Party finance spokesperson Eóin Tennyson has said squandering nearly £1bn every year to duplicate services in a divided society, extra policing and security costs, and lost investment and tourism was an expense the Executive could no longer afford. He was speaking as the party is due to bring a motion before the Assembly on Tuesday (25 March) calling for a Stormont action plan to tackle the cost of division, which was estimated to be up to £833m per year by Ulster University’s Economic Policy Centre in 2016. However, Alliance said “in all likelihood that is a significant underestimate of the true cost”, given the rise in inflation since 2016 and the fact that the academic study didn’t include economic activity and investment Northern Ireland may have missed out on due to political instability. Mr Tennyson said the extra spending to run a divided society is a waste of the Executive’s already scarce budget and would be better invested in improving health service and helping with the cost of living.
He is right, of course, but only in the same way that if people stopped drinking, smoking, eating junk, and got off their fat arses, and did some exercise every now and again, the health services would save billions. Or if people stopped being so beastly to each other the criminal justice system would save billions.
It is a nice aspiration that people should be less dicks to each other, but the last gazillion years of human history (or 6000 if you are in the DUP) shows that human nature is a mixed bag, to say the least.
As you munch on your rice crispies this fine spring morning, you can contemplate the classic Socrates vs. Nietzsche view on human nature.
Socrates believed that people do wrong out of ignorance, not because they’re inherently evil. If someone truly understood what was good, they would naturally choose it. This idea is known as intellectualism—the belief that knowledge = virtue.
Nietzsche on the other hand. Nietzsche said traditional morality (e.g., humility, compassion, self-restraint) is “slave morality,” invented by the weak to shame the strong and powerful. He thought true vitality came from strength, willpower, and self-overcoming—not meekness. “People are messy, power-hungry, instinct-driven animals with a thin veneer of civilization slapped on top. And all your so-called ‘morality’? That’s just a social control mechanism.”
I do have a soft spot for aul Nietzsche. He was a miserable bollix, but he had some great lines.
Or we can split the difference and go with Hegel – “Man is becoming.” We’re not finished. We’re evolving—morally, socially, spiritually.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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