- Opinion
- 20 Oct 09
The government’s uncomfortably close relationship with business contributed significantly to our current economic difficulties.
Very shortly, the Greens will be deciding on whether or not they pull out of government. As a party member, I will be at that meeting, and all sorts of fantasies of how it will turn out are running through my mind. Alas, at the time of writing, my crystal ball is as opaque as marble.
Is it going to be a case study in brinkmanship, a minority party playing a blinder in negotiations, extracting so many dramatic policy changes from its weakened majority partner that the Greens, rejuvenated, vote en masse to continue in government? Is it, on the other hand, going to be a repeat of the first agreement, with Fianna Fáil throwing their numerical weight around, displaying their traditional stubborn resistance to innovative thinking, resulting in a watered-down deal that fails to convince the Green party members? Or is there a desire in the Green leadership to give the country what it wants, a general election? In which case, the negotiating demands have been deliberately pitched too high for Fianna Fáil to accept. The Greens can leave the table, declare that their supper with the devil is over, and both parties pray the electorate doesn’t maul them to extinction at the polls. Any of these three options are possible. And of course, it could easily be none of the above. Irish politics is fraught with the absurd.
A week is a long time in politics, they say, and it is extremely tempting to try to predict the outcome.
We all want to hear confident, reassuring lies about what the future holds. It is seductive to play the role of soothsayer, to get it right, to be the smug one to say “I told you so”. I should know, I used to be a consultant astrologer. But I got tired of spending so much time disabusing clients of the notion that I could tell their future. There’s Dial-a-Psychic for that. They tell you exactly what you want to hear.
Economic forecasters are no different to any other kind of charlatan. Most make a living not out of truth-telling, but of cheerleading, especially in the USA. Naturally, there are exceptions. Pundits Nourel Roubini, Peter Schiff and George Magnus all clearly predicted the world recession and its severity. And all were ridiculed at the time. But, admirably, they stuck to their guns. Schiff, in particular, seemed particularly clear-eyed against mockery and derision, because he did not fear what he was forecasting. Indeed, he saw recession as a necessary stage in any economic cycle. But that terrifies business people. Fear and emotions play such an important part in economics, in world affairs, but it is hardly ever acknowledged to be the case.
Whether it’s someone selling in a car-boot sale in Nenagh, or the manager of the state-of-the-art new Microsoft data centre in West Dublin, all business people have to exude confidence to persuade customers to buy. It is bad business to tell the truth - if you’re in business, you have to talk up, up, up. Related to that is the notion that all businesses should continually grow and expand as much as they can in order to provide even greater returns on investments. Big is better. But once you go down that path, big is never big enough. Growth, expansion, staying power, potency: the phallic metaphors are apt, because, bless its pointy little head, it is in the nature of business to aim to piss the highest against the wall.
Just as it’s healthy for state and religion to be separate, so is it essential that state and business are separate. Both religion and business are faith-based, and therefore irrational. The job of a government is to refuse to be infected by the seductive assumptions of both, and legislate with a clear head to contain both, sensibly and fairly.
Our own ESRI has such a clear head, not that the government pays anything but lip service to them. Two and a half years ago, ESRI researcher Dr Ide Kearney reported something I had been noticing, all around me in Dublin 8, as a recently returned émigré. With so many new offices and apartments springing up, why were so many of them staying empty? And why were prices still so high? It didn’t make sense to me. The natural state for a boom economy is that it is stretching beyond its limits: there should have been shortages in housing, in the workforce, in office spaces.
However, I didn’t know what it foretold. It was the equivalent of the sea receding from the shore. Like most people, I just gazed at the exposed sea-bed in puzzlement. I wonder how many people really knew at the time about the economic tsunami heading our direction?
I don’t think anyone “knew”. Everyone was in collusive denial, too much was at stake to risk being the one to tell the truth.
But it should have set alarm bells ringing somewhere in the corridors of power, someone should have been able to detach enough from the values of the business world and take a sober look at the inevitability of economic cycles. Someone should have accepted early on that there is a social and competitive benefit in cheaper housing and lower business rents, and worked patiently and steady-handedly towards it, ignoring the bombastic bluster of those whose profits depended on the mirage continuing.
But traditionally, Fianna Fáil has always painted the brightest of economic futures just prior to an election, after which the bad news is revealed. I assume that old, cynical political habit was hard to kick, no matter how deafening those bells were. And, so much had Fianna Fáil become the party of business, running the country like a PLC, I believe it had lost perspective completely.
This is why, I believe, there has never been a convincing apology from Fianna Fáil for its role in the current disastrous state of the Irish economy. They were (and are) too immersed in world business culture and values. They cannot see that there is an alternative. The lemming called Ireland PLC fell the furthest off the cliff, and ended up in intensive care, but it was only following the (American-led) crowd. In order for it to apologise, it would have to acknowledge the choice it made to be a lemming in the first place, which is simply beyond it as a party.
Adopting the green principle of sustainability as economic policy, and abandoning the unquestioning faith in the free market, is something that has to happen in Ireland, sooner or later, for us to survive and thrive in the long term. I doubt that Fianna Fáil has the imagination or self-awareness to make that leap, because it has to be done wholeheartedly, with clarity and purpose. Without such a change, the sooner this government ends, the better.
Cassandras: http://url.ie/2k2n