3 ms·

A wasted opportunity for grievance peddlers and hand wringers to steal more limelight and derail public discourse from more important things, so they can hear t

A wasted opportunity for grievance peddlers and hand wringers to steal more limelight and derail public discourse from more important things, so they can hear themselves speak and act like they're bravely engaging battle at great risk to themselves for the benefit of all others, by stamping their names on pointless political and bureaucratic machinations that achieve exactly nothing for the common person.

michaelmrose 3y ago
This is somewhat in the same vein as the argument that we can't possibly do anything of modest importance if somewhere children are starving. Amusingly this remains true even if we do nothing to ameliorate the larger problem its mere existence provides sufficient counter argument for any action. Inevitably if larger matters go unaddressed it is because we don't want to pay higher taxes to feed starving kids not because all our time was consumed by the trivial.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  No, it's completely different, because this is not important at all. Evidence-free assertions of aforementioned grifters notwithstanding. But tacitly admitting a poor cost/benefit with a reductio ad absurdum argument is not a great start anyway, because the actual situation is not an absurd one and margins matter.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    Doesn't the crown cost Canadians like 58M per year over over half a billion in the next decade?
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      This isn't an argument though, you'd have to try to claim that a new scheme with a president (or whatever idiotic scheme the ruling class tries to foist on people) would cost less. Stripping most of that funding from the useless crown representative and entourage would be a great idea. Could be done tomorrow with acts of parliament and executive with no fanfare and no need for constitutional grandstanding. The fact they don't gives the imagination a good starting point for how much it would cost to be a republic.

michaelmrose 3y ago

This is somewhat in the same vein as the argument that we can't possibly do anything of modest importance if somewhere children are starving. Amusingly this remains true even if we do nothing to ameliorate the larger problem its mere existence provides sufficient counter argument for any action. Inevitably if larger matters go unaddressed it is because we don't want to pay higher taxes to feed starving kids not because all our time was consumed by the trivial.

throwawaylinux 3y ago
No, it's completely different, because this is not important at all. Evidence-free assertions of aforementioned grifters notwithstanding. But tacitly admitting a poor cost/benefit with a reductio ad absurdum argument is not a great start anyway, because the actual situation is not an absurd one and margins matter.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  Doesn't the crown cost Canadians like 58M per year over over half a billion in the next decade?
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    This isn't an argument though, you'd have to try to claim that a new scheme with a president (or whatever idiotic scheme the ruling class tries to foist on people) would cost less. Stripping most of that funding from the useless crown representative and entourage would be a great idea. Could be done tomorrow with acts of parliament and executive with no fanfare and no need for constitutional grandstanding. The fact they don't gives the imagination a good starting point for how much it would cost to be a republic.