Claims about Ireland (from the comments)

 [[{“value”:”The proximate cause of this problem is the housing crisis, but the underlying reason is that Ireland’s political spectrum is still broken due to being defined by its reactions to colonialism and Catholicism. Beneath the surface-level tides of imperialism, rebellion, theocracy, and liberalisation is a deep nationwide conformism and lack of agency. There is a
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The proximate cause of this problem is the housing crisis, but the underlying reason is that Ireland’s political spectrum is still broken due to being defined by its reactions to colonialism and Catholicism. Beneath the surface-level tides of imperialism, rebellion, theocracy, and liberalisation is a deep nationwide conformism and lack of agency. There is a ‘learned helplessness’ from this illiberal past that conditions the population into modes of subservience and rebellion, with nothing in between.

Because the reactions against colonialism were both left-wing in character (republican and social liberalism) the entire population thinks of themselves as superficially left wing. The result is that each generation grows up with the same abstract ideas that problems are caused by “greed” and “corporations” but no conception of how oligarchy and government actually work to maintain an oppressive class system that is truly brutal compared even to much of western Europe.

The wealthy and influential networks in society use moral-sounding concepts such as environmental protection and invoking famine-era evictions to establish legal frameworks that protect existing capital by preventing growth. They also use the civil service as a massive programme of sinecures for the less ambitious within the upper middle classes. To take a random example: Ireland still claims to have ‘free’ university (though there is a significant registration fee). But the cost of renting is so high that effectively only the wealthy can send their kids away to college. Superficially left wing, but de facto oligarchy. This is everywhere: health service (half the population have private), public transport (unusable if you actually need to be somewhere), and there are shakedowns at every financial touchpoint — bank duopoly, huge insurance fees, dysfunctional legal system.

You’ll read a story in the news about how evil foreign investors are bulk buying homes and letting them out. What that actually means is that large capital-efficient reliable finance is outcompeting inefficient amateur Irish landlords, to the benefit of renters. The media will never report the story that way, because the ‘left wing’ story is best at protecting Ordinary Decent Irish Millionaires. None of the major parties will fight the civil service unions because the strongest voices in society get a lot of easy money through civil service jobs and contracts, and they will frame the debate as an attack on teachers and nurses.

The worst thing is that the people who are most oppressed by this (young people and poorer people) are most inclined to favour policies that have a superficially “left wing” appearance but just boil down to things like “greedy corporations are bad”, and have the effect of preventing growth and protecting existing asset ownership. James Joyce really captured this brilliantly — other writers describe the specific ailments, but Joyce saw the spiritual sickness of Irish society as it exists independent of particular forms of oppression. Fly by those nets.

That is from luzh.

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