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Comment by chongli | Hacker News Reader

It's a difference of cultures. Canadian culture traditionally focuses less on making a lot of noise, standing out from the crowd, etc. Canadians are almost infamous for politeness, especially compared to Americans.

Now, couple this with the ease at which Canadian engineers can get jobs in the US and the picture emerges, bright and clear. Any Canadian with a lot of ambition may be alienated by the relaxed culture in Canada and subsequently move to the US, further reinforcing the cultural divide.

On the other hand, Canadians (and even Americans) who are disillusioned with what they may see as an excessive ambition and a relentless focus on "growth hacking" might opt to live in Canada, also reinforcing the cultural divide.

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You didn’t go over the possibility that Canadians may prefer to live in Canada compared to the United States. Last time I checked there wasn’t a race war and a group of belligerents storming the capitol in Canada.

Exactly. As a Canadian, I don't have to worry about my family being harmed by racially motivated violence and discrimination. Especially since some are in demographics who disproportionally experience racially motivated violence.

Not everyone in the world idealizes the American tech sector as much as America thinks they do. Personally, I'm more drawn to the EU tech sector.

Finally, Canada's tech sector isn't worse somehow. Canadians are different, therefore our Canadian sector is going to be different too. Canadian tech companies ("startups" specifically) tend to be more driven by stability than generating the largest valuation possible. The author completely neglects the impact that culture has on the tech sector. This is a common mistake when comparing things between America and Canada.

The primary difference between Canada and the US was that Canada was small/smart/lucky enough to enact some social nets before the world became too easy to manipulate by media and the internet.

Not really. Our first attempts at universal healthcare involved general strikes from doctors and the government standing its ground. Some of the most important legislation and infrastructure in Canadian history was done under minority governments have to work with other political parties.

I would say it would it comes down to a much healthier government with more churn and not two different flavours of the same political party. I only found out this year that in certain states the ballots contain options "Vote all Democrat" or "Vote all Republican". Enshrining political parties like that into an electoral process reminds of the Soviet Union.

My implication is that the political systems in most nations are becoming more recalcitrant to acts that cause massive overhauls due to deliberate beurecracy. I would be curious if you and others think that Canada would be able to pass any new massive social program today.

So what we have now is that some countries ossified after passing lots of welfare systems while others ossified before. The ones where welfare is present end up serving a higher quality of life for its lowest ladder of folk, ensuring a better scenario for them to not radicalize much (just comparatively, look at France).

It wouldn't be too hard. Again we don't have the House / Senate split that the US does, and our parties (even the conservatives) are not too against new social programs, so the main reason why we haven't piloted a UBI or affordable housing program is because the parties (especially one in particular) only push legislation if there's already a lot of momentum behind it.

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