Diagnosis / Prescription

Day 1,709, 11:26 • Published in Canada Canada • by Jacobi

Turn your head and cough....fool

Taxation is to support a concerted military effort in a fair and equitable way, to develop new talent and to cultivate existing talent within the greater Canadian team. Spending efforts by Congress contrary to these goals are a waste, spending efforts successful in supporting these goals are funding well spent.

Without taxation, or with libertarian taxation levels, the ability to arm and defend the nation falls to an argentocracy, rule in Canada according to wealth rather than democratic means. A low taxation culture begets a toothless government unable to be more than a centre of roleplay and lulzy shenanigans.

Ultimately are you playing for yourself or for the betterment of the team? It appears to me that in the past few years the hollowing out of the Canadian team has had as much to do with rogue behavior as it has the supplanting of a team spirit by individualism. A desire to constrain government because higher taxations causes an exodus of wealthy players, or it stifles business, or acts against the economy or whatever bullshit reason of the day has led to a government whose institutions are gutted, whose purpose has been turned primarily into a clearinghouse of wealth distribution. Actively despised by some, held in low regard by most.


Fallout: eCanada

Canada used to have one third of the US’ population, now it has one ninth. Was this because of high taxes? Or because the government has been starved and emaciated through successful terms of incompetence, graft, corruption and greed? It is because we have look towards our own needs first, Canada’s second, and then blamed the team for not constraining the actions of those who took the next logical step of the community’s me first mentality?

I have said, I will say, that the reason things have happened as they have happened wasn’t because of the actions of an individual, or a clique, but because of a culture shift. I remember clearly a community of players who may not have really cared for each other playing for a team called Canada, before game upgrades made individuals Gods among men beholden only to themselves and not to the whole.

We became meta. And then we sucked.

Dictatorship by a leader or a clique isn’t the answer. It merely solidifies eCanada as a tinpot kleptocracy with pretensions of grandeur.

A community-lite libertarian eCanada is hardly the answer either. It’s just the easy way out – an admission that Canada means no more than 6 letters on a map.

What made eCanada great was a social democratic community with a strong culture of tolerance and inclusion. What made eCanada worth fighting for was the sense of camaraderie and togetherness that spoke to a commonality of purpose. It was a nation, a team, with institutions that set us apart and a sense of spirit that was all our own.

The people who have left our country left because of the symptoms of the disease. Let that disease be now diagnose😛 Let’s recognize the things that made us a team worth belonging to, a country to be proud of, and work to restore them.

The first step in that process is to rebuild our government, not as merely a dispensary but as a unifying force in which all members of our country can reasonably participate and succeed within. We must build that government on a strong foundation of ethics in what, how, and why decisions are made. A government that can be counted on by its citizens, by its members, and by its allies to do the right thing, even if it isn’t immediately the most popular thing. Recreate what we used to have, where corruption was the exception rather than the rule, and where social democratic egalitarianism reigns, and we can start to have our country back.

We just have to start taking our medicine.