During a discussion on the Cardiff scandal (Today with Pat Kenny; Friday) economist Jim Power made an interesting revelation.
Apparently, about four years ago, Cardiff made a formal complaint to Power’s employer because he felt that the opinions expressed by Power were injurious to the state of the nation.
Power had expressed the opinion that if the Irish didn’t get their finances in order very quickly the country would ultimately default on its dept.
Clearly, Cardiff wanted Power’s employers to shut him up or even sack him.
This kind of sinister attack on freedom of expression is typical of all corrupt states.
it’s not the state that’s corrupt it’s the people – or a sizable proportion of them – who run it. Similarly when something goes wrong in an institution we have to stop blaming it on systems failure. People are to blame. Systems are designed by people and worked by people; when something goes wrong either the designers of the system are at fault or the people who operate it are. Using systems failure as an explanation is obfuscation and a distancing of people from blame.