[air7]

My optimistic take on this is that the politicians of the time had the actual peoples' best interests at heart and realized that even though the change was unpopular, it was the right thing to do and that people would eventually realize that. I'm sure very few of those 83% held their opinion a few years after the change.

Also 83% is really a lot... While seemingly obviously correct now, the vast majority didn't see it that way then. I can only assume that If I was there I would be against it too.

Nowadays with mass media and powerful almost immediate public reaction to government, such "you'll thank me later" moves seem less likely, and arguably, we are worse off for it.

[littlestymaar]

> Nowadays with mass media and powerful almost immediate public reaction to government, such "you'll thank me later" moves seem less likely, and arguably, we are worse off for it.

The problem isn't mass media, the problem is that they did use this card many times over the past decades to promote neoliberal policies, and in retrospect it's clear that nobody is thanking them.

The main lesson is that you can indeed force things on people, and when you do so for good reasons you'll be thanked later, but you must do it wisely and be sure that people will thank you, otherwise you're just destroying public's confidence in politicians (which doesn't matter to the neoliberals anyway, since they don't think State is a valuable institustion in the first place…)