Pluralistic: Good ideas are popular (07 Aug 2025)


Today's links


A black and white photo of a massive crowd (a 1910s Mayday parade); matted into the background of the photo are the three wise monkeys, posed before a cloud-shrouded capitol building.

Good ideas are popular (permalink)

In democracies, we're told, politicians exist to reflect and enact the popular will; but the truth is, politicians' primary occupation is thwarting the will of the people, in preference to the will of a small group of wealthy, powerful people.

That's an empirical finding, based on a study of 1,779 policy outcomes, which concluded that:

economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

The policy preferences of the public would give the leadership of any mainstream party the fantods. Here's a remarkable thread where the economic anthropologist Jason Hickel summarizes recent polling on public preferences:

https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/1953126243118813556

  • "Capitalism does more harm than good" (56% globally; 69% in France; 74% in India)

https://www.edelman.com/news-awards/2020-edelman-trust-barometer

  • In 28 of 34 countries, the majority are anti-capitalist:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecaf.12591

  • A majority of Canadians, Australians and Britons aged 18-34 believe "socialism will improve the economy and well-being of citizens":

https://jacobin.com/2023/03/socialism-right-wing-think-tank-polling-support-anti-capitalism

  • 62% of Americans aged 18-30 "hold favorable views of socialism" (61% of Democrats have a positive view of socialism vs 50% who are positive on capitalism):

https://www.cato.org/blog/81-say-they-cant-afford-pay-higher-taxes-next-year

  • Majority of youth climate group members blame "a system that puts profit over people and planet" and 89% say that system is capitalism:

https://www.climatevanguard.org/publications-all/mapping-the-global-youth-climate-movement

  • Majority support a national job guarantee (72% UK, 78% US; 79% France):

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/11/24/how-popular-are-post-capitalist-ideas

  • Majority of Americans support workplace democracy (unions, worker shareholders and board seats):

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/what-do-americans-want-from-private-government-experimental-evidence-demonstrates-that-americans-want-workplace-democracy/D9C1DBB6F95D9EEA35A34ABF016511F4

  • Majority of Britons support public ownership of services (education, healthcare, rail, water, postal service, parks); 64% of Americans support universal public health care; 64% support public options for internet, child care, and housing;

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/11/24/how-popular-are-post-capitalist-ideas

  • 74% of Britons support national, permanent rent-controls; 71% of Bay Staters and 55% of Californians agree:

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/11/24/how-popular-are-post-capitalist-ideas

  • 72% of Americans support a living wage; 87% of Britons agree:

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2023/11/24/how-popular-are-post-capitalist-ideas

  • 84% of Europeans support a millionaires' tax; 69% of Americans agree:

https://wid.world/document/international-attitudes-toward-global-policies-for-poverty-reduction-and-climates-change/

  • Majority of people in 40 countries want 4:1 maximum pay ratios for CEOs and their lowest-paid workers:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691614549773

  • 71% of Europeans want transformational reform of the UN and IMF, with proportional votes based on member-states' populations (58% of Americans agree):

https://wid.world/document/international-attitudes-toward-global-policies-for-poverty-reduction-and-climates-change/

  • Majorities of Europeans and Americans support "compensating low-income countries for climate damages, funding renewable energy in low-income countries, and supporting low-income countries to adapt to climate change":

https://wid.world/document/international-attitudes-toward-global-policies-for-poverty-reduction-and-climates-change/

  • 80-90% of people in medium/high-income countries want to finance this with a global tax on millionaires:

https://wid.world/document/international-attitudes-toward-global-policies-for-poverty-reduction-and-climates-change/

Hickel's thread reminded of the 2023 Pew report that found that:

  • 65% of Americans feel exhausted when thinking about politics;

  • 63% have little/no confidence in the US political system;

  • 4% think the US system works well:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/18/the-people-no/#tell-ya-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want

Unsurprisingly:

  • 87% of Americans want Congressional term limits;

  • 79% favor age limits for Congress and the Supreme Court;

  • 62% support automatic voter-registration for every American;

  • 65% want to abolish the Electoral College (47% of Republicans agree!);

  • 70% believe voters have too little influence over their representatives;

  • 83% of Republicans say big donors call the shots (80% of Dems agree);

  • 72% of Americans want to limit campaign contributions (75% D/71% R);

  • 58% of Americans believe it is possible to get money out of politics.

So on the one hand, this is all pretty dismal. It also makes the trend towards electing anti-democratic politicians who want to abolish elections a lot easier to understand: if you (correctly) believe you live in a world where politicians don't care about you, then why not vote for a strongman who'll punish your enemies and maybe leave you with a few more crumbs?

But on the other hand, this is very exciting, because it shows us what a truly democratic world would look like (and just how different that world would be from the billionaire astroturf-dominated social media world)! If the popular will can achieve primacy, we would live in a veritable paradise!

It also explains how candidates like Zohran Mamdani were able to clobber the political establishment simply by a) telling people that he would do popular things; and b) convincing them that he meant it.

Suppressing popular preferences in (nominal) democracies isn't easy. It requires absolute unity of the ruling classes. Whenever the faintest crack appears in capital's unity, good policies gush out of it. That's what's happened with antitrust this decade, where the divisions between billionaire rentiers like Apple/Google and the millionaire capitalists who want to escape their 30% app tax has allowed a rush of effective antitrust enforcement to sweep the world, to the detriment of both:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting

By not hanging together, the rich let us hang them separately. And since there is no honor among thieves – since the rich want nothing more to eat one anothers' lunches – there is disunity aplenty for us to exploit. We just have to remember that we are the (very large) majority and act like it.

(Image: Japanexperterna.se, CC BY-SA 2.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Charlie Stross, Hugo winner https://web.archive.org/web/20050810024249/http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2005/08/07/#hugo-thing

#10yrsago Veiny, slick silicone ovipositors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkfFZnK5W9s

#10yrsago A treadmill for Slinky toys, for your infinite Slinky-torturing pleasure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dinVcBEDhQ

#10yrsago The Princess and the Pony, from Kate “Hark a Vagrant” Beaton https://memex.craphound.com/2015/08/07/the-princess-and-the-pony-from-kate-hark-a-vagrant-beaton/

#5yrsago Free the law https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/08/turkeys-for-christmas-party/#recap

#5yrsago Google bans anticompetitive vocabularies https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/08/turkeys-for-christmas-party/#newspeak

#5yrsago Peter Thiel was right https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/08/turkeys-for-christmas-party/#christmas-voting-turkeys

#1yrago The Google antitrust remedy should extinguish surveillance, not democratize it https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • Canny Valley: A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

  • Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

  • Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

  • The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI, a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/).

Currently writing:

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1048 words yesterday, 23678 words total).

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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