Humans by their very nature, seldom learn from mistakes of the past. Yes, they may change how they do something, but in the end they always go back to the same things - War, strike, blame somebody else.
Right now Ireland is generally full of panic stricken people irrationally trying to solve the Ills of the country by simply pointing fingers.
Accountability is vital, but not the most important matter to attend to today. What I see is few people being accountable for their own financial decisions, I dont see that changing by 2020!
In the future, there will be corruption, the same mistakes will be made and similar clowns will be in positions of power whether through wealth or status in politics.
I think society can be summed up nicely with ideas such as -
- When you have a bad drinking culture, limit access to drink, close pubs earlier so people drink more in less time. The alternative is to try and educate people from a young age to respect the drug.
-Voting for parties based on their Populist ideals. Look at Labour who have offered nothing in the way of solutions, only problems to ideas (few of them posters on AAM).
-Acting as though you have a right to something at the expense of others. Taximen, civil Servants, waterford workers (note I wasnt ps bashing, making a point) feel that society owes them something, but the rest of society should bear the brunt of the recession.
In 2020, if theres a celtic tiger, very few will be prudent, very few will care what happened today and the same problem will happen when that bubble bursts. Unless we change our fickle nature to vote on who can give us the most, the quickest in elections, we will always be a stonethrow away from ending up in a similar mess. The reason long term planning isnt really practised (new roads, networks, public savings) etc, is because we (as a nation) do not demand it. To expect the government to be prudent when popular votes go to the most "popular" (as opposed to long term prudent) ideas is at best contradictory.
That said, realistically, By 2020 we will still feel the sting of todays Ills and will be less inclined to be risky with our wealth. But believe me eventually what I said above will happen again, and again, until eventually we all evolve into monkeys, at which case bankers will own the rights to bananas, builders will own the land it grows on and politicians will decide on who to prioritise on receiving the bananas. . . At that stage we will all be screwed . . .