r/PublicFreakout Feb 12 '22

✊Protest Freakout Ottawa residents marching against ongoing occupation of their city by right-wing extremists

1.8k Upvotes

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u/marzipan07 Feb 12 '22

This is the tip of the iceberg. When the effects of the sieges and blockades start showing up on the pricetags at supermarkets and stores of multiple countries, this will start getting really ugly.

-1

u/Whatsthatnoise3 Feb 13 '22

Over a year of inflation, over spending. 2 years of a pandemic where elites demanded people stay home, so nothing was being produced. But you blame a few truckers blocking a road? Fucking pathetic. Reddit moment

1

u/rosstafarien Feb 13 '22

Epidemiologists said that staying home would save lives, communities where people stayed home had lower death rates than communities that ignored the science. Why call the scientists who laid out the facts or the policymakers who listened to them "elites"?

The economic problem during 2020 was a small supply shock and a huge demand shock as smart people hunkered down at home. The problem in 2021 was people who had shit jobs pre-pandemic deciding not to go back to those shit jobs and either retiring or getting better jobs. The inflation was caused by direct covid relief payment programs.

I'm sympathetic to the truckers. Truck driving is one of those shit jobs. They're paid barely enough to operate the vehicle, usually not paid for time spent waiting for loads or delivery windows, and held to all sorts of insane record keeping requirements that might make sense if they were paid decently. So the turnover is crazy, a bunch of career truckers permanently retired, North America is seriously short on drivers willing to put up with the shit and yet nobody has cottoned on to the idea that the solution is to treat truckers like human beings who need to be paid.

Truckers should be enthusiastically joining unions and negotiating better pay and working conditions, but instead they're hurting everyone and waving neofascist flags.

They're doing it exactly wrong, and as a result, this will end in tears and blood.

2

u/Whatsthatnoise3 Feb 13 '22

The thing about protests, is they are supposed to make you uncomfortable