When it comes to the spicier cultural issues that generate flame wars online, I tend to find myself falling on the side of the conservatives. The exceptions to this are LGBT rights and drug use, but these days, these issues seem to divide more on old/young lines than conservative/liberal lines anyway.
I'm strongly against all forms of gun control. I believe that nations often have the responsibility to get involved in the affairs of other nations, including militarily. My diet consists mostly of red meat and I have a longstanding beef with vegans. I find media that overtly panders to minorities irritating whether or not I'm in said minority. I believe that wealthy liberals are intentionally and maliciously fanning the flames of race and gender conflicts to break down community bonds to make people easier to manipulate. Yadda yadda.
In short, when it comes to cultural views, I'm a milquetoast example of exactly what you'd expect to find from a young, online, cultural conservative, or at least libertarian.
And yet, despite all of this, I'm a Socialist. Not a Socialist-lite or Social Democrat in the vein of Bernie Sanders, but a dyed-in-the-wool Socialist.
I believe corporations are fundamentally evil to the core. I believe the overwhelming majority of working people in the US (and probably the world) are being ruthlessly exploited by a class of nobles we'd all be better off without. As a result, I believe we have an ethical responsibility to favor trade unions, strikes, and literally anything that protects workers from corporations. I believe the only realistic long-term result of unchecked Capitalism with rapidly improving technology is a dystopia. Yadda yadda.
Now, neither my cultural beliefs nor my economic beliefs are particularly unusual. The proportion of people in the US identifying as an Economic Leftists or Socialists has gone up every year since 1989, and the cultural conservatives, reactionaries, anti-progs, and anti-woke types are growing rapidly as well. Yet, I've never met anyone else in the overlap.
The combination of cultural Conservatism and economic Socialism is what's historically been called Populism, so that's how I'll be using that word. (I'm clarifying this because some people call Trump a "populist", but he's about as anti-socialist as someone can be, so I'm not using that word the same way as these people.)
Looking to the past, I can see lots of examples of this kind of Populism, especially in the first half of the 20th century, but practically nothing in the present. Libertarians are culturally liberal and economically conservative, and there's loads of them, so you'd think the opposite would also be true, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
With this in mind, I have 3 questions for this community:
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Why are there drastically fewer Populists today than there were in the past?
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Besides "Populist", what are some other names for the belief system I'm describing?
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Where are all the Populists that are left? I assume there's not literally zero, and that some of them hang out online together somewhere, so where are they? Are there populist blogs? Populist forums? Populist subreddits?
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Notes -
Ever seen a chart that goes along the lines of 'this is what they stopped talking about in 2012' listing mentions in major newspapers and it's all stuff along the lines of foreclosures, bankers, bailouts? Meanwhile, sexism, racism and transphobia all go up 400-800%. Also consider that study that shows heterogenous worker pools are less likely to unionize. I agree.
Well what do you want specifically? Communally owned corporations? State-owned industries? Which ones? Mixed market economy but with more pro-worker regulation?
I favour a mixed-market economy with some central planning (state backing for large-scale infrastructure development, city-building, nuclear power plants). Such functions should be conducted by the state as opposed to contracted out. The state should generally be trying to make it easier for business to engage in development, provided said development is in the public interest. For example try to reduce the cost of inputs like electricity, train high-skilled workers and so on. Yet there should also be many market interventions - at least tame sites like Tiktok so we get the relatively more pro-social Chinese version that has kids doing science experiments. Incentives for R&D in the hard sciences as opposed to fintech, online gambling or e-markets. Strategically important industries should be subsidized rather than offshored, unless it's totally impractical to retain them. Subsidies and affirmative action in the workforce for married parents with well-functioning children.
I also want a return to nation-states as the accepted norm. No mass migration lowering wages, no new groups of elites or wanna-be elites.
If they wrote it, you wouldn't read it, and if you read it, you wouldn't believe it.
Well I did read it and believe it but couldn't easily find a high-quality version, only shitty copies. I judged that the ifunny watermark would not enhance the credibility of my point.
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