[And1]

Love to see it.

When Canada legalized weed in 2018, the US administration made it clear that they can ban Canadians from the US for life if they have used marijuana in the past. The administration alluded to looking at Canadian's transaction history to facilitate cracking down on this more harshly[1].

It was so clear at that point to me how badly sovereign payments and banking is so needed. FATCA is a thing, I get it, I get the motivation- but allow another country to wield a "cooperation" like a weapon to attack Canada's sovereignty is just further evidence that we need to safeguard our data.

[1] https://globalnews.ca/news/4461315/will-your-cannabis-credit...

[Waterluvian]

One silver lining of the current U.S. regime's behaviour is how it's forcing us to move out of the local minima of over-Americanization that we've been stuck in for too long.

[chneu]

As an American, I'm so glad America is finally crumbling from its position of power. Americans need a wake up call because our insane hubris and stubbornness is responsible for so much of the bad stuff in the world.

[spamizbad]

I got some (bad?) news for you: Most Americans are either in complete denial over this or genuinely don't care. They don't think the wealth and lifestyles they enjoy have anything to do with the US' status as a global hegemon. Some even think the relationship is inverted, believing that as the world de-Americanizes, Americans will somehow benefit from this.

[leereeves]

> Some even think the relationship is inverted, believing that as the world de-Americanizes, Americans will somehow benefit from this.

That may well be true of the working class, who receive nothing from the foreign income multinational corporations earn but face more competition to buy housing from the people who do receive a share, and more competition for jobs from foreigners (both immigration and globalization).

[spamizbad]

The people who hold these views are overwhelmingly not members of the working class. They're retirees or Gen-Xers coming off their peak earning years.

[leereeves]

> They don't think the wealth and lifestyles they enjoy have anything to do with the US' status as a global hegemon.

> The people who hold these views are overwhelmingly not members of the working class. They're retirees or Gen-Xers coming off their peak earning years.

That implies young working class people think their lives would be worse if America does not remain a global hegemon.

I'd love to see your sources for that claim. That is not my impression. I have seen little if any support for American hegemony among the young.

[1234letshaveatw]

Another American here, I find these self loathing kind of posts to be so sophomoric and embarrassing

[matthewfcarlson]

It is entirely possible to recognize the things that are good about the US while also seeing the very terrible things. Nothing is perfect and if we tell ourselves it is by criticizing anyone who says otherwise, we are robbing not only the world but ourselves of any opportunity to make it better.

[righthand]

No sophomoric and embarrassing is electing the same unqualified rapist pedophile moron back into power again.

[therealdrag0]

That’s insulting to sophomores.

[Varelion]

All I see on your timeline regarding us is blind sycophantic behavior. It's not self-loathing or sophomoric to recognize a point of policy or behavior that is not conducive to the wellbeing of global markets and wider well-being. We haven't been behaving in the best interest of the common good, or fellow Americans, nor even private interest for decades now and a little realization of that is just seeing objective reality.

[1234letshaveatw]

Does the same sentiment apply to TN1 visas? Funny how you never see those burned in protest

[Waterluvian]

That's my point, right?

We've had such a closely integrated economy and it's been a win-win for a very long time. Whether it's resources like lumber or manufacturing like Ontario/Michigan, or massive amounts of fuel refinement, we're so closely interconnected that we've needed that ease of cross-border travel for work. A consequence is that our industry hasn't evolved as much as it could have. We're sitting on an enormous amount of natural resources and technical competence that we've been feeding in to American companies forever, because we were reaping sufficient profits.

What the current regime could absolutely do is force us further from that local maxima by throwing a tantrum over TN1 visas.

I work with a lot of Americans so I know they understand deeply: changing careers out of principle is a rare luxury very few can act on. Especially when you depend on your employer for healthcare (though we don't suffer that mistake as much). I wouldn't expect people to voluntarily quit their jobs the same way they are voluntarily stopping U.S. recreational travel in record numbers [1].

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cross-border-travel-down-dr...

[1234letshaveatw]

I question your sources methodology as, similar to travel habits during the performative COVID border lockdown, Canadians are still heading south en masse over the winter.

[Waterluvian]

Okay that got a hearty laugh. I post a CBC article and you question it, then make a claim while offering no evidence at all.

Quite frankly, I wouldn't be surprised to find that you're just here as an instigator, possibly not even from North America. Or, maybe I just want to hope that it's malice rather than incompetence that governs your behaviour.

[1234letshaveatw]

That elicited quite the gafaw, I even lost my breath for a bit. I live in a border state filled with commuting Canadians, and every other residence is owned by a Canadian where I vacation at. The travel protest you take so much pride in is a rounding error

[drstewart]

You are probably thinking of local maxima.

[Waterluvian]

Thanks. I probably am. I will never not confuse the two because I imagine getting into a comfortable place and then having to march up the next hill to discover an even comfier place that you can't see from where you are. I also imagine the instability of placing a boulder at the top of a hill and the effort of pushing it up a hill to find a new resting spot.

I'm sure I can invert the sign of something being measured to make my mental model work again :D

[ornornor]

Are you kinda alluding that if it was so bad in the US, people wouldn’t be asking for TN1 visas to go work there?

[kimos]

I worked at Shopify at the time this became legal and several provinces were launching on our platform. It was a monumental lift to get every single thing a transaction from these shops touches to only run on or through infrastructure on Canadian soil for this exact reason.

[And1]

If you've written about this on a blog or elsewhere, I would be very interested in hearing more about this.

Can you say more here? Is this a payment gateway thing? I though if you used a visa/mastercard/etc that data is up for grabs by a foreign government, but if it's interac or some other payment method, does that ensure the data resides only in Canada?

[kimos]

Unfortunately it wasn't my project so I can't speak to it with detail or authority. I was just observing.

It was things like: Where do log statements go? Via what path? Are we sure none of those routers are in the US? Can we spin up new instances of EVERYTHING in a `-ca` region? Can we force traffic for this shop to only use those instances? What about vendors? Can we disable US-only vendors of whatever? What about backups? What things are centralized (which were good to identify)? Can we region those too? Can we disable/bypass them?

And do that for every bit and packet for a very complex system. I think that it launched with a considerable number of features just disabled. Privacy trumped everything.

[kvgr]

What makes you think EU will not look into it and block us from buying “bad things”?

[llm_nerd]

Do you think that is a retort in some way?

EU residents have a say over the EU. Canadians have a say over the Canadian government. We do not have a say over a nuclear-armed idiocracy forcing it's profound corruption and stupidity on other sovereign entities.

For instance right now the US, in defending their war-crime boss Israel, has sanctioned judges of the ICC, including Canadians, Europeans, etc. Any US firm enforcing such a sanction should be booted from operating in all of those countries. Which is precisely why Visa and Mastercard are soon going to be a busted, provincial, US-only concern. Well, maybe they'll have it in the great nation of Venezuela as well.

[drstewart]

So is Wero going to give everyone in the world a say over its regulations or will it be a busted, provincial, EU-only concern?

Or maybe they'll have it in the great independent territory of Greenland as well.

[llm_nerd]

It is LITERALLY an EU-only system. What is your tired point?

[neksn]

> We do not have a say over a nuclear-armed idiocracy forcing it's profound corruption and stupidity on other sovereign entities.

That’s funny because it perfectly defines the relationship between the EU and the countries in it.

[joenot443]

So now that 8 years have passed since that article was written, do you have any idea how many Canadians have been banned from the US for life because they used marijuana in the past?

> credit card data can be stored in the United States, where it’s an open book to U.S. authorities, who don’t need a warrant to access it if it belongs to non-Americans

> A U.S. border guard could quickly put a Canadian in an impossible position — admit to marijuana use and be banned for that, or deny it and be banned for lying

The mechanism in the article is border agents analyzing your credit card purchases to see if you've bought legal weed. Has this become a common procedure? I've passed the border 50+ times in the last few years, I haven't yet had it happen to me. I've never had them bring up cannabis once, they've always seemed much more concerned about when I was leaving.

I think when it comes to something as important as border operations, it doesn't really add much to the conversation to share fear-mongering pieces from 8 years ago.

[morkalork]

It was threatened and just because Canada called what turned out to be a bluff, doesn't make that threat magically go away. Next time, is it a bluff or threat the USA will follow through on? We shouldn't be in this position in the first place.

[And1]

This is a _very_ fair criticism and worth pointing out. I thought the piece wasn't particularly alarming and more just showing the opportunity exists, and cursory googles don't show any cases where it happened.

The problem I'm trying to point to is that we cooperate internationally because it benefits both countries or pushes towards a common goal- but when one of the cooperative speaks of turning that cooperation into a weapon, to me, makes it clear that the goal of the cooperation has changed.

[kingleopold]

what until you understand what is next, cdbc and restricted digital money. Enjoy it.

[1234letshaveatw]

Like American DUIs?