11 thoughts on “McDreamy’s Punk Economics: We’re Strangely Drawn”

  1. Yeah David, “its Karl Marx for the rich”

    How come institutionalised capitalists like David never say, well actually this is what power and capital have always been used for by an elite. Much each to say oh its socialism for the rich than capitalism par excellence.

    When that f**ker stop charging people to come listen his* ideas I’ll have a bit more time for him.

    *Last week a friend described McWilliams as “good and original – just never at the same time”

    • Did you catch him at the Re:public 2011 debates in the button factory Mark? that was a freebie more or less (at least his time was pro bono, like vincenzo browne etc.), he was good then, and dare I say it, original! I know what you mean about the easy clichés they fall into ‘socialism for the rich’ and so on.

  2. I’m not liking religion being brought into things at all ‘t’all.

    He’s not the first I’ve heard mention it. It’s a bit of a stretch, an unhelpful, slightly reckless stretch.

    • i think its McWilliams take on Malcolm Gladwells “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes” which in turn references the Power Distance Index developed by Geert Hofstade while working at IBM in the 60s. which probably would have been a better example to quote as it breaks down how various countries deal with authority (not via religion)

      so i guess McWillaims thought If you really want to reach a wider audience you have to break this down into bitesize analogies that all people understand (ie your nan or your mam needs to be able to understand this beyond internet generation references, so religion was an easy/lazy choice). Its not perfect but to cram that much into 10mins is quite an achievement and it goes a lot further in explaining where we’re at to the general public than those gombeens in the Dail have managed.

      • It’s not an unimpressive piece of communication but in the above case religion is a bad analogy to use, badly used.

        It is far too simply put: catholic way: economically correct; protestant way: we will all burn in hell for eternity.

        It’s Cromwell all over again! To arms!

  3. Yes, the “Catholic” v. “Protestant” solutions are a bit far-fetched. Especially when he then uses the US – largely a Protestant country – as a good example of doing things the “Catholic” way.

    But to bring it back to democracy, why are Sarkozy and Merkel making the running on this? No Irish person gets to vote for either of them. If the EU had a properly elected president, then he / she would be the one calling the shots, not the leaders of France and Germany. The price of fiscal union should be proper European democracy.

  4. two words – Lisbon Treaty
    it gave france and germany more power of votes to the relative size of their populations and requires a unified block vote by the smaller countries to have any hope of standing against. Add to that nearly every eurocurrency country is in debt to Germany so it makes bargaining a little trickier at the moment.

    i reckon Greece will call Germanys bluff, go all in and hope to Zeus their cards come up on the flop.

  5. What’s the solution? What should we do? What should France and Germany do? Allow us to default? Allow the major banks to go under? What about depositors? I don’t know barely enough about all this but I don’t feel much better informed on an alternative course of action for watching that.