Tackling Populism

Within the last year or so there has been a rise in populism in the Political landscape.  Populism to put it simply is to gather a group of people disenfranchised with political process and to turn them against the political process itself.  This can be left or right, or up or down on the political compass but ultimately it is fuelled by one thing more than any other - perception.  Within every populist movement there is always an issue, sometimes more than one, depending on how deep the tranche goes.  This issue or these issues, are perceived by the followers of the populist movement in one way.

There's no definition of what that one way is, because that is the cause behind which those of the movement rally.  In modern times it is the perception that political progress has not delivered beneficial results, or to be specific, the globalisation process is not beneficial to those part of the movement. 

This frustration is born out of a desire that has been embedded in our society for centuries now and which is beginning to prove self-defeating: that progress must be visible.  By this I mean, there must be a visible sign of the progress made.  The easiest way to demonstrate this is to look at mobile phones.  When they were first created they were like bricks, large, heavy, bulky etc, they weren't practical.  As the technology evolved the size reduced, their capabilities changed, their design evolved.  Over time these phones went from large bricks to the sleek smartphones we use today.  Throughout this process of evolution, their designed changed visibly, many times.  The designs that were experimented with varied greatly, in form factor, in colour, in their selling points, and yes, in their price too.

Today however we have reached a point in the evolution of smartphones where progress is no longer visible.  There is no visible change to the design of these phones that is substantial.  Changes made to processors, and capability of the hardware are not visual.  The gains from upgrading from one device to a newer one are now marginal, and as such the smartphone market has been changing, it has been slowing.  Manufacturers have been striving to find something groundbreaking or something that will change the market entirely but to no avail.  The lack of perceivable changes in these devices has led most people to become complacent save for a few that are brand loyal and must have the latest version produced by that brand.  In parallel to the populist movement in politics today, those that stay true to that pursuit of the latest version are those that are perceived by populists as being the "elite" of globalisation, whilst the others who have given up on this forward momentum are perceived to be those who are part of the populist movement.

It's worth noting here that nothing is this black and white in reality, this is simply an analagy to demonstrate how there can be two opposing sides who both like smartphones but disagree fundamentally with the consumer process.  This is the direct parallel to be found in populism.  Both sides claim to be defending democracy yet have fundamental disagreements over democratic process, and unfortunately the two view points are irreconcilable, they can not both be held to be right, they just aren't compatible.

While some will call me biased, and I admit I am, the important thing to realise here is that progress does not always have to be visible.  Improvements won't always have results that can be perceived visually.  With the example of smartphones, the evolution of the design of these phones has indeed stagnated, but the evolution of the underlying hardware continues.  The evolution of the software that runs these devices continues.  The test of this evolution and the perception of the advancement won't be perceivable to you until you find yourself comparing a much wider gap in the evolutionary process which will only become apparent when sufficient time has passed.

With politics as a whole, time has been passing, and this advancement has been constant.  The reality of the world and the way it works today as opposed to the way it once worked is the same reality of an iPhone 7 vs the original iPhone - the detractors will claim nothing has changed, and that no advancement has been made, but when they find themselves in the reality of actually comparing one to the other, and having the 7 taken away and being expected to use the original while the rest of the world moves forward, the disparity will become self evident.

Populism will be self-defeating when the reality of a world people are nostalgic for that never existed to begin with hits home.  The delusion that everyone coped just fine decades ago will quickly give way to reality.  When you try to run the latest version of Call of Duty on a Windows 3.1 machine you will see for yourself how woefully inadequate it was.  UK GDP per capita rose from $4,400 in 1975 to $41,800 in 2013.  To assume the economic model of 1975 can sustain the UK at its present level is to assume an economic model that sustained an economy 1/10th the size it is today will be robust enough to cope - that's the equivalent of trying to play a game with a 4 GHz processor requirement on a 400 MHz processor, good luck with that.

To that end, the easiest way to defeat populism is to give it enough rope, it will hang itself.  When it's dead and buried we will advance globalisation at an unprecedented rate.