Fairness

2002-06-11 - 4:08 p.m.

Agh! Entry 100! Dammit!

This was supposed to be an entry about NAFTA and fairness and all that stuff, but I had also planned to do something for entry 100.

Although, you know what? This diary wasn't meant to be entirely a forum about my relationship woes...it was meant to talk about things I care about...so maybe entry 100 can be at least a brief return to some of my political leanings...

UPS, an American corporation, has joined the list of companies that are suing the Canadian government for "unfair" funding of public corporations. UPS claims that Canada Post, our national postal service, gets funding from the government that makes competition unfair and gives Canada Post an edge in the business world.

Companies can sue the government under a piece of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) called Chapter 11, which is meant to eliminate blocks to fair trade. Er...sort of.

Blocks also include more than government funding of public utilities and corporations. Canada has been sued (and lost) for trying to eliminate a product because it contained a carcinogen. Because we lost, the company got paid a lot of taxpayers cash and that product is still in circulation. Our government has signed away our right to decide what is healthy for our country.

It all comes down to fairness...sort of.

I'm not sure where it was decided that a corporation has more rights to self-determination than I do, then people do, but it's become like that. Often you'll here them talk about the unfairness of a government prefering one company or service over another.

What happened to my chunk of fairness? My right of self-determination? My choices, because of the greed of large companies, are severely limitted. I can't afford to choose a lot of things. If you're ever poor, or strapped for cash for a long time, you definitely know what this is like. I can't afford to go to the movies, I can't afford "name brand" products more than occasionally, I can't afford music concerts, CDs or books. I can't afford to go to school without putting myself in major debt, and this cuts off a huge range of choices. I can't choose my occupation, and I can't choose to visit a warm country next year when it's 40 below. I can't choose to go home and visit my family more than once a year, and I can't choose to take the subway more than necessary because I don't have enough bus tickets.

The purpose of government is not to make things easier for corporations...if that were the case, privatize everything and let the modern-day Feudal system work itself out. It won't work itself out, or at least it won't leave us any better off than we were five hundred years ago...

The purpose of government is to advocate for the rights of its citizens. An ideal government would support free education, or at least as close to it as possible, would have a strong and healthy welfare system, would have public medicaire, would have publicly owned media services that don't depend on advertising revenues.

These things take taxes, but I would be willing to pay higher taxes if it meant I had an opportunity to go to school, if my kids would have clean air tomorrow, if I knew I wasn't two missed paycheques away from being on the street. I also don't think we'd have to pay extremely high taxces for what we'd get, if the government stopped worrying about what was fair for corporations and started worrying about what's fair for its citizens.

I don't think the majority of us voted to give McDonalds billions in profits last year.

Cheers,

The Magus

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