Why doesn't Ireland have conservatives?

sink · 08-09-2008 5:28pm

Liaise-fair capitalism only looks out for direct financial interests. Not all of societies interest provide direct financial reward to the investors. Lacking any financial reward private investors are not going to provide funds.

Is that not more of an argument for electing a competent government?

I'm not talking about the 'talented individuals' as they will be more than capable of looking after themselves. Unfortunately they are a minority. I'm talking about people from impoverished backgrounds who are not self motivated. If you ignore these people they will turn to less than reputable pursuits sucking up resources such as policing which will have to be paid for by your tax receipts while these individuals contribute nothing to the overall economy. Like a black hole they will suck resources while not giving anything in return and they will spread like cancer.

It's not only young people but older people who have become structurally unemployed due to their industry no longer being economically viable. A lot of these people will not be seen as a worthy investment and will not receive retraining becoming long term unemployed also becoming a drain on society.

Again another argument for electing competent representatives who will tackle the unions and reform the education sector. Unfortunately we continue to vote for populist governments with little vision.

Or ferment revolution. My point is that not all of societies concerns revolve directly around the economy. If you completely neglect social issues and rely on a purely market orientated approach to everything you will create 'economic black holes' as the prevention of / solution to these 'black holes' has no direct benefit to the investor. Instead the economic benefits/negatives are second and third order effects.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 5:33pm

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jmayo · 08-09-2008 5:34pm

I heard ould Maggie has lost her faculties but I didn't know she had starting posting on boards.
Privatise everything and the free market will take of it.

You might have a degree, but not much common sense if you think all your tenents would magically turn us into some free market, full employment, great infrastructure, low tax country with little effects on the majority of people.
You appear to have almost a Pol Pot view of changing the whole of society to reach your ideal.

Look at UK where privatisation of services has occurred.
Rail and water infrastructure has had no major investments. The systems will need major overhaul and private companies are refusing to do it unless they saddle customers with huge charges or get money from government.
Some services just should be provided and controlled by the state.
Leaving the EU would be another castrophic move and leave us out in the cold and we don't have the natural resources of Norway nor the historic industries of Switzerland.

Just because we have had cr** politicans and bad leadership over last 10 odd years doesn't mean we should hand everything over to the Eircoms of this world.
Eircom has been a private company for a number of years, actually since atime before broadband appeared I believe, and look at what a job it has done at rolling out broadband to the country.
Childcare is a very good example of how the private sector providing a service doesn't work.

PS who paid for your education?
Was it totally taxpayer funded or just partially, because using your criteria I would like my contribution returned

Iwasfrozen · 08-09-2008 5:36pm

@donegalfella I still don't get how you plan to benifite Ireland by leaving the eu and alienating all of our main exporters.

nesf · 08-09-2008 5:40pm

It's not zero-sum but treating FDI as a big pool that we can ever draw from is unrealistic. It's dependent on a multitude of factors, some outside our control like tax law in other countries discouraging the basing of profits abroad.

I'm all for lower taxes in theory, I'm just sceptical of how easy it will be to massively reduce the public sector like you want to do. Or how any political party here could manage it. They've some bloody powerful unions in fairness.

But, and here's a tricky problem, in a representative democracy we're pretty much stuck with what the people elect. So if the people want a platform of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor the people will elect such politicians.

Can that ever happen here though with the consent of the people? Don't get me wrong, I've as many problems with unions crying out for cost of living increases as the next fiscal conservative but I can't see exactly how you're going to achieve what you want.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 5:49pm

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daithicarr · 08-09-2008 5:53pm

I don’t see how leaving the EU and opening up to anyone with a degree will benefit us, most of the large multinationals and FDI come to Ireland because we have access to the European market, that would disappear if we left , attracting skilled workers to fill short term gaps in the workforce is a good idea, but open to anyone with a degree?
Those tax cuts proposed would probably leave the government with less than a quarter of its current income, that’s less than 10 billion euros a year to run a state.
Sure the public sector is wasteful in Ireland, but would reform not be a better option and try and get value for money. The private sector by its very nature tries to make a profit , so our schools, hospitals, prisons etc would be run on the basis of generating a profit for their owners.
If there is no union representation companies will be able to dictate terms, and will pay their workers as little as possible. Private education will mean that a large section of society wont be able to afford it, with no state pensions and a very restricted social welfare there will be a huge disenfranchised underclass created.
In a downturn in the economy people will be laid off as the economy restructures itself, how are they expected to survive and pay for their family’s health and education and other necessity’s on a 6 months greatly reduced dole.
It will create a massive gap between those who have and those who have not and will most likely result in a massive increase in crime, those people will need to do something to survive.
Sure if people are unemployed they can retrain, but how do they do that, who is going to pay for it? The government , they have no money under this system, why would the private sector. A bank wont lend a person who’s skills have become obsolete and is unemployed any money.
These services are there for a reason, its to help people in need , not everyone availing of these things are lazy spongers , not everyone can have a high paid job , some one needs to do the manual low skilled low paid jobs.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 5:58pm

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Permabear · 08-09-2008 6:13pm

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Dirk Gently · 08-09-2008 6:19pm

Actually they were built by slaves desperate workers, working literally to death in a lot of cases. They were poorly paid, had no access to health care and lived on the railway land as it progressed and in a lot of cases spent what little wages they had on food and rent directly back to their slave master employer. The land was either provided by the state or forcibly taken bought from families who thought that their right to private property was guaranteed.

Like it or not this is the backward vision you project for the modern day. You talk of a Victorian system that would make mr grandgrind himself cry out for social reform and flowers on the wall . Just as people now generally accept that high taxes do not stimulate growth and have a negative effect, I thought that people like yourself were also economic dinosaurs. American economics degree? sounds about right tbh.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 6:22pm

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Iwasfrozen · 08-09-2008 6:30pm

In terms of economices, we didn't, I do agree with you on every thing else though.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 6:49pm

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sink · 08-09-2008 6:53pm

Take two economists from Princeton and ask them as simple question about the economy and you will get two different answers. Just because you have a very good qualification does not necessarily mean the economic theories you follow are correct. I must admit I am not an economist so debating the intricacies of economics is a little out of my depth. I have however read material on Post-Keynesian economics and modern theories on wealth accumulation and the polarisation of wealth in advanced economies leading to inflation and eventually stagnation. These theories seem to contradict your views and they are written by doctorates from universities such as Princeton, Harvard and the London school of economics.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 7:06pm

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oscarBravo · 08-09-2008 7:19pm

The point you and all AynRandians studiously avoid is that not all adults can look after themselves.

Maybe - if you can afford private insurance, and you can get cover, and your health insurer doesn't go to lengths to avoid paying out.

What happens to people who are not motivated or self-reliant? The ones who just don't get themselves organised to set up a private pension? The ones who make unwise investment decisions?

When their pension fund, if they have one, stops paying out - do you let them starve and freeze?

If you can afford it. Not everyone is enamoured of the idea that only the rich can afford quality healthcare.

Plus, it depends on the public healthcare system. I haven't heard too many complaints about the quality of public healthcare in (say) Canada or Denmark.

Like it is in the US?

Right, people below the poverty line in the US don't turn to crime, because they have cars, TVs and designer clothes. Gotcha. That's why the US has such a low prison population, right?

Permabear · 08-09-2008 7:42pm

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jmayo · 08-09-2008 8:00pm

Well it will be transformational alright, I give you that :rolleyes:

You might be the other pole of the ideological divide from Mr Pot but your ideas would end up having the same disastrous effects on a country.

As pointed out by another poster you cannot compare 19th century railroad development with 21st century rail networks.
In the 19th century the railroads were built, in the case of America by stealing the land from the inhabitants and affecitvely using cheap immigrant labour with no concern for working conditions.
Perhaps your US education has you hankering for the days when cheap Irish and Chinese labourers were dispensible at the whims of their betters ?
Also rail was the new method of transporting goods and people across distances. Today we have things called cars and aeroplanes which railroad investors have to compete against in order to earn returns on investment.

You seem to view a country purely in economic terms, with the great notion that if left to private enterprise everything will be solved.
With your logic if someone happens to fall through illness or bad luck then tough.
Would you just let people die if they could not afford private health insurance ?

Permabear · 08-09-2008 8:13pm

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oscarBravo · 08-09-2008 8:22pm

Sure. Before we had government-run social programs, nobody starved, right?

That's not an answer to the question.

Because they made unwise investment decisions, or because their pension company went bust. What happens to them then?

Do you?

Nope. If you've got a point to make, make it. Oh, and read the forum rules.

And the other three-quarters of the prison population?

Permabear · 08-09-2008 8:38pm

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irish_bob · 08-09-2008 9:25pm

what is your view on the u.s goverments descision to save freddy mac and fanny may

nesf · 08-09-2008 9:29pm

I'll guess that he'll argue that they should never have been created in the first place in that weird public/private hybrid form and that the US is just reaping what it sowed many years ago with the need to save them for fear of the mortgage market collapsing.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 9:50pm

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nesf · 08-09-2008 9:54pm

Well, we can agree on something then.

Lemming · 08-09-2008 10:02pm

I feel a Bill Hicks quote coming on which is in resonse to forcing myself to read through 4 pages of inane pseudo-economic babble;

"These LIBERALS think people should have eat and have food. These LIBERALS think people should have homes". Only republicans could make human rights a partisan issue.

meathstevie · 08-09-2008 10:14pm

A couple of little remarks on the side :

- Milton Friedman was the benevolent gentleman who helped Augusto
Pinochet implement the sacred free market in Chile
- The EU was never only a trade organisation. The intial embryo of what's
now the EU was a joint coal and steel authority that put a supra-national
control over the German and French heavy industries. People didn't want
another European arms race. Two world wars in less than 50 years was
plenty. Thanks very much.
- Leave the EU and the Euro, yeah right, who's going to run the show ? The
same dimwits who managed to saddle the country with massive debts,
rampant inflation and interest rates on a near Zimbabwean level ?
Time to stop dreaming. Ireland has a population smaller than half of the
Paris urban area. Some impact that currency will make, nearly the
equivalent of a drop of spit in five oceans.
- Who's going to supply services like fire and rescue, policing, military ?
Sandline, Executive Outcomes or Blackwater ?

In short, what's being advocated is jungle capitalism. The sort of thinking that was de rigeur at the end of the 19th century-early twentieth century.
The days when Dublin was the biggest slum in Europe with child mortality higher than what it is in many 3d world countries now. The same picture was being drawn to roughly the same extent all over Europe and of course the fat few at the top saw it was good and cracked open another bottle of Dom Perignon while a seven year old died in a coalmine accident after working a 14hour shift.

Dirk Gently · 08-09-2008 10:23pm

Exactly what I thought you'd say after Mr Nesf kindly obliged with a quick reply.

Don't take this the wrong way but are you sure you're not a closet marxist. Looking at your list it looks like a fast track to social revolution. It's as if you're purposely trying to bring about the conditions in which the government implementing your plan would be over thrown by a newly politicised population.

Safety nets to protect the worse off in society aren't necessarily there out of the goodness of the governments heart. They are as much a safety net for capitalism as they are for the great unwashed. Take away the safety net and you have a large section of people with literally nothing to lose and everything to gain by overthrowing and replacing the offending government. What will they replace it with? Most likely the opposite of what they oppose.

Society exists whether you chose to acknowledge it or not. It doesn't just exist in times of convenience such as pledging allegiance to the flag, associating the national consciousness with an economic theory or calling for patriotic wage restraint. It exists, inconveniently, everyday and when society fails to function the economy fails to function.

Your list reads like a far left wet dream. Once implemented all they have to do is wait (not too long) , recruit those affected and grow into a mass movement. Social safety nets prevent this and preserve capitalism by giving the people just enough so as not to become radicalised. Sure it's soft capitalism, a quasi social kind of capitalism but it balances the contradictions in society to a greater degree and promotes a stability of sorts which your list doesn't.

Permabear · 08-09-2008 10:46pm

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Permabear · 08-09-2008 10:55pm

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Why doesn't Ireland have conservatives?

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