4 ms·

Populism is 'supporting the concerns of ordinary people', demagoguery is 'apealing to popular desires and prejudices at the expense of rational argument'. Dist

Populism is 'supporting the concerns of ordinary people', demagoguery is 'apealing to popular desires and prejudices at the expense of rational argument'. Distrust of populism itself is misplaced distrust, since while these two concepts do appear at the same time on occasion, I'm not sure of a causal or even correlated relationship.

Nasrudith 8y ago
I think it is more a matter of how populism is defined: the policies or the stated goal? Look at the USSR and the way they treated their workers. Taken for granted and undersupplied, given grandiose mandates to live up to from the uninvolved above to deliberately gives lung cancer to union leaders via minutes long xray. The USSR was "for the workers". The Technocrats weren't really scientific or engineering based, just a moronic faschiod cult which called for a power based currency and no interest or accumulation - ignoring the value of other inputs or accumulation of growth. And then there is all of the violence committed in the name of religions calling for peace.... The point is never trust the pretense. Populist movements/groups are untrustworthy by defining themselves by the pretense instead of the policy. This does not apply to some policies called populist. Moving up the bonus payment dates in the Great Depression, safer working conditions, raising the minimium wage, shorter hours, Roman land reform after the farmland had been illicitly shifted past the legal limits per owner, even more radical goals like Georgist "only the value of the land itself is taxed - scaled appropriately", shifting to direct democracy are all fine - a given policy may or may not work as intended but they are not an easy direct road for some megalomaniac to power. Populist groups are untrustworthy for the same reason as theocracies. It isn't operating upon the basis of say treating fellow man as a brother that is bad but the actual practices.

Nasrudith 8y ago

I think it is more a matter of how populism is defined: the policies or the stated goal? Look at the USSR and the way they treated their workers. Taken for granted and undersupplied, given grandiose mandates to live up to from the uninvolved above to deliberately gives lung cancer to union leaders via minutes long xray. The USSR was "for the workers". The Technocrats weren't really scientific or engineering based, just a moronic faschiod cult which called for a power based currency and no interest or accumulation - ignoring the value of other inputs or accumulation of growth. And then there is all of the violence committed in the name of religions calling for peace.... The point is never trust the pretense. Populist movements/groups are untrustworthy by defining themselves by the pretense instead of the policy. This does not apply to some policies called populist. Moving up the bonus payment dates in the Great Depression, safer working conditions, raising the minimium wage, shorter hours, Roman land reform after the farmland had been illicitly shifted past the legal limits per owner, even more radical goals like Georgist "only the value of the land itself is taxed - scaled appropriately", shifting to direct democracy are all fine - a given policy may or may not work as intended but they are not an easy direct road for some megalomaniac to power. Populist groups are untrustworthy for the same reason as theocracies. It isn't operating upon the basis of say treating fellow man as a brother that is bad but the actual practices.