I am sure we all can see how crummy the economy is still. Despite what "professional" economists say unemployment is looming over most Canadians heads, nearly every one lives pay cheque to pay cheque, and finding a job can take months or even years. So what plan for our economy is actually guaranteed to generate the growth we have been striving for? Every political party has proposed something but do they really offer real solutions? To figure that out we need to look at what is preventing growth and that is the very nature of business in Canada itself. I'm sure every body knows by now how it works here. Monopolies monopolies and more monopolies. That's all there really is. Bell and Rogers... if you live in Ontario those are pretty much your only choices for television, internet, and telephone. If you want a bank account you need to hit up Scotiabank, TD, RBC, or perhaps BMO. Feel like buying some new clothes? Zellers or Walmart. There is absolutely no room for the mom and pop business to thrive in. Every market already has a major corporation gobbling it up. This is disastrous because of how when one company suffers a huge chunk of the population does too. And don't forget that when you own your own clothing store, for example, all the money you make goes straight to your home. Not in this system though, where every sale you make goes straight to some other guy and you get a severely watered down pay cheque two weeks later. When was the last time you looked at the downtown strip, the one with all the mom and pop stores, of your town and saw all the out of business signs? Ever noticed how they all sell the same things Dollarama and Zellers sell? You know that giant building that your local Canadian Tire occupies? Yeah that's right, the one that's big enough to be a shopping mall. Why not dismantle Canadian Tire and divide up that building into a centralized location for people to set up their own privately owned shops in? Like, I don't know, the flea markets are? By dismantling CT you relieve a lot of stress on local hardware stores and give them plenty of room for growth. Especially true for the hundreds of small towns dotting the nation which contain the majority of the Canadian population. What I am suggesting is that we ban the practice of owning multiple store fronts and businesses (subsidiaries and such), we make outsourcing a criminal offence, and basically go back to something along the lines of the 1800s but you know, more high tech. When everybody owns a mom and pop the economy becomes a whole lot more stable. You know why it's stable? Because every body happens to make money for their own families and can make their own jobs rather than depending on finding employment elsewhere, making next to nothing in the process. You didn't hear about major recessions and borderline depressions in the 1800's eh? Of course this is very simplified. There's only so much you can fit into a forum topic and I don't feel like writing a whole book. Simply discussing a way to make a smooth transition from mass monopolization would require a whole section altogether. I feel terrible saying all this, being a strong anti-capitalist and all, but if we must have a capitalist system shouldn't we make it at least functional? SOMEBODY has to present real solutions to real problems after all so it might as well be the guy who has run into every single fault in the system personally.
None of us were alive back then, so no, we didn't hear about those. That aside: Wikipedia: Recessions in the USA since 1790. General economical history of Canda I'm certain there were major recessions and depressions in the past, as there are today. For instance due to failed harvests, bad financial policy or wars. Not that much different from today. Information on recessions back then is a lot more scarce than the well documented recessions since the 20th century. So this is more a matter of perception bias, than a sound argument.
Of course there are certain situations which will pop up that any economic model will struggle with. War especially. So it isn't valid to dismiss a proposal simply because there might be a bad harvest one year. After all, we didn't scrap the Trans-Canada Highway just because it would take a lot of work to maintain it. And just looking at the first link goes to prove what I said above. Three out of four first listed dates are due to acts of war and the first of them all is related to the struggling of a foreign business, which is exactly what is killing us now. Looking at the second link was a lot of general information and I didn't see much regarding recessions and depression on a quick browse through it (that's a lot of text to read just to find a few bits and pieces of historical economic data). So I would say that the points still stand. If we went back to small businesses being the primary, if only, method of operating a business we would definitely be in a much better position.
