You are not an Economy

Irish Steve wrote: »

We're that already. and it's not showing any signs of improving any time soon. Most of my friends are of an age where they were thinking about what was ahead in retirement, now, they're frightened about where things are going, what they are going to be left with to live on, and how they will try to provide for their retirement, as their plans have been blown out of the water by the destruction of their reserves, and the implosion of the property market. If your capital reserves are gone, and you can't downsize because there's no property market, and you know that you are going to be hammered by new taxes like property tax, water charges, and the like, and there's damn all income to pay them with, that's frightening, and before too long, it will also be poor and starving, cold, and more dangerous, with no liklihood of seeing it change or improve in the remainder of their lifetime. the most corrosive aspect of what's happening at the moment is not the immediate pain of the restructuring that is needed, it's the painful realisation that the politicians don't have a clue how to fix it, or how to get things working again, for a VERY long time.

Starting again from nothing at the age of 60 is very hard to do in the present environment, the system is not there to enable that to happen, even if someone has an idea that could be productive, making it happen requires resources of some sort, either financial, or emotional, and a lot of my friends have none of either of them any more, they've been destroyed by the ongoing lack of vision and change in what they are seeing. Speaking personally, I no longer have the energy to start from zero again, and there is no way I will ever trust the banksters again, they can't be trusted, so borrowing from them. even if it were possible. to start something new isn't an option.


Maybe if we said to hell with "the economy" and the Euro, and being dominated by Germany (looks like they have effectively won WW3 at last), there would be seismic changes that would cause massive pain, but if things like oil, BMW's and the like became prohibitively expensive, we'd make a real start on finding and using, or actually making locally sourced and manufactured alternatives, rather than the pretense that we have at the moment. Carbon tax for example is doing NOTHING to encourage alternative energy research or use, all it's doing is generating revenue that the Govt desperately needs to prop up it's failed experiements in running the country.



If we couldn't afford the size of the PS, and lots of the other things that we are wasting money on, including some of the crazy EU regulations that have very little to do with reality, and everything to do with justifying jobs for the people that make stupid regulations, then maybe we'd get back to employing people in ways that are positive in their effect. Rules on the size, shape, colour and texture of bananas are exactly that, rules for a banana republic, and a luxury that we, and a lot of other people, can't afford, as they do nothing to improve the quality of the product or its use.

If that means that some of the PS workers have to start working in completely different areas, like manufacturing devices for effective use of whatever resources we find to replace oil, at least it's a positive contribution to the economy of the future, rather than an expensive drain on diminishing resources that we can't afford any more.

Communism always was a busted flush, because there are always people in the communist system that feel they should be better treated than the average, so they want larger cars, and bigger houses, and dedicated traffic lanes and all the other distortions that make them into dictators in all but name.

The system failed, but what's now happening is that we've also discovered that capitalism with too much freedom has also failed, big time, because the only difference between the 2 extremes is the manner in which a small group of people seek to manipulate the system for their own personal benefit over and above the rest of the collective, however you want to name it.

So, we need a new system, and achieving that is going to take some serious and long term changes that go to the very core of the entire existence of the species on the planet, and I'm not talking about some of the carp that has been spouted by special interests like the Green party and their ilk, so much of that was just short sighted local issues that in the overall scale of things didn't even represent a bump in the road. Too many of them were just vested interest NIMBY's, without a vision of the wider implications of their policies and attitudes. Since when has putting red tarmac on the roads and in bus stops made a blind bit of difference to how people use those roads, or park? Generated lots of jobs for the boys, producing all the regulations, but did the national economy really benefit from doing it, or were we just spending money on things that didn't make much real difference to how the nation lives and survives.

Going back to the opening point, frightened doesn't even come close, partly because of the damage that's already been done, and partly because there seems to be no idea or clue from any of the "leaders" about a realistic and viable way to rebuild a society that's discovered that there is no future in the way that it was heading.

Going back to "the old ways" is not going to be a solution either, too much of that was dominated and controlled by another vested interest, the Catholic Church, and we've seen in recent years how much damage and pain was inflicted by that organisation on the lives of countless people, and we're paying the price now for some of those excesses.

I don't have answers to some of this, far from it, but I do know that paying some broker in an office somewhere stupid levels of "bonus" for moving electronic money from one place to another at just the right moment is not a realistic use of the resources of the planet, and allowing another individual to "own" a ship load of oil for several weeks and make huge profits by speculating on it is equally immoral. In the same vein, only being able to get into certain professions by virtue of having a certain number of points at Leaving Cert is also wrong, academic ability is no indicator of a person's ability to be a good doctor, or vet for example. In the same vein, making huge profits out of areas like drugs and medical services has to be looked at in a new light, research has to be paid for, but not if it means that the end product is only available to an elite or exclusive few, and we're going that way with the present system of healthcare.

So, how do we persuade the people in power that EVERYTHING has to go back into the melting pot, and just maybe, if enough people are involved in deciding the shape of what comes out of the other end, a new Republic, might just have the capability to succeed in ways that the present one has no chance of doing.

It can't happen, but if it could, what would the long term effect be. Wipe all the information in all the banks computers. All the balances, debit and credit, gone. Change the system so that things like pensions are not based on earnings, but on need. Things like massive pensions for an elite few are gone.
Earnings based on realistic values rather than the nonsense that happens now. Are politicians worth the money they get now? No, and they certainly don't deserve by right to get the pension entitlements that they do, not when the rest of the people in the country can't get anything like the same entitlements (or allowances and the like, come to that). Social upheaval isn't even close, but it's what's going to have to happen if Ireland of the future is going to have a future as a Republic, the only other alternative is that we all learn German and become another state in the new enlarge German Republic that thinks it has the answer to solving all the problems of Europe. Merkel and Sarkozy think they have the answers. I don't think so, not if we want to be the people that we are supposed to be.

phasers wrote: »

Let me know when you do something proactive instead of whining about it on the internet.