David Eby, the increasingly socialist NDP premier of BC, increasingly sounds more like a revolutionary leftist than a government leader who appreciates the free market: The CTVNews post on X made me gulp:
Eby says governments must step up on housing, can’t rely on private sector.
Eby also says:
“These are the revolutionary ideas coming from our government, from the known radicals that are running the government,” he joked, drawing laughs from the crowd.
Hillarious.
I’ve learned not to take what powerful leftists say as a “joke.” I think they mean what they say. The people laughing were not like me apparently. Who were these hyenas? They were — you might have guessed it — people who would benefit from his Big Government action on housing: the BC Non-profit Housing Association, at their annual confab. Eby is their ultimate benefactor. Great minds and all that.
And his idea is, actually, pretty revolutionary and radical — I mean unless you’re a Marxist or run-of-the-mill socialist: the state blowing off the private sector, and assuming state control over the house-building marketplace. No doubt these state-built homes will be rented — not sold, lest home ownership makes folks independent of the state! And surely it will be done on a non-profit basis, thus satisfying his affable private audience of the BC Non-profit Housing Association. And helping wreck the marketplace.
Effectively it’s the state competing against its own citizens. Once again. And once again, the state meddling in the marketplace. The once free market. It’s literally how we got here, this meddling, but never mind, the government is here to save us (narrator: from, um, them).
(And then that narrator guy interjects with this: The Nine Most Terrifying Words – YouTube)
It’s not revolutionary in Cuba or Venezuela, this state takeover of what was once citizen and market-driven. But it is radical in a free market democracy — one which has, throughout its history, relied on the free market — the private sector — to build, buy, and sell homes. And everything else for that matter. Wildly sucessfully, until governments wreck the marketplace, as is the case here.
Our beloved freedom-based, non-government system largely works wonders until guess what? The government imposes itself into the marketplace yet again, and wrecks it, at least in one manner or form or another. Then it flops. Every time.
…
So. If we really “can’t rely on the private sector,” then what is the answer? It’s pretty binary. There’s the private sector, and there’s the public (think state-owned, state-run) sector. Sure there’s also the optional blending of the two, but that’s fraught with dangers, not the least of which is suborning the private sector — citizens and investors in our country from here and elsewhere — to conduct themselves not according to their business acumen or according to the marketplace, as is their expertise, but to political ideology and politicians’ dictates instead.
But Eby isn’t even talking about blending anything. He’s saying he’s given up on the private sector altogether.
“It’s “hard to understand” why many politicians still believe they can rely on the private sector to deliver affordable housing and instead it’s time for governments to step up, B.C. Premier David Eby told a conference on Tuesday.”
What’s “hard to understand” is the audacity of this dangerous useful idiocy (pace Vladimir Lenin). I don’t think it’s “hard to understand” at all; and actually, I don’t think he does either. I think he’s just ceasing upon an opportunity — the current housing crisis (narrator: caused by the government) — to impose a signature socialist NDP ideology. “Never let a good opportunity go to waste,” as the U.S. leftist Rahm Emanuel advised Democrats. (He also said, “I wake up some mornings hating me too,” so…)
What’s equally offputting is that Eby speaks of this supposed inability of the private sector to perform its magic as if governments were merely unwitting observers of all that has gone on over the past 8 years (especially), but even going back to the (narrator: government-created) great recession of 2008. It is as if it wasn’t their meddling that, once again, literally caused this. It was the citizens ‘fault! [Cue scary music] … The private sector! BAD CITIZENS! Very bad! The state has a five-year plan!…
Their “we didn’t do nothin” tactics include, but is not limited to:
- rampant excess uncontrolled immigration which is arguably the main root of the whole matter,
- massive unchecked foreign buying and money laundering by absentee (mostly Chinese, sometimes Communist sympathizer) buyers,
- massive and still growing scads of rules and regulations for builders — at multiple government levels,
- massive delays in permitting and licensing,
- increasing building burdens requiring unGodly amounts of money (for developers and obviously then the buyers) to satisfy progressive fever dreams regarding “The Climate Crisis™,”
- enormous and growing taxation on multiple government levels — often taxes upon other taxes,
- high interest rates that are caused mostly by out-of-control government spending, especially during their massively mishandled and unnecessary “Covid” lockdowns (BC among the worst) — this leading to inflation and competition for capital,
- the loss of purchasing power amongst almost all Canadians wishing to buy homes already too expensive (see above), who are reaching out to food banks at historic levels,
- and I could go on. Those ever-so-failed losers, the private sector home builders, could go on much longer.
Unwitting observers indeed. “Can’t rely on private sector!” (narrator: holy gaslighting.)
Housing on state land, sort of like in the old Soviet Union. It’s actually worse than you think with Eby’s Soviet-style plan:
“We are acquiring properties,” he told the BC Non-profit Housing Association’s annual conference … The province is buying land near bus and train corridors to build homes …
Silly question: what if landowners near bus and train corridors don’t want to sell?
Eby’s radical plan is much more radical than the increasingly socialistic federal Liberal/NDP government plan announced this week, which will allow homes to be built on excess state-owned federal lands. So it’s homes on state land but the land is already owned by the state, and regular developers will build the homes. (This is a blend as I discussed above.)
Compare and contrast the rather Marxist notions with the one federal Conservative leader Pierre Poiliever is musing about in his campaign material: SELLING state-owned land to normal private sector developers who will use their expertise and proven know-how to build homes, and sell them to citizens, like in a normal, free country.
As I said on X to the Libs and a dumb-dumb who tried but failed to “LOL” me…
Late-breaking: As if he read my mind, just as I was completing this post, the Conservative Party of BC leader chimed in on X:
Any time the size of or mandate of government — or the power they assume for themselves — increases, it necessarily means a decrease in your size. Your mandate. Your power and control. Your freedom. So don’t rely on government is the real lesson here.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
Contact Mr. Johannesen about this article using this form. Please refer to article's title.
FOLLOW @JoelJohannesen ON X!
- State-Funding of Sports Boondoggles Need To Be Sent To The Penalty Box - Wednesday March 13, 2024 at 4:44 pm
- I’m from the government and I’m here to help you become barely mediocre like us. - Tuesday March 5, 2024 at 11:53 am
- Big-Ass Government makes Big-Ass Blunder - Friday March 1, 2024 at 12:36 pm
