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RedditI have not yet read David Sirota's new book, The Uprising, but I will nonetheless eagerly recommend it, if only because I think any serious contemplation of populism is worthwhile--and even necessary.
When I say populism--acknowledging that the meaning is contentious, and that I don't know what Sirota's definition is--I mean a few things by it. I mean first, a belief that people have the intellectual and moral capacity to govern themselves, and are in fact better at self-governing than experts who might, on the face of it, appear to be better decision-makers. I mean also that some nontrivial number of citizens and politicians recognize this fact.
One of the most interesting--and disturbing--features of modern politics is the fetishization of expertise at the expense of popular knowledge. In this way, the entire Washington culture is a captured industry, in that staffers and consultants, the bulky satellites of elected representatives, basically accept the premise that "people don't understand" and that the public job of staffers is to spin, not to explain.
Not only are policy decisions measured against expert opinion, but the practice of politics is measured against expert opinion, so that (just to pick a random article--there are too many) a Reuters article about Obama's recent (disappointing) gestures away from diplomatically engaging Iran ended with a Rutgers professor approving of Obama's "correction", because it "makes sense politically" is "better for him to make that course correction now than later in the campaign." In the Reuters article you see two troubling trends in political reporting perfectly fused--tactics over content, experts over citizens. Elections, in the expert world view (or minimalist democratic theory of the kind endorsed by Richard Posner and his ilk), are intended as course (and coarse) corrections for serious problems. "Are you better off than you were four years ago" is not only a campaign slogan, it is a literal translation of the belief that people are capable of only the most crude empirical analyses--a person's job as a citizen, in the minimalist world view, is to accurately experience the trends in his or her own life, and vote based on it.
What I find exciting about Sirota's premise--of which I hope to be persuaded--is his claim that something is rumbling at the heart of our democracy, and there's a not-so latent new energy in the works to throw the smug bureaucrats out and demand true responsiveness, not pandering, on the part of federal elected officials. I know I heard some of that rumbling while I was following the fascinating Mike Huckabee campaign, where godbloggers debated among themselves whether they could support a candidate who was so hated on Wall Street; I certainly heard some of it in the Ron Paul campaign, where supporters actively engaged in questions like whether America is dealing with credit in an appropriate way, and whether or not we should have a gold standard. To be clear, I think Ron Paul is wrong; I also think he's right to put on the table questions of credit and the value of money, as a question democratic processes should answer, instead of hiding the ball. Obama's campaign includes both populist and expert strains, which battle each other on a regular basis, much as modern labor organizing encompasses both strands.
Some of biggest issues facing the country involve trade, energy, and monetary policy, issues which the experts want to leave to the experts--in this world view, intellectual property is for the geeks, antitrust for the lawyers, and tiny tax breaks for the masses. The leading candidates for President and most Senate candidates so far have danced at the margins on these issues, either showing that they don't want to deal with them at all, or believing that they should try to solve them in secret, instead offering up anti-climactic rallying cries of rebuking the Bush Tax Cuts.
Citizenship, in the populist world view, is a more serious job, but also a vastly more interesting one. When I worked in DC I met few populists. When the possibility was raised, they used anecdotal evidence of the stupidity of voters to reject it; my time in DC gave me ample evidence of the stupidity of consultants and other satellites, so I find that argument basically a wash. (Not to mention that an idiot with arrogance and access to media is far more dangerous than an idiot with a drink and an ATV.)
More importantly, Americans have some great historical models of an actively engaged populace--populism not just as a movement but a way of being. Toqueville noted our capacity for group-forming--groups with both social and political ends--as the American skill that trained us for democracy, as we learned how to suggest ideas, negotiate, compromise, and advocate in these small groups so that they could then suggest, negotiate, compromise, and advocate in the larger state and national realm.
Sidney Verba's seven-country cross-national study of civic engagement found that involvement in voluntary associations was important for democratic faith, regardless of whether ones' own political wishes were realized; the mere fact of having access to a group of people who one might persuade to take an issue to the State House created a positive experience of power and democracy.
In Theda Skocpol's fantastic book Diminished Democracy she noted that as much of five percent of Americans were presidents of their local voluntary association through the late 40s, and there were more than 30 million federated voluntary associations throughout the country--cross-class, and in both black and white communities. She quotes one commentator as saying that we are "a nation of Presidents," our "safety-valve" for the great political ambition our democratic culture inspired.
Skocpol, Toqueville, and Verba suggest something important for understanding populism, and for rebutting the anti-populists and expert-lovers. People are not necessarily engaged, they are not born as naturally great citizens--and they will not vote intelligently because Rock the Vote tells them its cool--but they can be, if we collectively choose to have a society in which politics is normal, in which the skills of understanding, debating and advocacy are learned in other ways. As Skocpol documents in another http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/social_science_history/v028/28.3skocpol.html">important article with Jennifer Lynn Oser, Robert Putnam and others wrongly discount the importance of these voluntary associations (and ascribe too much to culture), especially in telling the history of the Civil Rights movement, where black civic organizations, rivalling church groups in some places, played a critical role in developing political power and community.
Since reading Skocpol, I have placed my hope in a vision of five percent active involvement--by which I do not mean volunteering, but leading some group with agency and independent decisionmaking. Five percent is reachable in part because we've been there before--we know that many people can care. If we can take what is good from the past, having rejected the racism and sexism that defined voluntary associations before the Vietnam War--if we can take this new energy and get up to five percent of Americans again leading some local political group, in any given year--then we will find ourselves newly capable of making the sacrifices we need to better deal with the threats of centralized power (both governmental and corporate), environmental devastation, horrific health problems, and radical inequality. If one in twenty Americans is taking responsibility at any given time, we can achieve extraordinary things.
We will no longer need to spend so much energy on the trivial aspects of a Presidential campaign because we will be a nation of Presidents--we just need to make sure we get to the safety valve in time.
I'm looking forward to reading Sirota's book to hear his ideas about how to get there. Among other things, I know of no innoculent against corruption except a healthy dose of populism. A culture in which expertise and experience is the highest political aspiration is one ripe for the buying.
In the meantime, for what its worth, here's an extended excerpt from the 1892 Article that Skocpol quotes by Walter B. Hill, in the periodical the July Century:
The Republic is Opportunity
It is the birthright of every American boy to have the chance to be President, and of every American girl to have the chance to be the President's wife. The atmosphere is stimulating to ambition. The desire inspired by the genius of American institutions is " to be equal to our superiors and superior to our equals." But in the midst of universal suggestions prompting the citizen to high ambitions, the ugly fact remains that the positions of political distinction are relatively very few compared to the vast multitude of possible aspirants. The practical politician confesses this in the wail, "There ain't offices enough to go round among the boys."
But here every school-boy is taught that the highest stations are open to him; and in a thousand papers, books, lectures, speeches, and sermons he is told that perseverance alone will put the highest prizes within his grasp. What, then, can explain the contentedness of the millions who, as the French say, never " pierce " the level of mediocrity ? What is the great American safety-valve for these ambitions for precedence which our national life generates, fosters, and stimulates, without adequate provision for their gratification ?
We were standing in the office of a large hotel at the time, when an incident gave me the clue. There walked up to the register a sturdy American citizen, who seized the pen as if he were about to sign some momentous document. Bending over the open page of the book, he scrawled his name, his mouth moving and writhing with every twist of the pen. It occurred to me to look at the record of this new arrival, and this is what I saw: " Hon. Sock Bruitt, Chairman of the Committee on Pumps, Whiskyville, Texas." Seizing this thread, I proceeded to unravel as best I could the tangled skein of American life as it is organized into social, business, religious, and other associations, all of them elaborately officered. Until I made the effort to explain the matter to " an alien to the commonwealth," I had ne ver. realized the full significance of the non- political office-holding class in our country as a factor in the national life. Take a city directory and examine the list of organizations usually printed in such a publication : you will see ample provision for the local ambitions of all the inhabitants. Take one of the books issued by a " live" church ; examine the list of societies, devotional, missionary, temperance, young people's, Sunday-school, charitable, etc. The matter will be made clearer still if you study the subject in a small village where universal acquaintance is possible. I made a test case of one small town, and found that every man, woman, and child (above ten years of age) in the place held an office -- with the exception of a few scores of flabby, jellyfish characters, whose lack of ambition or enterprise removes them from consideration as elements of the problem.
A few years ago, in a little country village, there was instituted a chapter of a certain benevolent insurance order. The Chancellor was subsequently elected Grand Chancellor of the State. Afterward at a national convention he was made Supreme Grand Chancellor of the United States. The next year he was elected Most Supreme Grand Chancellor of the World ; and it became his duty, the order paying his expenses, to make an international visitation to the three chapters in Australia, New Zealand, and England that composed the aforesaid " world." When that triumphal tour was completed, his return home was heralded, and the chapter of his village arranged for a reception of the honorable dignitary. Never shall I forget the feeling of solemn awe that settled down upon the little community as the evening approached when the Most Supreme Grand Chancellor of the World was to arrive. This favored American was a " bigger man than old Grant."
Not only are there offices enough to "go round," but the really capable and pushing American is generally honored with a score. I have heard a busy and overworked man decline to be at the head of an organization because he was at the head of twenty-five already. Here then we have the great American safety-valve -- we are a nation of presidents.
Walter B. Hill.
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The most disturbing aspect to modern politics-to me anyway-Is that all of the polls out there are biased in some way, that is until I took the matter into my own hands..
http://www.votenic.com
Run by a kid.
Posted by votenic at 05/29/2008 @ 2:10pm
welcome to earth, happy.
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/29/2008 @ 2:49pm
Just as every generation or so needs a war, the regression to the mean will always have its pull. In 2004, anyone who could fog up a mirror with their breath knew Iraq was what McClellan now reveals. "Populism" can't artificially be extracted from the West Virginia, regression to the mean reality. A huge factor is as Dean points out followers. The dominant groups (whites) vote for what the media serves up as the alpha-sounding chimp (Cheney/Bush). Kerry they convinced the herd would bring about their very destruction. So the corporate media easily pegged Kerry as the windsurfing elitist, not the 'populist' alpha. He's tough and you can have a beer with him. These basic truths remain, and the media's busy swapping Bush out for McCain since it looks like Clinton, as much as they've tried to paint her as the new tough redneck darling - thanks to the net - isn't likely to make it.
Posted by winyahn at 05/29/2008 @ 2:58pm
When WAS the great "Golden Age of Populism" that we're supposed to emulate?
"New Deal"?...hardly. Roosevelt balanced economic recovery and maintaining capitalism in SOME form versus the populism of Huey Long.
"Great Society"?...again, no. Bureaucratic extensions of the New Deal, not some ground-swell from the seniors or the general public for Medicare...and certainly none for welfare, just Johnson's dream.
So when? And if "never" or "not yet"....why predict one coming???
Posted by Mask at 05/29/2008 @ 3:06pm
Woops, to clarify - Dean as in John Dean's book on how conservatives as authority-followers.
Bush was spoonfed to followers in search of a leader, painted as the 'populist' alpha - tough but accessible. For the herd, he was an extension themselves. They could share a beer.
An lastly on Hillary, the media focus on propping her up as the new tough redneck darling was just to ensure McCain's win in Nov. They'd have turned a 180 after she clinched the nomination.
So populism is limited in it's goodness, and ripe for exploitation.
Posted by winyahn at 05/29/2008 @ 3:08pm
‘Man, I see in Fight Club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see it squandered. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war…our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.' -- Tyler Durden
Posted by HonestLiberal at 05/29/2008 @ 3:16pm
Great quote/movie. Captures some of heat, some of the hate in the media/neocon 'elite' charge.
Posted by winyahn at 05/29/2008 @ 6:52pm
why predict one coming???
Posted by Mask
the vain hope the one may finally come.
i think perhaps the u.s. may come out of this whole iraq deal with an altered "psyche",
much like the japanese and the germans did after ww2.
or maybe not......
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/29/2008 @ 9:07pm
Born to die, and you get to sit and watch your TV set.
Believe the lies before your eyes, credit cards & apple pies!
50 stars to blind your eyes, 13 stripes to hypnotize!
Free thought is gone, you'll never see your just a pawn.
You'll die tomorrow but today your empty dreams just fade away,
evaporate, dissolve to hate, while you survive and wait until a lifeless fate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsRLdzAmeY8&fmt=18
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/29/2008 @ 9:12pm
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/29/2008
FROS, America is not going to become ...well...what guys YOUR PARENTS' age thought it was "going to become" 40 years ago, sitting around smoking dope at Woodstock.
We'll "settle down a bit"...maybe swing back to Clintonism, maybe a HAIR further left....but that's it.
Just take what you can get.
Posted by Mask at 05/29/2008 @ 10:23pm
I would have thought Putnam's "Bowling Alone" would have warranted some kind of reference here.
Mask, I presume you have heard of the American Revolution? "We the people" against the King? Populism?
What about Jefferson's arguments favoring the rights & responsibilities of states over the federalism of Hamilton - who Jefferson equated with Tories?
Or look at the current political parties. See any populism in the Know Nothing Party that was absorbed by the Republicans or any populism in Jackson's Democrats?
Or how about other groups and "movements" such as The Grange, Huey Long's Share Our Wealth, or Ross Perot's Reform Party?
If we understand that populism is some form of putting the common man against the elites, then populism is as American as apple pie. It is only a matter of time before there is some kind of reaction against what gets variously referred to as the Managerial State, Technocracy, Corporatocracy, etc., but the problem is that in order to fight these institutions - you need managers, technocrats and likely incorporation.
So, it's bread and circuses until the population gets pissed, our mercenary armies decide that they don't just want a slice of the pie anymore but the whole thing, or some new boss comes in to replace the old boss in some way Polybius would have approved.
Posted by srjenkins at 05/29/2008 @ 10:23pm
Cut-n-paste alert!
From:
http://www.sapphireenergy.com/mediacenter/press_release/1
Sonoma, California – May 28, 2008 – Sapphire Energy announced today they have produced renewable 91 octane gasoline that conforms to ASTM certification, made from a breakthrough process that produces crude oil directly from sunlight, CO2 and photosynthetic microorganisms, beginning with algae.
"It is imperative, both economically and for national security reasons, that American companies figure out ways to produce oil here at home," said Sapphire co-founder Kristina Burow of ARCH Venture Partners, the company's founding investor. "Imagine if even a portion of the $200 billion we spend on foreign crude stayed here: The payoff in new jobs, and domestic economic growth would be huge."
Posted by ttr at 05/30/2008 @ 12:15am
Posted by srjenkins at 05/29/2008
Yes, I have heard of those MOVEMENTS...
how many translated into a governing politic?
Posted by Mask at 05/30/2008 @ 09:03am
Posted by Mask at 05/30/2008
I don't know. Do you want to argue that the American Revolution didn't translate into a governing politic? Or that there haven't been election of Democrats and Republicans based on populism? Maybe politicans like Andrew Jackson or Huey Long got their positions based on something other than populism? Maybe failed politicans like Ross Perot or John Edwards didn't have a populist message that shaped the respective races they were in? What argument do you wish to make?
Posted by srjenkins at 05/30/2008 @ 1:48pm
Do you want to argue that the American Revolution didn't translate into a governing politic? Or that there haven't been election of Democrats and Republicans based on populism? Maybe politicans like Andrew Jackson or Huey Long got their positions based on something other than populism? Maybe failed politicans like Ross Perot or John Edwards didn't have a populist message that shaped the respective races they were in? What argument do you wish to make?---Posted by srjenkins at 05/30/2008
Well
1. I'm a fan of the Revolution, but as many on the Left note...the "guys in charge" were white....landowners....MALE....and a goodly number of slave-holders.
So not sure where the "populism" is?
2. Sure there have been "elections" where populism supported Dems or Repubs...but that didn't translate into a governing majority...else we'd have HISTORICAL examples of populism to go on....I haven't seen you or anybody mention one yet.
3. Re-read your "Jacksonian democracy"...true, it spoke of the "common man" and granted sufferage to all non-landowning white males....but it also supported the PATRONAGE system (spoils to the winner)....it supported STRICT CONSTRUCTIONALIST views of the Constitution (sound familiar?)....and LAISSEZ-FAIRE economics (again, familiar?)
It also supported Manifest Destiny for America to conquer the continent.
Any of that sound "populist" as now defined?
4. "Maybe failed politicans like Ross Perot or John Edwards didn't have a populist message that shaped the respective races they were in?"
What is the KEY word, an adjective before "politicians"...in that phrase?
Posted by Mask at 05/30/2008 @ 2:50pm
Posted by lvliberty1 at 05/30/2008
It's a point of fact, LVL, that you can't have a global war on "terror" or the military capability required for your ideas of fighting Islam, without a huge central government.
I understand the conflict. I'm not particularly interested in bad ideas like selling off our National Parks to help make the federal government smaller or to put "defense" in the hands of states.
Still, I acknowledge that left and right don't have particularly high ground when it comes to shrinking government, and libertarians - despite their protests to the contrary - don't have good arguments when they propose that property rights will protect the environment, ignore facts like most markets aren't free, or pretend that having commons - such as parks - would be better if someone owned them. There is truth in each of these positions. So, to pretend you have some special claim on the truth here is simply false.
Posted by Mask at 05/30/2008
""Who will govern the governors?" There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government." - Thomas Jefferson
Beard thesis aside, I don't think you can claim the founders didn't lead a populist revolution based on self-government, simply because it wasn't perfect - particularly given your consistent commentary on "purists".
It is obvious that populism was at the heart of many an administration. You need go no further than the current race. If you don't think Obama's message isn't a populist one, you need to put down the crack pipe.
As for Jackson, again, you make the argument that if it's not perfect populism, it's not populism. The problem is in your definition.
And as a parting shot, the failed populism of Perot was directly responsible for a Clinton presidency.
Posted by srjenkins at 05/30/2008 @ 4:31pm
Posted by lvliberty1 at 05/30/2008
I'm not sure what you are talking about in your first comment. I do favor local control and decentralized power.
If it is about national parks, I was talking about the libertarian argument of privatising them in a free market - which would likely eliminate them altogther. Could states run them? Sure. But what about states that have large national parks with every incentive to sell them off piecemeal? This is why I'm left libertarian, because I know that competition costs, the free market is rarely free and that sometimes it helps to have economies of scale that only government can provide. The trick is to make sure that we are careful to limit the powers such that they don't usurp more than we have given them and more than is necessary for them to provide a useful service.
Which brings me to your second point, as Donald Rumsfield pointed out, you don't go to war with the army you wish you had, you go with the army you do have. In order to make it possible to conduct a war like Iraq, you have to have massive military spending, military infrastructure, etc. I know you know the arguments that the founding fathers had against a standing army and the threat that poses to liberty, so I won't bother rehashing them here. I'll simply quote Jefferson:
"There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army." --Thomas Jefferson
Posted by srjenkins at 05/30/2008 @ 5:30pm
wow! excellent post. excellent comments.
thanks
:)
Posted by loveloki at 05/31/2008 @ 12:26am
We'll "settle down a bit"...maybe swing back to Clintonism, maybe a HAIR further left....but that's it.
Just take what you can get.
Posted by Mask
just crossin' my toes.
both nations i mentioned seem to have finally left behind a looooooong history of BLOOD.
just crossin' my toes.
kinda like this guy:
http://www.drtonguestoys.com/store/products/ComicCartoonCharacters/52124 69139.jpg
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/31/2008 @ 02:01am
Posted by ttr
that's cool.
kinda worry about the co2....
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/31/2008 @ 02:04am
You are running counter to their argument that a huge central government is an absolute need, not something that can get in the way of empowering the people.
I look forward to many more leftists chiming in on this thread to discuss the "problems" your solution would bring.
Posted by lvliberty1
heck no ;+]
i am the most important government.
my "laws" are the most important.
i must set the precedent.
the farther removed the entity, the less likely the entity's governing will be effective.
nonetheless, some problems because of their massive scale, require a (up to) global organization in order to achieve success.
sure i can keep my garden clean, but the sky is shared by everyone.
and certain problems are so big that uniting peoples wealth on a national (if one must use such a crass term) just makes sense.
hey, weren't you a government employee for a long time?
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/31/2008 @ 02:11am
Posted by srjenkins at 05/30/2008
I'm using the definition of populism that Ms Teachout is using.
Of course there's SOME "populism" to our form of government, else it wouldn't be a democracy with a social welfare state and legal protections for the individual.
But it's never going to be the dream of post-60s populism...hardly even Long's "Share the Wealth", etc.
In a way, you could say, we should do what the CONSERVATIVES want...but don't think through...that is a return to the FIFTIES economic model, which supported the New Deal, but kept it in check from devolving into the European model.
Posted by Mask at 05/31/2008 @ 4:05pm
Posted by JOMAMMA at 05/31/2008
Funny how the vaunted 5% Ayn Rand heroes (Gates, Buffet, Murdoch) don't do their thing in lawless, corrupt countries.
This is because the very government you dismiss as an obstacle, as a wimpy, liberal, socialist hindrance to all that's good and proper and brave and worthy, is the precondition your heroes rely upon.
An ingenious idea resulting in a patent and unique product, a market niche, doesn't mean squat without rules and regs.
Moreover, your heroes - like Limbaugh or Bush - rely on false capitalism, on the blend of multinationals and federal government (corporatocracy) not true competition.
Look at the talk radio space, do you really believe it is representative of the demographics. Do you really believe the fact that there's nothing even remotely close to the Clear Channel product domination (Limbaugh, OReilly, Savage, Hannity) is because they simply reflect the customer base?
You'll be better off when you grow up and out of the Ayn Rand / neocon fantasy of meritocracy and heroes.
Lockheed/MSNBC and Clear Channel/Limbaugh and Halliburton/Cheney are precisely what Jefferson and Eisenhour and so many true studs warned of -
They're gutting your America and you're praising them like kids cheer the invented heroes in Disney films.
Posted by winyahn at 05/31/2008 @ 4:50pm
BTW, we have a German student in our house, and this week his parrents came to to visit us...you should hear the disdain of Euro socialism and the health care system..from the Germans themselves.
Posted by JOMAMMA at 05/31/2008
mr and mrs germany at the maasch house.
vox populi, to be sure.
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/31/2008 @ 8:34pm
They're gutting your America and you're praising them like kids cheer the invented heroes in Disney films.
Posted by winyahn
check out this "hero" from the "good" folks at disney*.
http://www.slate.com/id/2190255/
*Divisions ABC, ABC Family, ABC Kids, Walt Disney Distribution, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Disney Channel, Disney Channel Original, ESPN, ESPN2, Jetix, Walt Disney Studios, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Walt Disney Television Animation, Walt Disney Records, Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Miramax Films, ABC Studios, Playhouse Disney, Disney Consumer Products, Pixar, Soapnet,Monkeyman&BaboonBaby,Lego! Disney Interactive Studios, Muppets Holding Company, Disney Store, and Toon Disney
damn!
they swallowed the muppets!
boo!
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/31/2008 @ 8:40pm
booooooooo!
Posted by frosty zoom at 05/31/2008 @ 8:40pm
I think one thing is an expert and another an insider. Experts are required in all fields as they have studied their disciplines for long time. Insiders are "experts or not quite", that have been absorbed by the system and are conditioned by the system requirements and rigidities and so they no longer are able to think creatively.
Populism has always been demonized by most politicians and experts (political pundits) as "a cheap way of trying to please an auditorium without pointing at the political and economical costs"...but we tend to overlook that often it contains the substance of the worries of the common citizen. So smaller doses of populism are required always as they represent addressing the citizens' daily concerns with responsibility.
Edwards' populist rhetoric represented the wishes and daily problems of the say 30 million people that happen to be at the lowest place in the socio economic scale. And I felt that if his proposals were fully funded there was no reason not to put them in place because it is a scandal that people in America will have that kind of living standards.
The key therefore is balance. Balance between populism and experts. Balance between insiders and fresh lookers. Balance between politics as usual and innovation. But yet the worst thing a person in power (say a President) can do is forget common people.
Posted by Frank42 at 06/01/2008 @ 1:56pm
Posted by JOMAMMA at 05/31/2008
Whom does Bain or Carlyle serve? If you could ever find your way to less of a binary mindset (especially vis a vis your illusions of a free market), you'd have a better grip on reality.
But you're so infatuated with alpha silverback Cheneys and Limbaugh. This is the problem explained by the empirically-validated work on authoritarian followers. You actually buy the lie that they've earned their positions.
The levels of government regulation and social programs that you claim to prefer lead to outcomes like you see in many third world countries where you clearly prefer not to live and neither do I. Too much restriction on capitalism, and too costly safety nets is also suffocating and seen throughout Europe. We need reward-based population controls. Beyond this we need government to guard us, protect us (military) from enemy, and protect our markets from insider trading, monopolization, etc. You wouldn't spend so much time arguing the other side of this coin if you didn't have some degree of a handle on this. At the same time, the more you argue in the simplistic, binary manner you do, the more you miss.
Posted by winyahn at 06/01/2008 @ 3:31pm
Posted by JOMAMMA at 06/1/2008
When you subscribe to the belief that "5% produce and the rest consume," it explains what is so horribly wrong in your analysis.
But, I'll bite. Take any of the top five billionaries in the world on Forbes list and explain what these men have "produced". Buffet manipulated markets. Carlos Slim Helu made his fortune off government privatization of telcos. Bill Gates off a software monopoly. Lakshmi Mittal off investing an inheritence. Mukesh Ambani also off investing an inheritence. Same goes for his brother Anil Ambani who is #6 on the list.
If you feel that the top 5 is overly restrictive, feel free to cherry pick to make your case. I don't think you can do it even then.
Also, I'd like to know exactly what you mean by "produced". Does the fact that someone has millions or billions given to them by the accident of their birth make some people into producers and those of low birth "consumers"?
Explain this rational. I think there is some merit to your redistribution of wealth argument, but the rationalization that it is because some people "produce" and others don't - well, that's sheer fantasy and sinks your whole position.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/03/05/richest-people-billionaires-billionaire s08-cx_lk_0305billie_land.html
Posted by srjenkins at 06/01/2008 @ 6:10pm
Add to this that the 5% trickle all over India, China more than they do Louisiana or Ohio. And they practically run congress so they can legally divert profits offshore.
They may produce a lot, but they certainly exploit a lot. "U.S. deficit at record high and rising"
Posted by winyahn at 06/02/2008 @ 8:11pm
I have noted, in reading comments on certain subjects - veganism or climate change for example, that Many people are not subject to logic, and when their world view is challenged by simple facts, they react with intense anger and even intenser denial. That could be a problem in populism, as it is a very common trait. I live in a state where nobody questions red meat and oil, and any movement toward populism would probably result in fatalities (our fact-less friends settle for marginalization of "weirdos" for now.) Encouraging people to take up the reins does nothing toward increasing their commitment to reality or ability to actually debate a topic or to live-and-let-live. On another note, even our own Revolution was largely engineered by American businessmen for their own profit, and the whole thing was "spun" in a populist tone. The people were fooled, or desperate for any improvement, so they bit. Populism is as vulnerable to manipulation by whatever powers that be as any other structure of power. Organizing groups and taking responsibility for what we believe in is, off the cuff, a Great idea and antidote to our current condition, but do we have the requisite skills? I mean, who wants the KKK to come storming back?
Posted by jenni_poo at 06/03/2008 @ 12:35pm