Most likely the latter.

Orange guy may make news, but Canada has greater problems from within.

Depends. When it comes you many chronic conditions (example: high cholesterol), their treatments will actively harm you, than when left untreated. There are a lot of bogus treatments out there and certainly they will appear to know a lot, but it's harmful intervention that they know.

Bottom line - you have to take a call depending on the situation. As a general rule complete disregard for authority in case of medicine in a developed country will do more people OVERALL good. I'm not saying that they cannot be legitimately helpful, but those cases are far and few in the developed world.

Quote attributed to Jiddu Krishnamurti: "It Is No Measure of Health To Be Well-Adjusted to a Profoundly Sick Society"

On rare occasions they do investigate it but it's often a ruse just so that they are not accused of not being 'open minded'.

This is the case and unfortunately this will continue being the case. Even when research is funded by the govt it will be only projects that their mediocre member ( who are prone to lobbyists, kick back etc.) approve of.

This is not going to be easy. But it can be done even if it's done imperfectly. For example all the fertile land can be divided equally and the infertile ones equally - so an individual will have multiple plots. There are other issues also - for example what happens if someone decides to have 10 + children. In certain locations around the world people have essentially out bred the land resources that they have.

Of course one might ask why should one bother with all of this complexity I stated above? One has to compare it with the current situation which I think is the greater of the evils:

1) government decides the property tax. In many situations people are edged out of their own properties because they cannot afford the property tax.

2) it goes against the very principle that citizens own their land and not the government. The current state of affairs is the other way around.

3) People do not have ways to live off their own land like they used to in the past, now they have to have jobs. If they do not have jobs then they have to have a social security, which leads to a whole bunch of other issues.

4) tax complications.

Let me phrase the overall problem in another way - how do we prevent government from excessively controlling our lives, and have the citizens truly owning their own land without having to 'rent' it from the government?

Zero taxes is the only right answer. Any talk of taxation means that you have already given in to being exploited, because it's a slippery slope. Let's be realistic - corruption will never end. The only way to reduce it is to starve the beast.

This will have some of the unfortunate effect of collectivism. We don't want the govt to tax you into poverty.

A simpler overall approach (I've left out the nuances) would be to have an equal amount of land per person completely tax free. Individuals can then rent out their land for others to use as needed. Forests/rivers/conservation lands etc. can be seen as truly a common inheritance of mankind and should generally have the least of commercial activity.

p.s - a govt will never agree to such an arrangement because it will not favor them.

>And if your parents suck? (Mine did.)

What you proposal then?

(for the records: Mine did too, in addition to half of the people I know.)