Trudeau announces intention to freeze bank accounts of protestors

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-blocka...

Not everybody outside of Canada may realize we just HAD an election. I personally don't think it was necessary or useful; in fact I think it was a colossal waste of money; but we did. And Canada tends to have relatively stable governments, our period between elections tends to be reasonably lengthy. Some people may not LIKE the result of elections, but there's nothing that indicates government does not have support of majority of Canadians. Polls tend to indicate most people are Canadians about covid. And elections tend (not always) to be about majority.

Second, many outsiders and even many inside Canada don't seem to realize vast vast majority of public health policy and restrictions is done on provincial level. That includes virtually all restrictions that impact majority of citizens. Further, many if not most are done by conservative governments - Alberta and Ontario as obvious examples, as well as conservative municipal governments like Toronto.

So I never understand on any level why anybody feels "federal government to resign" is an "obvious solution", let alone what, exactly, is it meant to accomplish when it comes to covid response.

Why not have the second chamber of parliament made of randomly picked citizen [0] with the responsibility to approve the work of the first chamber (of elected representatives), with the power to cast motions of no confidence?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Selection_b... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_of_no_confidence

And I’m expressly not saying the Canadian government picked the right response here — I don’t know if they did or didn’t — but what you’re suggesting is way too far in the other direction.

Making it the norm to resign in response to protests makes it very easy for any political opponent on any issue to do a soapbox equivalent of filibustering.

However, resigning every time there is a protest, even a spectacular one, is obviously not an option for any democraticaly elected governement.

Pick a cause you defend, and a right you'd want to preserve ; browse recent history to find out when was the last time a massive protest was held by people with the opposite side of view.

Western democracies are warry of calling elections for anything but picking representatives. More direct forms of democracy would clearly help in this case.

The current scenario is that the elected governement takes harsh measure, and the people will have to wait and vote them out of office.

(Which, I believe, is a fundamental difference between most western democracy and more autocratic regimes - I'm ready to reevaluate that when there is suspense again in a russian / NK / china election.)

This is _very_ unfortunate for governements that have been recently elected and have strong parlementary majorities.

I wonder if a better "better scenario" in such crisis would be to have different level of population oversight, depending on the time scale of measures.

As in: first, the elected governement takes extraordinary measures, with relatively free reign for short period of times (days / weeks.) "Extraordinary time calling for extraordinary measures", etc...

Than, parlimentary oversight kicks in, to prolong measures in the "months" scale (I'm one of those annoying people who believe representatives have a role in democracy. Sorry.)

Than, referendum / votations need to occur for anything longer than a few months.

It would not "solve" the issue - because, a vaccine mandate might very well have been agreed by referendum in Canada, and truckers would _still_ have blocked roads. But in the grand scheme of things, I'd rather have this process.

But should the powers of protests go so far that small groups can shut down large parts of an economy? It is my understanding that the convoy is hundreds of trucks. This is already disproportionate power for few people but what if dozens could shut down an economy peacefully?

It seems to me that a line has to be drawn somewhere for a society to function.

I absolutely don’t believe any of the exception I would list actually apply in this case — and even if I did I would still apply the “arrest people who break the law” part because of how fundamentally important I regard rule of law — but there are some occasions (most civil rights battles, wars for independence) where facing a conviction is worth it because the system won’t even take you seriously otherwise.

You can't even explain your argument on the street corner without breaking the laws against public nuisance, in the eyes of some.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire#:~:text=The%2....

However, what's the answer without contravening liberal democracy?

There is no principle within liberalism or democracy that says "if the legal protest lasts more than X it stops being legal".

Using anti-terrorist powers to go around the courts and freeze bank accounts, revoke insurance, and do whatever else you want is not the solution.

I am saying if they aren't yet freezing land defender's bank accounts, without even the need for a court order, under the Emergency Act, as per this article -- be sure they will use this precedent to do so, once they have set it, many more times against the left than the right. It sounds like you would probably agree, since you are aware they are generally much harsher against left protests/disruptions than right.

Don't fall for the "team sport" false dichotomy - there are many who are rational enough to get vaccinated but still largely side with the "less / less broad restrictions" side of the debate.

(For instance, I am vaxxed, extremely pro-vax, and quite anti-restriction. Give everyone a chance to get vaxxed, even make it free - but then let them manage their risk from there.

Even the most effective restrictions, from a case load perspective, such as here in Australia, just left us completely naive when Omicron arrived. Shortly thereafter we had world record cases per capita.)

- Supply of tokens is limited or otherwise is entirely predictable. In the cases where the supply is not limited, the rules for minting new coins are clear in the code and for the vast majority of cryptocurrencies, the inflation is a fixed number of tokens; meaning that the inflation expressed as a percentage drops over time so it has deflationary characteristics. If the annual inflation is 100K tokens per year, these 100k new tokens will represent a smaller percentage of the total supply as time goes by. This is very different from fiat currencies where inflation is expressed as a percentage. In fiat, 10% inflation this year represents A LOT MORE in dollar terms than 10% inflation represented 20 years ago.

- They do not rely on trusting a single government or entity. There are no single points of failure where somebody could steal funds or tamper with records.

If someone is caught in the act of cheating, it doesn't help if they say "he just wanted some action on the side!"

The problem is the cheating, the reason for cheating doesn't make it acceptable.

You have effectively just stated that "oh don't worry he meant to cheat."

I think you're right about one thing though. Opinion hasn't "turned" on them because it was never with them in the first place.

Also "Honk Honk" has be co-opted my more extreme forces. I think we all know what "HH" stands for. But it has deniability, so it's perfect for them.

To "freeze" my Bitcoin "account" you'd have to steal my phone and then bruteforce the PIN before I used the seed phrase to sweep the coins into a different wallet on a new phone. Not impossible by any means, but of similar difficulty to imprisoning me. I have other coins that are stored under a different seed phrase that isn't on my phone, and there are people with safer storage than that. If the government was in a position to imprison all the protestors they wouldn't be trying to target their bank accounts.

Of course centralized crowdfunding platforms and payment service providers aren't any safer than centralized banks, whether they use Bitcoin, dollars, or yuan. But your Bitcoin wallet is definitely a lot safer than your bank account from being frozen out from under you, unless it's something like a Binance account or a Coinbase account.

Generally people don't "pay everything in btc", both because of the transaction costs (33¢ in my most recent transaction, but often as high as US$8) and because not many sellers accept BTC; instead they exchange the BTC for local currencies that are more widely accepted and have lower transaction costs.