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Comment by spottiness | Hacker News Reader

They won't solve any problem by protesting. Moreover, they're probably protesting for the wrong reasons. Spaniards are asking the government for jobs and decent salaries as if bureaucracy could solve these problems; and the more the government does, the worse it gets, because what the government should do is "nothing" but just get out of the way and let the free market take its course.

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I believe what people are protesting is that austerity measures, more often than not, are enforced upon services that benefit the middle to low income working class, rather than on the corporations that were complicit in creating the problem in the first place.

They are protesting for a more balanced approach.

I'm sorry, but it was the middle class that went along with the insane bubble.

The big Spanish banks, unlike banks in most other places, acted relatively responsibly and have not needed to be bailed out (the 'cajas', which are local banks controlled in part by politicians on the other hand are totally bust).

agree with @alienfluid. Bureaucracy cannot create economic value out of nothing but a transparent bureaucracy and accountability can prevent the need for austerity measures by preventing socialised losses and privatised gains by corporations

Well the weird thing is that in this particular situation, bureaucracy could indeed create some economic value.

The current situation is this - we have a financial crisis set off by the collapse of the US housing market (the biggest single market in the world). Because of the financial instruments involved in financing US mortgages from 2002 - 2008 it's difficult for banks to tell how much any of their investments are indeed toxic debt, which means they don't know if they are solvent or not. Furthermore, they know all other banks are in the same situation, which means they are hesitant to lend to other banks, let alone consumers.

So, we have a stagnant world economy even though we have production capacity and we have people in need of goods and services, because the money supply is essentially being hoarded by the financial institutions. In this situation the government is the only source of demand left. It could create this demand by investing smartly into infrastructure or paying someone to dig a whole and another person to fill it up. One is clearly better than the other, but in the short term they're both better than austerity.

I hope I wasn't unclear. I think it's important that everybody realize this. These people might not have sophisticated reasons to protest austerity, but they are actually correct.

EDIT: I hate to bitch about being down-voted. Please don't think this is about the karma, but it is disappointing. I think what I wrote clearly adds to the discussion. I suppose it's okay to vote down if you simply disagree, but I spent time constructing a thought-out response and I think at least a discussion of where I got it wrong is in order...

Lyudmil, I disagree with you, yet I voted your posting up just to counteract those that wanted to silence you.

Thanks. I'd love to know how you disagree, though.

Most protests are actually about government's spending, corruption and overall blatant plutocracy:

City councils not paying gardeners while the mayor says he's won the lotto for the 4th time in 5 years (obvious shameless money laundering that leaves the council with millions of debt).

Banks pay-rolling whole parties to gain favor which is showed later on with no hint of shame.

In some autonomous communities (Länder), a third of the politicians running for office have ongoing lawsuits about corruption.

They just spend their entire hours wheeling and dealing while the countries becomes the next Argentina.

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