Why More US Businesses Are Outsourcing to Latin America

This reasoning sounds hollow. The federal government controls pharmaceuticals and devices (via Health Canada), is responsible for preventing the spread of contagious illnesses (under the Quarantine Act), and collects statistics through Statistics Canada and other federal agencies. Most crucially, the federal government provides tens of billions of dollars to provinces each year through direct health-care spending and a small number of health-research grant agenciesThere are no health data reporting requirements for these monetary transfers. This is a mistake, especially when provinces have no motivation to reveal statistics that could be embarrassing or portray them negatively in comparison to other jurisdictions. The United States enforces health data reporting by linking it to the receipt of federal funds via Medicare and Medicaid. If our southern neighbor was able to organize its fragmented health-care system to develop a set of coherent, standardized, up-to-date measures within a few months of the COVID-19 pandemic's onset, we should be able to do the same in a few yearsThe minimal statistics accessible on provincial and local health system websites offer a gloomy picture. For example, at the time of writing, 11 of Montreal's 21 emergency rooms are overcrowded, with the worst operating 55% above capacity. Overall, the number of patients in the system outnumbers the number of beds available on the entire island by 14 percent.

Long wait times in emergency rooms. 

have long been a problem in Canada, but the pandemic's devastation, as well as the subsequent wave of resignations and exhaustion, have pushed the system to its limits. The continual flood of tales of deaths in waiting rooms and desperate efforts to keep hospitals staffed and open sheds light on the health-care issue, which we frequently lack the facts to explain more concretely.Canada's health-care system is in dire need of overhaul. Better statistics can help make this point, and thorough analysis will help distinguish between effective and ineffective measures. The essential issue of staffing will become more difficult to address: the World Health Organization predicts a global shortage of 15 million health workers by 2030.3 Canada today competes with every other country in the globe to train, recruit, and retain health-care workers. Canadians deserve to face this situation with open eyes. Our reluctance to create precise, timely, and accessible statistics about the state of Canada's disintegrating health-care system serves only to maintain the failed status quo.The series begins in 1969 and shows an alternate history in which the space race never ends, with both America and the Soviet Union pushing the technological barrier to reach the moon and beyond. That's wonderful.In the last scene of the second season, you take the perspective of a camera soaring across the Martian surface, gradually sinking, and eventually pausing at ground level. Two human feet in space boots enter the frame. A date appears: 1995.

A still picture from For All Mankind. Credit: Apple TV Plus.

It is tragic.This might have been us! But it's not. In truth, humans haven't returned to the moon since 1972. There is no lunar base, no spaceships capable of transporting humans to Mars, and no one is currently on Mars. It's 2022.Again, tragic.I want the future to be dramatically more fantastic than the present.Not merely in terms of space exploration. I want the stuff of utopian science fiction, like much longer healthy lifespans, energy that is too cheap to meter, and, of course, flying automobiles.This takes me to my politics.We do not have flying automobiles. We don't have electricity that is too cheap to meter (rather, it's high and rising). Life expectancy has been rising in poor countries as they improve, but we're all now converging and plateauing in our late 70s. We don't have any humans on Mars.Why not? And what can we do to hasten the arrival of those things, much alone more fundamental and pressing issues like abundant and affordable urban housing?My conservatism is largely based on an extensive and growing collection of knowledge about the reasons and solutions to our Great Stagnation.To properly define it, I'll have to draw on four major pieces produced within the last two years.The first is Tyler Cowen's post on state capacity libertarianism.1 In it, he defines an emerging ideological movement that combines libertarian liberty-maximizing priorities with a recognition that a strong and competent state is required to do those things that it is either best positioned to do, or that a sufficiently large majority of people believe it is best suited to do.

For example, while more libertarianism.

namely deregulation, is likely the best solution to our high and growing urban housing costs, a highly capable state is unquestionably required to manage our awful and worsening traffic congestion. Consider quick and cost-effective delivery of subway infrastructure, efficient implementation of dynamic congestion pricing, and so on.The second essay is "Back to the Future" by Peter Thiel.2 This is a review of Ross Douthat's book The Decadent Society.In it, he describes Western cultural, technological, and economic stagnation during the last five decades."Over the last two generations, the only truly radical change has taken place in the devices we use for communication and entertainment, so that a single one of the nineteenth century's great inventions [running water] still looms larger in our everyday existence than most of what we think of as technological breakthroughs."The third essay is "It's Time to Build" by Marc Andreesen.3 As in Peter Thiel's essay, he describes the lack of technical advancement in a variety of fields. Like Tyler Cowen, he emphasizes the importance of a strong and competent state in addition to powerful and competent market actors.He presents it all as a rallying call for builders.