In his work of intellectual history, Liberalism, Edmund Fawcett wrote,
To the liberal mind, nobody claiming to intuit the popular will or to speak for “the people” was to be trusted.
You can’t trust the people to trust themselves.
People who trust themselves will
1. Prefer to make their own decisions, rather than have “officials” make decisions for them.
2. Prefer not to make decisions for others.
I see populism as failing to embrace (2). But if you do not embrace (2), then you cannot live by (1). The difference between populists and elitists is about who gets to make decisions for others. For progressive elitists, it is experts, by which they mean people who think like themselves. For populists, it is popular will, by which they mean people who think like themselves.
Genuine expertise is great. We should all consider the advice of experts in making individual decisions and in making voluntary decisions about how to coordinate and collaborate with one another.
But we should not allow experts to sit on a throne and rule over us. This is where libertarianism seems to align with populism. Unfortunately, populists only remove the expert while keeping the throne. On that throne, they would place the “will of the people,” often represented by a demagogue.
I think that many of us make the mistake of thinking that “the people actually agree with me.” This comes from a habit of seeing democracy not as a check against government excess but as an expression of “the will of the people.” We go so far to flatter and venerate “the will of the people” that the notion that one’s ideas are not shared by the majority creates cognitive dissonance: if the majority is right, and I disagree with the majority, then does that mean that I am wrong?
It is tempting for you to resolve this cognitive dissonance by insisting that most people really share your views–it’s just that the system is corrupt. If we just bang on democracy’s door hard enough, our views will make it inside.
For libertarians, this means believing that deep down everybody else is libertarian. But they are not. “Keep your hands off my Medicare” or “shut down hate speech” are more typical attitudes. Many people are, either explicitly, or implicitly, FOOLs (Fear Of Others’ Liberty).
“The people” are not truly libertarian. Perhaps by your definition of the term, I am not truly libertarian either. For me, libertarianism entails resistance to rule by experts. But it also entails resistance to the “will of the people.” You cannot trust the people to trust themselves.
We are about to be ruled by the “experts” of the World Economic Forum. That is not populist. And they are not experts in economics. Their reset will bring death to many.
Arnold;
I’m sympathetic to your statements about libertarianism and your frustrations; however, I can’t be libertarian as many people define it because – as you say – I have a fear of other’s liberty. People routinely generate asymmetric costs with their liberty, often not even reaping short term benefits but imposing on me long term costs. We see it with 3-year olds, college students, drunk drivers, politicians, everybody. I can’t trust them to do the right thing, for themselves or others.
I also can’t trust myself to do the right thing (your point 2).
Finally, a totalizing low trust environment is very grim. Not being able to trust anyone is very limiting; and ultimately nihilistic. In reality, given no better options, people rely on the untrustworthy and the cycle is reinforced by the failures. Sometimes, for a while, we can discipline ourselves to be trustworthy, but it takes consistent effort and there must be a mechanism for forgiveness of lapses (straight forward game theory).
We can escape the cycles of mistrust and betrayal in society; but not with a simplistic libertarianism. Instead, it requires specialization…
Lost in the progressive/liberal/libertarian discussion is a sense of scale(s). The ‘dunbar number’ is a shorthand for one break in scale; but there are others. Population, spatial, and temporal scales matter in decisive ways – people who can meet in person once a year vs those who wake up in the same household should have different relationships and should have different structures of authority/liberty.
I don’t want to try to outline an entire thesis with all the ramifications; but you could make more progress in conceiving how society could practically work if you considered a diversity of organizational modes, how people must have control over even the manner by which they are locally organized, and how communities interact with each other apart from but not disconnected from how their constituent people interact.
Check out the book, “The Tragedy of American Compassion,” by Marvin Olasky. It details the tens of thousands of charities and mutual aid organizations that crisscrossed the country before government welfare programs displaced them. These private organizations had excellent track records of helping people lift themselves out of poverty rather than simply making them more comfortable in, and with, their poverty. Such civic institutions once formed the libertarian bedrock of the nation.
Thank you for the pointer; though I readily accept the conclusion that there were many effective charities, even some at the national level.
Hear, hear.
Stephen Knott’s recent book – “The Lost Soul of the American Presidency” – argues that Trump is the modern product of populist political reasoning that started with Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson undermining the presidency as an institution that James Madison (at least initially) and Alexander Hamilton viewed as a check against such populist fervor. He makes a persuasive case.
So true.
Nice post. I would add that one thing that I find discrediting is that there is quite a bit of Homo Hypocritus at work among the populists. IE, they are not terribly shy about making decisions for other people, but if anyone wants to make decisions that affect them which they happen to disagree with, suddenly they all sound like Samuel Adams.
That said, I also don’t think so much of elitism, either, these days. I think that at least in the last decade or so, our managerial elites have become conspicuously less (small-l, classically) liberal than the populists have. Less tolerant of dissent, more suffused with a kind of moral and intellectual narcissism, etc. Additionally, I think that as the social fabric has frayed since the 1960’s or so, the expert class has become more willing to leverage its position to serve its own interests, and is therefore somewhat less trustworthy than perhaps it once was, and more parasitic. Eric Weinstein has been good on this subject.
In other words it’s “‘clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.'”
Why is anyone surprised that, when the government starts selling special privileges, the elite – that is, the wealthy and well-educated – are best able to buy what the government is selling?
We need to return to the rule of law under which laws apply equally to everyone regardless of position, wealth, race, or religion.
James Madison warning in Federalist #62 is particularly prescient:
“Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any manner affecting the value of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not the many.”
I think there was more of a sense of noblesse oblige in generations past.
Arnold: In practice, I think that big government is what North, Weingast, and Wallis call a “limited-access order.” Powerful and important members of the governing coalition capture rewards, at the expense of everyone else.
I’m a temporary populist because populism is the only available weapon against the current arrangement, which is High and Low against the Middle.
Wise deference is a crucial, but elusive civic virtue in democracy. It should cut both ways between experts and laypersons. Instead we have the situation that Arnold Kling describes.
We should experiment with new institutions, which, at the margin, might increase wise deference. Here are two that I find intriguing:
1) Prediction markets, to provide more credible information about means-ends relations in public policy: “a new form of governance, wherein voters would say what we want, but speculators would say how to get it.” (Robin Hanson) Vote on values, but bet on beliefs.
For example, Shi-Ling Hsu has proposed an ingenious experiment, a prediction market in climate change:
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/2014/7/regulation-v37n2-2.pdf
2) Deliberative juries, designed to integrate representativeness (random samples of citizens), competence (expert testimony), and collective decision (arguing, bargaining, voting). Thomas Jefferson sketched reforms along these lines. Sortition + education + deliberation.
Might these sorts of institutional experiments reduce mistrust between experts and everyday citizens in democracy?
Of course, the problem is how to get from here to there. I don’t see much demand for these kinds of experiments.
A critique of libertarian populism starts in 5…4…3…2…1…never.
Open borders and drug legalization are most likely loser issues that only a noble libertarian populist would support. And, these + atheism are pretty much all that separates you from conservatism. Perhaps it’s time for a healthy self-examination?
I found it hard to keep reading when Elizabeth Warren, a literal embodiment of the academic managerial class, was called a “populist”. We are at “bad word for people I don’t like” territory there.
Can I ask what the supposedly populist Donald Trump forced anyone to do against their will ever? In his entire presidency, as far as I can tell, he passed not a single law that limited your liberty.
His economic policy was a tax cut and maybe some tariffs on an entity half of you think is an existential threat to freedom.
His justice policy was a soft on crime bill.
His foreign policy involved no foreign wars and a pulldown of US troops abroad.
In an era where elites literally LOCKED US ALL IN OUR HOUSES FOR MONTHS, Donald Trump was more anti-lockdown than your average politician. He was also pro-vaccine and anti-FDA obstruction.
He enforced existing border policy…but are we really going to make open borders some kind of populist litmus test?
Like, what exactly are you afraid of populists doing? What did Donald Trump do to force his beliefs on anyone?
I think libertarians are going to find Donald Trump may have been one of the most libertarian presidents they will experience in their lifetime…
@asdf, Trying to coerce election officials and overthrow an election are not “libertarian virtues.”
Arnold, I don’t master your language but it seems that your reference to “people who trust themselves” makes nonsense. Maybe you wanted to say “people who are confident in themselves”. The relevant issue to your points 1 and 2 is meddling (as in the book by John Lachs, a great libertarian).
Anyway, your analysis of populism makes no sense to me. I still remember discussions with Rudi Dornbush in the late 1980s about populism in Latin America. And I remember discussions about Perón’s populism during the past 70 years. In late 1951, when Perón was campaigning for re-election, one of my uncles was the main confidant of Ricardo Balbín, the leader of other opposition to Perón. Until 1963, I was on good terms with my uncle and I learned a lot about why they rejected Perón. It was very simple, Balbín wanted to be President and was willing to repeat whatever my uncle and other advisers were telling him (Balbín lost in 1951 and again in 1958 against Frondizi, and then in 1963, he didn’t want to lose again so he accepted the party’s candidate proposed by my uncle and the funny thing is that this candidate, Arturo Illia, became president with 26% of the vote). Yes, Perón was not a conservative, or a libertarian, or a liberal, or a socialist. He was a typical president: he was willing to promise whatever was necessary to win the election at a time in which millions of people were moving from rural areas to what today is called the Great Buenos Aires. To find Perón’s ideology is an intellectual task for idle people. I never liked him, but I liked Evita (she died in 1952 and knew how to spend well other people’s money).
Yes, it’s a waste of time to discuss the ideologies of past presidents. You better focus on what they promised and what they delivered.
Well I guess if there is a movement out there to fill thrones with demagogues, I would bravely stand in opposition to it as well.
A more charitable interpretation of populism would be to characterize it as the popular movement away from majoritarianism control and uncheched and unbalanced unelected authorities in favor of consensus model democracy. An excellent example of this sort of consensus populism is the Arnold King who writes in favor of breaking up the two party duopoly in this fine pragmatic piece that appears respectful of democracy and also happens to leave a throne in place: https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2021/Klingduopoly.html
If you don’t want to call that populism, fine. Give it a name that you like and we will call it that. I do kind of like the ring of consensus populism
What is the difference between majority control and consensus model democracy? What are the mechanics of deciding an issue in the latter?
Well, here is the Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_democracy
The seminal work is Arendt Lijphart’s Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries which also has a Wikipedia page. A second edition is available free online here: https://e-edu.nbu.bg/pluginfile.php/830138/mod_resource/content/1/Lijphart%2C%20A.%20Patterns%20of%20Democracy%20-%20Government%20Forms%20and%20Performance%20in%20Thirty-Six%20Countries%20%282012%29.pdf
In a nutshell, the Encyclopedia of Governance offers: “Consensus democracy is a model of democracy designed to find and create common ground in pluralistic societies and to base decision making on consensus. Consensus democracies also seek to allow different political interests to share power.” Examples: Switzerland and Belgium which have proportional representation, parliaments, and federalism. Such systems permit a relatively large share of the population to be substantively represented and participating their governance. Consensus models are frequently contrasted with the Westminster model which is described as majoritarian because its first past the post electoral system tends to exclude larger shares of the population from participating in their governance.
Before you even say anything, I’ve done the math on inmate death rate and its way way below the elderly (and of course the inmates doing the dying are themselves older, and would be protected if the old were prioritized).
If the below is populism, sign me up!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/02/covid-vaccine-prisons/
First came the outcry in a Denver newspaper op-ed, arguing that Colorado’s coronavirus vaccination plan would bring relief to a man who fatally shot four people before it protected the author’s law-abiding, 78-year-old father.
Then came the backlash on social media. The accusation that state leaders were coddling convicts like Nathan Dunlap, who is being held for life in the Colorado State Penitentiary for the 1993 slayings at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, caught fire in pro-Trump Facebook groups with titles such as “ALL ABOARD THE TRUMP TRAIN.” Within days, the person behind the broadside, a Republican district attorney, was making his case on Fox News, labeling the state’s vaccination plan “crazy.”
The plan, which put incarcerated people in line for coronavirus immunization ahead of the elderly and those with chronic conditions, had been released by the state health department. It was the product of months of deliberation by members of the state’s medical advisory group — physicians, public health officials and experts in bioethics. But their framework, when subject to the machinery of online outrage, quickly unraveled.
Asked by a Fox reporter about the prioritization, and the criticism touched off by the op-ed, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said at a December news briefing there was “no way” the limited supply of shots would “go to prisoners before it goes to people who haven’t committed any crime.” He let out a short laugh as he pronounced the word “prisoners.”
As promised, a revised version of the state’s plan, released a week later without input from the advisory panel, put incarcerated people in no particular phase. It similarly demoted people living in homeless shelters and other congregate settings, while guaranteeing access for front-line workers and adults 70 and older as part of the priority group following medical workers and residents and staff of long-term care facilities.
Where I strongly support the populists is on immigration. How can the elites be considered to work in good faith when they expect all their formal and informal woke legislations and judicial changes be treated as solemn unbreakable laws, while compromising on the most basic of rules — who gets to be a citizen?
No congress nor president has successfully repealed our immigration laws. Yet the stance seems to be Denigrate those who would apply the rules or enforce them. Give money to the illegal, and shame the enforcers. Hope that the demography is eventually changed to satisfy the elite desires. Delay, allow invaders to enter, and treat them with kid gloves. Don’t cooperate with federal authorities Spend whatever is necessary to help them and defame those opposed.
Against this constant treasonous behavior, everything in the liberal or libertarian set of outrages pales in comparison.
Yes, you can argue that Obama is/was an elite-servant. A cheap one: he opened the door to the U.S. in exchange for 8 years of a good salary and two huge lump-sum payments (one pre-and the other post-presidency).
Kling is opposing of one specific type of “populism”. Any issue where there is a popular voter base against the interest of an elite, could reasonably be called populism. I’d side with an elite advocating austerity against a populism that advocates lavish publish spending. When the progressive elite wants more state level money, power, and status for itself, I side with the populists.
wow, I wish I could fix typos in that. sorry 🙂