Brexit a symptom of change

In medical matters, treating symptoms while ignoring the malady festering within is very dubious practice, yet in economic matters it is exactly what we do.

Brexit, the election of US President Donald Trump, the possible election of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen in France, and a general movement towards extremist or fragmented politics are the rash, the irritant, the pain indicating something is seriously wrong with the economic body.

But like medical practitioners of the Dark Ages, we concentrated all our energies towards dealing with these outward maladies while the real cause of infection runs amuck and threatens catastrophic economic and political collapse.

Incidentally, it will not matter even if Ireland gets an extraordinarily good result from Brexit or if it never happens at all; global economic conditions will continue to worsen until we address the real problem.

This is an era like none other; nothing in history matches the extraordinary transformation technological progress has wrought on global economics.

This unprecedented ability to oversupply practically everything coupled with massive and accelerating elimination of dependence on human labour cause ever-greater numbers to be precluded from economic participation.

We have been extraordinarily successful; we have created economic conditions of great abundance without ever having to work very hard anymore.

But the wonderful changes for the better cannot be shared with the world using ideology which evolved in very different and much harsher times.

We desperately need to adapt to and spread the benefits of our extraordinary good fortune to the masses or Brexit and Mr Trump are only the beginning of a terrible journey to disaster. Padraic Neary Tubbercurry, Co Sligo