this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2025

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What business domains, services, organizations should be nationalized to ensure Canadian sovereignty? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 days ago by cyborganism@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And then we attract pricks into the federal government who ignore rules and they evict everyone overnight so that they can build a resort for themselves.

Look, I get the sentiment, but this sort of centralization is scary.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I mean... they can already evict people from land they privately own. It's called "expropriation" and it happens fairly regularly in Canada.

Not sure why this would change anything related to that.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Then how would your proposition change anything, except that the government would have even less reason to pay private citizens after forcing them to move?

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It changes the money part of the equation. You could no longer sell your land because you wouldn't own it. The government is the beneficiary of any land value appreciation, not private investors.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don’t think that really answers the question and feels like a nothing burger. There would be no land appreciation when it’s all owned by the government. Its value is purely perceived and never realized in such a scenario.

And to be fair, land is somewhat of an interesting case. Suppose you own a piece of land and have no debtors, but you’ve died without descendants or relatives, and certainly without a will, wouldn’t the government just take over that? In essence, the government has a holding on the land, and you’re holding an indefinite lease that can be transferred. Expropriation is simply a mechanism for the government to take back the lease, but they are still obligated to pay to owners. To the owners, it sucks, cause you might really like the piece of land, or that your livelihood depends on it. Hence the conversation should be about fair compensation or equivalent exchange, and a strong scrutiny of expropriation (provably worthy investments being done by the government).

That said, that does depend on your political beliefs on individual freedom. I believe that we should have the freedom to be where we want and do what we want, but to the extent where it doesn’t cause others pain, discomfort, or jeopardy of any sorts (physical, mental, societal where appropriate), or when there is something that would benefit us, collectively. Being asked to move, and being paid fairly to do so, is annoying and disruptive, but if all we do is reject every attempt of improving public spaces and infrastructure projects, then I think we have a more serious problem than just land ownership.

Of course, every case of expropriation should be fully scrutinized. Do these people HAVE to move? There are many ways to incorporate existing infrastructure with new ones.

I simply don’t believe or trust that governments will forever be benign, and full ownership of land by only the government is no different from the age of kings: all it takes is one bad king to ruin it all.

Even in an anarchic society, there’s still a sense of ownership of space: this is where I can be alone by myself, and that my right to privacy in my space is respected.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There is land value, it's reflected in the amount the government charges the lessee. A property downtown is not going to have the same monthly lease value as a property in the suburbs for the same land size. This changes over time as areas become more or less desirable.

I also don't believe that the government is perfect, but I do think they're still better than private landlords who are showing how un-trustworthy they are as we live and breath.

As for your "anarchic society", you're actually not correct in this assertion. Large-scale personal ownership of land was uncommon historically, though of course it depends on where and when you look.

The roman empire had private land ownership, but only for a small people. Very few people owned their own land or home.

England was the same, a bunch of lords and dukes and shit. Lots of peasants that didn't own even the shit from the animals.

If you look at First Nations cultures in North America pre-European contact there was no private ownership at all, it was all collective for the tribes. The Aztec empire was the same, collective ownership by groups.

Tracking the ownership of a plot of land for a lot of people requires a lot of bureaucracy and centralized systems to track it, along with citizenship rights, which simply didn't exist in most places.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m not promoting private ownership of land, but I fail just fail to see how allowing a single entity to manage land would be better than a more decentralized one. Having one dickhead who owns some land trying to gouge others is bad, but we can go somewhere else. If instead, we have THE dickhead who “owns” ALL of the land trying to gouge groups of people they specifically don’t like (oh you know that those racists and neo-Nazi’s will try to get into government), then where the hell are people supposed to go?

Sure, there may be a handful of landlords who own a lot of land and it’s hard to avoid them, but that’s more telling of an oligarchic society and its problems, and not that private ownership is a problem.

Some of those examples from history weren’t great. If anything, they (aside from the tribal ownership of land) more-so exemplify things that seem to frustrate you: few people own the lands and they’ve dickheads about it, but we are left with no choice.

And just because it never happened in the past, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. Personal property isn’t private property. You can use a piece of land how you wish, but you don’t own it forever: you can use it as long as you’re still using it for your personal needs. This “you” can expand into a group, eg a family, and as long as this group still continues to use it directly, it’s “theirs”. No small private group of people can “own” a piece of land and demand those on it to pay for it.

As for saying that tracking private ownership of land is bureaucratic, that doesn’t sound too different from how it’s inherently bureaucratic that the government owns it all.

[–] BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

but we can go somewhere else This is where you logic breaks down.

A) People tend to like to stay in the city they're already in, and B) With the current system we have right now nobody who doesn't already have a home can afford to do that

If the government owns the land, and you vote in some fucking nazis, then the people have decided that's what they wanted. That's how democracy works. It's not some sort of Utopian system of government, it's a popularity contest.

No small private group of people can “own” a piece of land and demand those on it to pay for it.

Yes they can, that's literally what a landlord is. If the only options are Landlord A, Landlord B, or Landlord C... you have no options. At least with the government you can vote.

[–] Subscript5676@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

Oh you know that people will vote for Nazi’s on a long enough timescale. The fact that we have fascists becoming governments around the world right now, and the fact that there’s some far right multinational organization working on all sorts of disinformation campaigns around the world, is already showing us the limits of democracy: if there’s a large enough group of people with that will (however small they are relative to the whole population), they will exercise everything they can to get into power; start small, underfund education and public welfare, create the environment for public anger, and then feed on that anger to make themselves government.

Anytime anyone tells me that “the people have decided”, I wince, cause people can be gullible, simply overwhelmed by (dis)information or just keeping themselves afloat, be pressured into following suit, etc. Democracy relies on the fact that people can be rational at the voting ballot, but that basis is being undermined.

And sorry, but you’ve misread that paragraph and sentence that you quoted, mostly cause of my wording (now that I look at that), and I apologize for that. I said that in the context of an anarchic society, not our current one.