The marriage of big data and personalized pricing makes some people uncomfortable — but should it?
Loblaws is back in banking, offering a no-fee savings account through its subsidiary PC Financial, but most interesting is what hasn’t changed. Since splitting from CIBC a few years ago to focus on payments and loyalty rewards, PC Financial is holding deposits again and offering customers even more loyalty rewards. The bank’s press release says as much: rewards for every dollar you spend, rewards for shopping at Shopper’s Drug Mart, rewards for setting up direct deposit with PC Financial, rewards for every bill payment over $50, and that’s not even the end of it.
Chasing big ideas with a will to try, fail, and try again is hard enough — let’s not make it any harder by celebrating complacency
In between Edmonton and Calgary — the two largest cities in Alberta, Canada — there is a wildlife park, the oldest Danish settlement in Western Canada, and plenty of local restaurants. But the two cities are also separated by about three hours of roadway, which comes as nothing more than a cost if it’s not being traversed for the surrounding sights and sounds. This is why Alberta’s government recently backed a hyperloop project that, according to the company behind it, would transport passengers and cargo between Calgary and Edmonton in just 30 minutes.
Liberalism may let us live our best lives, but without our lives there’s no liberalism.
“Give them liberty and give them death” was the quip that dubbed the resistance to the government-imposed lockdowns to suppress the novel coronavirus. It wasn’t long ago that people first took to the streets, protesting the shuttering of businesses and confinement of people to their homes. With jobs lost and bills to pay, some people felt as if their governments had fallen on the wrong side of the liberty. Others rallied against the lockdowns on more ideological grounds, believing their governments just didn’t have the right to tell them what to do, or deluding themselves into thinking that the pandemic…
So what if evidence of racial bias in policing is lacking? The reasons to reform institutions and culture still hold.
In the aftermath of a senseless murder, in the backdrop of fire and frenzy, it is not the time to shove statistics in people’s faces as you try to tell them how wrong they are. But circumstances haven’t always stopped people from trying.
Search “racial bias in policing” on Twitter today and see what comes up. Read contrarian takes on systemic racism, recent ones or others that came long before we knew who George Floyd was. No matter whether we’re ready to emotionally stomach the conversation, someone else always is.
It’s maddening, really, but what else is a culture war…
Despite being debated for decades, the basic income is no closer to becoming a reality
Interest in a basic income got louder with time throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, but the economic destruction caused by COVID-19 turned the volume up. At a time when people are losing their jobs, and others are losing their businesses, politicians, journalists, policy wonks, academics, and, yes, even the Pope are doubling down on just giving people money.
I like the idea of a basic income. So do smart people across the political spectrum. But I doubt it will grow from a mere curiosity into the revolutionary reform its advocates want it to be. …
The problem isn’t Amazon. It’s the plight of vulnerable workers. Changing Amazon doesn’t make their plight go away.
Despite a pandemic-induced surge for orders, times aren’t great for Amazon. Though its sales have gone up, its after-cost earnings have gone down. The pandemic is eating into the company’s bottom line. But short-term financial forecasts aren’t the only concern, as Amazon has also been the subject of a critical symphony.
A former Amazon executive, Tim Bray, recently made headlines when he quit his million-dollar gig in solidarity with “whistleblowers,” who were fired after raising the alarm about COVID-19 in Amazon’s warehouses. …
In the aftermath of widely-covered natural disasters, people who send victims their prayers might donate less money to actually help them than people who don’t pray.
On 25 August 2017, a hurricane shook the coast of Texas. With a diameter of 280 miles and winds of 130 mph, Hurricane Harvey devastated Port Aransas and Port O’Connor, small communities where the beaches are sandy white and the waterways are full of fish. Businesses and homes were stripped down to wooden studs, if not levelled, and the streets were littered with debris. Harvey kept on spinning, making its way into Texas and Louisiana, before being downgraded from a Category-4 hurricane to a tropical storm. What started as a bulldozing wind morphed into a torrential downpour: a swath of…
The Liberal government’s newly announced ban of assault-style weapons leaves much to be desired, but maybe that’s for the best
On May 2nd, Doug Ford criticized the federal government’s ostensible ban of several semi-automatic rifles. Standing behind a podium, after delivering his update on COVID-19, the premier of Ontario said the federal government should stop treading on law-abiding citizens and turn its attention to “smugglers” and “gang bangers,” who now only get a “slap on the wrist” while they “laugh at our police.” Though Ford’s management of this pandemic has been inspiring confidence in even his critics, perceptions are volatile. …
COVID-19 has devastated restaurants, who are pointing the finger at food-delivery platforms, but they’re not the problem
Restaurants are angry at food-delivery platforms when they’re running smoothly, but restaurants are also angry when they’re not. The sentiment towards Uber Eats, SkipTheDishes, and DoorDash in the backdrop of a global pandemic seems to be a fine expression of the phrase, “Be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
This past weekend, Uber Eats was experiencing some technical difficulties. Open restaurants were being listed as closed, pushing customers away from their favourite vendors in search of other purveyors of food. One owner of two bakeries said he lost $6,000 to $8,000 as a result. Other restaurants were…
Asking “what?” is a good start, but with so many barriers to building things in front of us we won’t make progress until we ask “how?”
It’s time to build, says Marc Andreessen in a short essay he recently published. The US was not ready for the COVID-19 pandemic and it shows. There’s a shortage of tests and test materials, such as cotton swabs and reagents. Ventilators are also in short supply, as are negative pressure rooms and ICU beds. Medical staff on the front lines are running out of surgical masks, face shields, and medical gowns. As Andreessen writes, “New York City has put out a desperate call for rain ponchos to be used as medical gowns. Rain ponchos! In 2020! In America!”
Alex Vronces
Policy wonk in Ottawa by day: focus on fintech, competition, and innovation. Writer of stuff by night. Views are my own, not my employer’s.
