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Home > Web Summit > Paddy Cosgrave on the Irish Government's misuse of history
Podcast: Web Summit
Episode:

Paddy Cosgrave on the Irish Government's misuse of history
Category: Technology
Duration: 00:25:55
Publish Date: 2018-11-21 09:04:26
Description: "In Ireland today, as was the case in feudal France, a certain class of people who hold large amounts of property, have been granted extraordinary privileges. They are, through various property fund structures, exempted entirely from taxes. That’s essentially feudalism. Fine Gael style feudalism." A short lecture on the misappropriation of the ideas of Adam Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers by the current Irish Government delivered at Social Justice Ireland's annual conference by Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave. "Leo Varadkar described Alexander Hamilton as the “great founding father of America”. Hamilton once wrote that the majority were an “unthinking mass”, with “all the folly of the ass” who “must have a master” as they were “only made for reins and spur”." "When Leo Varadkar talks of those who wake up early to work, he seems entirely unaware of perhaps the most important division made during the Enlightenment with regard to income. All income is not equal. As Adam Smith lamented though, some people foolishly “confound rent with profit”." "The only way Paschal Donohoe could refer to Adam Smith so liberally is if neither he, nor his advisors, had ever properly read Adam Smith." "The current Government’s continued confounding of rent and profit, an absolute critical division of the Enlightenment, is most unusual. But so too is their proclivity to continue to reduce and in some instances entirely remove any forms of taxation on large property owners, while simultaneously subsidising the purchase of luxuries. This runs entirely contrary to quite literally the core purpose of the Enlightenment: to end the unreasonable dark ages and exceptional privileges granted to a minority at the great expense of almost everybody else." "By quoting Adam Smith and other Enlightenment thinkers our Taoisigh and Finance Minister believe they are demonstrating a certain intellectual competence. That they are not “anti-intellectual” to quote Michael D Higgins. But if you actually examine what Adam Smith and his contemporaries actually said, it’s clear Paschal Donohoe and Leo Varadkar are misappropriating many of the core ideas of the Enlightenment."
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