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 -
Keep in mind, government doesn't necessarily mean the feds, just any institution directly answerable to the people of an area. Also, privately-owned and government-owned business would look similar in the day-to-day running of things; the main differences would be in who profits.
Simplified example:
Suppose you live in a town of 10000 people and you and some buddies believe that your town would be better off with a power plant.
In a Captialist economy, you'd all go to a wealthy investor and try to convince him of your hypothetical plant's ability to make him a lot of money if he invests in it. If you succeed, he'd fund your plant in exchange for most of the profits. This could be described as an investor-owned business.
In a Socialized economy, you'd all go to the town council to convince them that the plant would be a net positive for the town. The council would hold a vote of the entire town. If the vote passed, the town would fund your plant in exchange for most of the profits, which would be distributed to the people, either directly or through infrastructure. This would be a collective-owned (government-owned) business.
The advantage of this over an investor-owned business is that it scales better with automation. Suppose that the plant initially hires 50 people from the town. Then suppose, as is common, that improvements in technology enable the plant to be only manned by 10 people. Then suppose that all other businesses in the town do the same thing. Under Capitalism, this would be good for the wealthy investor, and very bad for the town, as now most of the workers have been laid off and no longer benefit from the plant.
Whereas under Socialism, automation would be good for the town. Since everyone shares in the profits of the plant, everyone would benefit from improvements to the plant's productivity.
What if the town council disagrees with my idea? Am I not allowed to start the business?
Who does the hiring at the plant? Me, the "founder" or the town council?
Assuming your proposal wasn't blatantly absurd or frivolous, then regardless of their personal feelings, as civil servants, they would still be obligated to put your proposal to the vote of the town.
If you go to an investor to fund your plant, and you're turned down, is he "not allowing" you to build it? Indirectly, maybe, but that would be a really odd way of phrasing it. Same way with going to the town to fund your plant.
As far as whether or not you're literally "allowed" to build the plant in the town, yes that would probably also be up to the local government, but that's also true under Capitalism, at least in all the nations I'm aware of, and not what I'm talking about. Hell, I live in the US and my municipality votes on that kind of thing all the time.
On the day-to-day, I imagine the plant's hiring manager would make that decision. If you're asking who hires them they would likely be appointed by the COO, who would be voted in by the plant's workers every few years. If you're asking who the initial workers would be, that would consist of you and the group of people who decided to start a plant in the first place, along with anyone else from the town you convinced to join. I imagine the more of you there are, the more likely the town would vote to fund you.
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