We are about to be “tariffed” and this will have a significant impact on Ireland’s economic model, entirely based as it is on open, free and ubiquitous trade, the more the better.
There’s nothing we can do about Donald Trump’s mercantilist economics but there are plenty of things we can control within the domestic economy – and this crisis is too good an opportunity to miss. Let’s use this crisis to fix what we can and make the economy run more efficiently so as to provide a better life for as many citizens as possible.
At a time when it is easy to be overwhelmed with pessimism, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Ireland’s future. With a shift in mindset, Ireland can be a far better place to live than it is now.
How do we do it? Well, rather than getting bogged down in Dáil rows about who gets the chance to showboat in the chamber, maybe a good place to start would be for our political class to reframe what is going on in the world. We are going through a technological revolution and Ireland could be at the centre of it. If we embrace the technological possibilities available across a whole of range of sectors – from housing to transport and energy – this country can be transformed.
Any student of economic history, or indeed of human development in general, knows that one of humanity’s standout qualities is our ability to solve problems. Ever since humans used fire – humanity’s foundational technology – around 400,000 years ago, we have solved increasingly complex problems using new technology. Sometimes that new technology was “physical”, such as the wheel, the printing press or the steam engine, which pushed humanity forward by making us individually more productive and intelligent. At other times, the new technologies were “social”, such as writing, laws and money. These technologies allowed us to collaborate and co-ordinate at scale, making us collectively more efficient and impressive.
In every generation, new technologies have made us more productive, generating more wealth and increasing not just our standard of living but our quality of life. Think about the number of diseases that have been eradicated in my (Gen X) lifetime. Or consider the millions of people who died of starvation in this country during my grandfather’s father’s lifetime. Technology has been, from the very beginning, the handmaid of human progress.
Today there are so many positive technological developments that what is needed in Ireland is a mindset shift from what is impossible to what is possible, from a mentality that always sees reasons not to do something, to a temperament focused on reasons to do things. We must move from a state of mind that is constantly in fear of losing something, to a positive way of thinking that is programmed to build things. The Government and the State bureaucracy should use this Trump-inspired crisis to embrace new technology. Without sounding all Obama-esque, we need to replace fear with hope.
[ Wind was State’s leading source of energy in FebruaryOpens in new window ]
Consider perhaps the most important aspect of the modern economy: energy. For millenniums, we have come to see energy as scarce. Food, our elemental energy, the stuff that powers humans every day, has never been more abundant. So much so that we are inventing slimming drugs to make us eat less, not more.
Think about solar energy. It has become much cheaper and more efficient. So too wind energy – of which there is no shortage in this country. There is a real possibility, for the first time in human history, that energy truly becomes renewable, which means free over time. We can combine our ability to harness wind and solar energy with new developments on storage through battery and hydrogen. Ireland could move towards much cheaper energy in the decades ahead.
Think about the huge development in genetics, regenerative medicine and AI-powered drug discovery and gene editing. Not unlike the 19th-century breakthroughs of Louis Pasteur that changed the world, we are on the brink of curing diseases that were once thought fatal, extending life expectancy and improving quality of life for millions. In a similar vein, genetically modified crops will require far less water, creating the space for more abundant food that uses less of the world’s resources.
[ AI’s transformative role in drug discovery and developmentOpens in new window ]
On a day-to-day basis, let’s reflect on AI. Rather than focusing on fear of the impact of AI, why not look on it as a way of amplifying human knowledge, making it available to more people and by automating lots of reasonably mundane tasks, freeing up people to do more creative work? Do we really miss the filing cabinet and do the people who used to manually itemise thousands of files in filing cabinets really want to go back to that sort of work?
The point here is that when a machine can do a whole host of things that humans once did, history suggests that humans adapt and do things that are more productive. If you doubt this, think about all the apocalyptic predictions that accompanied inventions such as the car, novels, television, the internet. Even the humble bicycle was supposed to corrupt the women who rode them.
Now look at the possibilities of this new technology to improve life in Ireland. Imagine if we could move from a mindset in government of not doing things to a mindset of getting things done. A new book recently published in the US, Abundance, coins the phrase “radical hope”, meaning that we need to get out of our own way, stop being afraid of technological advances and embrace them.
Take our planning system with its byzantine network of objections, all the vested interests that are narrowly but effectively deployed to retard building and to slow down regeneration. Imagine a system that advocated change, pushed forward technological advances in, for example, modular housing, penalised those who stand in the way and reward those who agree to build? Rather than have a system based on doing things the way we have always done them, suppose we decided to build ambitious new towns with new rail links that truly tried to emulate the best in the world?
We could consider best practice. For example, why don’t we ask ourselves how Singapore – a tiny place with far more people per square kilometre than Ireland – managed to build more than a million homes over the past two decades? And how does Singapore build 20,000 public homes a year for poorer residents as a matter of course? How did Tokyo build 100,000 new homes every year for decades? How does the Milan-Rome train cover 480km in 2 hours 55 minutes while our train system snails along? How does New Zealand produce 87 per cent of its electricity from renewables, primarily hydro and wind?
How do these countries use technology to achieve obvious improvements in housing, transport and energy, while Ireland languishes? Is it because they embrace the future? In fact, they embrace life. They say yes.
It’s time that Ireland finds her inner Molly Bloom. “And yes I said yes I will Yes.”
