Ireland and personal responsibility

Dudess

ThinkAboutIt wrote: »

Richard tea wrote: »

Tripe & bull****. No matter who's fault it is you can be guaranteed one thing. Its '' Joe soap'' that pays for it. And you can take that to the bank

Yep, it's someone else's fault.

You don't really live up to your username tbh.
It looks like you're deciding "Yeah, people - except me - abdicate personal responsibility and that's why Ireland's in its current state" yet don't consider any other angles...

You're pretty much saying it's someone else's fault too. What responsibility are you taking? Besides telling everyone else to take responsibility for stuff they haven't done?

desertcircus

It's feasible to hold someone responsible for decisions they could have made differently. Not buying food is not a serious alternative to buying food.

Bruce7

Dudess wrote: »

Nice passive-aggressive shyte there - why would I probably not understand this? Are you telling yourself I'm not very bright simply because you disagree with what I've posted?

As you'd have read but obviously ignored, I admitted I have something of a role, and outlined the details explaining what. For that, I am happy to take responsibility. I won't take any more responsibility than I have though.
The bread and milk thing is just silly - and probably an idea dreamed up by people who actually did fuk up big style with money and want others to go down in the sinking ship with them. If you purchased essentials you are not to blame - the alternative would have been to live as a hunter-gatherer. Do YOU feel you owe a considerable debt of responsibility for simply buying e.g. disposable nappies in Dunnes instead of recycling old rags into reusable nappies?

All the Celtic Tiger was was a period of rampant inflation. Of goods like milk and bread as well as mink coats and diamond rings. Of property like one room bedsits and mansions on Shrewsbury Road. Of services like your salary and mine as well as the price of Merrill Lynch's consultancy fees.

Inflation means rising prices. In order for prices to rise, transactions have to be completed. This means that a buyer and a seller have to agree to complete a transaction.

We can't just blame the sellers. We're the buyers and millions of us willingly paid higher prices for everything day after day, year after year. Billions and billions of individual purchasing decisions all pushing prices the same way. The price of property, the price of goods, the price of services.

Did the sellers take advantage of us? Yes. They still do - look at all the businesses that charge way more here than anywhere else. Why were / are they able to? Because of our culture - and this is the point of this thread. The Germans don't let this kind of thing happen.

You either understand this or you don't.

secretambition

Well the main argument for the "we're all to blame" line would be that we elected essentially the same government for 15 years and we could see what their policies were early on, but wanted to believe that after nothing but economic doom and gloom in our history, that the miracle of a never ending boom was real and a ridiculously overperforming property market was sustainable. We only had to look at what happened to our next door neighbour, the UK, in the 90's to see that there would be a severe crash but we preferred to indulge ourselves with dreams of soft landings and continue to support a government promoting bad policies.

ThinkAboutIt

Dudess wrote: »

You don't really live up to your username tbh.
It looks like you're deciding "Yeah, people - except me - abdicate personal responsibility and that's why Ireland's in its current state" yet don't consider any other angles...

You're pretty much saying it's someone else's fault too. What responsibility are you taking? Besides telling everyone else to take responsibility for stuff they haven't done?

I take responsibility for my actions. I'm currently paying my debts, currently paying my taxes (without moaning, I understand the need to bring the deficit down) and I can see it is no one's fault bar my own. I like my house, car and belongings though. And I'll pay for them even if in negative equity, sure what difference does it make if you aren't selling.

Dudess

Bruce7 wrote: »

We're the buyers and millions of us willingly paid higher prices for everything day after day, year after year. Billions and billions of individual purchasing decisions all pushing prices the same way. The price of property, the price of goods, the price of services.

Did the sellers take advantage of us? Yes. They still do - look at Tesco and other chains charging way more here than anywhere else. Why were / are they able to? Because of our culture - and this is the point of this thread. The Germans don't let this kind of thing happen.

You either understand this or you don't.

Being of the view that it's unfair to use this to apportion a large amount of blame doesn't mean you don't understand it. If you could lose the condescending tone - provoked by nothing - it would be cool too, cheers. What do the Germans do to prevent such price increases?

HazDanz

FCUK YOU DEPUTY STAG!! :mad:

Dudess

ThinkAboutIt wrote: »

Dudess wrote: »

You don't really live up to your username tbh.
It looks like you're deciding "Yeah, people - except me - abdicate personal responsibility and that's why Ireland's in its current state" yet don't consider any other angles...

You're pretty much saying it's someone else's fault too. What responsibility are you taking? Besides telling everyone else to take responsibility for stuff they haven't done?

I take responsibility for my actions. I'm currently paying my debts, currently paying my taxes (without moaning, I understand the need to bring the deficit down)

I'm the very same but I won't just bend over and say we're all to blame for the economy being in the toilet.

ThinkAboutIt

Dudess wrote: »

I'm the very same but I won't just bend over and say we're all to blame for the economy being in the toilet.

Well no one made me go into debt, so it's all my fault. Useless you lose your job, the economy doesn't really effect your live too much - bar the price of petrol etc, but I can live with a few extra cent on it and so be it. That's life, people tend to make a bigger deal of everything than it actually is.

secretambition

The extent of blame definitely varies hugely. A property developer who racked up €millionns of debt that the taxpayer is now dealing with, is far more to blame than the ordinary person who went a bit too mad shopping. But I do think that while people who willingly purchased expensive bread and milk are not the worst culprits by far, the simple weekly grocery shopping is indicative of the problematic attitude at a micro level. I'll give an example. I lived with a foreign housemate and we once went grocery shopping together and she was appalled that someone would pay an extra euro to buy pre-chopped tomatoes, she would do it herself in seconds. If everyone said that, that product wouldn't exist. Many people were too complicit in paying for whatever rip-offs were going which contributed to spiralling prices.

Bruce7

Dudess wrote: »

Being of the view that it's unfair to use this to apportion a large amount of blame doesn't mean you don't understand it. If you could lose the condescending tone - provoked by nothing - it would be cool too, cheers. What do the Germans do to prevent such price increases?

They refuse to pay higher prices. They count their pennies, clip their coupons, search for value, don't pride themselves on having brand new possessions when their existing ones are perfectly adequate, and so on. In general, they are thrifty, careful people, basically. In general, we're not.

There is blame on all sides, but markets are driven by demand. Supply always rises to meet demand. We are the demand side and we created an absolute whirlwind of demand. Others exploited this unscrupulously, and in some cases dishonestly, and they deserve condemnation, but the ultimate blame lies at our own feet.

The real tragedy will be if we fail to learn this lesson. Threads like these make me despair that we ever will, hence my tone, which I apologise for, and shouldn't have directed at you.

bleg

I blame six sigma!

Bruce7

secretambition wrote: »

The extent of blame definitely varies hugely. A property developer who racked up €millionns of debt that the taxpayer is now dealing with, is far more to blame than the ordinary person who went a bit too mad shopping. But I do think that while people who willingly purchased expensive bread and milk are not the worst culprits by far, the simple weekly grocery shopping is indicative of the problematic attitude at a micro level. I'll give an example. I lived with a foreign housemate and we once went grocery shopping together and she was appalled that someone would pay an extra euro to buy pre-chopped tomatoes, she would do it herself in seconds. If everyone said that, that product wouldn't exist. Many people were too complicit in paying for whatever rip-offs were going which contributed to spiralling prices.

For every property developer there were a few thousand people competing with each other to buy houses off them at constantly rising prices. The developers wouldn't have existed without them.

68Murph68

Part of the problem is that the major cultural religion is Catholicism. This is a religion which teaches that if you do a bad thing and then go into a box with a priest and say you're sorry, it's like the bad thing never happened. Given the church's cultural position in Ireland, it's no wonder people have a difficulty with personal responsibility and morality.

Also people don't seem to understand with rights/entitlements come responsibilities/duties.

Also when people are blaming people its a lot easier to apportion blame/responsibility to nameless groups as opposed to people.

There is a tendency in Ireland to apportion responsibility to a group of people as opposed to naming the actual individuals who had responsibility.
There's a huge difference in saying Bertie Ahern, Brian Cowen, Michael Fingleton, David Drumm, Patrick Neary, Kevin Cardiff and Sean Quinn are responsible for the financial mess as opposed to saying that it was politicians, bankers, developers who were responsible.

secretambition

Bruce7 wrote: »

For every property developer there were a few thousand people competing with each other to buy houses off them at constantly rising prices. The developers wouldn't have existed without them.

Yes, that's basically my tomatoes on a larger scale.

Dudess

ThinkAboutIt wrote: »

Dudess wrote: »

I'm the very same but I won't just bend over and say we're all to blame for the economy being in the toilet.

Well no one made me go into debt, so it's all my fault. Useless you lose your job, the economy doesn't really effect your live too much - bar the price of petrol etc, but I can live with a few extra cent on it and so be it. That's life, people tend to make a bigger deal of everything than it actually is.

Yes I'm fortunate to have a job and I can manage fine as things stand, but that doesn't mean I can't see the unfairness of telling someone they don't have a right to complain about corruption and greed with virtual impunity among the elites.
I do agree though that very few people were complaining during the boom and thus benefitted at some level, therefore it's "suck it up" time to a point.
Blame being apportioned evenly across the board though is a useless approach...

Dudess

Bruce7 wrote: »

They refuse to pay higher prices. They count their pennies, clip their coupons, search for value, don't pride themselves on having brand new possessions when their existing ones are perfectly adequate, and so on. In general, they are thrifty, careful people, basically. In general, we're not.

There is blame on all sides, but markets are driven by demand. Supply always rises to meet demand. We are the demand side and we created an absolute whirlwind of demand. Others exploited this unscrupulously, and in some cases dishonestly, and they deserve condemnation, but the ultimate blame lies at our own feet.

The real tragedy will be if we fail to learn this lesson. Threads like these make me despair that we ever will, hence my tone, which I apologise for, and shouldn't have directed at you.

I agree with much of that for sure, but it's disingenuous to imply no Irish people were frugal and copped on during the Celtic tiger.

suicide_circus

bleg wrote: »

I blame six sigma!

Is that the cheese-like substance which accumulates beneath the foreskin of sweaty unwashed degenerates?

desertcircus

Bruce7 wrote: »

There is blame on all sides, but markets are driven by demand. Supply always rises to meet demand. We are the demand side and we created an absolute whirlwind of demand. Others exploited this unscrupulously, and in some cases dishonestly, and they deserve condemnation, but the ultimate blame lies at our own feet.

The real tragedy will be if we fail to learn this lesson. Threads like these make me despair that we ever will, hence my tone, which I apologise for, and shouldn't have directed at you.

"We" did not create a whirlwind of demand. Some people did, some people didn't. Of the people who did, they frequently had no real choice in the spending they did and consequently can't reasonably be said to bear responsibility, which requires some degree of choice to carry any weight. I didn't buy pre-chopped tomatoes (although spending 37 cent instead of 34 to get your tomatoes pre-chopped means your share of the blame for the bubble is somewhere between a guy who bought a pack of chewing gum and accidentally threw it out unopened, and someone who bought a ribbed condom instead of plain to see if it'd make things more sensual); I didn't buy any property; my shoes are from Dunnes and my shirts are from H&M. I rented a room in a city centre apartment for two years because I was working fulltime and attending evening classes five days a week, and doing anything else would have involved losing two hours a day of my waking life or else spending a fortune on car, petrol, insurance and parking).

There's a ludicrous lack of proportion in what we're talking about here. The Irish state is in the hole for something in the region of two hundred billion dollars, and we're arguing over the level of blame to be apportioned to people who bought milk at 1.55 a litre instead of 1.20. That's like the players on a losing football team telling the fans to think about how they might have breathed in such a way as to cause the loss. And I can't stress this enough: you can't assign responsibility for something to people who had no choice in the matter. Huge numbers of Irish people didn't have jobs, or were renting, or shopped in Lidl and Aldi, or simply didn't live close enough to a cheap supermarket to be able to buy cheap milk. Milk and tomatoes, of all things: the people in charge of the country set up a gigantic Ponzi scheme and huge numbers of the citizens buy into it, and then people start seriously claiming that part of the responsibility falls on the shoulders who didn't buy cheap enough milk.

Ghost Buster

desertcircus wrote: »

"We" did not create a whirlwind of demand. Some people did, some people didn't. Of the people who did, they frequently had no real choice in the spending they did and consequently can't reasonably be said to bear responsibility, which requires some degree of choice to carry any weight. I didn't buy pre-chopped tomatoes (although spending 37 cent instead of 34 to get your tomatoes pre-chopped means your share of the blame for the bubble is somewhere between a guy who bought a pack of chewing gum and accidentally threw it out unopened, and someone who bought a ribbed condom instead of plain to see if it'd make things more sensual); I didn't buy any property; my shoes are from Dunnes and my shirts are from H&M. I rented a room in a city centre apartment for two years because I was working fulltime and attending evening classes five days a week, and doing anything else would have involved losing two hours a day of my waking life or else spending a fortune on car, petrol, insurance and parking).

There's a ludicrous lack of proportion in what we're talking about here. The Irish state is in the hole for something in the region of two hundred billion dollars, and we're arguing over the level of blame to be apportioned to people who bought milk at 1.55 a litre instead of 1.20. That's like the players on a losing football team telling the fans to think about how they might have breathed in such a way as to cause the loss. And I can't stress this enough: you can't assign responsibility for something to people who had no choice in the matter. Huge numbers of Irish people didn't have jobs, or were renting, or shopped in Lidl and Aldi, or simply didn't live close enough to a cheap supermarket to be able to buy cheap milk. Milk and tomatoes, of all things: the people in charge of the country set up a gigantic Ponzi scheme and huge numbers of the citizens buy into it, and then people start seriously claiming that part of the responsibility falls on the shoulders who didn't buy cheap enough milk.

~Great post. Just a shame this seems to be a 'hit and run' from The OP. Would love to hear her response.

Dudess

The OP tends to do that all right.

Kev.OC

AudreyHepburn wrote: »

I have come to the conclusion that the biggest problem in this country at the moment, and the biggest stumbling block on the road back to stability is the lack of personal responsibility. From the office of the Taoiseach down to the ordinary Joe soap it seems that no-one wants to own up to their mistakes, be it politicians denying they made promises they could keep to the ordinary refusing to acknowledge they took out a mortgage they couldn’t afford or bought too many properties.

It’s always some-one else fault; the bank who bullied you into taking out that mortgage, the Minister who lied during the election campaign etc. Except it isn’t just their fault. We all make personal choices and its time we all take responsibly for them instead of the constant whinging and self-pitying and scape goating.

If we don’t or won’t acknowledge our personal mistakes, in all levels of society, then how can we ever learn from them? How can we ever make steps towards change and recovery if those who made the mistakes don’t accept the part they each played?

The bits in bold I agree with 100%. The rest, not so much. All we hear from the government is "we have to tighten our belts", while they get more in unvouched expenses than a lot of people, myself included, earn in a year. Then if something happens (i.e. frivolous spending being revealed to the public) what happens? A committee is appointed to look into it. What do the committee do? Make a suggestion. No one is ever responsible. No one is ever held accountable. I strongly believe that for the people of this country to start to have faith in the government again there needs to be two things; transparency regarding government spending and personal accountability.

As for us all being equally responsible? Bollox! Read in the paper today that there's some developer that owes the banks €370 million. But I took out €4,000 for a motorbike, so I can't judge him. We're both clearly equally responsible for the state the country is in. :rolleyes:

AudreyHepburn

Ok let me just say I never meant to imply that we are all to blame because of course not everyone lived beyond their means.

But a lot of people did and I only meant that they need to start facing up to their mistakes instead of laying the blame everywhere else.

That goes for politicians, bankers, developers and those ordinary citizens who took out loans they could afford or bought properties they couldn't afford etc.

Again of course not everyone is responsible and I did not intend to imply otherwise.

Nor did I suggest, or mean to suggest, that anyone should have to take responsibilty for things they didn't do...thats just beyond ludocris.

I apologise for generalising, causing confusion and for any offense caused. I have no doubt most of the posters here, if not all, did not live beyond their means and I certainly did not mean my post as a jab at any of you.

secretambition

desertcircus wrote: »

" I didn't buy pre-chopped tomatoes (although spending 37 cent instead of 34 to get your tomatoes pre-chopped means your share of the blame for the bubble is somewhere between a guy who bought a pack of chewing gum and accidentally threw it out unopened, and someone who bought a ribbed condom instead of plain to see if it'd make things more sensual);
.

I described the pre-chopped tomatoes as "micro" when I gave that example, so I think it's unfair of you to describe a huge lack of proportion if your going to bring my example into it without acknowledging that.

Also, where during the Celtic Tiger would you have bought them for 37c. Are you not talking recession Lidl/Aldi/Dunnes there?