Nice. likely aspects of AI will continue, broaden and accelerate industrial obsolescence in advanced countries to something like analytic obsolescence and the political trends will shift around as noted in this post. more interesting than how each trend will arrange remedies to build coalition logic is how they will address underlying dynamics and problems with remedies, which requires an art of suppressing impulses popular with their trend, and pragmatism for trial and error.
like integrating global economy, AI will relentlessly deploy regardless of political trend - we will transition to automated economy just as certainly as we transitioned to industrial economy. This will elevate the conceptual and autonomous ethical ability demanded from modern labor, which will in turn demand family procreative practice to supply such labor. in parallel the west formation is toast and multi polar relation will be constructed on the basis of the prosperity of a majority of countries. at present in the west only the nativists have a glimmer of remedy in their planks, the other trends babbling ancient mantras as if mentally ill. but that will likely shift as problems become more pressing.
Somewhere I would like to read an evaluation of Conservative Populism's performance (Hungary, perhaps) rather than just its appeal. Does it resolve the issues that bring it popularity or is it just churning through grievances and scapegoats without actually making its supporters lives better?
My definition of conservative populism is “The ordinary people of the nation are being ignored or harmed by powerful elites, and we need to restore control, tradition, and national strength.” (from AI)
Which Americans are being harmed by this governance? It looks like the elites and those with a lot of time on their hands, thinking up things to change about the US, have lost influence.
The verdict will be whether conservative populism stimulates economics prosperity and safety for citizens to live their life, raise their families, attend church, temple or mosque, and help neighbors who have fallen on hard times.
Your analysis is missing a very important factor: the Old Left was in favor of broad-based prosperity, meaningful work and a rising standard of living for working class people. The contemporary globalist Left only knows how to speak in terms of redistribution and refers to the disruptions of globalization in the passive voice, as if they are inevitable and therefore unchangeable. I have read more proposals for UBI among “left”-leaning economists than I have analysis of America’s seemingly perpetual trade deficit. This is really not a mystery at all and the cultural stuff is framing, a distraction for the upper middle classes who might feel guilty if they recognized they were voting for the disposession of their fellow countrymen. Both “sides” are simply voting their economic interests, and “conservative populism” will continue to rise as globalization does what it does: create a smaller and smaller class of winners and a wider base of precarity.
This is a really strong analysis, both the idea that coalition systems act as a buffer and the point about AI’s potential impact on populism.
What your article brought into focus for me is a broader pattern. Populism seems to surge when elites mismanage large economic transitions. You can see that beginning in the 1990s with globalization. It wasn’t just disruptive, it was perceived as unevenly managed, with concentrated losses and limited accountability. The gains were often framed as lower prices and efficiency, but that didn’t offset the loss of stable jobs, benefits, and long-term security for many people.
Then 2008 made that dynamic visible in a much more concrete way. A lot of people absorbed real damage, while it appeared that very few decision-makers faced meaningful consequences. That’s where I think the deeper trust breakdown took hold. Once that trust breaks, people don’t evaluate each new issue in isolation. They start asking whether the people in charge can be trusted to make good decisions at all, and that’s where economic, cultural, and institutional issues begin to stack on top of each other.
That’s why your AI point feels so important. It has the potential to be a similar kind of inflection point, but this time affecting groups that have largely been insulated so far. If it’s managed in the same way, I think you’re right, it could significantly accelerate populism, even in systems where coalitions currently slow that process down.
I sure wish we'd stop calling the right "conservative" and the left "liberal". This made sense only as long as political poles extended from center right to center left. But now the right is anything but conservative and the left is anything but liberal, and use of these old terms only confuses the reality of our situation. We now have two competing forms of totalitarianism, and both existentially threaten the entirety of centrism, spanning liberal conservatism to conservative liberalism.
I am wondering about how appropriate it is to refer to movements headed by Trump, Meloni and Orban as "conservative populism". As far as I can see, traditional conservatism is about conserving tradition, limiting government, personal accountability and so forth. In the USA, think George Will; in UK, think Roger Scruton. Olsen gives a nod to this by referring to the "Old Right". I prefer the term populist authoritarian to refer to Trumpism -- but that brand of populism is finally beginning to lose its popularity.
Remember the political compass? There is the social part of conservatism, and the economic side. The economy wasn't working out for huge segments of America.
Trump on some issues economic is left of progressives, and that's why I voted for him. That's also why Cato and Koch brother types hate him. The "New Right", Vance, Rubio, Hawley, anti woke, pro worker, protectionism.
Astute to note the potential effect of AI on Conservative Populism. Europe's Big 3 populist parties have risen from political jokes to near major player status in a relatively short time. This is nearly entirely a reaction to unpopular mass migration and normal center right European parties drifting ever more Left.
In Germay, Merz has far more in common with Open Borders Merkel, than Helmut Kohl. Both Merz and Starmer flirt with approval ratings that occasionally break below 20%. The latter feels one horrendous child rape story away from, literally, being run out of Downing Street in the middle of the night. Macron is limping across the finish line, avoiding the proverbial political guillotine only because, at the moment, a truly broke French government, is more concerning to most voters than mass migration.
Across the West, declining living standards, married with a loss of Western culture, has shoved ever more voters towards populist parties. If the managerial class, that overwhelmingly leans Left, spends the next decade watching their living standards decline as Blue Collar workers have endured, they are unlikely to continue cheering Progressive polices.
Housing shortages now plague the West in ways unseen since the end of WWII. In the US, 85% of college students are raised in owned homes. The demarcation is a far larger predictor of adult economic success than most would like to admit. Increasingly, family assistance is the only route to homeownership for large swaths of Americans, even those armed with a college degree.
Many Left leaning college educated voters are just beginning to comprehend their actual economic situations. The dream of trillions in college loan forgiveness is over, as is their 5 year break from college loan payments.
Forget owning a home, rising rents increasingly mean the young and college educated cannot afford a decent rental. In Silicon Valley, 5 people occupying a 2 bedroom apartment is no longer unusual. These are often engineers and other STEM majors that supposedly chose the "right" majors for today's economy. In NYC, the current hope is Mamdani will lower ever rising rents. When that fails, as it is undoubtedly fated to do, many cheering Open Borders may finally connect a lack of housing to non organic rising populations.
If AI ends many White Collar jobs, en mass, at the same time, it may well be the straw that permanently breaks Progressivism's back. Luxury beliefs are difficult to maintain, when luxury is but a memory.
There is a natural tension within right populism. People are attracted to populism here or in Europe or anywhere because they simply don't make enough money to make ends meet. They aren't after free money necessarily, people will work, the tension comes from the fact that people also want a social safety net. Retirement, min wages, health care, all anathema to traditional economic right wingers, but very popular with the working class.
Nice. likely aspects of AI will continue, broaden and accelerate industrial obsolescence in advanced countries to something like analytic obsolescence and the political trends will shift around as noted in this post. more interesting than how each trend will arrange remedies to build coalition logic is how they will address underlying dynamics and problems with remedies, which requires an art of suppressing impulses popular with their trend, and pragmatism for trial and error.
like integrating global economy, AI will relentlessly deploy regardless of political trend - we will transition to automated economy just as certainly as we transitioned to industrial economy. This will elevate the conceptual and autonomous ethical ability demanded from modern labor, which will in turn demand family procreative practice to supply such labor. in parallel the west formation is toast and multi polar relation will be constructed on the basis of the prosperity of a majority of countries. at present in the west only the nativists have a glimmer of remedy in their planks, the other trends babbling ancient mantras as if mentally ill. but that will likely shift as problems become more pressing.
Somewhere I would like to read an evaluation of Conservative Populism's performance (Hungary, perhaps) rather than just its appeal. Does it resolve the issues that bring it popularity or is it just churning through grievances and scapegoats without actually making its supporters lives better?
My definition of conservative populism is “The ordinary people of the nation are being ignored or harmed by powerful elites, and we need to restore control, tradition, and national strength.” (from AI)
Which Americans are being harmed by this governance? It looks like the elites and those with a lot of time on their hands, thinking up things to change about the US, have lost influence.
The verdict will be whether conservative populism stimulates economics prosperity and safety for citizens to live their life, raise their families, attend church, temple or mosque, and help neighbors who have fallen on hard times.
Your analysis is missing a very important factor: the Old Left was in favor of broad-based prosperity, meaningful work and a rising standard of living for working class people. The contemporary globalist Left only knows how to speak in terms of redistribution and refers to the disruptions of globalization in the passive voice, as if they are inevitable and therefore unchangeable. I have read more proposals for UBI among “left”-leaning economists than I have analysis of America’s seemingly perpetual trade deficit. This is really not a mystery at all and the cultural stuff is framing, a distraction for the upper middle classes who might feel guilty if they recognized they were voting for the disposession of their fellow countrymen. Both “sides” are simply voting their economic interests, and “conservative populism” will continue to rise as globalization does what it does: create a smaller and smaller class of winners and a wider base of precarity.
This is a really strong analysis, both the idea that coalition systems act as a buffer and the point about AI’s potential impact on populism.
What your article brought into focus for me is a broader pattern. Populism seems to surge when elites mismanage large economic transitions. You can see that beginning in the 1990s with globalization. It wasn’t just disruptive, it was perceived as unevenly managed, with concentrated losses and limited accountability. The gains were often framed as lower prices and efficiency, but that didn’t offset the loss of stable jobs, benefits, and long-term security for many people.
Then 2008 made that dynamic visible in a much more concrete way. A lot of people absorbed real damage, while it appeared that very few decision-makers faced meaningful consequences. That’s where I think the deeper trust breakdown took hold. Once that trust breaks, people don’t evaluate each new issue in isolation. They start asking whether the people in charge can be trusted to make good decisions at all, and that’s where economic, cultural, and institutional issues begin to stack on top of each other.
That’s why your AI point feels so important. It has the potential to be a similar kind of inflection point, but this time affecting groups that have largely been insulated so far. If it’s managed in the same way, I think you’re right, it could significantly accelerate populism, even in systems where coalitions currently slow that process down.
I sure wish we'd stop calling the right "conservative" and the left "liberal". This made sense only as long as political poles extended from center right to center left. But now the right is anything but conservative and the left is anything but liberal, and use of these old terms only confuses the reality of our situation. We now have two competing forms of totalitarianism, and both existentially threaten the entirety of centrism, spanning liberal conservatism to conservative liberalism.
I am wondering about how appropriate it is to refer to movements headed by Trump, Meloni and Orban as "conservative populism". As far as I can see, traditional conservatism is about conserving tradition, limiting government, personal accountability and so forth. In the USA, think George Will; in UK, think Roger Scruton. Olsen gives a nod to this by referring to the "Old Right". I prefer the term populist authoritarian to refer to Trumpism -- but that brand of populism is finally beginning to lose its popularity.
Remember the political compass? There is the social part of conservatism, and the economic side. The economy wasn't working out for huge segments of America.
Trump on some issues economic is left of progressives, and that's why I voted for him. That's also why Cato and Koch brother types hate him. The "New Right", Vance, Rubio, Hawley, anti woke, pro worker, protectionism.
Edited to be less strident.
Astute to note the potential effect of AI on Conservative Populism. Europe's Big 3 populist parties have risen from political jokes to near major player status in a relatively short time. This is nearly entirely a reaction to unpopular mass migration and normal center right European parties drifting ever more Left.
In Germay, Merz has far more in common with Open Borders Merkel, than Helmut Kohl. Both Merz and Starmer flirt with approval ratings that occasionally break below 20%. The latter feels one horrendous child rape story away from, literally, being run out of Downing Street in the middle of the night. Macron is limping across the finish line, avoiding the proverbial political guillotine only because, at the moment, a truly broke French government, is more concerning to most voters than mass migration.
Across the West, declining living standards, married with a loss of Western culture, has shoved ever more voters towards populist parties. If the managerial class, that overwhelmingly leans Left, spends the next decade watching their living standards decline as Blue Collar workers have endured, they are unlikely to continue cheering Progressive polices.
Housing shortages now plague the West in ways unseen since the end of WWII. In the US, 85% of college students are raised in owned homes. The demarcation is a far larger predictor of adult economic success than most would like to admit. Increasingly, family assistance is the only route to homeownership for large swaths of Americans, even those armed with a college degree.
Many Left leaning college educated voters are just beginning to comprehend their actual economic situations. The dream of trillions in college loan forgiveness is over, as is their 5 year break from college loan payments.
Forget owning a home, rising rents increasingly mean the young and college educated cannot afford a decent rental. In Silicon Valley, 5 people occupying a 2 bedroom apartment is no longer unusual. These are often engineers and other STEM majors that supposedly chose the "right" majors for today's economy. In NYC, the current hope is Mamdani will lower ever rising rents. When that fails, as it is undoubtedly fated to do, many cheering Open Borders may finally connect a lack of housing to non organic rising populations.
If AI ends many White Collar jobs, en mass, at the same time, it may well be the straw that permanently breaks Progressivism's back. Luxury beliefs are difficult to maintain, when luxury is but a memory.
There is a natural tension within right populism. People are attracted to populism here or in Europe or anywhere because they simply don't make enough money to make ends meet. They aren't after free money necessarily, people will work, the tension comes from the fact that people also want a social safety net. Retirement, min wages, health care, all anathema to traditional economic right wingers, but very popular with the working class.