Is it time for a new social order?

greaseit

Title sounds a bit sci-fi but it looks as though this globalization crack doesn't work.

At the basis of humanity is the human being himself (sorry girls just using "him" for ease of use) and it is for him and his benefit that economies should be run. That is, not financial gain alone but, social benefit as well. Currently, we have institutions run by private individuals who seem to have only their own needs in mind and when these vital institutions come crashing down they bring the whole country with them. I ask you is this in the best interests of our country?

Would it be too far out to say that this breaches the security needs of the state?

It is my growing belief that when it comes to any business which is there for the public need, such as banks, transportation companies, health, education...etc., it should be run on some sort of basis which benefits the community as a whole. That is to say, run like a private business but by the government, run by the people for the people.

In the past these sort of institutions run by the government were, or became, infested by the self serving requirements of unions which in turn became twisted selfish organizations run with no overall concept, or care about the knock-on effect of their actions into the future. I believe that unions have a fundamental responsibility for the worker but not the worker alone. They have a responsibility for the success of the business because it is this business that pays their members wages. It should be their responsibility to ensure that members don't "take the pee", endangering the very business that employs them. Unions are the watch dog of workers rights not the bed maker fluffing up the pillows.

We need a grass roots change in the way we in Ireland perceive and conduct our lives.

Lets start it by knocking on our public representatives doors and demanding change.

Regards.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

surely if globalisation didn't work you'd be standing on a street corner handing out pamphlets instead of on a computer using the internet. Do you own a mobile phone? Satellite tv? Do you own a tv?

I guess you're right, globalisation is for dummies.

Permabear

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irish_bob

donegalfella wrote: »

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if you think the statists are back with avengance in here donegal fella , you should see what its like over at politics.ie

your badly needed over there only at this stage it might be like trying to keep the tide out with a saucepan

Permabear

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Kama

Your "social experiment" has been tried—it's called socialism, and it doesn't work, on any level.

Stating 'it doesn't work, on any level' is a little tendentious; what works depends on the situation, imo, and your social goals. If you place any emphasis on egality, as Europeans tend to compared to, say, Americans, state service provision on the post-war welfare-state model achieves this better than markets.

The perspective that the role of the State is purely that of the 'Night-Watchman' is not one clearly shared by the majority of the electorate, and one hopes it is agreed that the 'design' of State system should contains a degree of democratic responsivity? There are economic benefits to a market-socialist model, though they may be systematically understated by those with an 'anti-state bias', to invert Caplan, even if purely on the 'lite' approach of market failure and mopping up externalities from market processes; eg 'Small' states on the watchman-Anglo model tend to possess enlarged (and costly) penal systems in lieu of welfare functions; a cost to the benefit.

I guess you're right, globalisation is for dummies.

when the OP said globalization, it seemed clear (to me, anyway) that the economic pattern of neoliberal economic integration was the referent, rather than the collapse of distance due to technology. These tend to be conflated in the word, while being distinct processes. 'globalization' as long-boom 'Great Moderation' can end, yet we can still send an email, no?

Would it be too far out to say that this breaches the security needs of the state?

Ireland has consitututed as a market-state, in Bobbitt's terms, and our openness as an economy, so beneficial during a boom, seems to carry with at an equal and opposite effect during a slump. How to best deal with this is an open question, and depends a lot on how bad the external situation becomes. Tbh, anyone who thinks they know for sure how this pans out is most likely talking out their behind, imho.

My 2c would be that the State doesn't possess the ability to refloat the economy in neo-Keynesian/Obama terms, and fiscal slashing will produce pro-cyclical effects and compound the slump in the short-to-medium anyway. Pessimist prognosis, I know >.<

It is my growing belief that when it comes to any business which is there for the public need,...it should be run on some sort of basis which benefits the community as a whole. That is to say, run like a private business but by the government, run by the people for the people.

I'd disagree that 'for the people' necessitates 'by the government', both on a theoretical standpoint, and on the pragmatic approach that I don't think our (broke) government will be able and willing to supply those goods.

We need a grass roots change in the way we in Ireland perceive and conduct our lives.

Amen. The problem then is the original one of a true politics: how do we want to live, and how can that be achieved?

Sand

As Don has stated - its been done before and failed.

And just to jog your memory:

Elected government & ministers? Completely failed in their roles. Completely failed to treat the stamp duty windfalls as being temporary, leading to rapid expansion of expenditure that wasnt sustainable. Engaged in horrific waste such as "decentralisation" which was only a vote buying exercise for FF down the country.

Financial Regulator? Completey failed in its role. Paid hundreds of thousands a year to be the dog that didnt bark. A complete and total joke.

Public Service? Overpaid, underworked especially at the highest levels. Services provided by the state [ the ones which are not natural monopolies] are generally expensive and inefficient. The ESB pay rises, and their contribution to restoring Irelands competitive edge [ increasing prices to pay for their pay rises...] are a perfect example.

Semi State Bodies? Boards are packed with people who have no idea what theyre doing - theyre appointed because their mates of politicians, not because they are expected to do well.

Unions? Actively contributed to loss of competive edge through the "benchmarking". Rejected pay cuts out of hand in complete denial of the new fiscal reality. Blames the "fat cats" for the whole mess despite their reps like David Begg sat on the board of of institutions like the Central Bank for years now. He would be a fat cat wouldnt he?

These are the guys we want to give more power to? More running of the economy to these clowns?

It is time for a new order in Ireland, but its one where the government cleans out the unions, the public services, the semi state bodies and the financial regulator to ensure they work efficiently for the least cost to the tax payer.

irish_bob

Sand wrote: »

As Don has stated - its been done before and failed.

And just to jog your memory:

Elected government & ministers? Completely failed in their roles. Completely failed to treat the stamp duty windfalls as being temporary, leading to rapid expansion of expenditure that wasnt sustainable. Engaged in horrific waste such as "decentralisation" which was only a vote buying exercise for FF down the country.

Financial Regulator? Completey failed in its role. Paid hundreds of thousands a year to be the dog that didnt bark. A complete and total joke.

Public Service? Overpaid, underworked especially at the highest levels. Services provided by the state [ the ones which are not natural monopolies] are generally expensive and inefficient. The ESB pay rises, and their contribution to restoring Irelands competitive edge [ increasing prices to pay for their pay rises...] are a perfect example.

Semi State Bodies? Boards are packed with people who have no idea what theyre doing - theyre appointed because their mates of politicians, not because they are expected to do well.

Unions? Actively contributed to loss of competive edge through the "benchmarking". Rejected pay cuts out of hand in complete denial of the new fiscal reality. Blames the "fat cats" for the whole mess despite their reps like David Begg sat on the board of of institutions like the Central Bank for years now. He would be a fat cat wouldnt he?

These are the guys we want to give more power to? More running of the economy to these clowns?

It is time for a new order in Ireland, but its one where the government cleans out the unions, the public services, the semi state bodies and the financial regulator to ensure they work efficiently for the least cost to the tax payer.

i like your ideas but the problem is , thier is no one in elected office who represents those ideals , i dont particulary like labels but neo liberalism ( privatisation , less state control etc ) has become a dirty word and while more people than not would like to see the likes of the esb face competition , the vested interests ( unions etc) hold too much sway with the political class for serious reform to happen as quickly as is needed

Nodin

donegalfella wrote: »

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Well, I think we've seen enough 'flourishing' for the moment, thank you. Come back next time with something other than a high rise stack of cards.

dresden8

Nodin wrote: »

Well, I think we've seen enough 'flourishing' for the moment, thank you. Come back next time with something other than a high rise stack of cards.

In "Newspeak" a Financial Regulator who doesn't bother to do the job of regulating is an example of how over-regulation is to blame for all our banking woes.

Nice.

K4t

donegalfella wrote: »

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None of those factors caused this disaster, it was your friend the banks.

Privatisation is all well and good in theory but it doesn't acount for one important little factor, human nature. Things were going fine but it was greed that f**ked it all up.

nyarlothothep

define human nature

K4t

nyarlothothep wrote: »

define human nature

Nobody has an exact definition but I do know that greed is a characterisitc of human nature and that private individuals acting on their own behalf (to make profits) are not going to have the best interests of the public at heart, ever.

nyarlothothep

Cool.

Is it not the institutional set up which rewards greed over competence among other traits? I see it as an historical problem, the society we have is the product of a rather negative legacy so I don't see this kind of behaviour as being eternally free from redress. A better social model than the one we have would involve safeguards which would punish pathological behaviour as evidenced by corporate policies at the top and towards indigenous populations in developing countries among many many other things.

Socialist models have rarely been tried out, the USSR was categorically not a socialist state, for example workers did not have control over the means of production from very early on which is a key component of socialism. In addition any socialist state that has come into existence has faced incredible antipathy from the West.

Permabear

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Kama

donegalfella wrote:

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Luckily, there's some middle-ground between these two positions. Call it an efficient rate of inequality? 'Flat' enforced economic egality is a terrible idea, but letting the market set the rate of inegality produces definite 'externalities', social, political, economic.

Call me Goldilocks, I guess...

And who was suppressing the interest rates to feed the banks a mountain of cheap credit...?

Plague on both their houses would be my admittedly-simplistic take; there's no monopoly on blame, and there's a butt-ton of mud can sling at either side. Policy fed into a bullish confidence, confidence fed into policy. Marketeers effected regulatory capture, states fed the bubbles; self-interest doesn't always lead to enlightened outcomes.

The only thing I'm sad about is that much of the developed world seems to be going in a similar direction, so that there are very few places left where genuine liberals can get away from overarching state control.

Fair enough. I regard the absence of such as an infringement on your human liberty, in case you're wondering, much as I regard the suppression of socialist regimes. Hopefully, in the coming world-economic restructuring, all the Austrians can get a micro-state and fulfil their social choice, and the wannabe-Nordics can do the same...I'm all for tinkering, experimentation, and seeing what works...definite advantages in diversity, purely from a comparative point of view.

That and not having the 'out' of blaming the other side for any short-comings...

Heh, I can dream, can't I?

SeanW

Nodin wrote: »

Well, I think we've seen enough 'flourishing' for the moment, thank you. Come back next time with something other than a high rise stack of cards.

The only thing flourishing in Ireland ATM is public sector inefficiency.

K4t wrote: »

None of those factors caused this disaster, it was your friend the banks.

Who only got greeding and started lending irresponsibly (for the most part) because of artificially cheap credit based on money pulled out of thin air by the Central Bankers.

Privatisation is all well and good in theory but it doesn't acount for one important little factor, human nature. Things were going fine but it was greed that f**ked it all up.

Here's a better idea: punish those who f up. Either by jail, in the case of fraud, or in the case of plain old recklessness, bankruptcy. A stable monetary environment based on hard currency, with no subsidies for screw-up banks, would make shareholders a lot more cautious about what their banks (or other companies) were/are doing.

greaseit wrote: »

It is my growing belief that when it comes to any business which is there for the public need, such as banks, transportation companies, health, education...etc., it should be run on some sort of basis which benefits the community as a whole.

You mean like the HSE which celebrated its inauguration by hiring a small army of middle managers and admin staff? Or how about the RSA driver testing service, which has recently been handed its monopoly back over the shambles of a driver testing system? Remember the deal with SGS, which the Minister for Transport - they were "clearing the backlog" (in reality they were just cleaning up a big mess and dealing with a fundamental problem of inefficiency in the RSA operation), they were doing the job way more efficiently and at half the cost - the gov even wanted to hand over ALL Category B testing to them at one point but the Unions got involved and they bottled it like a pack of wusses. As usual.

These are just a few examples, I could go on about the RSA, CIE, other semi-states, particulary where the government "service" is a monopoly or otherwise unavoidable, various departments for days.

So you'll have to forgive me if I don't jump up and down about your suggestion to have more socialised services.

Permabear

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Kama

Well, the economic and moral price of trying to eliminate these "externalities" is simply too high. People simply need more freedom, not more state engineering.

Note first I explicitly disavowed the concept of ‘eliminating’ inequality; I alluded to the costs in terms of crime (a bloated penal ‘Watchman’), social cohesion (stagnant social mobility, essentially a ‘caste’ society); this preference is reflected politically.
Part of the dislike, and imo the reason policies on your lines are democratically unacceptable, is that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. The value of the social-democratic or welfarist model is that one feels more free to play the game, and take risks, if you know the winner won’t take the shirt from your back. Many people possess an ‘irrational’ concept called ‘fairness’ (note Ultimatum games), and a dislike of dog-eat-dog Gordon-Geckoism. Without some kind of moderation, the results of unrestrained market processes are unacceptable; to repeat you, the economic and moral cost is too high.

Whose self-interest was at stake here? Please don't tell me that it was that of the bankers. It was the state that created the bubbles and strengthened itself by distorting monetary policy.

To claim that the bubble is purely the fault of the policy side seems like throwing mud at others in the hope you’ll look clean in comparison; it doesn’t and you won’t, to be blunt. Long-boom cheap money is I agree a huge factor, but claiming from that that bankers self-interest didn’t factor, or that the role of (deregulated) ‘shadow banking’, or the ‘light touch’ regulation in our own markets had no role in the crisis seems...untenable.

Like any emotive ‘civil war’ situation, it’s always too temptingly easy to claim ‘but A did Y first’; it’s the rhetoric of the playground, and avoidance of responsibility. Which is my main problem with Austrian/Rothbardian types tbh…the ‘pure’ market as a rhetorical tool for putting the blame on someone else, pretty analogous to a hard Leftist justification of anything by how we are short of the utopia of Communism, and as long as we keep going toward the mythical end, or keep deregulating, etc, it doesn’t matter how bad the present gets.Problem is, the present is reality, the pure 'market' or pure 'state' utopias are just that, nowhere.

And now the state continues to strengthen itself by presenting itself as the saviour of the private sector it ruined. See the constant theme here? The state always gets bigger, stronger, and more influential; the private sector always becomes smaller, weaker, and less robust. We need to put an end to this predation.

I’d disagree with your teleology; note that Adam Smith or Hayek developed their theories in a state and world-system where markets were decidedly the underdog, and straining for freedom. The difference now is that (in the view of many) states became decidedly subservient to markets, ‘handmaidens of industry’. States and markets have been inter-reliant throughout their history, an messy obligate symbiosis, and one unlikely to end short of massive state failure…possibly from guaranteeing the private sector. :eek:

Here's a better idea: punish those who f up. Either by jail, in the case of fraud, or in the case of plain old recklessness, bankruptcy. A stable monetary environment based on hard currency, with no subsidies for screw-up banks, would make shareholders a lot more cautious about what their banks (or other companies) were/are doing.

Agree fully. I find the hypocrisy of 'rainy-day Keynesians' astonishing, and a portion of the (apparent) discrediting and distrust of the 'market' side is that they do not practice what they preached (like puppies, markets aren't just for Christmas). Instead we see the old pattern of privatised profits and socialised losses, and a tolerance for white-collar crime that makes a mockery of our whole social system. The rich get richer, and the poor get prison tbh; yet I lack confidence that this would be any better in the Austrian 'State of Nature'.