from Hacker News

Populism (03/2017) – by Ray Dalio

by sr3d on 7/26/18, 9:47 PM with 1 comments

  • by sr3d on 7/26/18, 9:50 PM

    First 5 pages are gold. This part trips me out on how similar the Trump's administration and Trump himself are doing. It's like their playbook one by one.

    "And while their political ideologies vary, the 1930s populists shared most of these core beliefs and policy goals:

    o They aligned themselves with “the people” or “the common man.” o They were anti-establishment and attacked the current ruling interests (government, corporations, wealthy individuals, etc.), calling them elites who were out of touch and had failed the people. o They sought to undermine those elites in favor of others by, for example, advocating wealth redistribution or the nationalization of industry. o They were strongly nationalist and held national unity as a key aim. o They detested the debate and disagreement inherent in democracy, and sought to empower the executive branch, using strong-arm tactics to prevent others from getting in their way and, in more extreme cases, undermining democracy. o They tended to be anti-international, anti-global trade, and anti-immigrant. They often railed against foreign influence in their countries. This often translated to hostility toward other countries, which pushed those countries to embrace political extremes as well.

    • Conflicts between factions became increasingly intense, leading to great obstructionism, crackdowns on opposition and free media, etc. This led to more autocratic leadership. Those that had the weakest norms/shortest history of democratic institutions were quickest to move away from democracy to dictatorship"