Populism and Economic Prosperity

It seems that you make a populist argument.

Populism: the idea of the "common people" in opposition to a perceived elite. Frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment.

Indeed. The article did mention that in a succinct way, but you do a good job of laying the machinery more bare.

This dynamic is hard to break, because this concept is so foreign to 'regular' people, they can't spot it, even if it is in front of their own eyes. Their have an ingrained concept of cooperative and constructive behavior in a social context, they derive their sense of dignity in part from it, they learn it is their path to success.

An interpretation is classic grade school class President runs on "no homework" or "free lunch", things people will vote for because they sound good for them now, not because they have merit.

Lower income taxes sounds great today, but greater wealth inequality and no social safety net making wealth meaningless (population level poverty and poor social mobility make life for even the wealthy worse)

Populism is when people get what they vote for, as opposed to "democracy" where parties don't actually implement what they promise. "Democracy" is when the government thinks people are idiots and shouldn't be listened to because the "elite" knows better.

So if you vote based on your happiness and thigs you care about as opposed to voting to optimize the "GDP", then you're a populist voter.

And if you get what you want (instead of increased GDP at all costs) then the government is populist.

And if then you're happy, then you're a fascist.

That's not the definition, the definition of populism w.r.t. this paper is well defined. It is literally on page 2:

> We benefited greatly from the fact that the academic literature of recent years has converged on a consensus definition of populism that is easily applicable across space and time and for right-wing and left-wing populists alike. According to today’s workhorse definition, populism is defined as a political style centered on the supposed struggle of “people vs. the establishment” (Mudde 2004). Populists place the narrative of “people vs. elites” at the center of their political agenda and then claim to be the sole representative of “the people.” This definition has become increasingly dominant, and is now also widely used by economists (see Section 2, and the recent survey paper by Guriev and Papaioannou, 2020). Populist leaders claim to represent the “true, common people” against the dishonest “elites,” thus separating society into two seemingly homogeneous and antagonistic groups.

A surprisingly decent discussion of populism and backsliding democracy here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_backsliding

> Seems like the definition is "when people dont vote the way I like".

You should give the message another try, sincerely. It might come across like that if the environment has become a polarized world, where it is not about policy, but about the tribe one identifies with. I guess you are sick of that, and I am sure the author doesn't mean anything like that.

What he talks are real world consequences if politics doesn't concern itself with policy for the people, but rather focuses on the bare quest for maximum of power, often helped by the 0.01%, by deliberately misleading people, usually to advance the interests of those 0.01%, and so getting the populus to vote against their own interests. That phenomenon is known and measurable, as the article demonstrates.

> Whats the difference between populism and democracy?

Populism is a type of political messaging. Democracy is a system of government. They’re orthogonal concepts.

True, but GDP is often a decent proxy for material living standards, especially across countries and over time (so long as we note what it leaves out).

GDP per capita is far more correlated with prosperity. In western countries GDP per capita is being intentionally driven off a cliff.

If I knew I'd die in <10 years then I'd vote for the "short term" solution and believe or not - this would NOT be irrational on my end.

People might have different interests and they vote for themselves.

There are asymmetries. Right wing populists have an easy time getting elected and left-wing populists don’t, at least not in the core.

Studies now show that an overwhelming majority Americans don’t believe the economic system is fair

https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/most-americans-think-economy-rig...

some of the problem the Democrats have is that they’re supposed to be a left wing party that is responsive to those kind of concerns but they’ve gotten trapped in a “protect institutions no matter what the cost” mentality which has the cost of losing.

For instance people really want to believe that the recent spike in house prices has been caused by private equity or a monopoly of home builders or some other “other”. I don’t know what the truth is but when so many people feel this way politicians have to do something about it and I can tell you one of the things I learned about activism early on is that if you tell people that they’re feeling the wrong way they will react even more violently against you than if you tell them they are thinking the wrong way.

Consider a hybrid approach where the winner is randomly selected from the top 10 vote winners.

> I always wondered if a random-cracy wouldn't be better in the end, just pick anyone that cares to have a position by lottery and have a limited term and basic checks and balances.

This seems like a pretty decent idea to me. Instead of making it the main legislative body though Id have it like the house of lords. Expected to pass laws passed by the democratic body but with the ability to say no if things get crazy. No duty to engage with politics, they just get paid to focus on whether the laws actually make sense.

It is called sortition.

Can we at least agree on what populism is? Because one way or another, every party "uses" that.

From the article:

> There are obviously countless issues in any analysis of this type, like how a populist government is defined, how you do the counterfactual, how you ensure you are not getting reverse causality (i.e. bad economic times encourage the election of populists etc) and so on. For those interested in those issues the paper is very readable.

Did you read the paper in question?

He explicitly mentions it in the 3rd paragraph

> There are obviously countless issues in any analysis of this type, like ... how you ensure you are not getting reverse causality (i.e. bad economic times encourage the election of populists etc) and so on. For those interested in those issues the paper is very readable.

This is, IMO, a result of being in ecological overshoot. We've financed our growth as a species on the back of a limited supply of energy, and we're gonna go war-mode in order to win the musical chairs game that will happen as constraints on energy slow down upward economic progress. Global debt is an unfillable claim on future prosperity - We've kept kicking the can down the road until it's become feral and grown teeth. Stupid can is trying to bite our feet.