Ireland and personal responsibility

Bruce7 · 11-05-2012 07:02PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:03PM

I blame six sigma!

Bruce7 · 11-05-2012 07:08PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:14PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:14PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:17PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:30PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:30PM

bleg wrote: »

I blame six sigma!

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

desertcircus · 11-05-2012 07:32PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:37PM

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 · 11-05-2012 07:52PM

The OP tends to do that all right.

Kev.OC · 11-05-2012 08:35PM

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 · 11-05-2012 08:40PM

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 · 11-05-2012 11:00PM

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?

Ireland and personal responsibility

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