jadero

Given my age (66) I probably shouldn't be riding gravel roads too much. I've done a lot of it in my life and am pretty confident in my skills, but I don't have the reflexes, the bones, or the recovery time of a teenager anymore! :)

I gave up my trials bike and my mountain bike a few years ago due to more frequent falls and injury. If I ever do build that e-trike, I'll build it with a 50km range so I can run to town and back, but I'm not sure how often I'd actually do so. In some ways, a trike might be more challenging than a bike because of the probability that one wheel will always be in a gravel ridge.

Okay, so I do less computer programming for money, but it's still a hobby and I contribute to a few open source projects.

But here are a few things that wouldn't get done if I were still employed:

• regular classes in internet security and privacy to help keep community members safe online.
• volunteering at the school to help teach students both new technologies (3D printing, robotics, environmental data collection and analysis) and old (boat building, sailing, winter survival in nature) plus tutoring in everything from music performance to math.
• serving with the emergency measures organization

That's approximately where my list ends, but fellow retirees are helping less abled people stay in their homes and communities, showing up at social justice rallies, and a myriad of other things that are important both societally and economically. If it's judged to be less important than employment, it's also important to note that much of it wouldn't be societally affordable without our free labour, yet has profound impacts on quality of life.

And I disagree that removing incentives leads to less being done. External incentives, like paycheques, are probably the least effective incentives there are. Most people are motivated by passion, desire, contribution, and satisfying results.

Thanks!

It shouldn't have too much impact on daily life. As part of embarking on this, we decided that running to the village for takeout from the cafe wouldn't count nor would running to the next village over to craft store or lumberyard. We don't do either often enough to matter.

As for an ebike, I really like the idea. I used to be a pretty hardcore cyclist, even cycling year round. (I actually used to ice race motorcycles!) But gravel roads (speed limit 80 kph), especially in winter, aren't something I should be taking on at my age. :) I'm a hobby manufacturer and one of the things I'd like to tackle is an e-trike. But I probably never will, because I just don't think it will safely mix with traffic anywhere I'd ride it.

This may not apply everywhere, but around here (Saskatchewan), retirees are the lifeblood of service and community organizations. From the quilting club that generates revenue for brain injury research and food banks to the senior centre that helps people age in place, retirees are a critical component of the glue that holds us together.

Even if you have a fairly narrow economic view of what it means to contribute to society, there is no question that retirees are making those contributions. While actual money is required for most things, nothing happens without people putting in time and retirees have plenty of time and aren't shy about using it.

This is something I became aware of as my older relatives retired. Now that I'm retired myself, I'm more active than ever in the community, despite having also retired from the volunteer fire and rescue service.

Not a "this week" result, but a change in our vehicle use has borne fruit. This is the second month in a row where we've spent about $400 less than usual.

We live 20 km from the village where we get our mail, library books, and basic groceries. Instead of going in 2-3 times a week, we now go just once a week.

We live 150 km from a small city with groceries and other supplies that are not available in the village. Instead of going in twice a month, we go in once a month and coordinate that trip with a trip to town for mail and library books, cutting out a separate trip.

We live 250 km from a bigger city with yet more selection and supplies and our medical care. We've committed to holding the line on trips only for medical appointments and bundling our other shopping needs into those trips. It remains to be seen if we can successfully eliminate accommodation expenses from those trips.

There are some other things that go into our savings. More research has led to more online purchases of hardware and other non-grocery supplies and those purchases are put off until the threshold for free shipping is reached.

If we can hold the line over the long term, the savings should pay for some other stuff, like installing a heat pump, relegating our pellet stove to very cold weather and backup use. I don't know if that comes with lower average cost of heating/cooling, but it would be less physically demanding, something that will be important if we are to age in place (we're 66).

My concern with a universal income is that it discourages healthy people from working and thus contributing to our collective wellbeing.

Every study I've heard of shows that is not what happens except in very narrow situations. For example, the study run in Dauphin, MB found that teenagers were less likely to work or to work less, but that was because they were choosing to focus on their schooling and, in some cases, actually stay in school. IIRC, there were also people who chose to stay at home with young children or care for infirm relatives rather than find other care options so they could go to low wage, "low skill" jobs. Those outcomes seem positive given the results of other studies regarding education and family care.

There is a general problem in mass psychology where people sitting around a table or in their armchairs try to imagine the impact of a policy without conducting a study or looking at historical results.

"Hey, you know those rules designed to protect victims and those we are charged with supervising and protecting? Why don't we use those to punish them and protect ourselves?"

"Hey, you know those rules designed to protect victims and those we are charged with supervising and protecting? Why don't we use those to punish them and protect ourselves?"

From the article:

Moe previously said the policy had strong support from the majority of Saskatchewan residents and parents.

I cannot possibly express how pissed off I get at this blind adherence to majority opinion and majority rule.

The theft of Indigenous lands had the support of the majority of those with power.

The creation of the Residential School system had majority support of those with power and, by that time, the actual majority of the population.

Sometimes, the majority is false because it only includes those with power. Sometimes the majority is not just wrong but actively selfish and maybe just a little evil.

Sometimes, the only way to create a better world is to drag people kicking and screaming into it.

I don't have all the answers for how to balance minority rights against majority desires, but lots of very smart people have discussed the problem for hundreds of years and concluded that bills of rights based on the principles of inclusion and respect are a good starting point. If we are just going to toss those rights aside every time we get uncomfortable, then they are not rights, but privileges or concessions.

Ask yourself this: How would I structure the world if tomorrow I was going to be reincarnated as an infant into a community without power and grow up to be different from those around me?

It should be the other way round, with "Indigenous first" policies.

Determine what sustainability means. Set limits in a way that allows for an actual livelihood without any individual or corporation being able to monopolize the fishery while allowing for a certain amount of noncommercial use, including for subsistence. If there's anything left over, open it up to non-indingenous people using similar guidelines.

It's child's play.

We live where there is no municipal water or sewage. We have two holding tanks, one for water, one for waste. We haul the fresh water ourselves, but there are contractors we could hire. We call a pumper truck to empty the waste water tank occasionally and they haul it to a municipal dump site where it gets treated along with the rest of the municipal sewage.

There are RVs all over the place with appropriate toilet and water systems.

In the early 1980s, I worked at remote work camps with wash shacks that had hot and cold running water with flush toilets.

It's a solved problem.