Random Thoughts

Who Cares? Although the subject of electoral systems would usually make for a terrible blog post and the act of bringing this subject up should get you "un-invited" from dinner parties, the fact that Canada's newest Prime Minister wants to change Canada's system makes it worth talking about. It's also worth writing about because it seems  that our new Prime Minister is not considering my favourite system (status quo) as an option. How Does Our System Work Today? Today, Canada uses the "First-Past-the-Post" system (hereinafter referred to as FPTP) where the individual with the most votes (regardless of how many or what percent) in each riding is elected. Based on the countries that use this system (UK, US, Canada, India, etc.) I'm guessing the modern version of this system originated in the UK and was passed to commonwealth countries but I can't seem to find a solid reference for this theory...regardless of where it came from the idea for

How Much Longer? After my first post on why oil prices will go back up  I've often been asked the obvious question, ' when   exactly will they go back up?'. This obviously isn't a simple question to answer, which is why I didn't even try to address it on my first post, but I'll take a swing at it below. Country Analysis In order to determine how long the oversupply will last it's necessary to look at this from the perspective of every individual oil producer (ugh...) and try to predict their future actions. To simplify this process I'm only going to consider the largest producers and I'm going to lump them together as best I can. A good example of this is Russia. The Russian government does not actually 'own' all the companies producing oil in their country but given the closeness between the companies and the government I will treat them as a single actor (to further back this up Russia was actually asked to join OPEC ). So without fur