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Ytlaya posted:Regardless, if you had to judge our current society, decisions are definitely more dictated by "elites" than they are experts (or more accurately, it's dictated by the experts who elites choose to listen to).
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Oct 17, 2017 05:23
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asdf32 posted:Climate change is a classic tragedy of the commons problem and a global problem which make it a perfect problem for highlighting the dangers of both populism in general and the specific nationalist populism that’s ascendant right now. You're confusing the populist appeal with the ends for which the powerful use it. Nationalism, racism, class envy, etc are the populist appeals. You can motivate people to vote for universal health care with a populist appeal to class envy (the rich make profits by gouging you and denying you care!). You can also motivate people against universal health care with a populist appeal to racism (black people will use more healthcare and there won't be any for you!) There are very few people who are a natural constituency for polluters (and they're mostly people who work in the industry, who could be bought off if Democrats offered them something other than booooootstraaaaaaps as we shift away from fossil fuels). Racism, nationalism, these are present in lots of people and populists can appeal to them: inaction on climate change is purely an elite interest that they manipulate people into supporting. Most Republicans would change their minds on climate change on a dime if the elites stopped opposing it, the rank-and-file only oppose it because of bullshit or as a rationalization ("Republican politicians are good people like me, if they don't care about climate change then it must not be a big deal or else they'd be bad people and I would be bad or dumb for supporting them"). And those same elites are why the Democratic party, despite their constituency's overwhelming support for drastic carbon cuts, can only propose the limpest half-assedest measures (which conveniently can be attacked as "not sufficient anyway so it's a waste of money") asdf32 posted:Say what you want about the existing global elite but they are global and have succeeded at submerging nationalism and creating rudamentary global systems and institutions which are a necessary foundation for global agreements and global cooperation. So did FDR. It is not an either/or we have to have liberal capitalism or we can't have global cooperation (actually neoliberalism undermines global cooperation because it pits workers against each other in a race-to-the-bottom to attract freely-moving capital). And the global elite have also been undermining those systems and institutions with austerity, with hostility to labor and friendliness to capital, with decades of grinding down standards of living while the rich hoover up more and more of the wealth, leaving people feeling betrayed, atomized, powerless and therefore susceptible to racism, nationalism, and conspiracy theories that make them feel powerful again. Bernie is described as a populist, but he's really not, or not more so than any other politician. He says things people want to hear, but every politician does that, every politician says I want jobs and I want health care. His proposals aren't voodoo nonsense like Reaganomics or the Democrats' Third Way, in fact pretty much everything Bernie proposed on health care, on education, on labor, on housing was the expert and political consensus for decades after WW2, and is still the expert consensus today. The political and economic elite just ignores reputable economists and prefers to elevate Chicago school shysters who tell them what they want to hear: that what is good for the corporate bottom line is good for the country. When these people are held up as experts, and their advice destroys country after country wrecks the economy again and again, you and I can determine what went wrong, but a lot of people look around at their ruined communities and say "the experts said this would work and it didn't, how can we trust them", and so you get poo poo like Brexit where the arguments for were bullshit plus "the economy sucks, obviously the experts are wrong don't listen to them". Populism is always present in any society, but it stays relatively powerless when people trust their government and are more afraid of the unknown than the status quo. When that changes, it's because the status quo isn't working and those in charge are mismanaging affairs and losing the trust of the people. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 06:07 on Oct 17, 2017 |
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Oct 17, 2017 06:03
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