Just Business
It's entirely likely that no-one who reads this has ever seen an entire episode of the Front Line, not least since until Monday I'd never seen a whole episode either. Having viewed an hour of Pat Kenny talking to De Young People about how it, like, totally sucks to be unemployed, I can report is curiously invigorating in a painful and self-hating way; a bit like vigorously whipping yourself with aromatic birch rods.
It should be said at the outset that this was a depressing programme, although not for the reasons it wanted to be. The Front Line has yet to work, largely because it gives too many vested interests too small a platform over its running time, so there is no meaningful debate or justification of a position. You rarely learn anything from The Front Line, and it tends to end up with polarised ideas getting kicked around to limited purpose. Last Monday's episode wound up being a question of whether Young People Had Been Failed By The Government or whether They're All Just Pampered And Spoiled, but no-one at any stage suggested that, shock horror, it's actually possible for both these things to be at least partially true. Failure of government is self-evident, and it's stupid to tar an entire generation with the brush of whininess. However, it's also true that many people under twenty-five have grown up against a background of affluence and jobs always being available; it's difficult to quantify exactly what the social effects of this are, but it's not stretching a point to suggest they exist.
The most annoying moment came at the end, however, and it didn't even involve Bill Cullen*. Nor did it involve the self-consciously "young" TDs wheeled on by FF and FG, one of whom couldn't make a 90-second speech without cue-cards, or the seventy-four times that Pat said "well that's for another programme" as soon as anyone mentioned government policy.
No, the best bit was at the end, when a young self-made-millionaire called Smugford McTosserton** was asked what he would do to turn the country around. His response: "I'd hire a bunch of people like me." The rest of his reply was drowned out by the dying breath of satire.
To be fair, the fact that a millionaire-at-twenty-five, open-necked shirt type might think he's what the country needs isn't particularly surprising. What's rather more shocking is the traction this viewpoint gets. Certainly, the political establishment are shamefully quick to pander to the cult of the entrepeneur, but it isn't the political establishment who send in texts saying "We need people like Michael O'Leary to run the country." The view is embedded in our culture, to the extent that Pat Kenny can ask whether any members of the government have run their own business and no-one points out that it's a bloody stupid question.
To sum all this up; we have reached a point where many people genuinely see being an entrepeneur as the only meaningful qualification to run anything. This is desperately muddle-headed, and harks back to what I said about Newstalk's pre-Budget editorial; that something has gone badly wrong when governing a country and running a business are seen as one and the same thing.
It would be easy to go off on an anti-capitalist rant here, but I'm going to drop the rich-people-are-evil shtick. This isn't about the need for a new system, new paradigm, new priorities, yadda yadda yadda you know how it goes. Let's assume - just for the hell of it - that the system we've got is the one that works, and we need to get things back on track as opposed to climbing out of a wrecked train. Let's imagine, briefly, that the word "entrepeneur" doesn't make you want to clean your inner ear with a breadknife.
Even if you accept all this, entrepeneurs still aren't suited to government, because their priorities are terminally warped. These people operate within a well-defined system, and any system will always end up being dominated by obsessives. The best footballers are the ones that kick the ball against a wall for six hours; the best novelists are the ones who see the world entirely in terms of books. The most successful people in any field are those with a wholly unreasonable passion, and they are usually shocked that their passion isn't shared by the world in general. They're people with unbalanced priorities, basically. The rest of us accept we're only ever going to be Quite Good At What We Do, and just go for a pint instead. The obsessives rise to the top, driven by the misconception that their chosen passion is the most important thing in the world. If you wanted, you could view some of these people as ill, but with an illness that happens to be socially or economically useful.
Obsessives always think their pet subject is more important than it really is, and you can see this in the shared rhetoric of the self-styled entrepeneur. Both Cullen and Smugford referred to themselves as "being out there, creating jobs." This is comparable to a midwife claiming s/he creates babies. Certainly, they're an important part of the process, but the operative term is "part". Job creation simply isn't the point of what an entrepeneur does; they expand their business and make money, and jobs are a by-product they do their best to avoid. An entrepeneur will never create a job that doesn't reward them handsomely for their trouble, and yet Bill Cullen will still ask why he should be taxed like everyone else. This isn't avarice, it's just a skewed perspective.
Michael O'Leary running the country would clearly be a disaster, unless you really do think that no corporation tax and social welfare cut in half is a good thing. However, this because he's evil, or greedy, or obnoxious; it's just that he isn't capable of seeing the bigger picture, and assumes what's good for his own pet project is good for everyone. O'Leary, Cullen and Smugford belong in the same category as those boring doctors that talk about smoking and drinking as social diseases, or bloggers who say anyone that doesn't like Blake's 7 shouldn't be allowed to vote***. Entrepeneurs are unique as a group who have elevated selfishness to an ideology. They're nerds, basically, albeit an alpha-male variant.
Last Monday, Lucinda Creighton trotted out the David Cameron-inspired soundbite that politics is broken, but no-one ever suggests why this is (beyond broad phrases like corruption, which is a symptom of the problem rather than a cause). And so I'd make this suggestion; as we turned towards market-driven politics and a business-dominated culture, too many people have forgotten what politics is for.
The word "ideology" is a difficult word to use in politics, particularly now that our first shot at having ideologues in power has been such a disaster. The Greens have (in theory) a perfectly decent social manifesto, but in practice they've steered clear of the big picture and sent out excited tweets about electric cars - because they're nerds, and that's all they're really interested in. If anything, the role of the politician is to sift through all the weighted advice, and make a decision that's best for everyone from a social, economic, legal and cultural point of view. The only overriding passion needs to be a broad social vision, coupled with pragmatism about putting it into place. That's a hell of a job description. The bunch we have now clearly aren't up to it, but you're certainly not going to get any social vision by embracing The Cult of The Entrepeneur.
The can-do rhetoric and false simplicities of the market might sound liberating, but it only works within a narrow context. Some of these people are admirable in their own framework, and they're as important to our economy as the labourers, tradesmen, artisans and professionals out there. Ultimately, though, they're a bunch of people who take the work or creativity of others and - to go all Prop Joe on yo' ass - buy it for a dollar, then sell it for two. They aren't leaders, they're shopkeepers. That their ego gets the better of them is only natural; that is, ultimately, why they do what they do. They need to believe they're important. We don't. We shouldn't.
*For foreign-type readers, he's the Irish version of Donald Trump or Alan Sugar. Except, erm, not as charming.
**Obviously, I'm joking. His real name wasn't Smugford McTosserton. It was Slimey O'Twatbag.
***In the words of Stewart Lee: there is a subtext there. Oh yeah.
It should be said at the outset that this was a depressing programme, although not for the reasons it wanted to be. The Front Line has yet to work, largely because it gives too many vested interests too small a platform over its running time, so there is no meaningful debate or justification of a position. You rarely learn anything from The Front Line, and it tends to end up with polarised ideas getting kicked around to limited purpose. Last Monday's episode wound up being a question of whether Young People Had Been Failed By The Government or whether They're All Just Pampered And Spoiled, but no-one at any stage suggested that, shock horror, it's actually possible for both these things to be at least partially true. Failure of government is self-evident, and it's stupid to tar an entire generation with the brush of whininess. However, it's also true that many people under twenty-five have grown up against a background of affluence and jobs always being available; it's difficult to quantify exactly what the social effects of this are, but it's not stretching a point to suggest they exist.
The most annoying moment came at the end, however, and it didn't even involve Bill Cullen*. Nor did it involve the self-consciously "young" TDs wheeled on by FF and FG, one of whom couldn't make a 90-second speech without cue-cards, or the seventy-four times that Pat said "well that's for another programme" as soon as anyone mentioned government policy.
No, the best bit was at the end, when a young self-made-millionaire called Smugford McTosserton** was asked what he would do to turn the country around. His response: "I'd hire a bunch of people like me." The rest of his reply was drowned out by the dying breath of satire.
To be fair, the fact that a millionaire-at-twenty-five, open-necked shirt type might think he's what the country needs isn't particularly surprising. What's rather more shocking is the traction this viewpoint gets. Certainly, the political establishment are shamefully quick to pander to the cult of the entrepeneur, but it isn't the political establishment who send in texts saying "We need people like Michael O'Leary to run the country." The view is embedded in our culture, to the extent that Pat Kenny can ask whether any members of the government have run their own business and no-one points out that it's a bloody stupid question.
To sum all this up; we have reached a point where many people genuinely see being an entrepeneur as the only meaningful qualification to run anything. This is desperately muddle-headed, and harks back to what I said about Newstalk's pre-Budget editorial; that something has gone badly wrong when governing a country and running a business are seen as one and the same thing.
It would be easy to go off on an anti-capitalist rant here, but I'm going to drop the rich-people-are-evil shtick. This isn't about the need for a new system, new paradigm, new priorities, yadda yadda yadda you know how it goes. Let's assume - just for the hell of it - that the system we've got is the one that works, and we need to get things back on track as opposed to climbing out of a wrecked train. Let's imagine, briefly, that the word "entrepeneur" doesn't make you want to clean your inner ear with a breadknife.
Even if you accept all this, entrepeneurs still aren't suited to government, because their priorities are terminally warped. These people operate within a well-defined system, and any system will always end up being dominated by obsessives. The best footballers are the ones that kick the ball against a wall for six hours; the best novelists are the ones who see the world entirely in terms of books. The most successful people in any field are those with a wholly unreasonable passion, and they are usually shocked that their passion isn't shared by the world in general. They're people with unbalanced priorities, basically. The rest of us accept we're only ever going to be Quite Good At What We Do, and just go for a pint instead. The obsessives rise to the top, driven by the misconception that their chosen passion is the most important thing in the world. If you wanted, you could view some of these people as ill, but with an illness that happens to be socially or economically useful.
Obsessives always think their pet subject is more important than it really is, and you can see this in the shared rhetoric of the self-styled entrepeneur. Both Cullen and Smugford referred to themselves as "being out there, creating jobs." This is comparable to a midwife claiming s/he creates babies. Certainly, they're an important part of the process, but the operative term is "part". Job creation simply isn't the point of what an entrepeneur does; they expand their business and make money, and jobs are a by-product they do their best to avoid. An entrepeneur will never create a job that doesn't reward them handsomely for their trouble, and yet Bill Cullen will still ask why he should be taxed like everyone else. This isn't avarice, it's just a skewed perspective.
Michael O'Leary running the country would clearly be a disaster, unless you really do think that no corporation tax and social welfare cut in half is a good thing. However, this because he's evil, or greedy, or obnoxious; it's just that he isn't capable of seeing the bigger picture, and assumes what's good for his own pet project is good for everyone. O'Leary, Cullen and Smugford belong in the same category as those boring doctors that talk about smoking and drinking as social diseases, or bloggers who say anyone that doesn't like Blake's 7 shouldn't be allowed to vote***. Entrepeneurs are unique as a group who have elevated selfishness to an ideology. They're nerds, basically, albeit an alpha-male variant.
Last Monday, Lucinda Creighton trotted out the David Cameron-inspired soundbite that politics is broken, but no-one ever suggests why this is (beyond broad phrases like corruption, which is a symptom of the problem rather than a cause). And so I'd make this suggestion; as we turned towards market-driven politics and a business-dominated culture, too many people have forgotten what politics is for.
The word "ideology" is a difficult word to use in politics, particularly now that our first shot at having ideologues in power has been such a disaster. The Greens have (in theory) a perfectly decent social manifesto, but in practice they've steered clear of the big picture and sent out excited tweets about electric cars - because they're nerds, and that's all they're really interested in. If anything, the role of the politician is to sift through all the weighted advice, and make a decision that's best for everyone from a social, economic, legal and cultural point of view. The only overriding passion needs to be a broad social vision, coupled with pragmatism about putting it into place. That's a hell of a job description. The bunch we have now clearly aren't up to it, but you're certainly not going to get any social vision by embracing The Cult of The Entrepeneur.
The can-do rhetoric and false simplicities of the market might sound liberating, but it only works within a narrow context. Some of these people are admirable in their own framework, and they're as important to our economy as the labourers, tradesmen, artisans and professionals out there. Ultimately, though, they're a bunch of people who take the work or creativity of others and - to go all Prop Joe on yo' ass - buy it for a dollar, then sell it for two. They aren't leaders, they're shopkeepers. That their ego gets the better of them is only natural; that is, ultimately, why they do what they do. They need to believe they're important. We don't. We shouldn't.
*For foreign-type readers, he's the Irish version of Donald Trump or Alan Sugar. Except, erm, not as charming.
**Obviously, I'm joking. His real name wasn't Smugford McTosserton. It was Slimey O'Twatbag.
***In the words of Stewart Lee: there is a subtext there. Oh yeah.
posted by Nyder O'Leary at
20:46
5 Comments:
"If anything, the role of the politician is to sift through all the weighted advice, and make a decision that's best for everyone from a social, economic, legal and cultural point of view."
Always the common good issue that seems to arise when we talk about politicians. Pity it's not a race towards fairness.
Merchants are a funny breed though, despised in mythology and relegated to the lower castes in some societies e.g Japan in the Edo period. We want their money and business but we disagree with their way of thinking. Make money, lobby to facilitate this aim, keep growing. The state is the same, keep growing, but I'm not quite sure what we're supposed to be growing and what's the point at which we sit back and gloat.
Napoleon III is on my mind lately, don't know why...
Spot on! I remember once, a number of years ago, being at a conference on whether or not the educational system was serving our immigrant population well. The 'Top Table' included a couple of business suits, and one of them at one stage stated - and I quote - 'What's good for business is good for Ireland'. I pricked up my ears for the sound of a sharp intake of breath, but nothing came. And I was the only one who challenged here, and got an indulgent smile for my troubles. This was, of course, at the height of that poor unfortunate tiger.
And now - much to my own surprise - I rush to the defence of Michael O'Leary. I heard him interviewed before Christmas, I think maybe Matt Cooper, who of course asked him would he not consider running for politics, because we need people like him etc etc. The bould O'Leary actually said that he would be the worst person in the world to run the country, because he is not a politician, he is a businessman, and he would get rid of all of the things that we like, like the health system, social welfare, etc. So I suspect he might actually agree with a lot of what you have said above.
And I think I'm following Smugford on Twitter!!
Máire
Great post, well argued, the best for a while. good comments too.
Bill Cullen is just a car salesman - he isn't a patch on Alan Sugar - Trump is a tosser but a least he has some vision...
Interesting post. I've had a similar opinion for a while now. I think people should get into politics for the love of it. We seem to have a generation of politicians who got into it for the power and money.
Some of these politicians are hugely intelligent and if they were running a business no one would care if they were milking their expenses. But getting into politics and being greedy is destined to fail.
Ralph
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home