capable of engineering, right? Look it up. I'll wait...

  Your Google search likely told you that brilliant Mazda engineers employ this technology to increase engine output while lowering emissions and increasing fuel economy. This concept is so revolutionary that the company trademarked it and plastered it on their products. Of course, no one else does this, right? Oh.

  Since the 1970's the EPA has mandated all car manufacturers who sell in the U.S. to lower emissions and raise fuel economy with ever-increasingly stringent standards. Also, since the 1990's all car manufacturers have striven to significantly increase engine output to compensate for the reduction in horsepower which results from lowering emissions and increasing fuel economy.

  The short story here is Mazda isn't doing anything different than every other car manufacturer in the world. They just thought it would give them a marketing edge by making it appear they were doing something magical and wonderful. They're doing what every business needs to do in order to be successful, that is, creating a perception that their product is better than their competition.

  All auto companies are using similar technology to accomplish the same goals as Mazda but they're not advertising it. It would be like saying "our car has four wheels". Are people buying Mazdas because of Skyactiv Technology? I hope not, but I suspect the answer is a resounding "yes". Who's to blame for this? It's not Mazda.

  Speaking of cars, Ontario's smiling Premier, Doug Ford, this week announced his intention to build a tunnel under the entire city, from east to west, to resolve the gridlock issue. What a great idea! The next day a knowledgeable engineer did a cost analysis and said it would require about $55 billion to accomplish this Herculean task.

  Let's remember it would be the government building this so, using virtually every other capital project as an example, we can assume the price will be closer to $100 billion by the time it's done. But there's more. How long will it take to tunnel about eighty kilometers under a thriving, gridlocked city? Ten years? Twenty? I'm going to go with twenty-five, knowing full well it will be at least thirty. Thirty years of construction, exacerbating the current traffic nightmare in the name of progress. If you think I'm out of line just Google "big dig Boston".

  Did Dougie actually ask anyone if this was a good idea or did he dream it up as a pre-election cookie to throw at the electorate since his $225 million beer-in-corner-stores gambit landed with a thud? Is adding another ten lanes of underground traffic going to solve our problem? Hardly. Give me $100 billion and I'll give you ten other proposals and all of them will make more sense.

  For example, you could buy 50 billion cheeseburgers at McDonalds. That's about seven for every person on the planet. Now, no one thinks babies should be eating cheeseburgers and let's assume there's a billion babies. More cheeseburgers for the rest of us! Thanks Doug!

  But seriously folks, what about trains and ferries? What about re-purposing the underutilized toll road that already exists? What about flying Google cars? What about molecular transporters like Star Trek? I threw those last two in because they'll likely be available long before this tunnel is finished.

  Who's to blame for this idiocy? Not Ford, that's for sure. He's only Dougie being Dougie. Advertising helped people decide to vote for him. He was Skyactiv. The electorate allowed itself to be conned and continues to do so.

  Governments exist to do the things for their people that those people can't do for themselves. People that think they can run the government become politicians. Maybe their motives are altruistic or maybe they're just power-hungry but they put themselves out there, ostensibly, as part of the solution. That's huge. Somebody has to do it and these people are volunteering. Good on ya. Really. We should applaud them and give them our support because it's a dirty job and someone has to do it.

  Oh wait. In order to win elections we want them to tell us why they're better than their opponents and we believe them, even though we just know our problems can't be solved as easily as they make it sound. They Skyactiv us. Bastards.

  There's an election coming up in the U.S. in five weeks and a significant portion of the electorate thinks a lying, misogynistic, incoherent con man and felon is the best choice to be the Leader Of The Free World. He lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, who has overseen a successful  economic recovery on the heels of a once in a hundred years pandemic that shuttered the world for most of a year. Biden's reward: Let's Go Brandon. If you don't know what that means, ask Google. Americans think the economy is the biggest issue when, in reality, it's ignorance.

  Canada will go to the polls sometime in the next year. It looks like the incumbent Liberals will be shellacked by the redneck Conservatives. I say "redneck" because this isn't the Progressive Conservative party of yore. It might as well be called Republicans North as they use the same tactics and spew the same vitriol as Mr. Trump's cronies. Mr. Poilievre might as well change his name to Mini Me.

  For the past nine years we've had Justin Trudeau, who's heart seems to be in the right place but isn't very effective at actually accomplishing things. I guess that's supposed to justify the F**k Trudeau signs brandished on diesel smoke-billowing pickup trucks driven by those selfsame rednecks complaining about freedom. Freedom to do what? I want to see those imbeciles try that in China, or North Korea, or Hungary, or Russia, or any number of countries where people don't have the freedom to express their opinions freely. Let's Go Brandon... north.

  What's Trudeau's biggest sin, according to Mini Me? The carbon tax. "Axe The Tax" is the rallying cry. Except. Why is there a carbon tax? First, we're not alone. Many countries have started adding tariffs to imported products originating in countries who don't have carbon taxes. That means our products would become less competitive and reduce our exports.

  Economists, who know a lot more about this stuff than your average voter, say carbon taxes are the most effective way to change buying decisions. The additional cost attached to high carbon footprint products encourages people to buy less ecologically damaging products. Electric cars rather than gasoline-powered. Heat pumps instead of oil furnaces. Like that. But wait. The feds give us all a rebate at the end of the year that returns most of what the average consumer spent on the tax. The difference is minimal and not worth complaining about... or is it?

  The carbon tax is compounded. Every step of the manufacturing process pays it. Farmers have to buy fuel and fertilizer. Products have to be transported through manufacturing and  distribution chains and then to retailers. I could go on but the point is we end up paying so much more than the rebate we receive.

  It shows up in everything we buy, especially groceries. People blame greedy corporations for high grocery prices. Canadians have been complaining that they're being ripped off by Loblaws because they're making obscene profits. No they're not. Supermarket chains only earn 2-3% net profit. Check the financial reports for all the major grocery chains in 2019 and 2023 and you'll see it's consistent. Loblaws makes more money because they have more outlets. It's the same percentage of a much larger number than their competitors. Then why are prices so much higher than they were five years ago?

  Well, there's the aforementioned carbon tax which is compounded through every step of the production and distribution chain. The minimum wage has increased by 20% which is applied to every person working in all those parts of the chain. Interest rates increased by 75% over that period impacting every entity that borrows money. In short, a host of factors led to retail price increases because no corporation absorbs those costs without passing them on.

  Getting back to blame, who's fault is all this? Is it Justin's? Joe's? No. It's us. We demanded our politicians do something about greenhouse gases. We wanted a higher minimum wage. We overheated the housing market after COVID by spiking demand, forcing the central banks to raise interest rates to cool the market. That spike in house prices and interest rates led to fewer people able to afford real estate and forced them to rent. Increased demand for rental properties caused rents to spike as well. We demanded products when supply chains weren't functioning properly and were willing to pay higher prices rather than do without until things returned to normal.

  And now we cry at our politicians to fix all this. Where's the affordable housing? Why are prices so high? Why can't we afford rent? Why is gasoline so expensive. Whining. We demanded these things and now we have to live with the consequences. It's unreasonable to expect politicians to fix the things that market forces and our collective demands have caused. We have an unsustainably high standard of living.

  Blame. There's lots of blame to go around. Did anyone see this coming? I don't think anyone had COVID on their bingo card. We're living in the fallout and there's no magic Skyactiv to fix it. Any politician who says they have a solution is lying.

  Back to the dog. He's a good dog as long as there are no other dogs. There's no blame to place here. We're adults. We gathered all the available information and made an informed decision for which we accept the consequences. Remember that next time you vote.

  By the way, I have nothing personal against Mazdas. I'm sure they're fine cars. But, if I were ever to buy one I know the "Skyactiv Technology" badge would not be the deciding factor.

   Also, a shout out to my lovely wife who listens to my rants, corrects my grammar and puts me in my place when I get high and mighty. If her fingerprints weren't on these missives I doubt you'd have followed along until now.

  Thursday we wing our way off to Kelowna in search of new adventures. Stay tuned.

Cheers.