Despair for the Human Race

The other day I thought of what would happen if everyone simply obeyed traffic laws. I mean all the time, like the rules of a computer program or a mathematical procedure. I soon realized that accident rates would fall through the basement, saving lives, repair time, and money. Road rage would all but disappear. Traffic delays would be greatly reduced as most of these are caused by accidents, although those caused by construction would still occur. I soon became very depressed as I became aware that this would never happen. Everyone is in too much of a hurry, secure in the belief that arriving a their destination at the proper time is more important then the destinations and arrival times of everyone else on the road.

In other news, there was a minor financial sh*tstorm up here as the taxation rules for a class of companies called income trusts were revised. Apparently, since the 1970s a great many corporations in Canada have been re-designating themselves as income trusts, a form of holding company. Because income trusts are not corporations, simply groups holding assets in trust for various "unit holders" (like share holders), they did not pay corporate taxes, and many paid no taxes at all. Until now, that is. Which is fine, I'm all for closing loopholes which allow for multi-million dollar companies to get out of paying taxes. The rub is, many of these income trusts were publicly traded; the resulting sell-off caused the Toronto Stock Exchange (along with other lesser exchanges in Canada) to plummet. The resulting economic adjustment: increased investment in bank stocks. In fact, all of the Big 5 banks saw their share prices rise nicely. So we've eliminated a tax dodge, but we made the banks richer. Can't see if we've made a gain on that one.

In cops-and-robbers news, Ottawa is adding 10 more drug cops. This to me seems like a misallocation of resources. Sure, the murder rate in O-town is up, along with violent crime as a whole, but we need more drug cops who will probably spend all their time looking over people's power bills to see who has a few marijuana plants in the basement. The logic is inescapable. My policy on policing is based on a hierarchy of who I want the heck away from me and my family. These are, in descending order:

1) Murderers and Rapists
2) Thieves
3) Pimps and Drug Dealers
4) Panhandlers and Bums
5) Petty criminals such as vandals, petty thieves, potheads, etc.

First, get rid of categories (1) and (2). At that stage I am reasonably happy. Then (3), when you get a minute. I could definitely do without (4) and (5), but I can deal with them (a sharp kick in the face is generally effective). But those first 2 are the big ones and I would feel a lot better going out if the Ottawa police would kindly put the 10 new recruits to work on these big-ticket items.