Stephen Roney's Blog, page 39

Land Acknowledgements

 

It seems most public gatherings in Canada now open with a “land acknowledgement.” Here are two that showed up recently in my email, prefacing messages:

“The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick acknowledges that the land on which we live, work and gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq Peoples, and we honour the spirit of our ancestors’ Treaties of Peace and Friendship.”

“I respectfully and humbly acknowledge that I live and create on land traditionally inhabited and traversed for centuries by the Piikani, Siksika, Kainai, Tsuut'ina and Nakota peoples, their antecedents and their descendants.”

I understand this is also common in Australia; but not in the US.

I find these “land acknowledgements” offensive and ahistorical. I must always bite my tongue. I fear that, sooner or later, I will myself be forced to read one out, violating my conscience.

They are racist. They assert some special privilege for one racial group over others. That’s especially harmful in a multi-ethnic nation like Canada. They further imply a ruling class, an atistocracy by right of birth. We should all be equal, and advance on merit.

If the point is merely to recall the history of the place, how can they, in the case of New Brunswick, exclude mention of the Acadiens, or the French and British crowns, both of which also declared this their territory at different times.

Is it the claim that the territory was never ceded that makes a difference? 

Granted, the French and British did formally cede their claims to sovereignty by treaty. But so did the indigenous groups: in the same way, by treaty. 

Is the claim that sovereignty was ceded, but not the land itself? That the indigenous groups still  hold property rights, as individual Acadiens might still own their farms under Canadian or British sovereignty? 

But wait. Notice that multiple groups always need to be mentioned. This is because no one aboriginal group had secure possession of any territory; each might pass through. Accordingly, for none of them was it ever “their” land in the legal sense: property ownership requires secure possession, not merely passing through a place, even at regular intervals. Hence the legal doctrine of “squatter’s rights.” 

In fact, the land acknowledgements are inevitably discriminatory among indigenous groups themselves. In the NB acknowledgement, the Passamaquoddy are not mentioned: they too claim NB land as their traditional homeland. There were Iroquois in the Rocky Mountain foothills; yet the Alberta acknowledgement ignores them. Members of almost any tribe might have been almost anywhere at any given time. You can’t tell whom you should name.

Is it about who was here first? We do not know who was here first. All we know is that the named indigenous groups were the ones here at first contact with Europeans. That is an arbitrary point in time. Go back a few centuries further, and we have no idea who was here. We know that indigenous groups moved, expanded, contracted, and disappeared continually. They were, after all, nomadic.

And if being here before some other group establishes special rights or privileges, how does that work for more recent immigrants? Should those of English ancestry be shown similar deference by Italians or Hispanics? And is that second-class or third-class status eternal, generation after generation?

Stop it, Canada.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Depresssion and Its Cure

 

It seems plausible that the reason for the rapid rise in depression and other mental illness has been the growing use of seed oils. 

But this relies on the premise that depression is a “chemical imbalance in the brain.” That looks like a categorization error, mistaking something spiritual for something physical, the menu for the meal. It is like supposing that doing a dance wearing a false face will scare away cancer. It actually can work—witness the placebo effect—because mind and body do interact. But it is going about it the long way around.

What is depression really? It is not particularly related to feeling sad. “Depression” is a misleading term. The older word, “melancholia,” is better. Often more like an emotional numbness, and as often anxiety.

It is best described, perhaps, to those who have not experienced it, as like being in a maze. And in that maze, there is a minotaur. Any way you turn is probably wrong. But staying put is also wrong.

The obvious way to understand that, is that you have lost your moral compass. You have lost your sense of right and wrong.

Not in the way psychopaths are supposed to. Psychopaths seem to have the opposite experience, that nothing is wrong, and you are free to do what you want. The depressed feel instead that nothing is right; which paralyses them.

Most likely either is the result of an immoral upbringing, an upbringing by a parent who themselves had no moral sense; a parent who is either a psychopath, or chronically depressed.

The more dramatic experience we call schizophrenia seems adjacent in kind. Here the problem is not just what is right or wrong, but what is real. Probably produced most often by a parent who chronically “gaslit,” to use the currently popular term. And here, too, there are logically two opposite forms: either anything I want to be real is probably real; or anything I don’t want to be real is probably real. The former produces what we call narcissism. The latter produces what we call schizophrenia. 

So what is the proper or probable cure?

Where do we go to discover what is genuinely right and wrong, and what is genuinely real? Where do we go to reprogram our minds out of this trap?

Obviously, to philosophy and to religion.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Seed Oils

 

Mikhaila Peterson, Jordan’s daughter, says she and her father cured themselves of chronic depression by going to an all-meat diet.

I’m sceptical. For one thing, rates of depression have skyrocketed since the post-war years. Were our diets more meat-oriented before the war, and have they become less so since? I would think the opposite: with growing wealth, especially nouveau wealth, people tend to add more meat to their diet. I have also read many studies that claim the “Mediterranean diet,” or the traditional Japanese diet, cure depression. These diets are the opposite: little or no red meat, only vegetables and seafood.

So the data seems all over the place, and inconclusive.

But wait--the real problem might be seed oils: corn oil, canola oil, “vegetable oil” generally. Going carnivore eliminates the use of seed oils, in favour of animal fats.  So does going Mediterranean; you use only olive oil. Traditional Japanese cooking relies primarily on sesame oil. This is indeed a seed oil, but it may have unique properties. Some studies show it has anti-depressant effects. 

“Seed oils” have become far more common postwar. Everyone switched from bacon fat to oils in frying. Everyone switched from lard to Crisco in baking. Everyone switched from butter to margarine, and, influenced by concerns over cholesterol, specifically to vegetable-oil based margarine. 

The chart shows the rapid growth in the use of seed oils. It associates this with the increased incidence of diabetes. But what else has skyrocketed over the same time period? Auto-immune diseases, allergies, obesity, and mental illness.

Yikes. Seems possible.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

What I Learned at School Today

 

No doubt all of this video is worth watching. But I post it in particular for what Matt Walsh says at the beginning about sexual abuse in the public schools. I've been saying this for years: any problem with sex abuse by either Catholic priests or by teachers in the old Indian Residential School System, real as it was, is a hiccup compared to what has been going on in the public schools. With no outrage apparent.

After all, if you are a sexual predator, it is just easier to get what you want, into a position where you are in charge of young people and able to make them do your will by becoming a public school teacher than by joining a religious order or becoming a priest. Most priests or nuns get little contact with children. If a monk or nun is assigned to teach, it is not their choice; it is decided by a superior. The strategic placement for predation is guaranteed to a teacher. 

And there are moral tests in place to keep sexual predators out of holy orders. They must, after all, take a vow of celibacy, which they must visibly honour, more or less guaranteeing they lack a strong inclination towards and interest in sex. They must also often take a vow of poverty, another test of their sincerity. And they are vetted as much as is humanly possible by their superiors and their organization for good moral character. Under twenty-four hour observation. 

Which is exactly why, traditionally, the job of teaching was assigned in any Catholic school to monks and nuns. 

None of these safeguards are applied to public school teachers. It is as if we want predation. Which seems increasingly obvious in these days of SOGI: "Sexual orientation gender ideology." 

We don't care about children. We hate them/.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

The New Beatitudes

 

Xerxes, my friend the former left-wing columnist (who seems to have decided to clip his wings), wants the Beatitudes revised. He feels they no longer apply in modern times.

Are there indeed new problems or issues to which they should refer, but do not?

Xerxes cites drug overdose deaths. This is indeed currently an epidemic problem, but in principle, not new. Alcohol was a drug, and potentially a deadly drug, available in Jesus’s time. Not to mention hemp or opium, which seem to have been known. We must assume that Jesus did not consider this a moral issue, or an important moral issue.

In fact, he actually seems to have aided and abetted drunkenness at Cana.

Surely the more interesting question is, why did he not? Is it a moral issue? Or is addiction a symptom of something else?

Xerxes then notes that the Saviour would surely have had something to say about fossil fuel emissions. Granted, fossil fuel was probably not known in Jesus’s day; perhaps coal was sometimes used. But why is fossil fuel an issue? Carbon emissions, surely. So the same issue existed when people in his day burned charcoal or wood to get warm or cook their food. Jesus could have mentioned it; apparently he did not see fit to mention it. 

Is it a moral issue? Or is it an engineering problem: what is the best fuel to use?

“Would he have harsh words for those who know their product does harm, and keep doing it?” Xerxes asks.

People have always produced and sold products. Jesus was a carpenter; Paul a tentmaker; Peter a fisherman. Jesus could have mentioned this, but did not.

No question, this is a moral issue; but selling harmful products, a rotten fish or an unsound cabinet, is obviously and self-evidently wrong to the human conscience. There is no need for God to incarnate to tell us so, and no cause to bless anyone simply for not doing so.

“He talked about those who are persecuted. By the Romans. Or by other authorities. But I wonder what he would say about persecution by the social media, where individuals taking unpopular stands are hounded by hate messages and death threats. “ 

Jesus said “blessed are those who are persecuted.” He did not restrict this to persecution by legal authorities. It applies just as well to social media.

Yet he did restrict his blessing in another way: he did not bless simply for being persecuted. It was for being persecuted for righteousness. 

The distinction seems important. If you advocate the extermination of the Jews, raping women, eating children, or kicking puppies, you might indeed be unpopular, even persecuted. But this does not put you on the side of the angels.

So, in sum, there does not seem to be any demonstrated actual need for new Beatitudes. Why invent some?

Now, take it from the other end, is there a case for any of Xerxes’s proposed new Beatitudes? For of course, he goes on to propose some.

“Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are those who doubt, who aren’t entirely sure, who can still be surprised.”

This jumps out as obviously contradicted by the title of C.S. Lewis’s famous spiritual autobiography, “Surprised by Joy.” Surely this contradiction needs to be addressed.

If God is a person, with whom we can have an ongoing relationship, if he is not some abstract concept or cosmic watchmaker, he can be full of surprises. Just as a friend or romantic partner is in any vital and living human relationship. The world of faith is full of wonders and miracles, because everything is a conversation with him, and everything has meaning.

An agnostic, on the other hand is one “who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.” Sounds like a pretty dead and barren life. For the agnostic there are no surprises; he can never be surprised by anything except perhaps what’s for dinner.

And it of course beggars belief that Jesus would bless us for not believing in him.

“Blessed are those who have nothing to offer.”

If this is simply a restatement of “blessed are the poor”—blessed are those who have few material goods to offer—fine; but nothing new. If not, it contradicts what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, immediately after the Beatitudes: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” We all have much to offer; if we do not offer it, we are hardly to be blessed.

“Blessed are those who have buried loved ones, whose tears could fill an ocean. Blessed are those who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.

Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried. 

Blessed are those who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.”

Fine, and it all sounds noble and empathetic. But surely these are just specific cases of “Blessed are those who mourn.” Best not to single out specific sorrows; it shouldn’t be a competition. And causes for sorrow are too varied and complex to all be enumerated in this way.

 “Blessed are those whom no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at school lunch tables. The laundry staff at hospitals. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers. The homeless guy sleeping in a doorway.”

One of these things is not like the other ones. Five are already covered by “blessed are the meek.” The unnoticed, the lonely kid, the laundry staff, the night sweepers, the homeless. But are prostitutes soliciting meek? Are they trying not to be noticed? And do they generally go unnoticed? 

Of course there were prostitutes in Jesus's place and time, and he might have declared them blessed.

But what happened to our wish to condemn those who sell harmful products?

“Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the underrepresented.”

Blessing the unemployed contradicts Jesus’s admonition to “let your light shine.” Of course, if unemployment is not a choice, it is a hardship. But why would doing nothing be blessed in itself? 

Similarly, why would being unimpressive be blessed? Jesus says of those he beatified, “you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.” That sounds like being impressive. Having no talent is not a sign of holiness; our very term “talent” comes from Jesus’s parable of the talents, reflecting the assumption that our talents are given by God, and are there to be used. To go out and impress.

“Underrepresented” seems simply too vague to be meaningful. Represented where, and in what sense? If the intent is to apply race and sex quotas when putting together any representative body, per “DEI,” why is this meaningful? Why are race and sex so important? As opposed to, say, being left-handed, or bald, or having green eyes?

As the makers of the current series The Chosen insist on pointing out, there were surely black folks passing through Judea from sub-Saharan Africa in Jesus’ time, as well as Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, pagans, Zoroastrians, and of course women. Not to mention various social classes. Yet when Jesus chose his twelve apostles, there was no race, sex, or even religious diversity: all “white” Jewish working men.

Presumably Jesus was not against diversity; but “seeing yourself represented” was not important.

“Blessed are the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard.”

This is already in the Beatitudes; almost their entire point. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” 

Xerxes: “Blessed are those without documentation.”

But why is someone blessed simply because they do not have ID? I presume the intent is to bless “illegal immigrants.” Which is a dubious sentiment: bless those who break the law? Unjust laws, perhaps. But Christianity assumes a duty to obey the law in most circumstances.

“Blessed are those who make damaging business decisions for the sake of people they serve.”

This is difficult to parse. An employee of a business enterprise serves the investors in that firm, and has a fiduciary duty to make business decisions that are not damaging to their interests. That business, of course, also serves its customers. The employee has a duty to serve their interests as well. But if in doing so he damages the business, harming his employers, his position is morally ambiguous.

Jesus actually addresses this problem in the Parable of the Unjust Steward. It is, the parable seems to say, always in the self-interest of a business to be as helpful as possible to their customers. 

“And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

And it is in the interests of its customers, moreover, for a useful business to remain in business. 

Thus the conflict never actually arises.

Adam Smith pointed out the same thing.

“Blessed are the burned-out social workers and the overworked teachers and the pro-bono case takers”

Why not just “blessed are the overworked”? That Beatitude might have some traction. But the claim here seems to be that some occupations are more blessed than others. If so, “teachers” and “lawyers” are not the groups Jesus singles out for praise. “Teachers” and “lawyers,” awkwardly enough, translate in his day to “Pharisees” and “scribes.” He was actually not too keen on them. “Social workers” are probably also subsumed under “Pharisees.”

The proper and more interesting challenge is to understand what the Beatitudes mean. Why are these groups in particular blessed? And what does it mean to be blessed in this sense?

Xerxes actually responded to my dissents from his proposed new Beatitudes. He argued, firstly, that just because Jesus did not mention a thing did not mean he thought it was unimportant. Second, that he might have said many things, in his three years of ministry, not included in the Bible. And finally, that the Beatitudes as preserved by the Catholic Church needed to be amended because they excluded some from feeling blessed; they too should feel part of the flock.

This is a shift in his ground from his original argument, that Jesus would have said these things were he speaking today, but they were simply not present in his time. Apparently that point he concedes.

I do think it is a fair inference, however, that, if Jesus—or anyone else--did not mention something, that thing was not part of his core message. Otherwise, you could impute anything to anyone.

Jesus could have said these things, but they were not recorded? 

But we have four accounts. Assuming the sermon on the plain and the sermon on the mount are the same event, we have only this sermon, which we must therefore assume, by consensus of those who were there, included everything in Jesus’s core message. If there were other sermons, he must have said the same things in them—as is demonstrable if the sermon on the mount and the sermon on the plain were different events.

As with any text, we must go with what the text actually says, and not put words in anyone’s mouth. Once we do that, anyone can make anything say anything. No point in even reading the Bible then; or Shakespeare, or the Constitution, or any text.

Xerxes’s concluding argument seems to be that Jesus should have said these things, because nobody should feel “outside the fold,” that everyone should “feel blessed.”

But this is not Jesus’s message; he was making it clear that not everyone is in the fold, not everyone is blessed. Only these people cited in the Beatitudes. Luke pairs his four Beatitudes with the Four Woes, in which all those not covered by the Beatitudes are called out and excluded from God’s favour. 

“But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now,
   for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
   for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you, 
for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Elsewhere, of course, Jesus speaks of the sheep and the goats—goats, being goats, are not “in the fold.” Jesus speaks in parables so that those outside the fold will not understand—here he calls them “swine.” Elsewhere, “vipers.” 

He is, in the end, alarmingly judgmental. Of the living and the dead.

That’s the text.

So much for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Theory for Why the World Seems Mad Right Now

 

Here’s a unified theory of why governments around the world seem in the last few years to have gone mad and turned on their own citizens. Despite the obvious electoral risks of doing so.

It all seemed to start visibly going off the rails in about the Fall of 2021. It was well understood by then that the Covid vaccines did not halt the spread of the virus; and that we could never achieve herd immunity through vaccinations. Yet it was at that point that governments began to demand that everyone must get vaccinated. 

Unless I have missed something, this was the first obviously illogical and malicious move by governments. 

Others followed: 

Cracking down on long-distance truck drivers, demanding they in particular must be vaccinated, or lose their livelihood. Why? They rarely came in contact with anyone, alone in their trucks. And at the very time that we were facing a supply chain crisis due to the Covid lockdowns.

Cracking down on medical personnel, insisting they must get vaccinated or lose their livelihood. Granted, they came into close contact with the unwell; but we already knew the vaccines did not prevent the spread, and they were uniquely qualified to make their own decisions on their personal health. This at the very time when emergency rooms were supposed to be facing a crisis of overcrowding with Covid cases.

Insisting that children all be vaccinated. Even though herd immunity was not possible, and they faced no real risk themselves from the virus—and obviously some risk from the vaccine.

Insisting everyone stay indoors long after it was established that the virus spread better indoors than outdoors.

Suppressing any talk of cures or treatments other than the vaccine; even though some cheap and widely available drugs showed much promise.

Suppressing any warnings about dangers associated with the vaccines.

Then the weird overreaction to a peaceful demonstration by truckers in Ottawa.

Then they went after farmers, and the use of fertilizers—just as food prices were spiraling upwards due to inflation and interrupted supply chains.

In Canada, they then started raising exponentially their “carbon tax.” Effectively a tax on everything, just as inflation was going out of control.

Then they kicked the immigration doors wider open, a lot wider open, in the middle of an unprecedented housing crisis; and a crisis over health care availability. And just as studies were showing that mass immigration harms rather than helps the economies of receiving nations.

Then, in Canada, draconian measures to silence and punish dissent, and withdraw basic civil rights to do so. Similar initiatives seem to have arisen at the same time in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, former bastions of the free speech tradition, and just about across the developed world. In the US, unprecedented and open attempts to rig the next election and suppress the political opposition.

I have probably missed a lot.

Occam’s razor suggests this explanation: the governments panicked over Covid, and grossly overreacted. The lockdowns killed more people than the virus would have, on top of the economic devastation and personal loss. The virus itself was engineered, and recklessly, and several goverments were responsible, not just China. They saw that this was going to come out, it was a huge scandal, and they anticipated that their publics would turn on them. 

They knew too by September that the vaccines they had hastily approved and encouraged everyone to get had dangerous side effects, worse than Covid itself, and also were not effective.

The truth must be worse than we yet know: so bad that they not only fear losing power. That is routine for democratic governments. The truth must be so terrible, they fear worse than this: revolution, serious criminal charges once they leave office, perhaps the guillotine.

Mudh of this, I suspect, is instinctive rather than planned. But if true, it seems to explain everything. 

Once they knew the vaccines were harmful, it might well have seemed in their interest to have everyone vaccinated. This might mask the issue: there would be no control group. Truckers and farmers had to be targeted, because they were least likely to see the need for the vaccine, and most able to avoid the government’s demands. Farmers can be self-sufficient more or less off the grid; truckers can flee the jurisdiction. Health professionals need to be bullied into it, because they can raise the alarm.

Other measures, like the rising carbon tax and the mass immigration, look like pre-emptive strikes against their expected future enemies, the public. Good idea to import a large body of new people who will not blame them for the vaccinations, not having been here at the time, and have reason for gratitude to the government for being let it, and given hotel rooms, social assistance and the like. Who else might stand up for them when the flag drops?

Seatbelts, everyone.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Canada's Totalitarianism

 

Canada is gaining an international reputation for all thewrong things. Elon Musk has chipped in on Justin Trudeau’s “Online Harms Bill,”that “Thissounds insane if accurate! Community notes, please check.”

Specifically, according to a tweet he reposted, it “willgive police the power to retroactively search the Internet for ‘hate speech‘violations, and arrest offenders, even if the offense occurred before the lawexisted.”

Is this true?

Apparently so. Community notes responded: it applies if “aperson communicates or causes to be communicated hate speech so long as thehate speech remains public, and the person can remove or block access to it.”

So by the letter of the law, you are liable to prosecution,and penalties up to life in prison, if you have not taken down anything youmight have written or tweeted in the past, that violates the new law. Includingtweets or posts you might not remember.

This is especially problematic, because you can never besure what violates the present law. Life in prison, for example, is thepunishment for “promoting genocide.” But the definition of genocide has becomeelastic. Almost everyone is currently accused by someone of promoting genocidein one way or another. One can also be punished for anything “if it ismotivated by hatred based on protected characteristics.” But who can define “hatred”?

And, speaking of human equality, why are only somecharacteristics protected, and not others? Definitionally, this is not “equalprotection before the law.”

Since these protections are arbitrary, one must keep abreastat all times with what the current law says, and be alert for changes.

The safest thing, of course—the only safe thing; is to justkeep your mouth shut on any topic that might be even vaguely political orcontroversial. This seems to be the intent of the legislation—shut up and dowhat you’re told.

So who gets to define “hatred”? Or “detestation,” or “vilification,”or ”genocide,”  or the like? That task apparentlyfalls not to a court of law but to the “Digital Safety Commission.” Which meansthe accused will have no due process. No rules of evidence, no right toconfront your accuser or cross-examine, no right to trial by jury of your peers,none of the traditions of our legal system, fought and died for by ourforefathers over the years. You are judged by government bureaucrats. If thegovernment identifies an enemy, nothing stops them from throwing him or her inprison for life. “Name the man, and I will find the crime.”

No actual crime need even be alleged. A person can,according to the bill, be placed under house arrest and cut off from allcommunication devices, if a judge decides he or she is likely to say somethinghateful in future.

No problem, the government reassures us. No need to worry. Anysuch judgement would have to be approved by the Attorney-General, and “theseprovisions would only be invoked in the most extreme cases.” In other words, justtrust the government never to actually use the tools they are demanding.

Anarticle in The Independent, a centre-left outlet, apparently doing its bestto downplay the threat, quotes the Canadian Civil Liberties Association as saying“Generally speaking, laws don't have a retroactive effect... in Canada … itshould not have a retroactive effect; that would be a bad interpretation ofthat provision, which [we] would stand against.”

In other words, we have to wait and see. The law certainly canbe read to say this. The Civil Liberties Association must stand against thisinterpretation.

The Independent article even includes a veiled threatagainst anyone raising the alarm over this. Noting that Elon Musk has done so,it then cites a lawsuit against him for defamation, on the grounds of a similarprior post on X asking for information from “community notes” on a similarclaim.

So even asking questions is risky. Especially if you’re notrich and powerful like Elon Musk.

Canada is worst, but similar attempts for force silence onthe citizenry are rampant across the developed world. Something is clearlygoing on here.

Right now the Scots, the Irish, and the Dutch seem mostdetermined to resist. And the polls in Canada have turned decisively against Trudeau.

But the way things seem to be going, does that even matter? Governmentsseem to be showing a growing disregard for their own people and the popularwill. What do they know? Given that they are prepared to shut down open debate,will they even again allow a fair election?

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

Elon Musk on How to Teach

 

... and he's right.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

A Silver Lining

 

Small Dead Animals reports that mortgage defaults are rising quickly on commercial properties.

It stands to reason: the rise in interest rates hurts commercial property owners just as it hurts residential owners. But with the growth in telecommuting, and the boost it got from the Covid lockdowns, commercial vacancy rates are 20-23%. People are working from home. We have too much commercial space.

The problem is almost its own solution. Too much office space; too little residential space. We need to convert office buildings to apartments. 

These buildings will generally be high and near the centre of the city, reducing commuting costs and fuel use, creating livable mixed urban neighbourhoods, and supporting more efficient public transport.

Of course, working from home, there will be less reason for living in the city. But an apartment anywhere will be desirable.

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.

What's Happening at Sheridan College

 

'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.