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Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

Is populism supposed to be bad? I just looked up the definition to make sure and it's basically the principle that ordinary people should have control over government rather than political insiders and wealthy elite. That sounds like democracy to me. Is there an aspect I'm missing?

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From Wikipedia:

Populism is a political position which holds that the virtuous citizens are being mistreated by a small circle of elites, who can be overthrown if the people recognize the danger and work together. The elites are depicted as trampling in illegitimate fashion upon the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people.

The notion itself is quite subjective of course, but it is definitely very different from "democracy".

It seems to be a pretty common stance taken by democratic political parties across history.

This seems to objectively be the case in the US, right?[1]

[1] http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS...

Sounds like populism is just the recognition of oligarchy.

It is just as bad as oligarchy if left unchecked. There is such a thing as a tyranny of the majority. Or if you want to just look at the politics, if you tick off the wealthy elite or make it too difficult to do business, you end up with less control over things that matter since you're either poor because all the business you ticked off went somewhere else, or basically a colony state as the important decisions are made elsewhere.

The only reason why it seems more "democratic" is because for most of human history, the wealthy elite had way to much power compared to everyone else.

For me, the downside of populism is that the political insiders and wealthy elite just so happen to be the people who actually understand how economies and governments and international agreements work.

The common man may think he knows everything, but he really doesn't.

Agreed, but whether or not they manipulate the economy to the benefit of the citizens is another story.

Right, they have no incentive other than to make themselves better off. And it shows[1].

[1] http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FPPS%2FPPS...

That and the populist vote doesn't vote rationally. They vote emotionally. This puts you in a state where charismatic leaders will appeal to and exploit emotional triggers in people.

Historical evidence suggests that such leaders tend to move towards to political extremes.

Populism rewards short-term thinking at the expense of long-term results, because the common person isn't always aware of the deeper issues in a given field. Put another way, would expect the average person in the street to have an informed opinion on the details of [banking|medical|energy|transport|agriculture] industries?

We already know how easy it is for yellow journalism to sway popular opinion; expecting direct democracy to be able to deal with the subtle nuances of governing a millions-strong society is nice in theory, but simply isn't practical.

When you describe it this way, it sounds great. In practice populists are frowned up because they end up telling people nice things they want to hear, but aren't true or are appealing to their more basic instincts.

Imo it goes down to what your message is - both Trump ans Sanders are populists.

It is supposed to, if you add fear mongering to it. Dictators usually believe in it, that's why they try to control every news outlet or public space there is and spread their propaganda

Yes populism is bad. That is what has destroy South America with people like Hugo Chavez e.g. Populism is about shameless pandering to the emotions of the masses, rather than having a grown up talk about the nuances of real life and real politics.

Democracy involves thinking about the citizens, both short term and long term.

Populism is just catering to the short term needs, even basic ones, just to get attention/votes/support.

Populist example from Romania: get an IMF loan in order to increase pensions. Text-book example of shooting yourself in the foot long term, but a very popular action among pensioners, which are a large voting demographic.

It is bad because it never ends up being the case that the populist leader just does what the people want. The populist leader is always an opportunist. I cite pretty much ever single case in history as backup of my claim.

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