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Comment by jyscao | Hacker News Reader

One could endlessly go on about the economy/COL, immigration, crumbling healthcare, housing crisis, far-left ideology going mainstream, etc.

But I could frame it much simpler than that - Canada, at least in cities of modest sizes and up, is rapidly transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society.

An anecdote: my sister is more than 10 years younger than me, she's currently attending the same university as I did over a decade ago; in the span of less than half a year, she's got 2 bikes stolen - her original bike with front wheel removed to bypass the lock in late summer 2024, then the entire lock cut to steal her replacement bike in December; this would be inconceivable to me during my time living in the same town.

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Such an odd anecdote given that it wasn't that long ago Igor Kenk was the king of bike theft in Toronto.

> economy, healthcare costs, housing crisis, and... far left ideology

One of these things is not like the others. Could you elaborate on how 'far left ideology' relates to the others in terms of the supposed fall of our country?

Whenever I see people using the term "far left", I realize its meaning has been subverted and neutered to mean something else entirely. Same with "woke". It's very Orwellian to see how successfully these words have been distorted to obscure their nature and power.

I think people are talking past each other. Some of these parties are "far left" on social issues while simultaneously being "moderate right" on economic issues. So you can label these parties either way, depending on what's convenient to your argument.

Maybe he means the extreme levels of immigration that have tossed fuel on the housing and healthcare crisis?

For context, the liberal party is right of centre these days. We don't even have a "far-left" party. The NDP is solidly left, probably slightly left of what the liberals were years ago when this poster thinks things were wonderful.

We do have fringe parties that are far-left, that basically get a handful of votes a year, and we have one far-right party, the People Party of Canada, that gets enough votes to occasionally get some news coverage.

> One could endlessly go on...

Yet, apparently one will instead sidestep the discussion entirely. Frankly the more you've tried to answer the question the less you actually answer it...

I don't see how "rapidly transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society" or "she's got 2 bikes stolen ... this would be inconceivable to me during my time living in the same town" reflect failures in Canadian government at all, really.

Has societal trust actually increased anywhere in the developed world? Sure, our governments have had their share of failures, but it would actually take an extraordinary vision and effort to increase societal trust as technology and population advance.

Is it possible your sister had a shockingly unlucky semester? Or that your world model was simply naive and wrong 10 years ago? Hard to say since the anecdote isn't really evidence of anything.

Every store in my town now locks up anything small that costs more than $20 in cages. Talking to some people working there it was pretty common for people to walk in, take a bunch of shit, and walk out. Drivers are completely out of control. I've witnessed at least 3 people run red lights in the last 2 years, while I can remember only one such incident in the 10 years before that. Signalling is no longer something drivers do - like at all. For the last 2 years teenagers have terrorized the local park on Canada Day shooting fireworks at random passers by. With someone setting off fireworks under an occupied baby carriage last year. Car thefts in Toronto got so bad that people were building retractable bollards in their driveways[1].

I could go on, but there's a clear apparent trajectory to these experiences.

[1] https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/a-thief-will-think-twice-some-tor...

Still mostly anecdotal, but a better answer, and probably belongs higher up in the thread actually.

>Still mostly anecdotal

In principle, what sort of hard evidence is gathered that could establish the point?

I'm kind of confused by the question. Do you think an unverified commenter on a public website saying "all the stores in my town [not named] do X [but I didn't count]" is a type of hard evidence that I'm arbitrarily rejecting?

No; I think that there's no feasible way that anyone could have hard evidence one way or another for the underlying question, and that you should therefore take anecdotes more seriously.

>Has societal trust actually increased anywhere in the developed world? Sure, our governments have had their share of failures, but it would actually take an extraordinary vision and effort to increase societal trust as technology and population advance.

Japan. Again, depending on where in the country, but things like muggings and drunk driving have drastically decreased in the last 35 years.

Technology isn’t the issue

Mass immigration and increasing wealth disparity are much more relevant.

If you know you know, and clearly plenty of people who read my original comment do.

Judging from your other comments, you're either wilfully ignorant or actively dishonest, can't tell which, and frankly don't care either way. All I know is it'd be a complete waste of time to try to convince you.

> If you know you know

And if you don't, you... don't deserve to know?

> you're either wilfully ignorant or actively dishonest

I think "willful ignorance" is a good description of accepting impossible-to-verify anecdotes of internet comments as evidence of societal change, personally. But I'm realizing we don't have the same goals in the conversation so I understand why it feels pointless to continue.

Look at Japan as a homogenous and extremely (if not the most) high trust society.

>Look at Japan as a homogenous and extremely (if not the most) high trust society.

Why does Japan need separate trains for women, and why can the shutter sound on Japanese phones not be turned off?

All countries need this; Japan's just the only one that did something about it. I'm sure NYC ladies would love segregated cars right about now.

Um... why exactly am I looking for a highly homogenous society?

I'm just saying they tend to be more high trust, which is supported by statistical data.

Ah yes, increasing theft is just a fact of the "developed" world, and simultaneously, anyone that claims theft has increased is just imagining things.

> Ah yes, increasing theft is just a fact of the "developed" world

It seems like a pretty likely outcome of high population growth!

> anyone that claims theft has increased is just imagining things

Anyone that claims an anecdote is data is just bullshitting, actually.

anecdote is actually data tho lol

I think any Canadian that identifies as “far left” would find your post hysterical. They don’t even have a party to vote for anymore - best they can do is a begrudging vote for the NDP. This country has been on a rightward shift for decades. e.g. look at the hard push towards privatization of government services in Ontario.

This anecdote could be explained by something as simple as her forgetting to lock her bike consistently, locking it incorrectly, using poor locks, etc.

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