Thread Of What Is Populism & (Why) Is It Bad?

there are only so many people with extensive knowledge of, say, banking.

absolutely, but their advice about banking is no more likely to be neutral information at the service of the electorate than a military expert's advice is likely to be neutral, etc etc

It's also worth remembering that there is nothing necessarily racist about populism:

http://ncpedia.org/fusion-republicans-and-populists

Debates about things like the role of banking and how it should be regulated are unsettled even among the top minds in economics and finance. Expertise is necessary but not sufficient. It's not like hiring a pilot, where the range of "good" decisions in flying a plane is pretty narrow.

NV are you just broadly sketching the differences between direct democracy and representative democracy?

the US model of government is a kind of self-defined republic with one fully-elected branch, one with the leaders elected, and a third that is appointed with the candidates proposed by one branch and approved by the other. there is no real way to put a single issue up for popular vote nationwide (like the brexit vote) in that any law that applies to all states must be passed by the national congress (and signed by the president). constitutional amendments are put up for approval but passed by all states individually.

yeah, banking is a convoluted and ugly thing and was the first pick that came to mind, but not really a good example

i'm thinking more hypothetically than "how it works in the real world" but i think you can argue that the devil in the details of representative systems is the space where a genuine unelected elite exerts its control over the system and ensures it stays within the bounds it desires

idk we can debate about what things are in theory instead of the real world but populism's main pitch is that it's inherently non-theory

maybe so but i would argue that the inchoate resentments it harnesses are often based on very blurred perceptions of real problems

like if you resent them elites for undemocratically dictating to you, you're not entirely wrong

there are some higher-level thoughts but at a low level it's "tell people what they want to hear and then give them what they want"

it's like asking a thousand people with broken-down cars on the side of the road what they want

some are going to say "give me a new car"
some are going to blame the roads for screwing up their car
some will want their car taken to the cheapest mechanic possible
some will have a specific mechanic they will ask their car be towed to

almost no one will say "I want a light rail line that goes from my work to my home" because they don't realize a thousand people are having the exact same problem, live in the same area, and work in the same area. the real problem is that there's not reliable transportation from point A to B, not the road per se

but yes, that's a best case scenario, and in all likelihood i'm saddled with a government who thinks a light rail line between two points is the solution to most problems, the rail company lobbyist is one candidate's former employee, capital for the rail lines is a line-item on the state budget whether they're even a good solution anymore, etc

It's a pejorative term. I can't think of any politician describing themselves as a populist

If you don't like a successful politician then they're a populist. If you do like them then they're listening to people's concerns and fighting for what's really important

in the same sense that "liberal" is a pejorative term i suppose

think beppe grillo once referred to himself as a populist, cuz italian politicians love to troll like no other

but it's a term that's also seen some kind of rehabilitation in some of the left-wing movements that are interested in a more flattened if not exactly direct democracy and links to grass roots activism etc, e.g. podemos, syriza, maybe even momentum i dunno