It's Sunday afternoon and I've smoked too much but here we go.... Populism is becoming increasingly common in democracies around the world (eg: US, UK, India, Peru etc.). Populism can work for good as long as the group is smart and try to push for reforms for greater good. But when idiots are deceived into believing that bad policies can benefit them....it just erodes away the progress. Civics and economics are commonly taught in schools but majority of the people can't fully comprehend modern macro issues and tend to focus on micro. This just allows predators to abuse data to focus on micro issues of largest denomination without ever focusing on macro issues. All in all everyone is just held back rather than moving forward.
Populism that appeals to the undereducated rural population is always what turns a democracy into a dictatorship
Undereducated yes, but even the urban population sometimes falls for it. Look what’s happening in Brazil or India.
^ Exactly! Educated people can fall prey to populist ideologies as well. Illiberal left is getting louder by the day. If you have good data to find what the most common pain point is, you can figure out how to abuse community to push for irrational decisions.
“Civics and economics are commonly taught in schools” — how are those taught and how much of empirical basis is used is a crucial factor.
True, but how do you even fix that? Some don't want to learn and some don't have access
Additionally, a free and independent media also plays a role. A strong media that calls the BS from populist politicians can help.
By looking at India, yes
^^ we are talking about functioning yet flawed democracies here, not failed states. There might be another post on failed/failing states where you can share your personal experiences from your country.
Yep! British taught indians that system of reservation was good and shitting on other groups was ok. India has never successfully recovered from it. It's a 🤡 circus in the name of democracy
No, the problem with modern democracies is that they are not meaningfully democratic enough. Since much of the actual functioning of society is controlled by non-democratic bureaucracies and private companies, there are restraints on popular democratic influence through elections. For example, the left-wing populist movements in Europe after the Great Recession could replace the old parties and politicians and get voted into power in some places but then the new populist parties were still left with crushing debt and economic mandates set by Germany. If left-wing populists try and go too far, then like in Chile, the rich people will shut down the economy and lock out workers until the populist government restores the old status quo. Right-wing populism is usually focused on a middle class minority and tends towards authoritarianism - strong-men to keep “the poors” and some individuals politicians or rich people in line. It usually has less resistance because it usually is not a threat to fundamental economic rules. They usually want economic changes in terms of trade or taxes, not changes in the power balance between rich and poor - in fact they fear that.
Hmmm....that's a great point
No, you should have one full vote just like smart people. The US has a bad track record of counting populations as fractions of a vote due to BS claims of superiority and inferiority.
And who arbiters who is smart enough for multiple votes? It's not like there's a pop quiz on econ before you cast a ballot....on second thought maybe there should be 🤔
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Look at what happened on Jan 6th. And leading up to that, Trump tried to steal the election. So yea