Matthew Belanger

If you asked most people what economic system we use in North America, they would answer either “free market”, “capitalism” or both.  In this article, Sheldon Richman argues that our economy would properly be called corporatism – where the state works with established companies to protect their market share, at the expense of everyone that isn’t one of the privileged few.  Check it out.

Apparently, Harper and his cronies are looking at changing the Canada Pension Plan. If they want to make a real change, it should be voluntary, and it should remove the defined benefit provision. Make it operate like any private (non-union) pension plan – you put in your money, they invest it, and you withdraw your money when you retire. If it is successful, people will use it; if not, they will invest elsewhere.

The current ponzi scheme is unsustainable and unconscionable.

During the recent Ontario election, and the Federal election in May, the media focused almost exclusively on the major parties – the Conservatives, Liberals, NDPs and Green party.  Some in the Libertarian community wonder why we get so little attention, which has led me to wonder what responsibility the media has during an election campaign to report on smaller parties, their platforms and issues.

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The results are in – and are they ever great.  I personally got 435 votes, about 1.2% of those who voted.  In the Federal election, it was 260 for 0.5%.  In both cases, my results were very close to the Party average.

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I’ve added a new essay to my site – Why I Became a Libertarian.  It’s a discussion of my journey to becoming a libertarian, and a little bit of rationale for the philosophy.  This is here for those of you following my RSS feed, to make sure you see it.

My election signs are in!  I have a couple available for lawns in Oshawa.  If you have a lawn and want a sign, contact me through the site, Facebook or Twitter.  First come, first served.  Any unclaimed as of Sunday will be going up in a public area.

The line above is something I heard while listening to a Toronto talk radio station earlier this week.  The caller was complaining about the PCs and Liberals arguing semantics about the Liberals $10,000 tax credit for hiring immigrant workers – a ridiculous policy suggestion, by the way – instead of talking about solving “real people’s” problems.  This quote drove home, yet again, what a tough task we in the libertarian community have ahead of us, not just in terms of this election, but in terms of driving change in society as a whole.

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That’s the number of candidates the Ontario Libertarian Party is running in the provincial election.  That’s a great number – more than twice as many as we had in the Federal election – and we’re represented in almost half the ridings in Ontario.

Today is, of course, the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center.  I clearly remember my life at that time.  I worked part time in a breakfast and lunch restaurant, while resisting the inevitable path of my career – working as telephone technical support, and not as a computer programmer.  I was single, and okay with it.  Then, one day, we had a sudden rush – at 9:30 in the morning.  That’s our normal down time, spent preparing for lunch.  Of course, everyone’s lives were incredibly disrupted, as the unthinkable had happened – terrorists had made a coordinated attack, with four hijacked jumbo jets, in the United States.  You could almost feel the world changing.

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Today I finally finished the nomination process.  While infinitely better than the Federal nomination, I still consider the process and bureaucracy to be way over the top.  Democracy should not require hours of effort and paperwork – a truly free and democratic process would require little more than a signature, and perhaps verification of citizenship.

Regardless, the i’s have been dotted, the t’s crossed, and the hoops duly jumped through.  My name will be on the ballot on October 6th in Oshawa.  I encourage everyone to come out and vote.  Preferably for me, but for someone at least.

Thank you to all the people who consented to sign my nomination form, as well as to the Management of the Metro at Rossland and Wilson in Oshawa, who permitted me to use their store front freely.