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> You want elites to decide what the important issues are and propose solutions, and voting to be limited to picking between those approved worldviews. I'm not

> You want elites to decide what the important issues are and propose solutions, and voting to be limited to picking between those approved worldviews. I'm not sure the OP said anything that implied they wanted this, but on the other hand it's unambiguously true that many politicians characterised as "populist" do want this upon getting into power. It's just that their justification for interfering with court cases or removing elected officials who disagree with them or banning opposition altogether is "they represent the elites/immigrants/Jews but I am on your side", which distinguishes them from people justifying similar actions on the basis of national identity or religion or divine right or technocracy...

rayiner 1y ago
> many politicians characterised as "populist" do want this upon getting into power Your statement makes no sense. The elected politicians are the ones who are supposed to be deciding the political issues. The problem is that, throughout the western world, judges and bureaucrats are not staying in their lane. The New York Times did a good podcast on how the immigration system we have is one that nobody ever campaigned on or voted for: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/election-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi.... The immigration system has been created through litigation and bureaucratic action--e.g,, taking an asylum system enacted in response to Jews fleeing genocide and applying the eligibility criteria so broadly that it covers general unrest in a country, or even just crime and gang violence. Don’t forget, the judicial system is quite consciously an anti-democratic check. judges were put there to make sure that voters don’t vote themselves other people‘s property. That’s a legitimate function, but you have to keep an eye on it. The more and more issues you have decided by judges the less and less democratic your system becomes.
- yupitsme123 1y ago
  This is true for other areas as well. Our healthcare, education, and tax systems for example aren't what anyone proposed or ever would propose. They ended up that way for a variety of reasons and now we're stuck with them because the only real solution is to tear them down and start from scratch.
  - fn-mote 1y ago
    > only real solution is to tear them down and start from scratch The idea that tearing the political system down and starting from scratch will fix things is just as much of a fantasy as the idea that a greenfield rewrite of code will produce something with all of the desirable features of the original and twice as fast.
    - lttlrck 1y ago
      The Second System problem. Unfortunately even very (legitimately!) smart people fall into the trap. Though it's true that they may know it's a trap. Ulterior motives aplenty.
      - s1artibartfast 1y ago
        People fall for it because sometimes it is objectively true. It is often not clear when that is.
- notahacker 1y ago
  Not sure why you've chosen to go off on a tangent about immigration to the United States in response to my post about populists of all stripes typically trying to remove all sorts of checks on their power, including the democratic ones in the guise of "protecting" the people from the enemy du jour. But since you've decided to make this about the current US administration then yes, it's a matter of fact that the current system is a republic with limited democratic participation in the decision making process. A situation in which a single individual holds all the power and permits bureaucrats like ICE to do what they wanted to any individual for any reason with noone else being able to intervene would also be a republic with limited democratic participation in the decision making process, though not one I would prefer, particularly not if I was a law-abiding citizen who understood how legal processes worked but had the sort of ancestry ICE and Trump seem a bit suspicious of... No systems in the US look like what people campaigned on and voted for. What would policy look like in with true public votes on anything and everything? Well judging by approval ratings, Trump's decision to singlehandedly cause a recession with his tariff policy is something the public overall do not back, no matter how much Trump claims that he's acting for them and against globalist elites. Similarly, it seems that what Trump's newly created bureaucracy is doing to other government departments doesn't meet with wide approval, no matter how much the world's richest man appointed to head after giving him lots of money it claims to be tackling elites and corruption. Trump is a populist, but like many other populists he and many of his actions are not at all popular at the moment: it's a feature of the design of republics rather than the popular will that he remains in power nevertheless. Perhaps that's why the executive's power is supposed to be checked... But yes, the one area in which his approval ratings stayed above water in some polls is in his handling of immigration. Whether this includes every decision the unelected bureaucracy that is ICE makes to select random non-citizens and citizens for detention or even deportation to to foreign concentration camps for wrongthink or wrong tattoos is another question; seems like public opinion sides with the courts rather than the admin on deporting a legal immigrant for no reason and then not bringing him back because that would mean admitting error. In a republic like the US it's actually not the job of the official elected in the belief he'd get the price of eggs down to overrule courts, and it seems hollow to claim it'd be more democratic to skip the process of legislative change in favour of executive fiat when the public doesn't agree with him on many of the details. It would, of course, technically be more democratic to have people's right to remain in the country based not upon law but upon the prevailing fashionability of their skin colour and surname with a wider public that got to vote on mass deportations to third countries whenever they felt like it. Even as someone with reason to be completely confident this wouldn't jeopardise my right to remain in the country I was born in, I'd hesitate to say that supplanting citizenship law with a public popularity contest would be better though it would be more democratic. But this has nothing to do with what is going on in the US, which involves the president insisting his his yuge popular mandate places him so far above the law that bureaucrats whose actions he favours don't have to follow it, never mind other populists like Maduro or Mao or Mussolini who didn't even worry too much about the mandate bit.

rayiner 1y ago

> many politicians characterised as "populist" do want this upon getting into power Your statement makes no sense. The elected politicians are the ones who are supposed to be deciding the political issues. The problem is that, throughout the western world, judges and bureaucrats are not staying in their lane. The New York Times did a good podcast on how the immigration system we have is one that nobody ever campaigned on or voted for: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/election-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi.... The immigration system has been created through litigation and bureaucratic action--e.g,, taking an asylum system enacted in response to Jews fleeing genocide and applying the eligibility criteria so broadly that it covers general unrest in a country, or even just crime and gang violence. Don’t forget, the judicial system is quite consciously an anti-democratic check. judges were put there to make sure that voters don’t vote themselves other people‘s property. That’s a legitimate function, but you have to keep an eye on it. The more and more issues you have decided by judges the less and less democratic your system becomes.

yupitsme123 1y ago
This is true for other areas as well. Our healthcare, education, and tax systems for example aren't what anyone proposed or ever would propose. They ended up that way for a variety of reasons and now we're stuck with them because the only real solution is to tear them down and start from scratch.
- fn-mote 1y ago
  > only real solution is to tear them down and start from scratch The idea that tearing the political system down and starting from scratch will fix things is just as much of a fantasy as the idea that a greenfield rewrite of code will produce something with all of the desirable features of the original and twice as fast.
  - lttlrck 1y ago
    The Second System problem. Unfortunately even very (legitimately!) smart people fall into the trap. Though it's true that they may know it's a trap. Ulterior motives aplenty.
    - s1artibartfast 1y ago
      People fall for it because sometimes it is objectively true. It is often not clear when that is.
notahacker 1y ago
Not sure why you've chosen to go off on a tangent about immigration to the United States in response to my post about populists of all stripes typically trying to remove all sorts of checks on their power, including the democratic ones in the guise of "protecting" the people from the enemy du jour. But since you've decided to make this about the current US administration then yes, it's a matter of fact that the current system is a republic with limited democratic participation in the decision making process. A situation in which a single individual holds all the power and permits bureaucrats like ICE to do what they wanted to any individual for any reason with noone else being able to intervene would also be a republic with limited democratic participation in the decision making process, though not one I would prefer, particularly not if I was a law-abiding citizen who understood how legal processes worked but had the sort of ancestry ICE and Trump seem a bit suspicious of... No systems in the US look like what people campaigned on and voted for. What would policy look like in with true public votes on anything and everything? Well judging by approval ratings, Trump's decision to singlehandedly cause a recession with his tariff policy is something the public overall do not back, no matter how much Trump claims that he's acting for them and against globalist elites. Similarly, it seems that what Trump's newly created bureaucracy is doing to other government departments doesn't meet with wide approval, no matter how much the world's richest man appointed to head after giving him lots of money it claims to be tackling elites and corruption. Trump is a populist, but like many other populists he and many of his actions are not at all popular at the moment: it's a feature of the design of republics rather than the popular will that he remains in power nevertheless. Perhaps that's why the executive's power is supposed to be checked... But yes, the one area in which his approval ratings stayed above water in some polls is in his handling of immigration. Whether this includes every decision the unelected bureaucracy that is ICE makes to select random non-citizens and citizens for detention or even deportation to to foreign concentration camps for wrongthink or wrong tattoos is another question; seems like public opinion sides with the courts rather than the admin on deporting a legal immigrant for no reason and then not bringing him back because that would mean admitting error. In a republic like the US it's actually not the job of the official elected in the belief he'd get the price of eggs down to overrule courts, and it seems hollow to claim it'd be more democratic to skip the process of legislative change in favour of executive fiat when the public doesn't agree with him on many of the details. It would, of course, technically be more democratic to have people's right to remain in the country based not upon law but upon the prevailing fashionability of their skin colour and surname with a wider public that got to vote on mass deportations to third countries whenever they felt like it. Even as someone with reason to be completely confident this wouldn't jeopardise my right to remain in the country I was born in, I'd hesitate to say that supplanting citizenship law with a public popularity contest would be better though it would be more democratic. But this has nothing to do with what is going on in the US, which involves the president insisting his his yuge popular mandate places him so far above the law that bureaucrats whose actions he favours don't have to follow it, never mind other populists like Maduro or Mao or Mussolini who didn't even worry too much about the mandate bit.