IMD just sent out promotion for the World Competitiveness Yearbook. The table here was highlighted. My beloved Hong Kong, where you can get things done, is at the top, but Ireland, mired in government sloth, is comparable to centrally controlled Mainland China.
Anyone who has taken initiative will know that much red tape is wasteful and archaic. Many will notice the increasing bureaucracy to protect us from ourselves. Not only do we make government fat, but we also abdicate our responsibility for our own lives. We are too lazy to care what we eat because food has been pre-approved by government – otherwise it wouldn’t be on the super market shelf, right?! But that doesn’t mean that consuming kilos of fat and sugar is right or good.
It is a telling coincidence that I happened to notice this report on bureaucracy the day after I came across the description of Open Business!
Wow, I’m surprised to see France and Japan so much further down the list… but it is a shame that such a small country as Ireland has such an inefficient government. Is it related to corruption? My father is visiting, and every time he visits he’s fascinated, in an appalled way, at the corruption he reads about in the national papers (his first visit was during the time Haughy’s misdemeanours were being outed; then it was the Moriarty Tribunal…) I bought him a paper on his first day, and he laughed when I said ‘you can catch up on the corruption’. Sure enough – Richie Boucher’s lovely package, €831,000, so €331,000 OVER the ‘CAP’ (haha) was given a timid frown by the minister. For Boucher, the government’s inefficiency (why don’t they enforce a so-called cap?) works in his favour.