“Have you ever, ever felt like this” Australasian solidarity kicks in like we’re standing in Anzac cove.

I run into an Australian about once a year in Montreal and suddenly launching into singing that song within the first minute is the fastest way possible to make a new friend.

We should have just increased GST a small amount across the board instead of creating a tax that had such a concentrated impact on businesses from the country that is our largest trading partner.
There are these things that Canada does to protect industry or raise funds, but there are consequences for the quite convoluted way we go about it. VATs are a normal thing around the world, but we engineer these weird solutions to try to hide our protectionism.
For example instead of raising taxes and subsidizing the news media as a public good, we made (certain) Silicon Valley companies pay (certain) publishers for linking to them. Facebook then said it just won’t link to them and now there’s no news on Facebook. This was a backfire.
Instead of GST we could have taxed lots of things, fiber internet plans, advertising or digital services across the board, many people warned against the Trudeau era bills, they caused a rift with Biden too, and we’ve now lost the game of chicken and wasted 4 years on something we had to tear up.

The Selfish Gene.
As soon as the concept clicked halfway through the book my days as an evangelical were over.
It was interesting to me to hear years later that Wall Street types found it influential, because the thing I found most compelling was the explanation of why altruism and social generosity were rational traits.

Thanks for clarifying, I was worried for a second.

Totally possible and something you can do already with digital ID. Checkout RealMe in New Zealand: https://www.govt.nz/browse/passports-citizenship-and-identity/proving-and-protecting-your-identity/use-realme-to-prove-your-identity-online/

A big issue is that many countries are a decade behind in implementing this system. They’re effectively asking the liquor store to check customers are 18, without government ID existing. So now the private sector is creating ID solutions to avoid legal liability. It’s a real mess.