5 ms·

Populism Fast and Slow

screenoridesagb 1y ago
[dead]
gsf_emergency_4 1y ago
I regard swissinfo.ch as basically propaganda but they once made the point that direct democracy can be faster than populism at addressing citizens' (cognitive) needs: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/direct-democracy-series_in-switzerland-populism-thrives-but-under-control/45097054#:~:text=Similarly%2C%20the%20chance%20to%20vote%20more%20frequently%20(even%20if%20turnout%20rates%20are%20low)%20gives%20the%20impression%20of%20having%20a%20voice%2C%20something%20that%20both%20stokes%20and%20tempers%20populist%20demands. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/direct-democracy-seri... (The populism here on HN might be tempered by this mechanism too!)
nicodjimenez 1y ago
There are only two political systems at the end of the day: authoritarianism (everyone knows who is in charge) and oligarchy. Populism, in a liberal democracy, is basically authoritarianism-lite representing the interests of a particular faction of oligarchs. There's no "populism" in China, that's an American & European invention. Populism is ugly but it's a useful tool that can get things done in an oligarchy.
darth_avocado 1y ago
My reductive take on populism is that it is a consequence of majority of people being unhappy. If the unhappiness is a result of economic struggles, you get right wing populism. If it is a result of social struggles, you get left wing populism. And more often than not, the source of unhappiness is economic struggles.
- colechristensen 1y ago
  It's what happens when the ordinary politicians ignore problems until the "let's solve it like psychopaths" get a critical mass of support. There were actual problems with immigration, crime, and trade that were aggressively ignored by both parties perhaps one more than the other. The problems grew and grew in the collective minds of the public until enough of the public started to support "let's solve it like fascists". The lesson is that you can't manifest a perfect political reality by pretending problems don't exist.
  - irishloop 1y ago
    Or maybe their actual problems are caused by automation, tax cuts on the rich, and a lack of social safety net that lets people live in dignity, but the media they consume mostly blames immigration and crime. Political "reality" is rarely objective.
    - hunterpayne 1y ago
      In the US, we spend about $3T on social safety net programs at the federal level, that's half the federal budget or about 12% of the GDP. I used to live in Oakland, CA...about a mile from MLK. I can tell you plenty about the amount of crime there over the last decade. I've known lots of people from the suburbs that will try to tell me that crime is down, meanwhile I saw my neighbors getting robbed during the day (not just at night anymore). If your only experience with these things is watching the news, you really shouldn't be talking about them. And taking police services away from the poorest parts of town is despicable. PS It was the votes from those high crime districts that got Trump elected last year. The people down there don't watch the news. Your take is just copium because you don't want to do the real work of looking at your side's policies and fixing what is costing you voters and elections.
      - groby_b 1y ago
        As somebody avowedly on the left-hand side of the political spectrum - yep. I know the crime stats. I also have seen friends of mine get robbed 3 times in 4 years, once with them in the house. (LA, not Oakland. And in the nice suburbs.) And it's not an isolated incident. I know that the crime stats say crime is down. But that's not the lived experience for a lot of people. And unless politicians are willing to acknowledge there are issues, and do the work to tackle them, you get demagogues. Right-wing ones will use it to extol the virtues of cracking down, left-wing ones will use it to talk about the plight of the downtrodden. Meanwhile, you still have people for whom crime is the best option, and you have people who suffer from crime. We could choose to solve those problems (independent of political leaning), and we could choose to solve both sides of the coin. But that'd probably be too rational to sell at the voting booth. > It was the votes from those high crime districts that got Trump elected last year. The people down there don't watch the news. [citation needed] They do get enough info through various channels to decide "Trump might fix it". And a good chunk of that is news. We can debate the veracity of info they derive, and how they make their decisions, but let's not go "poor people don't watch news". Mass media exists and has effects, across all demographic strata. Mass media is a tool of demagogues, willing or unwilling. But that's really also the point of the article - "if people just had better info" isn't actually a workable answer to demagogues. And so debates about media consumption are mostly useless waffling. See above re "what if we instead thought about fixing real issues"
- deleted 1y ago
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pessimizer 1y ago
"More profoundly, the negative dynamic of fragmentation is cultural: mass higher education creates stratified societies in which the highly educated – 20%, 30%, 40% of the population – begin to live among themselves, to think of themselves as superior, to despise the working classes, and to reject manual labour and industry. Primary education for all (universal literacy) had nurtured democracy, creating a homogeneous society with an egalitarian subconscious. Higher education has given rise to oligarchies, and sometimes plutocracies, stratified societies invaded by an unequal subconscious. The ultimate paradox: the development of higher education ended up producing a decline in intellectual standards in these oligarchies or plutocracies!" The dislocation of the West: what threatens us - Emmanuel Todd https://substack.com/home/post/p-175377338 https://substack.com/home/post/p-175377338
hunterpayne 1y ago
There is a lot of irony in this article. There are points he makes where he assumes his political belief is 100% right. On at least one of those points, he is just wrong because of a tiny detail in how the paper he is referencing was setup. Specifically, he doesn't understand how recidivism is calculated. This leads him to think a counter-intuitive thing which is wrong. The simplistic POV is actually right on this specific topic. That leads some some ironic conclusions. My conclusion is that populism comes about when the "elites" perform badly. The author can't or won't admit this is happening even while unknowingly demonstrating it happening. Populism goes away when either the populist politicians don't improve things or when the elites get their act in order. If either of these happens, things go back to the previous situation. If neither happens, the elites are slowly replaced. We will see what happens going forward.
- bigbadfeline 1y ago
  > My conclusion is that populism comes about when the "elites" perform badly. That's only half true, or maybe a quarter. Actually, populism comes about when the people (are led to) believe that the (patsy) "elites" perform badly. Without that clarification, we would miss the most likely explanations for present day populism. > Populism goes away when either the populist politicians don't improve things or when the elites get their act in order. This is manifestly false today, the elites are now consolidating power for themselves, removing competitors left and right, mostly left because the right surrendered without a fight. In the end, they not only retain power but get more of it while acting materially worse.
grebc 1y ago
I feel like a lot of people are only just discovering history and that this is absolutely nothing new. Ancient Greeks had a word, demagogue, that isn’t used much but captures certain past/current political figures so well.
deleted 1y ago
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groovecoder 1y ago
Populism isn’t just bad elites or gullible masses. It’s what happens when both sides lose the virtues that once held them together. Elites forget humility and justice, turning reason into arrogance; populists forget prudence and temperance, turning righteous anger into resentment. HN itself is a kind of popu-elitism. Look at the other comments here. We're a crowd of self-identified “slow thinkers” who often post fast, intuitive reactions. The irony is that our intuitions here are shaped by analytic habits, not moral ones. The real goal isn’t to think faster or slower, but to build a society that makes a virtuous life first possible, and then easy.

[dead]

I regard swissinfo.ch as basically propaganda but they once made the point that direct democracy can be faster than populism at addressing citizens' (cognitive) needs: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/direct-democracy-series_in-switzerland-populism-thrives-but-under-control/45097054#:~:text=Similarly%2C%20the%20chance%20to%20vote%20more%20frequently%20(even%20if%20turnout%20rates%20are%20low)%20gives%20the%20impression%20of%20having%20a%20voice%2C%20something%20that%20both%20stokes%20and%20tempers%20populist%20demands. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/direct-democracy-seri... (The populism here on HN might be tempered by this mechanism too!)

nicodjimenez 1y ago

There are only two political systems at the end of the day: authoritarianism (everyone knows who is in charge) and oligarchy. Populism, in a liberal democracy, is basically authoritarianism-lite representing the interests of a particular faction of oligarchs. There's no "populism" in China, that's an American & European invention. Populism is ugly but it's a useful tool that can get things done in an oligarchy.

darth_avocado 1y ago

My reductive take on populism is that it is a consequence of majority of people being unhappy. If the unhappiness is a result of economic struggles, you get right wing populism. If it is a result of social struggles, you get left wing populism. And more often than not, the source of unhappiness is economic struggles.

colechristensen 1y ago
It's what happens when the ordinary politicians ignore problems until the "let's solve it like psychopaths" get a critical mass of support. There were actual problems with immigration, crime, and trade that were aggressively ignored by both parties perhaps one more than the other. The problems grew and grew in the collective minds of the public until enough of the public started to support "let's solve it like fascists". The lesson is that you can't manifest a perfect political reality by pretending problems don't exist.
- irishloop 1y ago
  Or maybe their actual problems are caused by automation, tax cuts on the rich, and a lack of social safety net that lets people live in dignity, but the media they consume mostly blames immigration and crime. Political "reality" is rarely objective.
  - hunterpayne 1y ago
    In the US, we spend about $3T on social safety net programs at the federal level, that's half the federal budget or about 12% of the GDP. I used to live in Oakland, CA...about a mile from MLK. I can tell you plenty about the amount of crime there over the last decade. I've known lots of people from the suburbs that will try to tell me that crime is down, meanwhile I saw my neighbors getting robbed during the day (not just at night anymore). If your only experience with these things is watching the news, you really shouldn't be talking about them. And taking police services away from the poorest parts of town is despicable. PS It was the votes from those high crime districts that got Trump elected last year. The people down there don't watch the news. Your take is just copium because you don't want to do the real work of looking at your side's policies and fixing what is costing you voters and elections.
    - groby_b 1y ago
      As somebody avowedly on the left-hand side of the political spectrum - yep. I know the crime stats. I also have seen friends of mine get robbed 3 times in 4 years, once with them in the house. (LA, not Oakland. And in the nice suburbs.) And it's not an isolated incident. I know that the crime stats say crime is down. But that's not the lived experience for a lot of people. And unless politicians are willing to acknowledge there are issues, and do the work to tackle them, you get demagogues. Right-wing ones will use it to extol the virtues of cracking down, left-wing ones will use it to talk about the plight of the downtrodden. Meanwhile, you still have people for whom crime is the best option, and you have people who suffer from crime. We could choose to solve those problems (independent of political leaning), and we could choose to solve both sides of the coin. But that'd probably be too rational to sell at the voting booth. > It was the votes from those high crime districts that got Trump elected last year. The people down there don't watch the news. [citation needed] They do get enough info through various channels to decide "Trump might fix it". And a good chunk of that is news. We can debate the veracity of info they derive, and how they make their decisions, but let's not go "poor people don't watch news". Mass media exists and has effects, across all demographic strata. Mass media is a tool of demagogues, willing or unwilling. But that's really also the point of the article - "if people just had better info" isn't actually a workable answer to demagogues. And so debates about media consumption are mostly useless waffling. See above re "what if we instead thought about fixing real issues"
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

pessimizer 1y ago

"More profoundly, the negative dynamic of fragmentation is cultural: mass higher education creates stratified societies in which the highly educated – 20%, 30%, 40% of the population – begin to live among themselves, to think of themselves as superior, to despise the working classes, and to reject manual labour and industry. Primary education for all (universal literacy) had nurtured democracy, creating a homogeneous society with an egalitarian subconscious. Higher education has given rise to oligarchies, and sometimes plutocracies, stratified societies invaded by an unequal subconscious. The ultimate paradox: the development of higher education ended up producing a decline in intellectual standards in these oligarchies or plutocracies!" The dislocation of the West: what threatens us - Emmanuel Todd https://substack.com/home/post/p-175377338 https://substack.com/home/post/p-175377338

hunterpayne 1y ago

There is a lot of irony in this article. There are points he makes where he assumes his political belief is 100% right. On at least one of those points, he is just wrong because of a tiny detail in how the paper he is referencing was setup. Specifically, he doesn't understand how recidivism is calculated. This leads him to think a counter-intuitive thing which is wrong. The simplistic POV is actually right on this specific topic. That leads some some ironic conclusions. My conclusion is that populism comes about when the "elites" perform badly. The author can't or won't admit this is happening even while unknowingly demonstrating it happening. Populism goes away when either the populist politicians don't improve things or when the elites get their act in order. If either of these happens, things go back to the previous situation. If neither happens, the elites are slowly replaced. We will see what happens going forward.

bigbadfeline 1y ago
> My conclusion is that populism comes about when the "elites" perform badly. That's only half true, or maybe a quarter. Actually, populism comes about when the people (are led to) believe that the (patsy) "elites" perform badly. Without that clarification, we would miss the most likely explanations for present day populism. > Populism goes away when either the populist politicians don't improve things or when the elites get their act in order. This is manifestly false today, the elites are now consolidating power for themselves, removing competitors left and right, mostly left because the right surrendered without a fight. In the end, they not only retain power but get more of it while acting materially worse.

grebc 1y ago

I feel like a lot of people are only just discovering history and that this is absolutely nothing new. Ancient Greeks had a word, demagogue, that isn’t used much but captures certain past/current political figures so well.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

groovecoder 1y ago

Populism isn’t just bad elites or gullible masses. It’s what happens when both sides lose the virtues that once held them together. Elites forget humility and justice, turning reason into arrogance; populists forget prudence and temperance, turning righteous anger into resentment. HN itself is a kind of popu-elitism. Look at the other comments here. We're a crowd of self-identified “slow thinkers” who often post fast, intuitive reactions. The irony is that our intuitions here are shaped by analytic habits, not moral ones. The real goal isn’t to think faster or slower, but to build a society that makes a virtuous life first possible, and then easy.