Specineff wrote:In one hand, everyone wants to live their life the way they want, but in the other, it's always someone else's fault when something goes wrong. Right?
Yes and no. You make it too simple.
I doubt that, say, I can blame myself for an Italian government (Berlusconi and buddies) that had no fucking clue on own to handle the crisis in 2008, let alone now. I did not vote them. I have not voted in a while, actually. So, the EU crisis is indeed someone's fault, not mine. But the crisis itself was not even started by them, so I wouldn't blame them. Who to blame, if not the bankers? Did I invent the derivatives, by chance?
The point is the single EUROPEAN citizen can't go and fix a huge debt crisis started by greedy beyond relief investors and governments who had no clue.
The whole Aynrandian mantra of "I am the sole governor of my destiny" may work well with private debt (single individuals getting indebted), but the current problem in several countries is public debt (governments getting indebted). So, who to blame, then?
For the public one, Joe citizen can't go wrong in blaming someone else (unless Joe is a banker, ehi!). One thing could be that, say, if there are elections, Joe citizen can go and vote some government that may know a way to fix the problem, so that competent people could do their job, and fix the citizen's problems.
As Van Bruce pointed out, Spanish people voted Rajoy, who is the protegé of Aznar, the Reaganite who placed Spain in the imbalance position it is now. Just to be sure, Zapatero and his government made a mess with the estate bubble, but Aznar deregulated everything, and made consistent tax cuts to the rich (Van Bruce is free to correct me on this).
Spaniards voted the ones who set up the mess, since the alternative would have been to vote the ones who triggered the mess. In other words, the recent election in Spain was much like that old episode of the Simpsons in which US citizens had to vote for Kang or Kong, the two aliens.
An alternative would have been to vote THE COMMUNISTS of
Izquierda unida (capitals for scaring effect). To be fair, I really wonder if any of the more serious european left parties have a clue about *the existence* of economics, let alone have a good, smart plan to solve the problem.
I have my own prejudices, and I think that what passes as "left" these days in Europe is mostly wannabe hippies that buy crystal and hug trees. That won't feed mouths and solve problems. And that's the alternative on the left. On the right, we get neo-nazis and xenophobic parties like True Finns, i.e. people who also have not the slightest clue of anything.
So, we can blame Joe citizen for making the wrong choices, and that would be easy. But who are we to blame, if Joe citizen exercises a constitutional right that has become a farce? I'd say that Joe citizen didn't corrupt the politicians, although some Joe citizens are also politicians who were in just for the corruption creampie ("fill me with money, I am your fiscal slut!").
Then, of course, there's the whole circus of politics and "people of power" who need to get elected, hence they need to blame someone ELSE for the crisis, and the solutions to the crisis.
Trade unions in Italy are protesting that retirement salaries can't be touched at all: their old, staunch supporters would become poor. Everybody is complaining about an estate tax on owned houses, with Berlusconi blaming the communists for this tax. The current Prime Minister, Mario Monti, is a bilderberger, an ex-Goldman and Sachs executive, and definitely not a communist.
They do so without making a distinction that further taxes on some people ended up getting fat retirements, by doing menial jobs at the right historical times. Or, that they could buy a house for peebles, until a few years ago (by current standards, my grandparents paid a tuscan-style villa for 50k euros, in 1996).
Their grandsons, the ones taking the brunt of the crisis, have a BA and tons of skills, and are getting paid pebbles.
Who the trade unions are supporting? The young and poor, or the rich pensioners who finance them? Who are they blaming? Berlusconi and the Goldman Sachs man, of course.
Who Berlusconi is supporting? The young and poor, or his tax-evading voters, with their shady estate properties? Who is Berlusconi blaming? The communists and the Goldman Sachs man, of course.
Does all of this makes sense? No, of course. Would we get better, by having politicians and leaders to stop following the masses, and stop blaming the wrong people? Probably. Can Joe citizen do something useful? Yes, don't get in debt and fistfuck the bankers until brains go back were they should have been, while reading a Dr Touserplank post to them, for great justice.
"The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines [...]: the urge not to feel useless."
I.M. Banks, "Consider Phlebas" (1988: 43).
