
How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul - enraged_camel
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/how-democrats-killed-their-populist-soul/504710/?single_page=true
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enraged_camel
Money quote:

 _" [Supreme Court Justice Louis] Brandeis’s basic contention, built up over a
lifetime of lawyering from the Gilded Age onward, was that big business and
democracy were rivals. “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth
concentrated in the hands of a few,” he said, “but we can’t have both.”
Economics, identity, and politics could not be divorced, because financial
power—bankers and monopolists—threatened local communities and self-
government."_

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philipkglass
_The essence of populist politics is that political and economic freedom are
deeply intertwined—that real democracy requires not just an opportunity to
vote but an opportunity to compete in an open marketplace._

There's a deep confusion at the heart of the article. Wal-Mart got huge
_because_ it was extremely competitive and because most regions' marketplaces
were open to its very effective competition. The argument is confused because
it's trying to criticize some outcomes of markets without admitting that those
outcomes are _natural to_ market competition and only preventable by non-
market mechanisms. He can't just say "markets have both good and bad effects."
Every unwanted effect of the markets has to be rhetorically set off as if it
were separate from the Real Market, which every right-thinking American knows
to be made of unalloyed goodness. _Members of the jury, my client did not take
that purse; the arm and hand incidentally attached to my client took that
purse._

The author doesn't want powerful corporations or individuals to have too much
economic clout, relative to the median citizen. I am sympathetic to that. But
he gets twisted in pretzels trying to praise that kind of freedom in the
vocabulary of market freedom. It doesn't work. Big business is the natural
outcome of robust competition between smaller businesses. (Not every natural
thing is desirable.)

Reviving small grocers and other fondly remembered set decorations from Main
Street Americana would require substantial _protections from_ competition for
small business. It would also tend to increase retail prices. A Mom and Pop
retailer cannot obtain much economy of scale. That may be acceptable to
prevent overlarge accumulations of financial power in private hands. I'm open
to that argument. But I have enough capital that I could imagine joining the
re-invigorated ranks of the petite bourgeoisie if I didn't have to compete
with bigger businesses; most Americans don't have even that.

At one step further back, my reaction to this article is: Were the last good
populist ideas invented before 1960? Is the future of populism a nostalgia-off
between conservatives LARPing as coal miners and liberals LARPing as trust-
busters? Enough with looking for greatness in the rear view mirror, already.
America's post-WW II economic golden age was a one time only deal. Think about
dealing with the future starting from 2017 instead of 1947.

