Populism is the result of global economic failure (opens in new tab)

I agree this post is prone to a flame war, but it's also a really important conversation for people to have. Many people don't understand why the election went the way that it did. How can we discuss this important topic correctly?

Ben studebaker called the rise of Trump in his article which had a really broad overview of what neoliberalism is, and he basically postulated that it's on the way out and we can EITHER have Nationalism (Trump) or Egalitarianism (Bernie Sanders)... sadly for America, he was ABSOLUTELY right, but nationalism won out... But that might not hold true, as we can easily flip flop back and forth till one side shows true progress at fixing the shit wrong with America.

https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/10/why-bernie-sanders...

That was written last February back when people actually thought it insane that Hillary Clinton could lose to Donald Trump -- doesn't sound so crazy now though.

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

Neoliberalism, and for that matter democracy (our Republic actually, since USA isn't a democracy) WAS devised by the 'elite' class. -- Washington, Jefferson, et al were all the elites of their times, Jefferson was a very rich slave owner. The problem I think is we get tied to the 'historical' or national pride of the constitution when there's many flaws in the way our government was setup, and it was always a rigged game - rigged for those with money/economic sway. There has never been a gov't yet that really put the needs of it's poorest people at the forefront of the constitution. (Some european countries come close like Denmark) -- but only after recent changes in the past 100 years -- the problem is changing ANYTHING in a country as big as America with a political establishment that contols BOTH parties is nearly impossible.

Should we blindly follow people who are rich enough to command others? Now that we have the internet/technology why can't we have where we vote on issues, or pick ANYBODY we admire and trust to vote for us? -- I don't want to vote on all tech stuff so I might delegate my vote to Bill Gates on issues tagged 'tech', environmental stuff I'd delegate to Bill Nye, etc..

They could vote or re-delegate their collective votes to someone else like Bernie Sanders, or John Mccain.

I think the problem is that neoliberalism is an ideology and suffers the same problem as all other ideologies - their advocates only care about purism of concepts and not whether things work or don't work in the real world.

e.g. I'm rather happy with our socialist NHS in the UK - I don't want socialism in many other areas but for health it seems to have made sense. I don't want an ideologue coming along and trying to dismantle it just because they disagree with the founding concepts rather than how it actually works.

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

> 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.

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.

Nobody gives a damn about values. Otherwise the British nationalists wouldn't care about the Polish immigrant workers, but they do get a certain amount of hate.