Ireland: neo-liberalism's triumph

by S. Hegarty Wed Jan 16, 2008 13:05

Kieran Allen's recent book, The Corporate Takeover of Ireland, documents the extent and effects of neoliberalism in Ireland.

by Idiot_Football_fan Wed Jan 16, 2008 15:12

But we'll be first when mary harney completes her run down and privatisation of the health services and water charges come in and the ESB is privatised.

then at last, first in the world at something I-R-E-L-A-N-D
we need to let our current managers stay on in order to win the title though!
Give bertie a chance to address his handlers in the US

"we are the CHAMPIONS!"

by Sceptic Wed Jan 16, 2008 22:12

It’s not a coincidence that the places with the greatest economic freedom are also those with the greatest prosperity and living standards. It is the freer countries that migrants flock to not the ones towards the bottom of the index of freedom – they are the ones people flock from. Also people should stop following Will Hutton and using the term neo liberalism as one of abuse. In fact liberalism is opposed to concentrations of ownership and influence. Thus a liberal government is a sound regulator of business including dealing with trusts and cartels if they threaten to appear. By the same token they are also tough on crime. Organized crime should be dealt with severely by a liberal government that by definition should value and uphold the rule of law. Incidentally Hong Kong and Singapore are not dictatorships but are atypical city States or zones. One cannot infer too much from them except that the market system is a very transformative agent for innovation and for success in markets and wealth creation.

by Feudal castrato Thu Jan 17, 2008 02:15

businesses have the most "freedom" when they

(a)pay no taxes,
(b)have the cheapest labour force possible,ideally unpaid slave labour , long hours, no protections(and no pesky unions)
(c)have no worries about polluting the environment whenever it suits them,
(d)no limits on what types of research experiments they can perform
(e)have as much as possible of their expenses and infrastructure ("externalities")paid by the state
(f)full control of media
(g)full access to state police force to "enforce" for them

seems to me these "ideal" conditions do not serve the good of the local population and are nearest to being achieved in a corrupt police state or a dictatorship. Nazi germany would have been a big business wet dream. oh wait...it was!!

Y'know, the kind of set up Ron paul wants!

by Sceptic Thu Jan 17, 2008 18:13

You have it wrong. Business freedom is largely about freedom from excessive bureaucracy. For instance until recently it could take two or three years and much expense to set up a company in India. The result was this most entrepreneurial people exported their business people all over the world but the India itself remained mired in gross poverty. In Ireland a company can now be set up in a day or two at minimal expense by international standards and it is easy to find out about tax and other compliance requirements. In fact the most competitive countries are not low tax or low wage ones; as regards wages including for ordinary people there are among the highest in the world. They also have proper regulation on the environment – their records are very good – the point is that regulation is reasonable and not capricious. The worst environmental records are held by China, Russia and the former Soviet Block. The situation as regards a police state, control of the media and research limits is also the opposite of that you portray. A modern economy can only thrive in conditions of reasonable political freedom. That is why Syria, for all its talk on the subject, will never become a player in the software design market.

by CodeMonkey Thu Jan 17, 2008 18:24

read the fucking newspaper sceptic. Companies are leaving ireland as fast as their greedy little legs can carry them. and software is a terrible example. I actually worked in software and watched my whole department get outsourced to india (including my own job) because they could write software adequately (its not exactly rocket science!) and the wages were much cheaper and the labour laws were lax etc etc..
So don't bullshit me. I watched it happen. You are a nasty little propagandist rat!

by Sceptic Thu Jan 17, 2008 22:02

Companies are mobile. We get inward investment but after some years they leave - what matters is the value they have added while they are here. Nationally the policy is to replace the ones that leave with other ones higher up the value chain and by and large we have been successful at doing this. The country is vastly richer for having inward investment but we cannot insist that they stay forever. That’s life - the old gives way to the new. Nothing about the outsourcing of your software department in any way invalidates what I wrote nor the wisdom of having a foreign investment policy or a degree of business freedom. What would you recommend instead? In the 1950s we had hardly any foreign industry or trade outside of primary agricultural products but the country was a poverty basket case as a result.

by Ernest Lynch Fri Jan 18, 2008 21:31

Feudal, great link to Chomsky.
Paul libertarianism would be a nightmare, and as Chomsky says, if ever implemented would implode. The difference between Paul's crackpotism and neoliberalism is merely that we have yet to experience the full brunt of state-imposed neoliberalism. As the neolib project advances towards the ideal, Paulite, utopian abstraction, state repression will also grow.

by Sceptic Fri Jan 18, 2008 23:39

"AER LINGUS NOT RENEWING CONTRACTS WITH SR TECHNICS"
The whole idea of having a contract is that you can choose to renew or
not at the end of the term or to re-tender. It does not say a whole lot for this firm if it cannot get business from Aer Lingus. It may be uncompetitive anyway. It has no prior right to the Aer Lingus business - it has to compete. If it can't it should go to the wall. Besides what is wrong with Aer Lingus doing more work in-house? This site is normally opposed to outsourcing. This is a reversal of outsourcing.

O'LEARY
O'Leary was dabbling in the Shannon controversy for his own amusement
and to embarrass the Government. The latter were wise not to treat with
him.

NURSES
Irish nurses are actually well paid by international standards and they
have their own staffing hierarchy. A director of nursing would be a very
well paid person indeed out earning all but the highest paid civil
servants. Top level civil servants are hard working and very qualified
people. They should not be denigrated glibly.

by Optimist Sun Jan 20, 2008 00:02

mary harney is working on the medical service.
Water / waste / power will follow.

most third world countries follow his model.
We'll be back there soon. (many of us never left)

corrupt government (at least there will be less of them!)
citizens can go to hell,
no public services worth talking about.
those that exist cherry picked and overpriced by private enterprise.
long hours
lousy conditions
low wages
abject poverty and squalor
the rise of religion again.

nice rosy future, you'll agree.
Enjoy one last credit spree, a bottle of bubbly and a spin in the gas guzzler and get the teeth done folks

by anti-Pinnochio Mon Jan 21, 2008 00:22

Remember Chile! The neoliberalism disease has spread and now infests universities worldwide. It has also come to Ireland:

http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/15172

Perhaps they will soon have a special day to honour Charles Trevelyan.

by Feudal castrato Tue Jan 22, 2008 06:28

Thanks for that anti-pinocchio :)
another interesting ron paul article here

http://www.counterpunch.org/sharon01162008.html
worth a read!

This is not to say I like the other candidates much either.

It seems the US voters have as little choice as we do.
So much for freedom and democracy.

Might as well have a benign dictator!
I propose joe higgins :)

http://www.gnn.tv/threads/28811/Noam_Chomsky_on

by P. Dubois Wed Jan 23, 2008 19:03

For 30 years an intensified class war has been waged by the rich against the working class. Its ideology is neoliberalism and its institutional expression is found in the various 'think tanks' that have proliferated like weeds. These propaganda institutes in Ireland are The Open Republic Institute and Libertas. Declan Ganley, the main mover behind these proclaims the virtues of 'free competition'. His minions, Paul MacDonnell and Constantin Gurdgiev advocate the privatisation of E.S.B. and R.T.E.

But the board of Ganley's company Rivada is like a 'who's who' of the military industrial complex.

http://www.rivada.com/about/keypersonnel/declanjganley.htm

Rivada is part of the war and and anti-terrorism industry, not exactly a paragon of 'free competition'. Its profits come not from the 'free market' but from the U.S taxpayer.

The latest addition to Ganley's stable of 'free marketeers' is David Cochrane of politics.ie., now part of the Libertas right-wing campaign against the Lisbon treaty.

David Harvey has advocated that its time for the oppressed to fight back in this class war.

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenu...=9655

In Ireland, exposing what Ganley and his hirelings really stand for, is essential to the fight-back.

by C.Lalor Fri Jan 25, 2008 23:01

'For thee but not for me'--
Declan Ganley the man behind the right-wing propaganda outfit, Libertas, is an ideological believer in the free market, but not in the virtues of competition when it comes to his business affairs. "We're a hybrid of Vodaphone and Lockheed Martin-a telco plus defence contractor" he says.

http://cnbceb.com/2006/03/01/cover_story/

The U.S defence industry is parasitical on the productive sector of the U.S economy. Ganley's business plan,-put retreads from the military and from homeland security on your board and secure government contracts-is typical of the merchants of death.

When Ganley's hirelings preach the virtues of the 'free market' they should be questioned about Ganley's involvement int he U.S military-industrial complex.

by Bill Thompson Sun Jan 27, 2008 21:55

The propaganda of the Heritage Foundation and their index claims that the freer the economy the more wealth is created. But when countries of similar economic development are compared this claim is shown to be nonsense. The 'Index', in short is a propaganda tool used to push a right-wing economic agenda.

http://www.counterpunch.org/weissman01252008.html

Likewise with Ganley's Libertas: Its purpose is propaganda.

by L. Bulero Tue Jan 29, 2008 18:46

Neo-liberalism can be seen as an attempt to return to the economic doctrines of the 18th and 19th centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism