
Populism is the result of global economic failure - mathoff
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/26/populism-is-the-result-of-global-economic-failure?CMP=share_btn_fb
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s_kilk
Basically: neoliberalism is shit and everyone hates it.

People who are deeply invested in this ghastly status-quo quake at the
prospect of the proles finally demanding a less insane mode of economy, hence
all the blithering about populism.

~~~
erelde
USA "proles" fell for populism and elected the worst neocapitalist team
possible, against their own interests, that's what we're talking about when we
talk about "populism".

By and large people (demographically) who voted for the democrats won't be
much affected by the GOP gov, but the people who voted for the GOP will be
badly affected.

If a mod comes here, I vote for closing this post, I feel it is very very
prone to political flame wars.

~~~
DarkKomunalec
Sharing your country and resources with immigrants is also against one's self-
interest, but we don't label _that_ as irrational.

~~~
lumberjack
How about your stop shitting on immigrants and blaming them for everything?

It only fosters irrational hate and causes unnecessary violence.

It's not like those immigrants are occupying good paying low skill jobs that
could otherwise be done by Americans. They do fruit picking in California for
below minimum wage.

Immigration is used as a scapegoat.

Look at Germany. They have the same policies. They have immigration. They have
open borders and they have free trade policies and they fully embrace
globalism.

Yet Germany retained its high paying relatively low skill jobs and the US
didn't. The reason is simply that the various CEOs in the respective countries
decided on different business strategies. In the US it seems they decided to
go with low cost manufacturing in China/Mexico.

~~~
DarkKomunalec
Immigration increases the supply of low-skilled labour, thus lowering wages.
And since a good deal of the US economy is based on exporting, the increase in
the demand for labour due to the presence of immigrants is smaller (i.e., they
don't have to be in the US to buy iPhones and Snickers bars).

Finally, people are naturally tribalistic - you can blame evolution for that
one. Until we fix that, immigration will increase ethnic tensions, which serve
as a distraction for corporations to use while they rob you.

But I guess I'm just being irrational..

~~~
Sone7
It does seem a little bit irrational to state that immigration is being used
by corps to distract us, while ignoring the positive aspects of it.

Also, saying that people are naturally tribalistic, because of evolution,
fails to take into account that we're not slaves to our impulses, and that
evolution blatantly favours cooperation over competition.

~~~
DarkKomunalec
Tribalism is as much about cooperation as about competition - help the
virtuous Us to drive out the villainous Them.

It makes it no less easy to abuse however, e.g. "Look at those no-good _black_
welfare queens with their 12 kids paid for by good honest _white_ people! Cut
social spending!"

~~~
candiodari
Some credit should be given to the war cry of the current (still pretty much
current) regime : let's help the favored classes (I would say the weak, but
lots of weak classes find themselves excluded) and everything will get better
for everyone !

And then, for about 16 years, since the crisis of 2000 ... it didn't get
better for everyone. Real income has been dropping since the 1980s, but it was
almost steady until 1999. And then healthcare, fuel/energy and education
really exploded. Of course this is the result of the crisis in 2008, which was
of course not caused in 2008, but before then.

Obama got elected on the same platform as Trump, really. He was going to
change things. Hope and change. The famous blue and red posters, his own
characteristic style, all very memorable and well executed. An abundance of
hope, but I must say the change was found somewhat lacking. Despite a nobel
peace prize, Guantanamo was not closed, and there was a massive 2008 crisis,
rather than a recovery (yes Obama promised an economic recovery from the
situation BEFORE the 2008 crisis, remember ? The Bush tax cuts were the big
bogeyman at the time).

Then the experience of the crisis came. Even if you weren't one of the people
who kept the debt but lost their home, very few people did well during the
crisis. Then there was the initial pullback, but aside from the 1% with lots
of stocks nobody was really made whole.

Then the FED "fixed" this. They came up with what's commonly known as the "PCE
deflator" because of oil. You see, because of the huge fuel/energy price rise
people were using much less energy, and as a result it shouldn't be counted in
inflation (or else inflation would have been close to 10%). Likewise, people
use less housing, same reasoning.

That's great, but ... people still had less fuel/energy as a result, the banks
just refused to count that as inflation. There's a famous Y Combinator article
titled "There's a remarkable correlation between the quality of life and
energy use". Likewise people have enjoyed less housing, all of which is not
counted ...

Despite this massive adjustment to favor economic indicators under Obama, his
policies have not improved the situation of the average American. All together
I would say that, on a large average, and without counting inflation,
Americans have gotten back about half of what they lost in the 2008 crisis.
Counting CPI inflation sadly I'd say it's more like 20%.

And now they elect the other party.

The response "They must be evil racists !" (because let's be honest,
"tribalism" is no more than a euphemism) seems like it might be missing the
point a bit, aside from being entirely unhelpful.

~~~
AstralStorm
Pity US has just one party in two colours. The party for rich. Both sides take
in a lot of support and allow lobbying.

~~~
candiodari
In Europe the situation is very different. We simply have political parties
that are job plans for their administrators. Doing what the rich want means
they also get to divide up jobs on corporate boards and that makes all of them
... also parties for the rich.

------
grabcocque
This is the same argument left academics have been using to excuse the
repeated failure of electorates to vote for socialism for a century.

It's not a new argument. And it nicely avoids left wing thought ever having to
take responsibility for its own electoral failures.

~~~
ue_
Can you give any more references to the sort of thing you're talking about? I
believe it's lack of significant class consciousness and the large-scale
remnants of propaganda from the Cold War (on which many if not most people are
misinformed about Socialism) which are the biggest obstacles to electing a
Socialist candidate.

~~~
raverbashing
What's there to be misinformed about socialism when they gave us the Berlin
Wall and big socioeconomic disadvantages that were not solved even in East
Germany today (not to mention Eastern Europe as a whole). Those are facts, not
misinformation. Not to mention the usual excuses of "not real socialism"

And those were the ones who got the "best" socialism

"Class consciousness" is divide and conquer crap

~~~
ue_
> Not to mention the usual excuses of "not real socialism"

I feel as though I've gone into this a thousand times. If I had a penny for
every time someone said this, I'd invest in stocks and shares and become a
capitalist.

The act of refusing to back up or defend all or any implementations or
interpretations of an idea, especially given pre-existing economic conditions
and various external factors is by no means making a No True Scotsman fallacy.

Even if I were to accept your premise that Socialism actually existed in GDR,
it wouldn't rule out anarcho-Communism, anarchism, communalism, gradualist
Communism, non-Leninist Marxism and a whole host of other leftist ideologies.

Class consciousness refers to the proletariat recognising their interests as a
class; it is only divide and conquer in the sense that recognising the
_division_ of society (albeit a little more fuzzy nowadays) between the
bourgeoisie and proletariat is a startig point to _conquer_ capitalism.

~~~
raverbashing
> I feel as though I've gone into this a thousand times.

And repeating it doesn't make it true, though repeating a lie makes some
people start believing it

> it wouldn't rule out ... and a whole host of other leftist ideologies.

Agreed on that

> Class consciousness refers to the proletariat recognising

Splitting the population into proletariat and 'big bad businessman' excludes
all those that work for themselves, excludes the non-factory workers (hence it
is a division made to divide and conquer). Not to mention the fallacy of the
surplus value, because apparently to Marxists having a factory costs nothing
and somehow businessman would hire people if that cost them more than they're
getting out of it.

Your proletariat will be increasingly replaced by robots, and as much as I'm
in favour of giving everybody living conditions all socialism has given is
poor conditions to everybody except if you were one of the higher ups.

~~~
ue_
>Splitting the population into proletariat and 'big bad businessman' excludes
all those that work for themselves, excludes the non-factory workers (hence it
is a division made to divide and conquer)

No it doesn't. Those who work for themselves are peit-bourgeois, who own the
MoP but do not exploit labour; their trade is of commodity for commodity (e.g
money for a painting) rather than of labour-time for wage. As I said, the
division is rough, though for most people it exists very clearly. Those who
are petit-bourgeoise can be considered for the most part proletarians as they
are not exploiting labour; many transition to a state in which they employ
wage labour and at that point they immediately become in possession of private
property and bourgeois.

As Marx put it,

>The self-employed labourer, for example, is his own wage labourer, and his
own means of production confront him in his own mind as capital. As his own
capitalist, he employs himself as a wage labourer.

>excludes the non-factory workers

No. Engineers, project managers, accountants etc. who are employed for wage
labour are workers, because they add value to the product and they sell their
labour-time on the market to sustain themselves. They are in every respect
proletarians.

>because apparently to Marxists having a factory costs nothing

No. The costs of maintaining the factory are taken out of the revenue; the
profit which is left over at the end (i.e the amount extra which the
capitalist has in his bank account after the production process is complete)
is a result of surplus value, and is either used for the capitalist's personal
wealth, for shareholders, or re-investment into future actions of the
business. Maintenance of the machinery, rent etc. is all taket out of the
revenue and it is not profit.

Labour from machinery (i.e dead labour) is merely transferred to products, it
is not augmented or created a new. This is done in proportion to the wear and
tear of the machine.

>somehow businessman would hire people if that cost them more than they're
getting out of it.

Precisely. This is the whole point. Capitalism would not exist if the
capitalist could not profit; i.e if the workers would not give their value,
the capitalist would have no reason to employ them. The reason why businessmen
currently employ people is beacuse these workers are paid for their labour-
time but in the course of this inevitably provide surplus labour.

Even in a system of equal exchanges, this still happens. It is clear that
workers apply some amount of value that the capitalist can sell despite paying
for the labour-time he purchased because when strikes happen, the capitalist
makes less money (tending to no money in the long term).

>Your proletariat will be increasingly replaced by robots

Again, you are right on the money. But not everyone can be replaced by robots,
beacuse people need to buy back products with their wages. So capitalism must
keep people employed, so when one job is taken by a robot, it is very
advantageous for the capitalist to find another job for the displaced worker.
This happens with sponsorship of the state, such as with job seeker's
programmes.

I suggest that robotics be used to help workers rather than be used against
them. The fact that a worker doesn't need to work as much should be an
advantage, but instead the capitalist makes the worker produce more. It has
been estimated that people would only have to work between 7 and 8 hours a
week if automation were used to make life easier for the workers rather than
short-term profit for the capitalist.

I advocate for direct democratic control of the means of production by
distributed voluntarily organised of self-interested workers; the workers
receive the product of their labour and any surplus product is subject to a
collective democratic decision as to how it will be distribtuted, probably to
those who cannot work (e.g elderly, infirm and children) or those who do not
need to work because production is so efficient.

Large-scale automation is used against the workers in capitalism. In
Socialism, it can be used for the workers to improve living conditions, as the
falling rate of profit would be of no concern at all in a society where
products are made for use rather than exchange.

------
zip1234
I see Donald Trump and Brexit more as a protest against the status quo--which
does not mean that the entire system is terrible. It could just mean that
people want reforms that benefit the public good and not just some Senator's
home state.

~~~
dukeluke
An issue with the current system is that while the people wanted a change
candidate, our two-party political system almost successfully suppressed a
change candidate from emerging from both sides, and _did_ successfully
suppress one of them, Sanders. If the political system can't adapt to change,
then how can it successfully evolve?

------
friedman23
I find it extremely amusing when one side bashes the other for being anti
intellectual and then goes on to bash economists. Anyway, I stopped reading at
wage slave, what a load of crap.

~~~
Sone7
Er, mainstream economists. Considering their record, mainstream economists
seem far more anti-intellectual than most of their 'bashers'. Though your
handle suggests this might be hard for you to swallow.

Also, wage slaves do exist. America is full of them, and it's very much
deliberate and intentional. I knew an extremely kind and bubbly lady with the
incredible skill of recognizing every one she's ever met, no matter how long
ago. She could remember their name, and the names of their whole family. She
worked two crap paying full-time jobs to support her small family, and did not
have any options, because of America's totally fucked welfare system. That's a
wage slave. With respect, if you think wage slavery isn't a thing in America
you're in a very strange bubble.

~~~
friedman23
> Considering their record, mainstream economists seem far more anti-
> intellectual than most of their 'bashers'

You don't explain why you believe this. Please go ahead and explain why _you_
believe that economists are anti intellectuals and please explain what their
horrible record is.

> She worked two crap paying full-time jobs to support her small family, and
> did not have any options, because of America's totally fucked welfare
> system. That's a wage slave.

No you don't understand. I know that a term called 'wage slave' exists and
that people have given it definition that is completely unrelated to what
actual slavery is. I think it is insulting to the actual slavery that still
exists on this planet.

Suffering because of your stupid life decisions is not slavery.

~~~
Sone7
Alright, I'll do my best. Your ignorant comment about people's "stupid life
decisions" (ever hear of a thing called "bad luck"?) suggests I'll be pissing
into the wind, but alright.

Most mainstream economists (with a few 'sort of' exceptions like Hayek and
Krugman) think of their field as a science, when it's really not. They speak
as if they had authority and empirical evidence, when they really don't.

They allow economic warfare against Africa, South America, poor Americans,
Greece, Italy, Ireland, etc. to go unchecked. They issue recommendations that
consistently favour the wealthiest, the central banks, the status quo. Those
who differ, such as Varoufakis, are ridiculed and chuckled at, while ignoring
their arguments.

They lack any introspection or ability to examine their mistakes. Few, very
few, mainstream economists chose to make their voices heard about the economic
crash of '08\. Contrary to the myth they spread that it was "unforeseeable",
many people knew that house prices were getting way out of control. I knew, my
friends knew, but somehow economists didn't know... Goldman and others
deliberately sold shitty bundles, and mainstream economists let them off the
hook completely, even when the facts came to light. Now it's happening again,
and they're still silent.

They quote Adam Smith to support their arguments, though he would have hated
the system we have now. Alternative views to the dogma of mainstream 'economic
theory' are mocked, rather than engaged with.

In the history of economic brutality - colonialism, apartheid, the financing
of wars - there are very precious few economists willing to speak up about the
effects on the least well off. They get denounced as naive, and have trouble
finding jobs.

Where are the mainstream economists talking about the future of our species,
the ones with some fucking vision, some foresight, some creativity, some
unique thought, some compassion? Unem-fucking-ployed, that's where.

Almost by definition, mainstream economists refuse to challenge the status
quo. And the status quo is fucked for the vast majority of human beings. We
are nowhere near our potential, and mainstream economists spend their time
debating miniscule changes in tax policy.

Despite the economic impact and effects of unchecked global surveillance, they
say nothing.

Despite the economic impact of continuous increases in military spending, they
say nothing.

They'd lose their cushy job, and deep down they fucking know it.

And after all that, they only speak up whenever someone comes along who wants
to help people and bring them together. They're trotted out on Fox News and
CNN to denounce Bernie Sanders' economic policies, despite the fact that those
policies are practically substandard in Europe. What did they say about Trump?
In comparison, nothing.

And yes, "actual slavery" exists. But in what economic course in the world do
students grapple with those issues? Where are the leading lights, the clear
voices in economics telling us what we can do about it?

Feel free to tell me how wacky, unrealistic and naive I'm being. Projection is
a funny 'ol thing. But here's your major clue that they're full of shit, and
anti-intellectual - in the history of mainstream economists, time and time
again they've been proven utterly wrong about major things. "Trickle-down",
"austerity", "cutting taxes on the rich drives growth", Brexit, Trump, '08\.
But there's never any reflection, never any expansion into inter-disciplinary
approaches.

Economics, as taught today, tries to make people simple, cogs in a vast
machine that only economists can understand. And even though they've been
wrong more often than nutrionists, and more catastrophically, the text-books
stay the same. Inequality grows, and we're told it's a good thing. Too many
times economists have told us it's raining while we're being pissed on.

The real, respected, popular intellectuals - Feynman, Sagan, Einstein, Chomsky
tell us that mainstream economists are full of shit, and they've saif it far
more eloquently than I could. But economists sniff, and scoff, and laugh at
how ignorant they are, before calling poor people stupid and endorsing the
latest scam on the people of Earth.

I haven't had breakfast yet, so I hope this doesn't come across too harsh. I'm
sure I made some mistakes, and I know I swore a lot. Rather than nit-pick,
please engage with the major points.

------
stat_enthusiast
Honestly this is a terrible article. I don't know why these "journalists" have
such a hard time stepping out of their bubble. Ask a trump supporter it's
great for me but it blows my mind how ignorant these cosmopolitans are. I just
hope they keep their head in the sand so we can get another 4 years

~~~
zzalpha
You do realize you haven't said anything of any substance, right? I believe an
accurate summary would be as follows: "Terrible article. Bad. Ignorant elites.
Wrong."

Care to provide any useful insight? Just... something?

------
gkya
Populism is the failure of compulsory education and the beginnings of the fall
of the 20th century western nation-state. The system favours the more-popular
over the objectively-superior, and the biased, ancient mass schooling makes
that the rule instead of the exception. We'll have to abolish nations and any
sort of tribalism---how sophisticated might it be---or it'll decay by itself
hurting everybody until it disappears.

~~~
Mikeb85
So you're suggesting more indoctrination and the abolition of states aka.
conquest and colonialism?

Because the way we're going, there's going to be another world war long before
people willingly succumb to a global state...

~~~
gkya
I'm not suggesting those, nor am I suggesting anything at all. I just say what
I think the reasons and the future trajectory is.

No need to be _binary_ about the potential political changes. I only say that
nation-states are bad, I din't say that states per se are bad.

Also, the next world war won't be before anything but the end of all of us. I
didn't ever say anything about a global state, but what I think indeed is
that, analogous to programming, state should be contained in the smallest
possible context, that is, I think that smaller, more focused states with more
direct democracy and with more (respective to today's nation-states) people
that indeed share common values, would be more stable and peaceful. I know
that such an idea will get many objections (even I do have my objections), but
I believe such a political situation would be better for everyone.

