The price ceilings they have are way above the price of 'bottom shelf' liquor. So as a policy objective, much of what it does is likely just redirect consumers to less expensive spirits.

If the goal was to limit overall alcohol consumption, they'd more likely do it with a price floor than a price ceiling (i.e., you must price above $X)

This is exactly what economists would expect to happen when a price ceiling is set below equilibrium price. The government said ‘you can’t sell above X’ and so supply dropped significantly and third-parties sought to arbitrage at the equilibrium price. It results in a loss of total surplus, and a wealth transfer from sellers to third parties (and a wealth transfer from sellers to some small subset of consumers unaffected by the arbitrage). Or in simple terms: the public didn’t get to buy as much of this stuff as it otherwise would have, and third parties were able to skim part of the profits of what they did buy.

TCGplayer is a company that sells secondary market trading cards (eg Pokemon, Magic)

eBay acquired TCGplayer in October of last year for $295 million (mixed stock / cash)

This is such a good idea, I’m going to use it for my kids.

I feel sorta bad that it’s hard for kids to collect interesting coins these days (at least here in Canada). When I was a kid in the 90s I could go through the till in my parents’ store at the end of the day and hunt for all kinds of rare and interesting coins, silver, etc (my folks always let me buy out whatever coins I wanted). In 2003, Canada started alloy recovery (taking first silver and later nickel and copper coins out of circulation because the metallurgical value exceeds the face value) and it kind of took all the fun out of the hobby. I don’t think I’ve seen a silver Canadian coin ‘in the wild’ in the last 10 year. This isn’t a criticism, alloy recovery is obviously the right policy decision. I guess I’m just nostalgic.

A lot of it is also about how media portrays “biblical archeology / history” and tends to talk over the actual academics.

Like I remember a scholar a few years back who wrote a very thoughtful book about the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. It was an examination of how different groups around the world have used the legend as a basis to form a communal identity and to orient themselves in relation to their religious texts. And of course media ran the story as ‘new book located the lost tribes of Israel’ or something to that effect.

(Of course, the tribes were never “Lost”, the Hebrew bible says exactly where they went and what they did, which is totally supported by the archeology and external sources and also common sense: the Assyrians forcibly exiled their political elites, many fled south as refugees to Judea, and rural commoners stayed where they were, with many continuing to practice the Israelite tradition all the way through to when Judea was re-established in the Persian period aka ‘the people of the land’ as they’re called in Ezra-Nehemiah).

Agree.

Now what do you think will happen when outlets like CBC and the Toronto Star become financially dependent on Meta, as C-18 proposes?

What do you think will happen when the big guys like Postmedia and Quebecor sign side-deals with Meta for a lower click rate than the regulated amount (C-18 specifically allows for this), making their content cheaper to for Meta than small independents?