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Comment by greenmachine | Hacker News Reader

As someone currently living in Ireland, I found the subtitle of this article particularly appropriate: "Where's the rage?". The Irish government bankrupted the country many times over by putting the debts of the banks on the backs of the people. But, unlike France, for example, where people have taken to the streets and brought the country to a halt to be heard, in Ireland there is nothing like the level of activism that one would expect given the depth of the economic quagmire.

I find it quite sad to see how a country that was once such a hotbed of political unrest has become so passified by the recent wealth that it experienced. My guess is it has to do with people having the feeling that they are stakeholders in the system now, with mortgages and fungible assets, and so they are less willing to want to subvert the system itself rather than muddle along even with unsatisfactory political solutions.

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You're advocating unrest? The government has disbanded and elections have been called. They're in for a kicking, which although short of full-on political reform, is something several hundred people had to die for in Egypt.

Would it satisfy you if we burned a few cars? Where do you live? I'll meet up with you later and we can tear your street to shreds if you like.

Not much of a comparison between Ireland and Egypt obviously. That's why the comparison to France is more appropriate: where the people were actually unwilling to take it lying down - as they are doing in Ireland. It doesn't matter that a general election has been called. With the poverty of leadership in Irish politics at the moment, Ireland is in for more of the same incompetence that led to the current disaster from whatever regime takes over. With activist unrest earlier on, it might have been possible to make it clear that the decision to bailout the banks was unacceptable and needed to be reversed. So, yes, sometimes you have to burn a few cars if you want to be heard. Instead the passivity of the Irish people has doomed the economy for generations.

I wonder about that. I view our (lack of) reaction as mature, not passive. People died in Greece and they burned all kinds of things. They still have a huge debt to pay back. We're taking it like grown ups and having an election.

If you have to choose between a mature reaction that keeps you in debt and an immature reaction that leads to reversing the bad decisions that have been made at the citizens' expense, I would take the latter. But most Irish seem too concerned about their precious "international reputation" to do that - I hear this refrain all the time. Many people seem more concerned with the effect of the crisis on Ireland's reputation abroad than with the impact on current and future generations. "Taking it like a grown up", as you put it, is not the highest aspiration one can have in this situation - you could simply refuse to accept the situation and create such a stink that nothing can happen in the country until some of these devastating economic decisions have been reversed. If Iceland can get away with it, Ireland can too.

My argument is that violent protests would do very little to help. We're having an election that will throw the ruling party out. The next government are campaigning on the basis that they'll get a better deal. I doubt they will succeed, but rioting on the assumption that the problems can be decided away won't make it any more likely.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow. It's no new thing for the old cronies to eat, in advance, the productivity of the younger generation. They'll sell off the country's future to protect what they have today. The only way around it is to leave; there will be no tolerance of a revolution.

Best reply I heard was an interview with a new graduate.

"We will just do what we have always done when the government fucks-up - we emigrate!"

In France the corresponding response would be:

"We will just do what we have always done when the government fucks-up - bring the country to a standstill!"

In a nutshell, that's it. People have a sense of resignation on the whole thing. There is very little prospect of things improving any time soon. The choices would appear to be a) adjust to a lower standard of living, or b) get out.

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