Instead of this: "Neoliberal institutions and ideas embody a project of global integration and governance that’s distinctly inimical to popular sovereignty."
Try this: "The US Constitution's institutions and ideas embody a project of governance that’s distinctly inimical to popular sovereignty."
Which is certainly true when it comes to anti-majoritarian prohibitions on violating "fundamental rights" and of other constitutional provisions. After all, the whole idea of having a republic and a constitution which is hard to amend (or of quaint, dying institutions like the Senate filibuster) is to put certain matters outside of what can be done with ordinary exercises of popular sovereignty. This isn't necessarily 'elitist', because often it's the elites pursuing a strategy of recruiting a bare majority of voters to allow those elites to try to make the awful changes those elites want to make, with the constitutional institutions inimical to popular sovereignty being all that's holding them back.
The fact is that practically no one is an anything-goes, absolutist-majoritarianist, direct-democratarian on every question. Instead, almost everyone who calls themselves a proponent of 'democracy' thinks there are some matters that are properly in the scope of what can be done with bare majorities, and other matters which require much higher supermajority levels of consensus (even in the case of unanimity among jurors), and even some matters which no government should ever be able to do at all no matter how popular they may be, and perhaps other actions which government must do, no matter how unpopular.
It's just that everyone disagrees on the details and on which matters go into which basket, in a way that tends to line up with what their side wants to change, and what they want to make impossible for the other side to change.
Even some hypothetical apolitical saint of democracy might recognize a few key areas where the lesson of history - especially in the context of a particular culture and time - is that popular sovereignty, when not blocked by institutions inimical to its exercise, is repeatedly exercised in ways that are predictably and severely catastrophic in ways that threaten to take whole countries off a cliff, but without any accountability or learning process to prevent these Social Failure Modes from recurring over and over.
Really, it would be better to name these particular "adult supervision required" 'projects' after the particular set of popular sovereignty Social Failure Modes they were intended to mitigate. Neoliberalism is just one project out of many, focused on the variety of common SFMs of national economic policy.
It's the stupidest attempt to smear one's opponents by claiming they are against the yay-word 'democracy', because literally everybody agrees and is against it too. There is probably no more universal consensus than that democracy should be in chains!
The only questions are which chains, whose chains.
“ There is probably no more universal consensus than that democracy should be in chains!”
I surely agree with the thrust of your point, but… most young SJWs do indeed think the world should be run on bare majoritarianism.
And today’s U.S. media encourages this talking about, among others, the ills of the Electoral College system and the Senate where red states have more power.
"but… most young SJWs do indeed think the world should be run on bare majoritarianism."
No, they don't think that, at all. They only think that about things they want to do and think they can get done with bare majorities.
Or, ok, prove me wrong and find a SJW who thinks it's ok if some bare majority somewhere bans abortion, restricts marriage to heterosexuals, criminalizes homosexual relations, establishes a mandatory system of Jim Crow or Apartheid racial segregation, teaches creationism in public schools, and so forth. SJW's aren't just opposed to those policies, they are opposed to the -very legitimacy- of those policies being enacted by any bare majority anywhere, and certainly not because they revere the constitution and are piously devoted to its procedures.
The fact is, no one supports actual Democracy, they support Humpty Dumpty* """Democracy""" as "Sometimes there is voting, but only about certain things, and only when the results are within the range of what I find acceptable."
*"'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.'”
Throughout history "democracy" has been uniformly denigrated. And there is an enormous modern literature, new titles coming out every month, on how democracy is awful and must be eliminated. "Democracy" is really only a "yea word" among those few who have noticed that the most democratic nations today are also those with the highest standards of living and greatest integrity in rule of law.
Herodotus has many good words for Athenian democracy as a wellspring of morale and motivation in contrast to the Persian way of doing things. Thucydides, after considering many sides of the argument, comes down against democracy in the end because of the Syracusan disaster and the subsequent events. Machiavelli sort of splits the baby in Discourses on Livy, arguing in Ch. V. that it is better to place power in the hands of the commons when seeking to gain power, but better to go with the oligarchy when you seek to preserve power.
Perhaps if Machiavelli were writing airport advice books today, he'd say that startups should give more autonomy to the workers in the beginning, but then hand the company over to adult supervision once it reaches a later stage.
Take all the countries in a column and rank them from best to worst, according to some fair, objective metric of performance. Test scores? Growth of real GDP per capita in the last 40 years? Now split into two columns, democracies on the left, non-democracies on the right. What you are going to see is a lot of overlap, which means that a democracy or non-democracy can occupy almost any rank. Singapore is going to be near the top, but it's more properly placed in the right column than the left.
China also near the top. Indeed, "integrity in rule of law" in the US has become a bad joke which continues to get worse all the time. I have a number of acquaintances who do business in China and who all agree that if they couldn't resort to private arbitration and were forced to use a public court system then they would much rather have some business dispute or liability lawsuit adjudicated in the Chinese system than the American one.
What one requires for any kind of real analysis of the question is to compare two similar jurisdictions, one democratic, one not, but with no other huge differences. West Germany vs East Germany and South Korea vs North Korea are better examples of the impact of communism than democracy, indeed, South Korea wasn't really a 'real' democracy until quite recently in the way people typically use the word these days.
The top four nations on the QDI, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, as well as #7 Netherlands also appear in the top 10 of both the SOLI and ROLI. Germany, Switzerland, and New Zealand also appear on one on the other two.
I think then it might be argued that having a high quality democracy does not automatically condemn a nation to chaos, anarchy, and mob tyranny.
You make a good point about China’s legal system, however, some of the disappeared business executives might argue. But in general, it is true that parties are more tempted to rely upon predictable, low cost, conflict resolution strategies and if the courts of a country provide that, then why not. The saving grace of the US legal system is that it permits private ordering and most business contracts rely extensively on non-judicial remedies. If a contract winds up in court, the partner companies have a serious competency problem. Asian nations in general are puzzling to me given the rise of New Confucionism and it’s anti-democratic emphasis on hierarchy based order. There are fair few New Confucionists teaching in US universities.
On the QDI, Singapore is considered a hybrid regime. Although it is the utopian ideal for both left and right establishment types, that is largely because about half of the population are non-voting guest workers who do not vote and live in eco-friendly dormitory arrangements that climate fanatics would like to see us all living in. Right wing establishment types no doubt privately decry Singapore’s communist regulatory regime requiring 4.5 square meters of space per resident (https://www.gov.sg/article/improved-standards-of-new-dormitories-for-migrant-workers ) but in the end probably concede they can’t really hope to do better than subsistence level compensation.
The Sultanate of Oman shows up in the top ten on standard of living but, consistent with the general salafist movement across the world generally, has moved away from its traditional history of leaders elected through a consultative process towards a hereditary monarchy. Although so far, academic salafists in the US have mostly maintained discretion, the recent riotous goings on and other anti-Western activities on campus, suggest maybe 1 in 20? US academics are closet salafists? Probably 1 in 10 subscribe to non-Islamic variations on salafism. I don’t know, maybe Houellebecq’s Submission is closer than one might like.
"The saving grace of the US legal system is that it permits private ordering and most business contracts rely extensively on non-judicial remedies."
This particular issue is one with which I've had some professional experience which included becoming familiar with the history of how such a state of affairs came about. What happened was:
(1) it didn't use to be that way, either in terms of contracts arranged to be self-enforcing or popularity of private arbitration,
(2) Business disputes used to be adjudicated in normal courts all the time, as the general perception was that the courts would resolve them in a quick, affordable, predictable, and fair manner,
(3) Then came an era emerging around the time of the OG Progressives thru the New Deal (no coincidence) of the complete breakdown of "rule of law" as assessed by those factors in contracts and torts (among other legal fields), when it started to take forever and tons of money to get a final ruling, when holdings were increasingly unpredictable and extreme.
(4) It took some time and decades of hard legal struggles - with plenty of resistant judges fighting every step of the way no matter how hard legislatures and higher courts tried to tell them to stop - to finally restore some kind of order and equilibrium, which can be summed up, "Avoid the US public judicial system at all costs, to the maximum extent possible, by any means necessary, lobby for this legislative agenda incessantly as a matter of first priority, and have your lawyers and accountants create a "break glass in case of American trial" contingency plan of fake bankruptcy reorganization to wipe out crazy judgments should you find yourself unable to avoid getting roped into court.
In my anecdotal experience from just a few conversations, my impression is that judges are torn about this state of affairs according to their political team. On the one hand, progressive judges don't like arbitration because they think that "evil corporations" use them to stack the deck against poor, innocent victims, and conservative judges are upset about the fact that if one actually wants "rule of law" one has to go to arbitration instead of the courts, because they think it is acquiescing and surrendering to total social failure instead of salvaging and repairing the courts and the law such that arbitration is not seen as so indispensable. This is "The South Will Rise Again" type of thinking. The war was lost a long time ago, the good old court system is Gone With The Wind.
But one thing that brings conservative and progressive judges together and upon which they all can agree is that they DONT want any more cases coming into the already overwhelmed system with its "caseload crisis". And, to the extent that arbitration keeps a lot of cases from getting into the system at all, or any further than step 1 with a dismissal at summary judgment upholding an arbitration award, then, whatever their concerns or objections, they are definitely willing to hold their noses and live with it, given the nightmarish alternative.
Re: "we need to bring neoliberalism back, because we are over-regulated and recklessly running up the national debt. [... .]. But it is an elitist project, and I don’t see it getting past populist opposition."
Maybe elites who favor deregulation and fiscal discipline should try and persuade the people. Where is Milton Friedman when we need him?!
So much of the analysis of "populism" revolves around this self-congratulatory idea that "the Elites are a group of efficient and hard-headed technocrats who have lost of common touch." If you take this line then you will always view populism as some animalistic emotional spasm without rational foundation, but the reality is just the opposite. People resent "elites" precisely because they think elites are *not* hard headed, they are *not* efficient, they are *not* capable and they *are* driven by emotion. The immigration issue is a good example. People oppose immigration from the third world because it decreases the quality of their local neighbourhoods, i.e. it very concretely impacts their quality of life. Elites support third world immigration for a set of highly sentimental reasons that have nothing to do with being hard headed or efficient. "Populists" want to put an end to such centrally planned reductions in the standard of living. Someone who views it as some sentimental desire for "more public participation" is simply not Getting It. Ditto for every other issue associated with "populism."
Hammond does a fine history review job, but most of his recommendations are weak.
"dismantling unaccountable bureaucracies," -- this step is being talked about, and might have some results. With 8 year term limits on Federal govt employee bureaucrats, and other ideas like eliminating the Dept. of Education. This latter I like more but it's far less feasible; 8 yr limits would hugely help.
Most of govt and other institutions have been captured by Big Govt Democrats who are technocrats/ college graduates and similar to small govt Republican college grads as elites. The Dem capture has been allowed and paid for by govt huge support to elite colleges discriminating against hiring Republicans. He could have mentioned the truism that Personnel is Policy.
Until the govt has more Republican bureaucrats, it will get worse in most ways. More Republicans is necessary, not just elected but hired in agencies, yet might not be sufficient.
When the Department of Education was created, it just transferred the education programs from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which got renamed the Department of Health and Human Services. Eliminating the DoE would just reverse that and do absolutely no good.
The Hammond article was worth a read. I read The Economist for 20 years, before it became captured, and it is a good example of the "neo-" problem. I believed its understandable errors: 1) The GDP per capita of developing countries would to first world levels, 2) Trading with China would make it politically free, 3) Picking the winners of elections, and 4) Transnational organizations could be effective. The first mainly happens when rich countries keep shooting themselves in the foot (e.g., UK, Canada). The last may yet turn out to be true, but the nation-state has a lot of life left in it, and legislating war out of existence seems naive when America is addicted to it.
The deeper problem with neo-liberalism or neo-conservatism is it's just another technocracy over-promising and under-delivering (see Rossi's Iron Law of Program Evaluation). Hammond's point about the professionalization of politics is well made. These people (e.g., Biden, Harris, Cameron, Trudeau, etc., etc.) have little exposure to the real world, and humility is not their strong suit.
The globalists are building yet another layer of bureaucracy. We can't afford the current layers, and the European Parliament remains irrelevant after how long? Oligarchy is very ugly; no wonder the people are revolted. Monarchy and aristocracy failed, representative democracy is failing, so how about direct democracy with every check-and-balance we can think of? Come on thought leaders!
"so how about direct democracy with every check-and-balance we can think of? Come on thought leaders!"
"With every check-and-balance we can think of"? Then it's NOT NOT NOT NOT direct democracy. It's very far from it. Kind of like, "so how about rain, but everything I like stays dry?"
Neoliberalism as an economic policy (not technocracy although those two are conflated) emerged out of necessity when capital lost the whip hand against labor post WWII and the Great Society. The policy at the time was full employment which was great for returning soldiers and a US that was now the co-leader of the world w/ the Soviet Union and the dominant force in the West given Europe was in ashes and rubble. However, full employment as a program run at the limit creates immense inflation in a bounded national economy. Labor and economic collectives had way too much power and negotiating capacity that limited capital's ability to seek returns and the pressure on wages to rise given full employment out of profits (for the labor marxists, this is a positive self interest in the short run but in the long run investors refuse to grow/expand their business if they have no profit if they have to pay wages/expenses thus investors will take their capital and either move it or hold onto it thus cratering the underlying economies growth aspects). The tension was/and still is between capital and labor at odds. Thus unbounding the economy, globalizing supply chains to limit costs, international finance and securitization, "free market" ideological justifications/inventions, and free movement was the only way to get away from the inflation crisis in the 60s and 70s (not to mention having to finance foreign policy militarism to ensure capital was safe to move internationally). Technocracy isn't neoliberalism although neoliberalism needs technocrats to maintain its process driven rationalizations for wealth/capital distribution (or lack thereof). Michael Koleszki predicted neoliberalism as a policy response to full employment in 1950
The President acts via exec orders and regulatory fiat (via appointees put forward by donors and activists). The same people writing the exec orders and choosing the appointees under Biden will be doing so under Harris (in fact, they chose Harris and are running her campaign).
Ask Harris which of the half dozen exec orders her administration proclaimed to cause the border crisis she now rejects and would overturn.
Ask her whether she still supports (or would reverse) the killing of pipelines, stoppage of LNG facility and export permits, expansion of federal lands off-limits to both drilling and renewables, the EPA carbon capture rules, etc
Ask her whether she would pledge never to raid Medicare funds to spend on new handouts elsewhere (as happened with Obamacare and the IRA), pledge the same for social security (ie that payroll tax hikes, benefit cuts or cost savings for Medicare and Soc Sec can only be used within these programs to make them more viable), and pledge that any additional tax revenues will only be used to reduce the deficit rather than to help justify new handouts (until the deficit is less than 3 pct of GDP at full employment).
I’d almost vote for her if she did these things. Right now I cannot see any sane individual voting for either Harris or Trump. They are clowns,
I’d have gladly liked your comment until the last paragraph. A sane person - at least in a swing state - needs to vote for the lesser evil. We seem to agree on which is the lesser evil.
I think Oprah of all people tried to ask her about your 3rd para, and she threw sand in her eyes.
I think it's unlikely, but if Trump wins or is permitted to win, I'm going to remember Oprah inquiring about the border, as the canary in the coalmine, a la Michael Moore in 2016.
I like Andy G's comment. Treeamigo seems to think it's "sane" not to realize that US politics is run as a two-party system.
If one candidate is clearly obfuscating when not dissembling about her policy positions while the other candidate advocates that those seeking to immigrate should be subjected to criminal background checks before being surreptitiously bussed around the country and given temporary work permits, then your choice is clear.
"Moreover, within each party’s base, negative partisanship is so strong that the sort of deal-maker politician who was successful in 1970 would today be primaried out of office." (From Kling's original post)
I feel like this is too pessimistic. RFK and Musk are supporting Trump while Cheney and others are supporting Harris. I think the negative partisanship is mostly just the result of media behavior and information silos, perhaps aggravated by social media algorithms. Media silos---that's something that could change (via innovation and creative destruction).
No argument. What I have in mind is something like "Voter pays; non-voter pays the average." In other words, people vote how much they'd like to pay and where to allocate it across programs or departments. This disciplines A voting to take money from B to give to C. In theory, this likely reduces taxes significantly, so minimums (e.g., 2% for defense) may be required in setting up the initial social compact. This still leaves the problems of program execution, measurement, and audit, as well as the court system. I'm looking for resources on the principles of direct democracy (as opposed to the procedures) or examples of libertarian constitutions. Two examples are Rothbard (1985) and Azurin (2007). Any help appreciated. Thanks!
“…they have offered a plethora of ideas that, while delighting voters by varying degrees, have appalled economists because they would distort markets or deepen America’s fiscal hole.”
I trust the WSJ’s integrity and competence (more or less) in the polling here using a representative sample of economists.
I am shocked at how liberal (leftist) ideologically the economists polled must be for them to have (in aggregate the following takes:
Make the 2017 Trump tax cuts that expire in 2025 permanent: Against 85-8
Cap out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs to $2,000 a year: Favor: 46-44
Cap insulin prices to $35 for all Americans: Favor 64-23
For the first two instances I cite you can at least make the case that a reasonable “moderate” economist *might* go the route the majority chose (if combined with the correct basket of other policies) despite the fact that - especially the corp tax rate hike - each of these proposals would lead to lower long-term economic growth.
But the 2nd pair I cite are SO far away from what economics teaches that I find it sad that so many “professional” economists clearly favor their political ideology over what economics teaches us about incentives.
“It seems to me that we need to bring neoliberalism back,”
Honest question: why do we need to bring “neoliberalism” back and not simply (classical) “liberalism” back?
I likely do not understand the benefits of neoliberalism that you do, at least in the U.S. context.
[I think I grok and even agree with you that Europe would be better served to go back to neoliberalism vs. where they are now.]
The closest I can figure from reading Hammond’s piece is that neoliberalism makes tolerance of markets acceptable to people whose political impulses are left-of-center. Is that what you mean when you say we need to bring neoliberalism back?
Will be following Hammond after reading this remarkably insightful and stimulating piece. What a great mind and writer. And Dr. Kling’s comments are well worth considering as well.
Just going to jot down some initial disorganized random thoughts as a placekeeper.
First, can’t read Hammond’s ideas on “embedded liberalism” without Vilfredo Pareto’s circulation of elites theory springing to mind. Cribbing from wikipedia:
“The ideal governing class contains a judicious mixture of lions and foxes, of men capable of decisive and forceful action and of others who are imaginative, innovative, and unscrupulous. When imperfections in the circulation of governing elites prevent the attainment of such judicious mixtures among the governing, regimes either degenerate into hidebound and ossified bureaucracies incapable of renewal and adaptation, or into weak regimes of squabbling lawyers and rhetoricians incapable of decisive and forceful action. When this happens, the governed will succeed in overthrowing their rulers and new elites will institute a more effective regime.”
“Weak regimes of squabbling lawyers and rhetoricians” with vast powers wielded incompetently and illegitimately might describe our current situation.
In turn, this calls to mind how Robert Michels built upon Pareto to develop the iron law of oligarchy. Again cribbing from wikipedia:
“According to Michels, all organizations eventually come to be run by a leadership class who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being servants of the masses, Michels argues this leadership class, rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank-and-file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes. Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.”
Oligarchic domination of power structures, check. Controlling who has access to information, check. Centralized power check. Little accountability, check. Failure of democracy, check. Pretty prescient one might argue.
And having been recently reading the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson debating the aristoi versus a natural aristocracy, one can’t help but see perhaps some foreshadowing of Pareto:
“ for I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. the grounds of this are virtue & talents. formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. but since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. there is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. the natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. and indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. may we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? the artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent it’s ascendancy. on the question, What is the best provision? you and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging it’s errors. you think it best to put the Pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where also they may be a protection to wealth against the Agrarian and plundering enterprises of the Majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. for if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. mischief may be done negatively as well as positively. of this a cabal in the Senate of the US. has furnished many proofs. nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislature to protect themselves.”
So is the toothpaste really out of the tube? Is Pareto correct in that the old elites must be displaced one way or another by the new elites? Are the transaction costs simply too great for the masses to compete with establishment interest-group cabals and the advantages they enjoy in smaller transaction costs and organization?
Or does populism have more to offer? What if a populist party were to resurrect Gladstonian liberalism? Let me crib from wikipedia once more: “Gladstonian liberalism consisted of limited government expenditure and low taxation whilst making sure government had balanced budgets and the classical liberal stress on self-help and freedom of choice. Gladstonian liberalism also emphasised free trade, little government intervention in the economy and equality of opportunity through institutional reform.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladstonian_liberalism ) With broad popular support, Gladstone, known as “The People’s William” launched a lasting era fiscal rectitude resulting in general prosperity and a much improved standard of living for the average people. In many ways, Gladstone was the modern incarnation of the first great populist leader, Pericles, under whom democratic institutions flourished and the Athenians flourished through the 5th century BC in a golden age. Might we discern a profitable way forward from studying the strategies of these exemplars?
John Adams is frequently cited for his aristocratically curmudgeonly dicta on democracy evincing an irrational fear mob tyranny lurking around every corner. Yet, Adams was a revolutionist as well: “Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.” And one suspects that if the people’s right is thwarted through our sub-Venezuelan standards of election integrity (https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801/ ), there is enough rope that our current establishment class of wastrels and triflers are well on their way to hanging themselves.
I'm not sure I understand most of what's in that post except the absence of mass-membership groups which I'm unsure had as much impact as suggested. Maybe if I reread it over and over I'd get it.
The post does raise a question. What about Trump? As I see it, he is a follower. He has ascertained what a rather large group wants and has been masterful at putting himself in front of the parade. The only notable exception I'm aware of is his backing of Warp speed and vaccines with the clear goal of getting the economy restarted before the election. Anyway, the people in this parade aren't in any formal group but does it behave significantly different than if it were?
Besides Trump, what about woke politics? Isn't that the same type of group? Aren't politicians on the left bending to what that group appears to want?
Eliminating gerrymandering in the US and require compact, contiguous districts that don’t stray from a city or county into a new one unless that city or county doesn’t have enough people to fill out the district.
Increase the size of the house of reps by 50 percent (reduce the number of people per rep/district) and then determine future rep numbers based upon that population (of citizens only)
Mandate that states should apportion electoral votes in presidential elections by district (as Nebraska and Maine do, with the overall vote winner gaining the two electoral votes attributable to senate seats)
Ban campaign contributions to house, senate, state and local candidates from out of state (though allow national parties to match amounts raised by their candidates in their state). This would mean that PACs would need to become state-level orgs funded only by state residents.
All of the above would have to be enacted by constitutional amendment (extremely unlikely) but would make Federal government more representative and accountable locally, less partisan (more mixed districts), and require Presidential candidates to campaign in more states and likely make party platforms less extreme.
As all of the above is extremely unlikely to happen, reducing the power of the Federal government and the administrative state is probably a simpler solution.
> determine future rep numbers based upon that population (of citizens only)
This is where the rubber meets the road and why I guess, my latent populist roused to inaction, I can't take an interest in this deck chair stuff. I kind of admire the thought you guys can put into it. But it seems undignified, to pretend that any of this stuff - especially the subject of the post - has any reality in the context of the mass immigration sanctioned by both parties. Eventually a mediocrity like John Roberts will put the final nail in the coffin, so that Harvard Law may be protected from the demos, indeed from everyone, even the "representatives".
To end gerrymandering nationally, you either need to replace the current Supreme Court or go through every state to get each legislature to redistrict, and then to litigate the appeals of that process at the state level as far as it goes (State Supreme Court / US Supreme Court).
To end campaign contribution issues you would need either a narrow or complete overruling of Citizens United.
Instead of this: "Neoliberal institutions and ideas embody a project of global integration and governance that’s distinctly inimical to popular sovereignty."
Try this: "The US Constitution's institutions and ideas embody a project of governance that’s distinctly inimical to popular sovereignty."
Which is certainly true when it comes to anti-majoritarian prohibitions on violating "fundamental rights" and of other constitutional provisions. After all, the whole idea of having a republic and a constitution which is hard to amend (or of quaint, dying institutions like the Senate filibuster) is to put certain matters outside of what can be done with ordinary exercises of popular sovereignty. This isn't necessarily 'elitist', because often it's the elites pursuing a strategy of recruiting a bare majority of voters to allow those elites to try to make the awful changes those elites want to make, with the constitutional institutions inimical to popular sovereignty being all that's holding them back.
The fact is that practically no one is an anything-goes, absolutist-majoritarianist, direct-democratarian on every question. Instead, almost everyone who calls themselves a proponent of 'democracy' thinks there are some matters that are properly in the scope of what can be done with bare majorities, and other matters which require much higher supermajority levels of consensus (even in the case of unanimity among jurors), and even some matters which no government should ever be able to do at all no matter how popular they may be, and perhaps other actions which government must do, no matter how unpopular.
It's just that everyone disagrees on the details and on which matters go into which basket, in a way that tends to line up with what their side wants to change, and what they want to make impossible for the other side to change.
Even some hypothetical apolitical saint of democracy might recognize a few key areas where the lesson of history - especially in the context of a particular culture and time - is that popular sovereignty, when not blocked by institutions inimical to its exercise, is repeatedly exercised in ways that are predictably and severely catastrophic in ways that threaten to take whole countries off a cliff, but without any accountability or learning process to prevent these Social Failure Modes from recurring over and over.
Really, it would be better to name these particular "adult supervision required" 'projects' after the particular set of popular sovereignty Social Failure Modes they were intended to mitigate. Neoliberalism is just one project out of many, focused on the variety of common SFMs of national economic policy.
Short version is, "Democracy in Chains? Um, duh!"
It's the stupidest attempt to smear one's opponents by claiming they are against the yay-word 'democracy', because literally everybody agrees and is against it too. There is probably no more universal consensus than that democracy should be in chains!
The only questions are which chains, whose chains.
“ There is probably no more universal consensus than that democracy should be in chains!”
I surely agree with the thrust of your point, but… most young SJWs do indeed think the world should be run on bare majoritarianism.
And today’s U.S. media encourages this talking about, among others, the ills of the Electoral College system and the Senate where red states have more power.
"but… most young SJWs do indeed think the world should be run on bare majoritarianism."
No, they don't think that, at all. They only think that about things they want to do and think they can get done with bare majorities.
Or, ok, prove me wrong and find a SJW who thinks it's ok if some bare majority somewhere bans abortion, restricts marriage to heterosexuals, criminalizes homosexual relations, establishes a mandatory system of Jim Crow or Apartheid racial segregation, teaches creationism in public schools, and so forth. SJW's aren't just opposed to those policies, they are opposed to the -very legitimacy- of those policies being enacted by any bare majority anywhere, and certainly not because they revere the constitution and are piously devoted to its procedures.
The fact is, no one supports actual Democracy, they support Humpty Dumpty* """Democracy""" as "Sometimes there is voting, but only about certain things, and only when the results are within the range of what I find acceptable."
*"'When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.'”
Humpty Dumpty Democracy is a good turn of phrase. I may steal it at some point.
We are actually agreeing, not really disagreeing.
But you lay it out well.
Throughout history "democracy" has been uniformly denigrated. And there is an enormous modern literature, new titles coming out every month, on how democracy is awful and must be eliminated. "Democracy" is really only a "yea word" among those few who have noticed that the most democratic nations today are also those with the highest standards of living and greatest integrity in rule of law.
Herodotus has many good words for Athenian democracy as a wellspring of morale and motivation in contrast to the Persian way of doing things. Thucydides, after considering many sides of the argument, comes down against democracy in the end because of the Syracusan disaster and the subsequent events. Machiavelli sort of splits the baby in Discourses on Livy, arguing in Ch. V. that it is better to place power in the hands of the commons when seeking to gain power, but better to go with the oligarchy when you seek to preserve power.
Perhaps if Machiavelli were writing airport advice books today, he'd say that startups should give more autonomy to the workers in the beginning, but then hand the company over to adult supervision once it reaches a later stage.
Take all the countries in a column and rank them from best to worst, according to some fair, objective metric of performance. Test scores? Growth of real GDP per capita in the last 40 years? Now split into two columns, democracies on the left, non-democracies on the right. What you are going to see is a lot of overlap, which means that a democracy or non-democracy can occupy almost any rank. Singapore is going to be near the top, but it's more properly placed in the right column than the left.
China also near the top. Indeed, "integrity in rule of law" in the US has become a bad joke which continues to get worse all the time. I have a number of acquaintances who do business in China and who all agree that if they couldn't resort to private arbitration and were forced to use a public court system then they would much rather have some business dispute or liability lawsuit adjudicated in the Chinese system than the American one.
What one requires for any kind of real analysis of the question is to compare two similar jurisdictions, one democratic, one not, but with no other huge differences. West Germany vs East Germany and South Korea vs North Korea are better examples of the impact of communism than democracy, indeed, South Korea wasn't really a 'real' democracy until quite recently in the way people typically use the word these days.
I am too lazy to do a full correlation calculation for all of the nations, but, I was just trying to comment on the overlap among countries in the top ten of the Quality of Democracy Index (https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking), the Quality of Life Index rankings (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/standard-of-living-by-country ), and the Rule of Law Index (https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/global/2023 ). Using the most recent rankings available, from 1 to 10.
QDI: Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Belgium, Costa Rica
SOLI: Luxembourg, Netherlands, Denmark, Oman, Switzerland, Finland, Iceland, Austria, Norway, Sweden
ROLI: Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Estonia, Iceland.
The top four nations on the QDI, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, as well as #7 Netherlands also appear in the top 10 of both the SOLI and ROLI. Germany, Switzerland, and New Zealand also appear on one on the other two.
I think then it might be argued that having a high quality democracy does not automatically condemn a nation to chaos, anarchy, and mob tyranny.
You make a good point about China’s legal system, however, some of the disappeared business executives might argue. But in general, it is true that parties are more tempted to rely upon predictable, low cost, conflict resolution strategies and if the courts of a country provide that, then why not. The saving grace of the US legal system is that it permits private ordering and most business contracts rely extensively on non-judicial remedies. If a contract winds up in court, the partner companies have a serious competency problem. Asian nations in general are puzzling to me given the rise of New Confucionism and it’s anti-democratic emphasis on hierarchy based order. There are fair few New Confucionists teaching in US universities.
On the QDI, Singapore is considered a hybrid regime. Although it is the utopian ideal for both left and right establishment types, that is largely because about half of the population are non-voting guest workers who do not vote and live in eco-friendly dormitory arrangements that climate fanatics would like to see us all living in. Right wing establishment types no doubt privately decry Singapore’s communist regulatory regime requiring 4.5 square meters of space per resident (https://www.gov.sg/article/improved-standards-of-new-dormitories-for-migrant-workers ) but in the end probably concede they can’t really hope to do better than subsistence level compensation.
The Sultanate of Oman shows up in the top ten on standard of living but, consistent with the general salafist movement across the world generally, has moved away from its traditional history of leaders elected through a consultative process towards a hereditary monarchy. Although so far, academic salafists in the US have mostly maintained discretion, the recent riotous goings on and other anti-Western activities on campus, suggest maybe 1 in 20? US academics are closet salafists? Probably 1 in 10 subscribe to non-Islamic variations on salafism. I don’t know, maybe Houellebecq’s Submission is closer than one might like.
"The saving grace of the US legal system is that it permits private ordering and most business contracts rely extensively on non-judicial remedies."
This particular issue is one with which I've had some professional experience which included becoming familiar with the history of how such a state of affairs came about. What happened was:
(1) it didn't use to be that way, either in terms of contracts arranged to be self-enforcing or popularity of private arbitration,
(2) Business disputes used to be adjudicated in normal courts all the time, as the general perception was that the courts would resolve them in a quick, affordable, predictable, and fair manner,
(3) Then came an era emerging around the time of the OG Progressives thru the New Deal (no coincidence) of the complete breakdown of "rule of law" as assessed by those factors in contracts and torts (among other legal fields), when it started to take forever and tons of money to get a final ruling, when holdings were increasingly unpredictable and extreme.
(4) It took some time and decades of hard legal struggles - with plenty of resistant judges fighting every step of the way no matter how hard legislatures and higher courts tried to tell them to stop - to finally restore some kind of order and equilibrium, which can be summed up, "Avoid the US public judicial system at all costs, to the maximum extent possible, by any means necessary, lobby for this legislative agenda incessantly as a matter of first priority, and have your lawyers and accountants create a "break glass in case of American trial" contingency plan of fake bankruptcy reorganization to wipe out crazy judgments should you find yourself unable to avoid getting roped into court.
In my anecdotal experience from just a few conversations, my impression is that judges are torn about this state of affairs according to their political team. On the one hand, progressive judges don't like arbitration because they think that "evil corporations" use them to stack the deck against poor, innocent victims, and conservative judges are upset about the fact that if one actually wants "rule of law" one has to go to arbitration instead of the courts, because they think it is acquiescing and surrendering to total social failure instead of salvaging and repairing the courts and the law such that arbitration is not seen as so indispensable. This is "The South Will Rise Again" type of thinking. The war was lost a long time ago, the good old court system is Gone With The Wind.
But one thing that brings conservative and progressive judges together and upon which they all can agree is that they DONT want any more cases coming into the already overwhelmed system with its "caseload crisis". And, to the extent that arbitration keeps a lot of cases from getting into the system at all, or any further than step 1 with a dismissal at summary judgment upholding an arbitration award, then, whatever their concerns or objections, they are definitely willing to hold their noses and live with it, given the nightmarish alternative.
Re: "we need to bring neoliberalism back, because we are over-regulated and recklessly running up the national debt. [... .]. But it is an elitist project, and I don’t see it getting past populist opposition."
Maybe elites who favor deregulation and fiscal discipline should try and persuade the people. Where is Milton Friedman when we need him?!
So much of the analysis of "populism" revolves around this self-congratulatory idea that "the Elites are a group of efficient and hard-headed technocrats who have lost of common touch." If you take this line then you will always view populism as some animalistic emotional spasm without rational foundation, but the reality is just the opposite. People resent "elites" precisely because they think elites are *not* hard headed, they are *not* efficient, they are *not* capable and they *are* driven by emotion. The immigration issue is a good example. People oppose immigration from the third world because it decreases the quality of their local neighbourhoods, i.e. it very concretely impacts their quality of life. Elites support third world immigration for a set of highly sentimental reasons that have nothing to do with being hard headed or efficient. "Populists" want to put an end to such centrally planned reductions in the standard of living. Someone who views it as some sentimental desire for "more public participation" is simply not Getting It. Ditto for every other issue associated with "populism."
Hammond does a fine history review job, but most of his recommendations are weak.
"dismantling unaccountable bureaucracies," -- this step is being talked about, and might have some results. With 8 year term limits on Federal govt employee bureaucrats, and other ideas like eliminating the Dept. of Education. This latter I like more but it's far less feasible; 8 yr limits would hugely help.
Most of govt and other institutions have been captured by Big Govt Democrats who are technocrats/ college graduates and similar to small govt Republican college grads as elites. The Dem capture has been allowed and paid for by govt huge support to elite colleges discriminating against hiring Republicans. He could have mentioned the truism that Personnel is Policy.
Until the govt has more Republican bureaucrats, it will get worse in most ways. More Republicans is necessary, not just elected but hired in agencies, yet might not be sufficient.
When the Department of Education was created, it just transferred the education programs from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, which got renamed the Department of Health and Human Services. Eliminating the DoE would just reverse that and do absolutely no good.
The Hammond article was worth a read. I read The Economist for 20 years, before it became captured, and it is a good example of the "neo-" problem. I believed its understandable errors: 1) The GDP per capita of developing countries would to first world levels, 2) Trading with China would make it politically free, 3) Picking the winners of elections, and 4) Transnational organizations could be effective. The first mainly happens when rich countries keep shooting themselves in the foot (e.g., UK, Canada). The last may yet turn out to be true, but the nation-state has a lot of life left in it, and legislating war out of existence seems naive when America is addicted to it.
The deeper problem with neo-liberalism or neo-conservatism is it's just another technocracy over-promising and under-delivering (see Rossi's Iron Law of Program Evaluation). Hammond's point about the professionalization of politics is well made. These people (e.g., Biden, Harris, Cameron, Trudeau, etc., etc.) have little exposure to the real world, and humility is not their strong suit.
The globalists are building yet another layer of bureaucracy. We can't afford the current layers, and the European Parliament remains irrelevant after how long? Oligarchy is very ugly; no wonder the people are revolted. Monarchy and aristocracy failed, representative democracy is failing, so how about direct democracy with every check-and-balance we can think of? Come on thought leaders!
"so how about direct democracy with every check-and-balance we can think of? Come on thought leaders!"
"With every check-and-balance we can think of"? Then it's NOT NOT NOT NOT direct democracy. It's very far from it. Kind of like, "so how about rain, but everything I like stays dry?"
Neoliberalism as an economic policy (not technocracy although those two are conflated) emerged out of necessity when capital lost the whip hand against labor post WWII and the Great Society. The policy at the time was full employment which was great for returning soldiers and a US that was now the co-leader of the world w/ the Soviet Union and the dominant force in the West given Europe was in ashes and rubble. However, full employment as a program run at the limit creates immense inflation in a bounded national economy. Labor and economic collectives had way too much power and negotiating capacity that limited capital's ability to seek returns and the pressure on wages to rise given full employment out of profits (for the labor marxists, this is a positive self interest in the short run but in the long run investors refuse to grow/expand their business if they have no profit if they have to pay wages/expenses thus investors will take their capital and either move it or hold onto it thus cratering the underlying economies growth aspects). The tension was/and still is between capital and labor at odds. Thus unbounding the economy, globalizing supply chains to limit costs, international finance and securitization, "free market" ideological justifications/inventions, and free movement was the only way to get away from the inflation crisis in the 60s and 70s (not to mention having to finance foreign policy militarism to ensure capital was safe to move internationally). Technocracy isn't neoliberalism although neoliberalism needs technocrats to maintain its process driven rationalizations for wealth/capital distribution (or lack thereof). Michael Koleszki predicted neoliberalism as a policy response to full employment in 1950
"emerged out of necessity when capital lost the whip hand against labor post WWII and the Great Society."
To paraphrase Barack Obama, "1933 called. They want their rhetoric back.
But Harris's proposals on the important issues -- immigration, deficits, trade restrictions and climate change policy are much less bad than Trump's.
🙄🙄🙄
Only on trade restrictions is your claim not prima facie laughably absurd to someone who believes in the principles of the founding of this country.
Proposals? 😂
The President acts via exec orders and regulatory fiat (via appointees put forward by donors and activists). The same people writing the exec orders and choosing the appointees under Biden will be doing so under Harris (in fact, they chose Harris and are running her campaign).
Ask Harris which of the half dozen exec orders her administration proclaimed to cause the border crisis she now rejects and would overturn.
Ask her whether she still supports (or would reverse) the killing of pipelines, stoppage of LNG facility and export permits, expansion of federal lands off-limits to both drilling and renewables, the EPA carbon capture rules, etc
Ask her whether she would pledge never to raid Medicare funds to spend on new handouts elsewhere (as happened with Obamacare and the IRA), pledge the same for social security (ie that payroll tax hikes, benefit cuts or cost savings for Medicare and Soc Sec can only be used within these programs to make them more viable), and pledge that any additional tax revenues will only be used to reduce the deficit rather than to help justify new handouts (until the deficit is less than 3 pct of GDP at full employment).
I’d almost vote for her if she did these things. Right now I cannot see any sane individual voting for either Harris or Trump. They are clowns,
I’d have gladly liked your comment until the last paragraph. A sane person - at least in a swing state - needs to vote for the lesser evil. We seem to agree on which is the lesser evil.
I think Oprah of all people tried to ask her about your 3rd para, and she threw sand in her eyes.
I think it's unlikely, but if Trump wins or is permitted to win, I'm going to remember Oprah inquiring about the border, as the canary in the coalmine, a la Michael Moore in 2016.
I like Andy G's comment. Treeamigo seems to think it's "sane" not to realize that US politics is run as a two-party system.
If one candidate is clearly obfuscating when not dissembling about her policy positions while the other candidate advocates that those seeking to immigrate should be subjected to criminal background checks before being surreptitiously bussed around the country and given temporary work permits, then your choice is clear.
"Moreover, within each party’s base, negative partisanship is so strong that the sort of deal-maker politician who was successful in 1970 would today be primaried out of office." (From Kling's original post)
I feel like this is too pessimistic. RFK and Musk are supporting Trump while Cheney and others are supporting Harris. I think the negative partisanship is mostly just the result of media behavior and information silos, perhaps aggravated by social media algorithms. Media silos---that's something that could change (via innovation and creative destruction).
No argument. What I have in mind is something like "Voter pays; non-voter pays the average." In other words, people vote how much they'd like to pay and where to allocate it across programs or departments. This disciplines A voting to take money from B to give to C. In theory, this likely reduces taxes significantly, so minimums (e.g., 2% for defense) may be required in setting up the initial social compact. This still leaves the problems of program execution, measurement, and audit, as well as the court system. I'm looking for resources on the principles of direct democracy (as opposed to the procedures) or examples of libertarian constitutions. Two examples are Rothbard (1985) and Azurin (2007). Any help appreciated. Thanks!
“…they have offered a plethora of ideas that, while delighting voters by varying degrees, have appalled economists because they would distort markets or deepen America’s fiscal hole.”
I trust the WSJ’s integrity and competence (more or less) in the polling here using a representative sample of economists.
I am shocked at how liberal (leftist) ideologically the economists polled must be for them to have (in aggregate the following takes:
Make the 2017 Trump tax cuts that expire in 2025 permanent: Against 85-8
Partially reverse Trump’s corporate tax cuts - increasing corp tax rate to 28%: Favor 59-31
Cap out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs to $2,000 a year: Favor: 46-44
Cap insulin prices to $35 for all Americans: Favor 64-23
For the first two instances I cite you can at least make the case that a reasonable “moderate” economist *might* go the route the majority chose (if combined with the correct basket of other policies) despite the fact that - especially the corp tax rate hike - each of these proposals would lead to lower long-term economic growth.
But the 2nd pair I cite are SO far away from what economics teaches that I find it sad that so many “professional” economists clearly favor their political ideology over what economics teaches us about incentives.
“It seems to me that we need to bring neoliberalism back,”
Honest question: why do we need to bring “neoliberalism” back and not simply (classical) “liberalism” back?
I likely do not understand the benefits of neoliberalism that you do, at least in the U.S. context.
[I think I grok and even agree with you that Europe would be better served to go back to neoliberalism vs. where they are now.]
The closest I can figure from reading Hammond’s piece is that neoliberalism makes tolerance of markets acceptable to people whose political impulses are left-of-center. Is that what you mean when you say we need to bring neoliberalism back?
Will be following Hammond after reading this remarkably insightful and stimulating piece. What a great mind and writer. And Dr. Kling’s comments are well worth considering as well.
Just going to jot down some initial disorganized random thoughts as a placekeeper.
First, can’t read Hammond’s ideas on “embedded liberalism” without Vilfredo Pareto’s circulation of elites theory springing to mind. Cribbing from wikipedia:
“The ideal governing class contains a judicious mixture of lions and foxes, of men capable of decisive and forceful action and of others who are imaginative, innovative, and unscrupulous. When imperfections in the circulation of governing elites prevent the attainment of such judicious mixtures among the governing, regimes either degenerate into hidebound and ossified bureaucracies incapable of renewal and adaptation, or into weak regimes of squabbling lawyers and rhetoricians incapable of decisive and forceful action. When this happens, the governed will succeed in overthrowing their rulers and new elites will institute a more effective regime.”
“Weak regimes of squabbling lawyers and rhetoricians” with vast powers wielded incompetently and illegitimately might describe our current situation.
In turn, this calls to mind how Robert Michels built upon Pareto to develop the iron law of oligarchy. Again cribbing from wikipedia:
“According to Michels, all organizations eventually come to be run by a leadership class who often function as paid administrators, executives, spokespersons or political strategists for the organization. Far from being servants of the masses, Michels argues this leadership class, rather than the organization's membership, will inevitably grow to dominate the organization's power structures. By controlling who has access to information, those in power can centralize their power successfully, often with little accountability, due to the apathy, indifference and non-participation most rank-and-file members have in relation to their organization's decision-making processes. Michels argues that democratic attempts to hold leadership positions accountable are prone to fail, since with power comes the ability to reward loyalty, the ability to control information about the organization, and the ability to control what procedures the organization follows when making decisions. All of these mechanisms can be used to strongly influence the outcome of any decisions made 'democratically' by members.”
Oligarchic domination of power structures, check. Controlling who has access to information, check. Centralized power check. Little accountability, check. Failure of democracy, check. Pretty prescient one might argue.
And having been recently reading the correspondence between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson debating the aristoi versus a natural aristocracy, one can’t help but see perhaps some foreshadowing of Pareto:
“ for I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. the grounds of this are virtue & talents. formerly bodily powers gave place among the aristoi. but since the invention of gunpowder has armed the weak as well as the strong with missile death, bodily strength, like beauty, good humor, politeness and other accomplishments, has become but an auxiliary ground of distinction. there is also an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. the natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. and indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. may we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government? the artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent it’s ascendancy. on the question, What is the best provision? you and I differ; but we differ as rational friends, using the free exercise of our own reason, and mutually indulging it’s errors. you think it best to put the Pseudo-aristoi into a separate chamber of legislation where they may be hindered from doing mischief by their coordinate branches, and where also they may be a protection to wealth against the Agrarian and plundering enterprises of the Majority of the people. I think that to give them power in order to prevent them from doing mischief, is arming them for it, and increasing instead of remedying the evil. for if the coordinate branches can arrest their action, so may they that of the coordinates. mischief may be done negatively as well as positively. of this a cabal in the Senate of the US. has furnished many proofs. nor do I believe them necessary to protect the wealthy; because enough of these will find their way into every branch of the legislature to protect themselves.”
(https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0446 )
So is the toothpaste really out of the tube? Is Pareto correct in that the old elites must be displaced one way or another by the new elites? Are the transaction costs simply too great for the masses to compete with establishment interest-group cabals and the advantages they enjoy in smaller transaction costs and organization?
Or does populism have more to offer? What if a populist party were to resurrect Gladstonian liberalism? Let me crib from wikipedia once more: “Gladstonian liberalism consisted of limited government expenditure and low taxation whilst making sure government had balanced budgets and the classical liberal stress on self-help and freedom of choice. Gladstonian liberalism also emphasised free trade, little government intervention in the economy and equality of opportunity through institutional reform.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladstonian_liberalism ) With broad popular support, Gladstone, known as “The People’s William” launched a lasting era fiscal rectitude resulting in general prosperity and a much improved standard of living for the average people. In many ways, Gladstone was the modern incarnation of the first great populist leader, Pericles, under whom democratic institutions flourished and the Athenians flourished through the 5th century BC in a golden age. Might we discern a profitable way forward from studying the strategies of these exemplars?
John Adams is frequently cited for his aristocratically curmudgeonly dicta on democracy evincing an irrational fear mob tyranny lurking around every corner. Yet, Adams was a revolutionist as well: “Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.” And one suspects that if the people’s right is thwarted through our sub-Venezuelan standards of election integrity (https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/13801/ ), there is enough rope that our current establishment class of wastrels and triflers are well on their way to hanging themselves.
I'm not sure I understand most of what's in that post except the absence of mass-membership groups which I'm unsure had as much impact as suggested. Maybe if I reread it over and over I'd get it.
The post does raise a question. What about Trump? As I see it, he is a follower. He has ascertained what a rather large group wants and has been masterful at putting himself in front of the parade. The only notable exception I'm aware of is his backing of Warp speed and vaccines with the clear goal of getting the economy restarted before the election. Anyway, the people in this parade aren't in any formal group but does it behave significantly different than if it were?
Besides Trump, what about woke politics? Isn't that the same type of group? Aren't politicians on the left bending to what that group appears to want?
Eliminating gerrymandering in the US and require compact, contiguous districts that don’t stray from a city or county into a new one unless that city or county doesn’t have enough people to fill out the district.
Increase the size of the house of reps by 50 percent (reduce the number of people per rep/district) and then determine future rep numbers based upon that population (of citizens only)
Mandate that states should apportion electoral votes in presidential elections by district (as Nebraska and Maine do, with the overall vote winner gaining the two electoral votes attributable to senate seats)
Ban campaign contributions to house, senate, state and local candidates from out of state (though allow national parties to match amounts raised by their candidates in their state). This would mean that PACs would need to become state-level orgs funded only by state residents.
All of the above would have to be enacted by constitutional amendment (extremely unlikely) but would make Federal government more representative and accountable locally, less partisan (more mixed districts), and require Presidential candidates to campaign in more states and likely make party platforms less extreme.
As all of the above is extremely unlikely to happen, reducing the power of the Federal government and the administrative state is probably a simpler solution.
> determine future rep numbers based upon that population (of citizens only)
This is where the rubber meets the road and why I guess, my latent populist roused to inaction, I can't take an interest in this deck chair stuff. I kind of admire the thought you guys can put into it. But it seems undignified, to pretend that any of this stuff - especially the subject of the post - has any reality in the context of the mass immigration sanctioned by both parties. Eventually a mediocrity like John Roberts will put the final nail in the coffin, so that Harvard Law may be protected from the demos, indeed from everyone, even the "representatives".
To end gerrymandering nationally, you either need to replace the current Supreme Court or go through every state to get each legislature to redistrict, and then to litigate the appeals of that process at the state level as far as it goes (State Supreme Court / US Supreme Court).
To end campaign contribution issues you would need either a narrow or complete overruling of Citizens United.