Actually, it’s a silly question.  There’s plenty of civilization up here, it’s just well spread out over a beautiful landscape.  I’m currently posting this from Points North Landing in far northern Saskatchewan.  It’s beautiful up here and the people are about as friendly as you can get just before expecting warm pies to be forced upon you because you look like you might not have eaten in the past hour or two.

No idea how far north “far northern Saskatchewan” really is?  Check it out on this google maps image.

So basically, the last place a trucker wants anything to go wrong.  There’s a single shop up here and the labour is expensive (because it’s hard to come by) and the parts can cost upward of $200 just to ship up here.  A $13 seal up here can cost upward of $180 if the truck shop doesn’t stock it.  Some parts come expedited by plane, some by truck and all with a heavy price tag.  Many parts are double, triple or even more than the cost of what I’m accustomed to.  So of course, it’s with a great deal of frustration that I got out of my truck after uploading some gravel that I saw this.

If you’re wondering what that is, it’s a bear wheel hub.  Basically, there’s a cap and a seal that are supposed to be screwed on there covering that orange thing up.  That cap and seal keep oil in the hub which lubricates the wheel bearings (both inner and outer) and ensure that the axle doesn’t heat up and either seize or light on fire.  In either case, there are potentially thousands of dollars of damage and this far up north, thousands more and no options for immediate or even distant future repairs.  Take a closer look and we can see what might have contributed to this problem.

That orange, spring loaded ring is supposed to lock that giant nut it’s sitting in, into place.  On the lower right hand side, you can see that the orange ring has a little rectangle shaped tab sticking out.  If you look to the bottom of the hub (in the centre) you’ll see a corresponding rectangle notch.  The orange tab is supposed to be sitting in the notch on the hub.  This keeps the giant nut (the nut holds the inner and outer bearings in place) from rotating and backing off.  In this case, because it looks like the orange ring is undamaged at the tab, (or anywhere else) and thusly that it was not installed properly, it failed to keep the nut from backing off and that’s why the hub cap and seal popped off because of all the outward pressure.  Surprisingly, none of the bolts on the hub cap and seal were stripped meaning I was not going to have to have a new stub installed.  Unfortunately, because the bearing and the inner seal (on the other side of the tires) was exposed to dirt and other grit, the bearings were slightly damaged and the inner seal gave way meaning all of the oil in the hub leaked out.  Crazy huh?

When I found this at the pit, I was lost for words.  Here I was, hundreds of miles from anywhere and a wheel axle that was essentially farked.  I couldn’t keep running with the axle as it was, it would have lasted maybe an hour if I was lucky before seizing and becoming ripped apart.  Luckily, the guys working with Asiliy Crushing helped me out with a new hub cap and seal and some gear oil to get me as far as I would need to go to get to the Points North Landing truck shop.  We jacked the axle up and took the nut off and the outside bearing out to clean out as much of the grit as we could.  Honestly, there’s only so much you can do in a gravel pit though.

When I got to the Points North shop, the mechanic took it apart and gave me some good news.  The hub was undamaged and the inside and outside bearings will safely last me until I get back home from this job.  The inside seal and break shoes had to be replaced, but this was the extent of the damage aside from the bearings being badly worn for being only a few weeks old.

The worst part of this is that this hub, seals and everything pictured above (even the steel rims) was completely replaced about 1,000-1,250 kilometres ago because the seal gave way letting all the hub oil leak out resulting in the axle becoming seized.  In case you’re wondering, this should have lasted much longer obviously.  There is more good news though.  I’m not on the hook for the bill.  The shop that replaced these parts is covering my cost of repairs while I’m up north and kudos to them for it.  They’ll also be replacing the damaged wheel bearings.  It’s far too often that you’ll run into a shop where they’ll try and find a way to weasel out their responsibility in a case like this and so I’m not posting a condemnation of this shop nor any information about them because they’ve made good on their mistake.  It would be malicious and terribly unfair of me to single them out now.  When I dialled their number, I was fully expecting resistance but what I found instead was a shop ready to make good on their error without hesitation.  It was honestly refreshing and brought me from being severely pissed off, frustrated and on the verge of panic, (my finances aren’t exactly set up for this kind of repair right now) to a calmed sort of contentment.  It was honestly unexpected and gratifying to know there’s some one out there not trying to screw a trucker out of their dollars.

So, search out some google images for Points North Landing if you like.  It’s a heck of a place and at night, it’s calming and peaceful to be in the middle of nowhere with hardly anyone about within hundreds of miles.  Just for the love of octopus, don’t break anything!  It’s gonna cost you an arm and a leg if you do!

ever heard of CUSO-VSO?  They’re a volunteer based organization that seeks to send professionals around the world to help impoverished regions with things like education, health care, community planning and so on.  To volunteer with this organization, you need a recognized professional designation of some sort and volunteer to be placed in a region where you will apply that designation to the improvement of that region.  It’s a great organization and I encourage you to support it.  However, I think that this organization and others like it should send financial planners overseas en masse.

The reason I think this is important is summed up very well in this column from the New York Times.  It’s not overtly politically correct but it demonstrates a very significant problem that besets families living in poverty and this is a problem not limited to the third world but I think in the third world is where the damage done by a failure of people to properly prioritize their spending is the worst.  choosing to spend money on beer when rent is 8 months behind is a demonstration of a house hold head who does not understand the long term benefit of financial responsibility.  It’s easy to say that in the short term, back breaking labour and poverty demand some kind of luxury spending because life is so rough but I can’t imagine how rough life will be for the subject of the New York Times article when his family no longer has a home.

Building housing, hospitals, roads, schools is all an essential part of economic and social growth in the third world and even here at home.  Providing seed for crops, help in farming land or placing teachers, doctors, engineers and others to help others become more self sufficient is also incredibly helpful to impoverished people.  It seems though that financial planning and education is given hardly a second thought in these types of aid efforts.  In a world where we are so familiar with “teach a man to fish…” as part of our cultural back drop, we should be more aware of how valuable that type of reasoning can be to those we want to help.

Volunteer organizations should send a hoard of financial planners around the world to educate those who seek status in their communities as to why having a grip on the household finances is the epitome of a successful and ultimately admirable family.  Having a cell phone today may put you at the head of the pack in terms of status but looking ahead two or three years may see the head of the household at the head of one of the most admirable families in the region.  Surely this can be impressed upon people in impoverished regions!

as a side note, check out the skyscraper banner that, at the time of this post, is placed to the right hand side of this blog.  KIVA is an organization that allows micro-lenders in impoverished areas access funds that come from people like you and I.  Throw in as little as $25 to help spur economic growth in an area that could use it.  Thanks in advance.

It turns out that in the “worst case” scenario, the massive oil spill could last into august if BP doesn’t get the oil gushing well plugged soon.  By that time, the gulf of Mexico may have a distinctive darkish tinge seen from space.

You know the most ridiculous “DUUUHH” kind of thing said in the article?

“I think now we’re beginning to understand that we cannot trust BP,” said U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass. “BP has lost all credibility … It’s clear that they have been hiding the actual consequences of this spill.”

Really?  you think so?  This didn’t occur to you when BP came up with their “junk shot” proposal to plug the gushing well?

This is pure idiocy.  It’s absolutely incredible that the government hasn’t grown the balls to take drastic action against against BP.  If this were a different world, I would be thinkin’ maybe we should set up a small naval force on the eastern coast of North America.  After the well is finally plugged, boats and a mess o’ shotguns put out to sea and if anything with “BP” or “Transocean” plastered on the side floats by, let fly and fire at will.

Eh, one can dream huh?

I’ve been asked a few times now over the past few days how I can justify a purist libertarian outlook when a private corporation is in the process of ruining an entire ocean.  “How” I am asked, “can you advocate for limited or even non-existent government when a corporation is responsible for destroying such a significant portion of the world commons?”  The answer is that it’s easy to do and I can often start with a counter question.

I a world where government regulation has failed so miserably to hold private corporations to account and in a world where a private corporation is the in the process of destroying an entire ocean under the eyes of a government in the United States that has never been larger in its entire history than it is today, how can you advocate for a stronger state and increased regulations?

It’s very important to respond to people who explain that this is a result of deregulation.  This is not a case of deregulation causing disaster.  This is both a cause of regulatory incompetence within government and a complete lack of corporate accountability and responsibility within BP’s corporate structure.  The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was set into motion when a government organization (the US Mineral Management Service) took BP on its word that this project was safe and was assured to happen when BP decided that expediting the process of completing the well was more important than acknowledging red flags that had indicated a decreased level of safety.  Really, the MMS didn’t have much of a reason to believe that BP and Transocean weren’t capable of drilling safely but this is how government regulation works the larger government gets.  More and more, as a complicated bureaucratic structure grows, the less potent it becomes.  I contend that the American bureaucratic is so complex, that it’s impossible for itself to remain accountable and effective.  In short, I don’t think the American government is actually capable of keeping an eye on itself and certainly, the American people are either unable or uninterested in doing same.

Those who advocate for further regulation often fail to recognize that regulation is often already in place and impotent.  Despite regulation coming up again and again as completely ineffective in preventing major disasters, there are those who continue to think that more regulation is the answer.  No one in this position has ever told me how it is that they plan to ensure that a government with a rule for everything will be able to enforce the rules.  The best I can get is that a government just has to work right and if you ask me, that’s a fairy tale kind of expectation.

So if further regulation isn’t the answer, how should BP have been handled or be handled now?

The answer isn’t simple.  BP is a large organization and the common space that is being destroyed is gigantic!  Millions of people are effected directly by this ecological disaster and hundreds of millions if not billions around the world will feel the impact of this some how.  BP (as a result of government regulation) will be entirely protected from going bankrupt over this and will continue to be allowed to operate in jurisdictions around the globe.  In a situation where government rules did not protect corporations like BP from bankruptcy, a company that is responsible for ruining a portion of the planet would, I think, cease to exist as a potent force in the business world.

A libertarian outlook requires, demands and necessitates that the population be so much more engaged and passionate about issues that effect them than people generally are today.  I’m not confident that BP would suffer as much as it should in today’s world if it suddenly became devoid of government force but BP certainly won’t suffer even as much as it could in today’s regulatory structure either.  In a libertarian world where government is largely hands off and the population more self reliant, a company like BP would be reviled by the population at large and forced to either put up or shut down or do both in sequence.

People don’t seem to understand that libertarians don’t simply advocate for a technical kind of method of governance; we advocate for public passion in the political realm.  We advocate that people become self dependant, responsible and that we all learn how to stop delegating responsibility for our personal lives to elected representatives.  Again, libertarianism is not simply a method with which to govern, it’s an adopted attitude toward all things political.

There should be no laws in place that allow a company to sue a worker for telling the press about safety concerns on an oil platform.  There should be no law limiting the liability of a corporation in causing a major disaster.  That’s what privately provided insurance is for if any insurer will insure your company.  there should be no government organization that gives legitimacy to safety plans for big oil platforms at sea because those organizations inevitably become ineffective and give us a false sense of security.  There should be no limit placed on the citizenry’s ability to lash out at a company for destroying a portion of our planet on which we all live and depend.

A libertarian world is not about letting companies do what they wish, it’s about holding companies and people to account for the choices they make and doing so independently.  A libertarian will never be satisfied with delegating those responsibilities to a government that claims legitimate authority over a population that largely doesn’t care about it until destructive decisions have already been made.  A libertarian will do their best to take personal interest in problems that plague our society and advocates that others do the same rather than electing some one else to care for them.

In my opinion, BP should be driven into non-existence and all its resources used to cap the leaking oil well by any means and clean up the Gulf of Mexico.  How are we to do that though when the government of the day has rules that protect that corporation from liability and is unwilling to act drastically as the situation demands?  You would think that an oil spill destroying an ocean would demand an emergency meeting of legislators passing new laws to ruin BP and clean up the gulf but no; government is ineffective and unable to solve these problems.

People need to get more in tune with geopolitical problems and take more responsibility is helping to solve them and I don’t think that involuntary government is the answer to that need for cooperative responsible action.

This is stupid.  And I don’t mean that blogger in particular; heck I don’t think the blogger is actually stupid, but this notion that the blogger posted is ruffling my feathers.  I first read about it over at John’s blog and was disappointed at safe injection sites (facilities that provide supervised environment where injection drug users may do drugs as they please) being labelled a “left” issue by him.  I know John to be an extremely intelligent fellow so this was only the beginning of an extreme amount of frustration that has caused me to mash together this blog post.  It’s a result of feeling anger, disappointment and unadulterated frustration at reading about not only the Wall government’s decision to keep safe injection sites out of the province, but the reaction as well.

If you haven’t guessed, I have an intellectual interest in the drug policy debate.  I’ve read oodles of information, mostly over the past 5 years, (give or take) about public drug policy in regard to cannabis, heroin, cocaine and several other substances you may recognize as being illegal to possess, manufacture or distribute.  As a lay person, I’ve read an innumerable number of published studies (both peer reviewed and not) on the social impact of public policy regarding the drug trade and pharmacological effects of drugs within the body as well.  In short, I am confident that I am well informed on the subject of drug policy the world over and in North America particularly.  I have invested a great deal of my own life into simply becoming informed and have swung from a soft prohibitionist years ago to a stanch advocate not simply of legalization, but of repealing the state’s prohibition of all drugs.

That being said, that doesn’t mean I’m all for safe injection sites such as the overtly successful “Insite” program in Vancouver, B.C.  No, I am very much against public expenditure for health services and so to me, safe injection sites take us further down a road we should be trying to find an exit from.  So my views are, on their face, at odds with each other.  On the one hand, I’m very much in favour of the state granting us the freedom to put whatever it is we like in our bodies and on the other, not necessarily in favour of a safe injection site allowing injection drug users to shoot up without fear of arrest.  The trick is, in this instance I can be a pragmatist because I know that the public health care system is not about to disappear tomorrow and without a society that functions with a truly free market, injection drug users have only the hope of the state’s help seeing as the community is already tapped out because of some misguided altruistic goal of us all paying for a bloated public health system.  To a purist libertarian like myself, safe injection sites do no make sense financially in a free market system but for those who would accept a public health care system, it makes complete sense both financially and socially.  The arguments against are galling in their ignorance and this is why I’m so blasted angry about them.  I’m so angry that I’m driven to support the public expenditure that would be required to establish and maintain safe injection sites.  Let’s debunk a few myths and be honest with eachother.

MYTH:
Leaving an injection drug user to contract an illness like Hep C or HIV/AIDS eventually solves the problem.  Either they overdose or they die of an illness.  Spending money on these low-lifes to preserve a habit is a useless and wasted expense.

FACT:
A Hep C patient will cost the health care system anywhere from $5,000 to $21,000.  An HIV/AIDS patient, though their life time, will cost the system around $120,000.  If just two cases of HIV/AIDS and 10 cases of Hep C are prevented each year, that results in anywhere from $290,000 to $450,000 saved per year in direct costs to the health care system.  There is no thought given here in this post to indirect costs saved in the economy which by some estimates are as high as ten times the direct costs.  94 new cases of HIV were found in Saskatoon in 2009.  these cases are heavily concentrated among injection drug users and sex trade workers.  Sex trade workers often serve as an unfortunate conduit for these infections to find their way to other pockets of the population and demonstrate a significant overlap in the sex trade/injection drug user demographics.  Diagnosed cases of Hep C in Sask’ were hovering around about 600 or so in 2008 but not only does the illness often spike when HIV rates spike, it’s also dramatically under diagnosed until it’s become a costly illness.

further left unanalyzed in this post are cost savings from safe injection sites treating patients for other ancillary medical concerns such as injection mishaps.  Injection accidents which can later turn into abscesses and other bacterial infections could, over the years, save the health care system added millions as has been the case in Vancouver with just a single safe injection site.

MYTH:
A safe injection site is an enabler of injection drug use.  Giving addicts the means to inject drugs without fear of arrest or other punishment will lead to increased rates of use and further disease and/or overdose deaths.

FACT:
A safe injection site is no more an enabler of injection drug use than a sexual health clinic is an enabler of bondage.  People who assume this are unfortunately missing the point of a safe injection site completely.  with supervised nurses on staff, a safe injection site’s secondary mission is to prevent overdose deaths.  Vancouver’s safe injection site Insite has never once suffered the unfortunate incident of an overdose death.  There have been hundreds of overdoses at the facility over the years, but never a death as a result.  The primary mission of which many people are not aware is referring injection drug users to treatment and educating them about the risks of their habit.  It may seem too obvious to assume, but it’s important to point out that an injection drug user doesn’t even get an opportunity to ask about the dangers of injection drug use when they’re shooting up under a tire swing.

Safe injection sites do not provide drugs though they do provide clean needles, much in the way a sexual health clinic offers up free condoms, no questions asked.  Rather than enable drug use, a safe injection site provides all of the information an injection drug user may be interested in (including how to seek treatment) while also providing an environment where the user does not feel pressured or prejudged.  In this regard, Vancouver’s safe injection site has demonstrated how successful the program can be at referring patients to treatment or at the very least, ensuring they have the information required to avoid preventable risks like needle sharing.

MYTH:
A safe injection site concentrates users in one area and thusly increases crime in that area.  Any neighbourhood having to bear the burden of a safe injection site will suffer.

FACT:
A safe injection site does not increase neighbourhood crime.  there has not been even a single peer reviewed study that has bore this out since Vancouver’s safe injection site was established.  A peer reviewed study has long discredited this claim.  A simmilar study in Sydney Australia came to the same conclusion at an earlier date.  In fact, both studies found a significantly reduced rate of vehicle theft.

MYTH:
A safe injection site leads to more users shooting up in a public areas around the site as they are generally concentrated in this area.  More needles are found in parks and on side walks.

FACT:
This was also studied and found to be false.  The incidences of public drug injection fell and the number of needles discarded fell by almost half in the surrounding area.

The point of all this is that a safe injection site is very effective in its stated goals.  The goals are to preserve life, save money and reduce drug abuse.  It achieves all three spectacularly.  Vancouver’s safe injection site has saved enough money to keep it operating for decades if it suddenly stopped being cost effective for some reason.  If we accept public health care, it’s flatly an ill informed position to rally against a safe injection facility in any urban centre and arguably to a lesser degree in any suburban centre.  Again, this is not about enable drug abuse and if you really think that’s what this does, you’re terribly and embarrassingly ill informed.