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To start ask what is populism? From Google: > a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by es

To start ask what is populism? From Google: > a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups. I find the more educated you are (read: elite) the less you like populism. Funny that.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Populism is a mixed term. But historically, it involves using majoritarianism to accumulate power and defeat systemic checks. It’s successful in the short run and damning in the long. Explaining to a starving orphan (or more pointedly: veteran legionnaire) that they can’t have food because of the constitutional system of consular veto is basically unwinnable, which is why that situation is checkmate: if you fight for principles you’re heartless, and if you fight for what seems right you must become a dictator. Roman politics, by the late Republic, has reached this level of gridlock and imbalance where the only factions were a conservative establishment unwilling to accept any change and a populist wing populated with strongmen. Put another way, Sulla and Caesar failed where Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR succeeded.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  The "norms of the Republic" were constantly violated to enrich the elites of Rome, it was only when Ceasar violated them for the people was it a problem. It's a tale as old as time, sort of like low interest rates, it's a party until wages start to tick up then all of the sudden we have to do something about all this inflation.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > The "norms of the Republic" were constantly violated to enrich the elites of Rome, it was only when Ceasar violated them for the people was it a problem There are high norms and low norms. (My terminology.) Low norms range from basic corruption to which sexual orientation is in vogue. High norms subvert how power is wielded. Equating these two is page one of populism. (You have a broad point in that crossing the Rubicon was a generational affair by Caesar’s point. But nobody was happy about it when Sulla did it either.) > until wages start to tick up then all of the sudden we have to do something about all this inflation This cannot be a serious reading of the data. Wages rose precipitously for a decade [1]. Even during the pandemic, while wages rose and stimulus reigned, measured inflation was low as were rates. When inflation started rising, rates remained low because the Fed thought it transitory. It’s only when it surged that the FOMC stepped in. The Fed was not only fine but thrilled with rising real wages. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      > while wages rose and stimulus reigned, measured inflation was low as were rates. Investors have been walking away with more and more of the productivity since about 1970 or so. Young people are less likely to own a home due to insane asset price increases during that time and the fed kept lowering rates in spite of this. They raised interest rates specifically to prevent a "wage price spiral" but had no problem with the price spiral around housing because wages weren't going up as well. If CPI was accurate you'd have the same standard of living your grandfather had. A decent house on a single salary, pension, new car in the driveway. The modern young professional class lives in overpriced apartment blocks, a lot of them don't even own a car. The iPhone doesn't make the mandatory two income household with no assets lifestyle equivalent to what we had previously. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > If CPI was accurate you'd have the same standard of living your grandfather had. A decent house on a single salary, pension, new car in the driveway. CPI speaks to price levels. It says nothing about standards of living, just cost. Nobody argues that if you were on the winning team, life in the 50s wasn’t great. Naturally, if you poll folks from different backgrounds, that rose tint fades a bit. Unfortunately, we don’t have fine-grained economic statistics from the 50s to today.
        willcipriano 3y ago
        If wages are up and CPI is accurate why are living standards down?
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > wages are up and CPI is accurate why are living standards down Living standards are not down over ten years. Statistically and, for me, anecdotally. I’m making no comparison over lifetimes because we haven’t been collecting e.g. real median household income over that interval. Fortunately, it’s beside the point. You alleged “wages start[ed] to tick up then all of the sudden” rates were raised. That’s untrue. Wages were rising for a decade, including precipitously through the pandemic, before we did anything about it.
scott_w 3y ago
That's an overly reductive definition. Alistair Campbell defines it to include a deliberate turning "the people" against "the elites" and to exploit the ensuing discord. It's an important part that this isn't a genuine concern, it's 100% manufactured by the populist for their own benefit. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, two populists, are both very much part of the "elite" they claim to rage against. It's also important that this is done specifically to cause social problems they can exploit. They have no intention of actually fixing the problem they "identify" and will continue to blame new "elite" groups to obtain or maintain power.
- argentier 3y ago
  Instead of turning the people against the elites, you might more accurately describe it as mobilizing popular anger as a political force. Obviously this is dangerous to those in power, and is therefore demonized by them. Your last paragraph is simply wrong: populists have effected major development and social change. Huey Long in Louisiana is a good example.
  - scott_w 3y ago
    > mobilizing popular anger as a political force. > Obviously this is dangerous to those in power This is a disgusting falsehood and I genuinely think you need to be ashamed of yourself for saying things like this. This "popular anger" is regularly directed against the most powerless in society. Look at the demonisation of LGBT+, ethnic minorities, refugees, Jews and traveller communities to name just a few. To hold any notion that this "only a danger to those in power," you'd have to completely ignore huge swathes of recorded history. You'd also have to completely ignore the actual examples I gave of populists like Nigel Farage. The man who right now makes his career out of demonising refugees drowning in the English Channel.
    - argentier 3y ago
      I think you mentally inserted 'only' into that sentence. Yes, certainly populists can be dangerous to all of those groups, as can elites. Political violence is certainly not limited to populists: indeed their contribution is small in historical terms.
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
The label is in itself mildly interesting, because if looked at from a different perspective, then populist simply means democratic ( popular, because that is what people want ). Amusingly, it is not that dissimilar to how liberal works ( in itself, the word is not 'bad', but it was made 'bad' ).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > populist simply means democratic ( popular, because that is what people want ) Democracy is what the people want. Majoritarianism is blindly doing what most people want. Populism involves majoritarianism, and both imply the failure of democracy. (This happens fast in a system of elections with no checks and balances.)
  - adolph 3y ago
    > Democracy is what the people want. Majoritarianism is blindly doing what most people want. Is democracy what most people want or just the people?
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > democracy what most people want or just the people People, broadly. (And unfortunately, ambiguously.) It is not what most people want, that’s majoritarianism, a known failure mode for democratic systems. The majority voting to execute the 10% whose views they don’t believe in is fine, electorally, but bankrupt, democratically.
    - Exoristos 3y ago
      I think what JumpCrisscross is saying here is democracy is what the people are _supposed_ to want.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > what JumpCrisscross is saying here is democracy is what the people are _supposed_ to want No, it’s not.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Populism is a mixed term. But historically, it involves using majoritarianism to accumulate power and defeat systemic checks. It’s successful in the short run and damning in the long. Explaining to a starving orphan (or more pointedly: veteran legionnaire) that they can’t have food because of the constitutional system of consular veto is basically unwinnable, which is why that situation is checkmate: if you fight for principles you’re heartless, and if you fight for what seems right you must become a dictator. Roman politics, by the late Republic, has reached this level of gridlock and imbalance where the only factions were a conservative establishment unwilling to accept any change and a populist wing populated with strongmen. Put another way, Sulla and Caesar failed where Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and FDR succeeded.

willcipriano 3y ago
The "norms of the Republic" were constantly violated to enrich the elites of Rome, it was only when Ceasar violated them for the people was it a problem. It's a tale as old as time, sort of like low interest rates, it's a party until wages start to tick up then all of the sudden we have to do something about all this inflation.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > The "norms of the Republic" were constantly violated to enrich the elites of Rome, it was only when Ceasar violated them for the people was it a problem There are high norms and low norms. (My terminology.) Low norms range from basic corruption to which sexual orientation is in vogue. High norms subvert how power is wielded. Equating these two is page one of populism. (You have a broad point in that crossing the Rubicon was a generational affair by Caesar’s point. But nobody was happy about it when Sulla did it either.) > until wages start to tick up then all of the sudden we have to do something about all this inflation This cannot be a serious reading of the data. Wages rose precipitously for a decade [1]. Even during the pandemic, while wages rose and stimulus reigned, measured inflation was low as were rates. When inflation started rising, rates remained low because the Fed thought it transitory. It’s only when it surged that the FOMC stepped in. The Fed was not only fine but thrilled with rising real wages. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/ https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    > while wages rose and stimulus reigned, measured inflation was low as were rates. Investors have been walking away with more and more of the productivity since about 1970 or so. Young people are less likely to own a home due to insane asset price increases during that time and the fed kept lowering rates in spite of this. They raised interest rates specifically to prevent a "wage price spiral" but had no problem with the price spiral around housing because wages weren't going up as well. If CPI was accurate you'd have the same standard of living your grandfather had. A decent house on a single salary, pension, new car in the driveway. The modern young professional class lives in overpriced apartment blocks, a lot of them don't even own a car. The iPhone doesn't make the mandatory two income household with no assets lifestyle equivalent to what we had previously. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LABSHPUSA156NRUG
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > If CPI was accurate you'd have the same standard of living your grandfather had. A decent house on a single salary, pension, new car in the driveway. CPI speaks to price levels. It says nothing about standards of living, just cost. Nobody argues that if you were on the winning team, life in the 50s wasn’t great. Naturally, if you poll folks from different backgrounds, that rose tint fades a bit. Unfortunately, we don’t have fine-grained economic statistics from the 50s to today.
      - willcipriano 3y ago
        If wages are up and CPI is accurate why are living standards down?
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > wages are up and CPI is accurate why are living standards down Living standards are not down over ten years. Statistically and, for me, anecdotally. I’m making no comparison over lifetimes because we haven’t been collecting e.g. real median household income over that interval. Fortunately, it’s beside the point. You alleged “wages start[ed] to tick up then all of the sudden” rates were raised. That’s untrue. Wages were rising for a decade, including precipitously through the pandemic, before we did anything about it.

scott_w 3y ago

That's an overly reductive definition. Alistair Campbell defines it to include a deliberate turning "the people" against "the elites" and to exploit the ensuing discord. It's an important part that this isn't a genuine concern, it's 100% manufactured by the populist for their own benefit. Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, two populists, are both very much part of the "elite" they claim to rage against. It's also important that this is done specifically to cause social problems they can exploit. They have no intention of actually fixing the problem they "identify" and will continue to blame new "elite" groups to obtain or maintain power.

argentier 3y ago
Instead of turning the people against the elites, you might more accurately describe it as mobilizing popular anger as a political force. Obviously this is dangerous to those in power, and is therefore demonized by them. Your last paragraph is simply wrong: populists have effected major development and social change. Huey Long in Louisiana is a good example.
- scott_w 3y ago
  > mobilizing popular anger as a political force. > Obviously this is dangerous to those in power This is a disgusting falsehood and I genuinely think you need to be ashamed of yourself for saying things like this. This "popular anger" is regularly directed against the most powerless in society. Look at the demonisation of LGBT+, ethnic minorities, refugees, Jews and traveller communities to name just a few. To hold any notion that this "only a danger to those in power," you'd have to completely ignore huge swathes of recorded history. You'd also have to completely ignore the actual examples I gave of populists like Nigel Farage. The man who right now makes his career out of demonising refugees drowning in the English Channel.
  - argentier 3y ago
    I think you mentally inserted 'only' into that sentence. Yes, certainly populists can be dangerous to all of those groups, as can elites. Political violence is certainly not limited to populists: indeed their contribution is small in historical terms.

A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago

The label is in itself mildly interesting, because if looked at from a different perspective, then populist simply means democratic ( popular, because that is what people want ). Amusingly, it is not that dissimilar to how liberal works ( in itself, the word is not 'bad', but it was made 'bad' ).

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> populist simply means democratic ( popular, because that is what people want ) Democracy is what the people want. Majoritarianism is blindly doing what most people want. Populism involves majoritarianism, and both imply the failure of democracy. (This happens fast in a system of elections with no checks and balances.)
- adolph 3y ago
  > Democracy is what the people want. Majoritarianism is blindly doing what most people want. Is democracy what most people want or just the people?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > democracy what most people want or just the people People, broadly. (And unfortunately, ambiguously.) It is not what most people want, that’s majoritarianism, a known failure mode for democratic systems. The majority voting to execute the 10% whose views they don’t believe in is fine, electorally, but bankrupt, democratically.
  - Exoristos 3y ago
    I think what JumpCrisscross is saying here is democracy is what the people are _supposed_ to want.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > what JumpCrisscross is saying here is democracy is what the people are _supposed_ to want No, it’s not.