Leaked document reveals that Sidewalk Labs' Toronto plans for private taxation, private roads, charter schools, corporate cops and judges, and punishment for people who choose privacy

Love the use of “trebuchet” as a verb!

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Trebuchet, pitch, matches.

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It might be the solution to a better world, but it isn’t the way to get to one.

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There’s an old quote about strategy and tactics: “Never forget - the enemy gets a vote too.”

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Unless they plan on buying Zug Island

If they buy Zug Island maybe they can stop the hum. :crazy_face:

That might be enough to garner support…

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Open source? Rite of rat repair and all that.

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My understanding is that they want to put this in further to the east of where I suspect you were, in an area where there’s been some new construction but not that much. Very roughly it looks like they wanted to build in the area between Sugar Beach and the Port Lands, and at least according to the Star today they’re just going to get the area between Queens Quay East and Parliament.

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In societies built on Capitalism, Fascism is always just a matter of degree. The degree of Fascism tends to ratchet up the more Capitalism fails, and Capitalism regularly cycles through failure spikes. Buckle your seatbelts, kids, because we’re on the verge of a major one.

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Yes, it is the ultimate vision of society for libertarians. The strong and rich do what they want, the weak and poor can knuckle under or leave (if they can). Libertarianism is fundamentally anti-Democratic, since it opposes people’s right to elect an effective legislature, and the legislature’s ability to make, you know, LAWS. All that’s left is the right to buy and to bully.
Visit Dubai someday. Not even effective traffic regulations or investment in infrastructure. You can’t park. If you have the money, your driver just drives around until you’re ready to go. I mentioned this to an official (well, the low-level representative of an official), and he said, You think there should be better parking? Invest in a parking structure! You and Dubai share the profits for ten (maybe 15) years, then it gets turned over to the Emirate. Complete abdication of government in exchange for extended, contractual bribery.

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No, they probably won’t. Current projections for changes in the Great Lakes, including Ontario call for a substantial water level fall due to increased surface evaporation. Depending on jet stream patterns you’ll have years of major flooding, but the overall trend line is the other way. It would take a rise well beyond any reasonable planning horizon to have sea level clear the something like 50 meter gap between Toronto and sea level.

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What a weird headline. Is it even a complete sentence?

Which is why the system is ejecting Amazon Prime citizens.

Google (data) subjects. We won’t be having any of that inconvenient talk of democracy and human rights interfering with our algorithms thank-you very much.

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The east side of the Toronto waterfront referred to as the Portlands are quite rundown and the ground is contaminated. It was very industrial many decades ago, with chemical storage sites, coal yards and more in that area. The ground in that area has a lot of heavy metals and various pollutants. There has been a multi-year multi-million dollar project to clean up that area.

The organization Toronto Waterfront, with 3 levels of government have been responsible in developing that land once it’s decontaminated. They have been working with Sidewalk Labs on a possible project there.

Now that document sounds quite scary but also far removed from where the project is currently at. Now Sidewalk Labs have made certain proposals like getting a percentage of property taxes to help build transit there, but it was incredibly unpopular. So Sidewalk Labs abandoned that and idea and came up with different possibilities to fund transit.

Who said headlines have to be complete sentences?

Who says we don’t already have a social credit system now? We are relentlessly monitored and all that data is sold to the highest bidder. How would you even know if, say, your insurance company bought your google map data and saw how long it took you to get from point A to Point B and figured you did it at 80MPH. Of if your social media friends were not to the linking of your bank and you didn’t get a loan? How would you ever know?

I’m dismayed that our elected officials haven’t legislated a default of opt out for all data collection.

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