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Pubs replaced banks in Ireland for several months in 1970 (2016)
- repelsteeltje 3y ago> [...] almost the entire banking system of Ireland went on strike after an industrial dispute in 1970. The strike lasted nearly six months, yet the economy escaped unscathed. Getting people to strike isn't trivial, but this is the first time I learn about bankers striking.
- Spooky23 3y agoIt’s uncommon in the US for reasons. It’s a thing in Europe. 1970 Ireland isn’t exactly an example of a modern or booming economy. But… what happened there should give pause when financial bros get weepy and pat themselves on the back about their sacred duty to provide liquidity at all costs. (And take a vig)
- digdugdirk 3y agoA perfect example of my favourite part of any "class warfare" talk. Even for the "capital" class, the system isn't necessarily in their favour. It's only when you're at the absolute peak that you get the benefits. Everyone else is perfectly disposable, society just runs smoother when society believes that 6 figure salaries puts someone on the other side of the fence.
- becquerel 3y agoThe class divide isn't based around an arbitrary salary, or specific job positions. It's whether you have hire/fire powers and you make money off of other people's labour, rather than selling your own. Hollywood actors and famous football players are often very rich, but they sell their labor to get by. They don't own the means of production
- tekla 3y ago> They don't own the means of production They literally own the means of production, their bodies and minds. No one is forcing them to sign contracts for a million dollar salary, they can do the exact same acting/athelete-ing with a $100 smartphone.
- corethree 3y agoRelax AI are now in the verge of evening the playing field for actors. Athletes not yet, unless we have AI starting to generate completely made up sporting events. The later is extremely possible given how much data there is and how similar it all is.
- fullspectrumdev 3y agoA fair while back I was actually reading about a proposed system for literally CGI/virtual horse racing specifically for gambling purposes, backed by gambling industry money. Unsure if it ever went anywhere, I kind of mentally filed it as “insane gambling nonsense”.
- kaashif 3y ago> Hollywood actors and famous football players are often very rich, but they sell their labor to get by. But there's a key difference. They don't need to continue to sell their labor, they can stop at any time and live on e.g. income from dividends. Or maybe they have enough cash they could literally not even invest it and still live fine. Although they may not own the means of production right at this moment, they easily could at any moment, it's a choice.
- robertlagrant 3y agoYou tomorrow could start out as a carpenter, buy a hammer and own the means of production. It's not a high bar to clear.
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- pavlov 3y agoThe banking system in 1970 was much more labor-intensive. This was before ATMs and online banking, or even computers — a small local bank in Ireland probably didn't have an IBM mainframe at that time. So there were clerks and cashiers at every level pushing paper, crunching numbers, handling cash. These people were clearly working class, not the later Wall Street image conjured by the word "banker".
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- neilwilson 3y agoBank underground view https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/01/20/the-cheque-republic-money-in-a-modern-economy-with-no-banks/amp/ https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/01/20/the-cheque-republic...
- terminous 3y ago> "I deal only with my regulars … I refuse strangers." > ‘They are mostly strangers to us, and we just have to play it by ear in deciding whether to accept a cheque’, said an official.” Sounds like a recipe for discrimination and inequality, which isn't mentioned in either article.
- version_five 3y agoRight, much better for everybody to be screwed in the name of equity.
- garba_dlm 3y agoand this is probably why and how it comes to pass that the taxpayer of the future is left holding the bills
- mlyle 3y agoWhile keeping something running via an informal system is better than nothing, and most people might be okay... if you're just kinda shifty looking or unpopular at the moment in your local pub and have a much harder time than everyone else, that's not exactly great. That is, it's not only the common experience that matters, but the outliers too. The basic tools of society should be available even if you're ugly, annoying, or a minority.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoThis problem is far worse with a concentrated system than a decentralized one. If there are five local pubs and one of them won't have you, well, still four more. If there is only one bank and their loan officer doesn't like the cut of your jib, or their algorithm has decided to have a false positive, you're done. Though of course the modern problem isn't that there is only one bank, it's that there is only one bank regulator which subjects all of the banks to the same incentives, and if those rule you out you're effectively prohibited from using a bank in another jurisdiction with different rules. What you need for this is something permissionless.
- version_five 3y agoLots of decisions in the last 50 years have made "the system" more fragile. This makes me realize that outsourcing trust is another one. This would never happen now because businesses have no connection to their customers, either a payment provider or credit bureau does the vouching which becomes meaningless when things don't operate as usual and human judgement is needed
- Kalanos 3y agoi don't get it, but it sounds like narrowly skirting by disaster
- throw0101a 3y agoPatrick Boyle did a video on it a little while ago: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFIQWWt4UaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFIQWWt4UaA * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_bank_strikes_(1966–1976) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_bank_strikes_(1966–1976)
- yosefjaved1 3y agoFor 21 minutes and 53 seconds, I highly recommend this video. It gives so much context and describes the situation in as neutral of a tone as it's possible with a sprinkle of dry humor. Also, Patrick takes it a step further by answering the question if something like this could work again as well as discuss how this system that emerged compares to modern day cryptocurrency systems.
- wodenokoto 3y agoThe article really wants to imply that because this worked, we shouldn't be afraid of "too big to fail", but it doesn't dare say that and kinda of ends up sitting between two chairs. "I'm not saying that banks crashing isn't bad, but it wasn't a problem for Ireland to have banks disappear" but the thing is, according to the article, trust in banks never disappeared, neither did the banks. People kept writing cheques against their bank accounts. There was a clear expectation that banks would open with all money intact and cheques would be processed. That is a very different scenario from a bank failing.
- corethree 3y agoHow were bankers not skinned alive? If someone owes you or I money and then suddenly they go on strike there will be a vicious reckoning.
- rsynnott 3y agoMost people, presumably, aren’t as bloodthirsty as you; strikes, no matter how inconvenient, rarely result in mass murder of the strikers by the general public. Sometimes by the state, in totalitarian systems, but not by random people.
- fodkodrasz 3y agoOnly in totalitarian systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_United_States_labor_disputes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
- rsynnott 3y ago> In the summer of 1921 in Mingo County, hundreds of miners were arrested without habeas corpus and other basic legal rights. I mean, er, yes, sounds like it.
- corethree 3y agoFirst of all bankers on strike isn't a normal strike. It's like parents going on strike and leaving their kids to die. Think about it... I steal all of someones money and promise to pay them back later and they're just going to be nice about it? If this happened to a person... likely he will hunt me down and "extract" the money out of me through any means available. Why? because typically survival depends on a persons' ability to spend money. I am not bloodthirsty. Theft in any society typically results in extreme measures of punishment including forcefully kidnapping people and confining them in inhumane conditions (it's called prison). Additionally, when the "theft" involves survival, getting violent is a normal thing. This is not just a "totalitarian" measure. What's going on here seems to be a social phenomenon because theft and a sketchy promise of repayment is essentially what happened. The only reason why the system remained stable was because people still accepted checks. I mean would you accept an IOU as payment if you know the issuer essentially stole the money and won't return it when asked for it? Typically no.
- NikolaNovak 3y agoThe link is extremely light on detail so in skeptical 1. What was the extent of the strike? Did salaries still get deposited? Did inter company transfer go through? Did exchanges stay open? Did lines of credit for businesses small and large stay open? 2. The whole "we knew who had money and we didn't deal with strangers" makes me suspect there's a whole other side of this particular story.
- barrkel 3y agoBack in the 90s in Ireland, my mother would occasionally cash a cheque at the pub - if it's not crossed payee a/c only, the bearer can generally cash it themselves. Going further back, pubs were the local shops for general dry goods, particularly in rural communities. I recall some dusty window displays in some pubs even in the 1980s, when I was a kid.
- fullspectrumdev 3y agoRecently I found that in a few of the more touristic areas in Ireland (which I rarely visit, being from here, was showing friends some places), a lot of pubs will offer a foreign exchange service of dubious legitimacy with debatably fair rates. Same thing in the border counties up north - you can often spend or exchange Sterling and Euro currency, but the rates will suck. In the 1990’s where I grew up, one of the two shops in the village was basically a room off one of the pubs. The other, larger shop was also the post office, hardware store, etc.
- rsynnott 3y agoThis is common in tourist-y areas everywhere. I was in Lisbon recently, and saw a number of places advertising that they accepted Sterling… at a rate of 1:1 with the Euro. A mere 15% FX fee.
- fullspectrumdev 3y agoWhat struck me as interesting is that one could do FX easily in a pub out in Blarney near the castle, while there’s not a single FX place in Cork City itself. Same thing in Galway - can’t find a FX place anywhere in the city, but if you head out to one of the tourist destinations you can do so at the pub. You can’t do foreign exchange at a bank or credit union anymore without an account.
- rsynnott 3y agoMost post offices will do it, I think. I bought dollar notes in one a while back without any difficulty. But yeah, it’s not really a business banks would want to be in; if you’re doing it honestly it’s not very profitable, and it can be quite… money-launder-y. Best bet for non-eurozone tourists would be to use a neobank (Revolut etc)/pseudo-bank (Wise etc) that offers fair FX rates, and then use an ATM.
- AlbertCory 3y ago> They had an informed view of whether the liquid resources of would-be payers were stout or ailing! Some world-class puns there.
- rsynnott 3y agoAs an Irish person, I would not _particularly_ recommend Ireland in 1970 as a model to aspire to. And even given that, the banks did not actually fail, they just weren’t operating, and the expectation was that they would start back up again at some point. When Ireland actually faced the banks failing, in 2008, we bailed them out and nationalised most of them, at a cost of almost 10,000 euro per capita.
- fullspectrumdev 3y agoArguably the only reason it worked out fine (for some value of fine) in the 1970’s was because everything being a shitshow was the generally accepted state of affairs, and for a lot of normal working people being paid cash was still normal.
- _cs2017_ 3y agoFlagging this article for being too stupid to warrant reading. In 1970, nobody was afraid their savings disappeared; when a bank fails, people would lose their savings unless the government insures or rescues the bank. Given the extremely low quality of this article, and given that the author is a finance editor rather than some freelance contributor to Business Insider, I very much hope that HN readers would stop upvoting submissions from Business Insider in the future.