Hacker News Reader

Comment by theluketaylor | Hacker News Reader

Food distribution is an actual market with competition. A bridge over a river is a natural monopoly that Moroun abused like crazy to his personal enrichment.

Canadian, not American and we tend to have a much more government-friendly position. I view public ownership of natural monopolies as vitally important. Then private enterprise can fairly compete in a reasonably regulated way to deliver services via that publicly owned infrastructure (like food distribution). When private entities own the infrastructure they can hold the entire society hostage, which was exactly what happened with the Ambassador Bridge.

View on HN

This makes me laugh. Canada is the most anti competition, everything is a monopoly country in the world. That is why food prices and telecom bills are so high. The govt owns nothing. This is another major failure of Canada.

Exactly this. People on the right in Canada like to blame all this on "socialism", but it's really the opposite. The state in Canada has always been captured by private interests, for the purpose of enforcing monopolies. Sometimes justified by nationalism (protectionism relative to the massive US economy next door), sometimes justified by expediency, but almost always working in some private sector interest at the expense of the public's.

In the west it's the oil & gas sector (or forestry), in Central Canada its banking, service, and manufacturing.

The reality is we have very little "socialism" in Canada, and a whole lot of corporatism which has worn a liberal facade for its own survival. It dates back to colonial times, we just replaced the British colonial parasites with our own local ones.

This bridge is far from a natural monopoly, as the border is considerably long. The justice system however, which allowed the bridge owner to maintain his unnatural monopoly, is publicly owned.

> This bridge is far from a natural monopoly, as the border is considerably long.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_River is a total of 24 miles long, and both sides have been populated since at least 11,000 years ago. Good luck.

So long enough to fit hundreds of bridges. And also a few miles to the north there is the St Clair river which is even longer and less populated and already has a bridge.

Oh? Which neighborhoods will you be demolishing? How you choose determines who will be suing you.

> And also a few miles to the north

Tell me you don't live here without saying it. What's an added 3 hours of commute one way? No big deal. Employers will be pleased.

Do many people commute over the bridge?

Reading [1] which talks of frequent delays, it sounds inconvenient. It isn't really "efficient for an international border" compared to the Schengen area in the EU, or India-Nepal, Russia-Belarus, UK-Ireland etc. At those, there are no checks at all; so no need to stop.

[1] https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Detroit#From_Canada

> Do many people commute over the bridge?

In short, yes.

What do commuters have to do with this? One bridge is plenty for them considering Windsor has a population of like 200k. And the toll over this bridge is only like 6 bucks which would be the same as a government bridge. This is an international trade issue.

> Windsor has a population of like 200k

City borders are often much smaller than city population areas. Population of the metropolitan areas on both sides of the Detroit River is over 5 million people.

The justice system is publicly owned but lobbied and interfered with (manipulated by?) by private interests.

Lobbying is just public officials taking bribes (in one for or another).

If we had to decide who's worse, i give my vote (of being the worst) to the politicians.

You could remove them all, and punish them all severely, but without change to the system which they were the most successful at working, they will all be replaced by indistinguishable figures working the same systems in the same ways.

The best predictor of results are the incentives in place.

So what? I mean... after a few dozen people are sent to prison for a few years, there should be at least a few people willing to say 'no' to the lobbyists.

So what? I mean... after a few dozen people are sent to prison for a few years, there should be at least a few people willing to say 'no' to [stealing/drugs/speeding/fraud/murder/etc.]

People still commit all those crimes you say? Oh.

You say that we tend to have a more government friendly position, but if you look at the actual management of e.g. toll roads in Ontario vs the US it's entirely the opposite. Canada is riddled with private-public partnerships that have led to private monopolies enriching themself off the public dime, starting in the Mulroney era and it's never let up since.

The toll system on the New York interstates is a dream compared to what we have here on things like the 407.

Even our much lauded "socialist" single payer healthcare system actually consists mostly of many private entities (doctors) billing the government. Public pays, private profits -- just has the advantage (vs the US) of cutting out the parasitical insurance companies in-between.

Telco sector (split into a 3 parasites, mainly), wine/beer/liquor (special distribution and retail privileges just for Andrew Peller and Vincorp in Ontario, no inter-provincial trade, monopoly private Beer Stores), the list goes on. And we're getting new ones, e.g. Shoppers Drug Mart exclusive contract for COVID vaccine deliveries. Moving Service Ontario facilities into Staples stores. Likely based on whoever attended Doug Ford's daughter's Stag & Doe, etc.

Been that way since the Hudson's Bay Company. The most "successful" way to do business in Canada is via regulatory capture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com