A major danger will continue to threaten the future of liberty in 2025. It is not a new threat but one that has become more pressing since the rise of populism in the world over the past three decades, including with the election of Donald Trump. (On the rise of populism, see Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick, and Christoph Trebescb, “Populist Leaders and the Economy,” American Economic Review, 2023.)
Populism of the right, which is more prevalent in Europe, is no less dangerous than populism of the left, which has been the main variety in Latin America. But the threat I want to emphasize is not populism as such, which I have treated elsewhere (see notably my Independent Review article “The Impossibility of Populism”), but its frequent identification with what journalists often label “the libertarian right.” It seems to me that Donald Trump himself has been mentioning the word “freedom” (but significantly not the more demanding “liberty”) more often recently—for example:
“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Ignore the funny anthropomorphism in the quoted statement. Consider instead how the likely problems caused by populism will be identified by the enemies of liberty as failures of libertarianism and classical liberalism. This could set liberty back several decades—and that’s if we are lucky.
One set of catastrophes will likely be economic. For example, if Trump were to follow up only on his tariff promises, we can expect a recession to follow the supply shock. If the federal government reacts by increasing its expenditures and the Fed partly finances them by creating money, inflation will compound the problem. It is easy to forecast that a populist government will worsen the problem with price controls.
Another sort of catastrophe would be war. For many Trump supporters, whether among the enthusiasts or among those who believe that his collectivism is less dangerous than that of “the left,” this cannot happen because he said he opposed forever wars. Among the least damageable foreign adventures, the Panama Canal may not be handed to the US government without a fight. Sending missiles against Mexican drug gangs would also be a casus belli—which is apparently a current fear among the least sycophantic in Mr. Trump’s entourage. According to the Washington Post (“Trump Team Says Canada, Greenland, Panama Comments Are Part of a Broader Plan,” December 28, 2024),
Some in [Mr. Trump’s] orbit have real concerns about whether he will cross the line from harsh rhetoric and economic warfare to military intervention. Trump has threatened a 25 percent tariff on Mexican imports to stop the flow of illegal drugs, and privately discussed the idea of firing missiles into Mexico to try to take out cartels.
Even if none of these catastrophes come to pass, any suggestion that such games or clowneries have something to do with the ideal of individual liberty can only compromise its future. John Maynard Keynes was right that in the long run, ideas matter.
Consider the case of Javier Milei, the president of Argentina who describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist or, more recently, a minarchist. He seems cut from a different cloth than the sort of illiberal populists I have been alluding to. (Among the recent press reports, see “An Interview With Javier Milei, Argentina’s President”; Javier Milei, “My Contempt for the State Is Infinite“; and “Javier Milei, Free-Market Revolutionary“— all in The Economist dated November 28, 2024.) Milei obviously has some economic understanding and competence: during his first year in power, he has already significantly reduced inflation, balanced the budget, and seems for the moment to have stopped the long decline of his country—decline that was mainly due to previous populist rulers. (See Ciara Nugent and Michael Scott, “Argentina: Has Milei Proved His Critics Wrong?” Financial Times, December 10, 2024; and Mary Anastasia O’Grady, “Measuring Milei’s Argentine Progress,” Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2024.)
But Milei has also fallen in with bad company. He expressed his support for many far-right and illiberal populist politicians in Europe and the Americas. Whether or not he succeeds in his important Argentinian enterprise, he will have further contributed to identifying libertarians with illiberal wackos.
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For somebody who can draw, it should not be rocket science to create, for this post, an image illustrating a dangerous pass in the Alps under the inspiration of a passage in a short story by Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), L’Auberge (The Inn):
Le ciel pâlissait sur sa tête ; et soudain une lueur bizarre, née on ne sait d’où, éclaira brusquement l’immense océan des cimes pâles qui s’étendaient à cent lieues autour de lui. On eût dit que cette clarté vague sortait de la neige elle-même pour se répandre dans l’espace. Peu à peu les sommets lointains les plus hauts devinrent tous d’un rose tendre comme de la chair, et le soleil rouge apparut derrière les lourds géants des Alpes bernoises.
[Translation:] The sky was growing pale overhead, and suddenly a strange light, springing, nobody could tell whence, suddenly illuminated the immense ocean of pale mountain peaks, which stretched for many leagues around him. It seemed as if this vague brightness arose from the snow itself, in order to spread itself into space. By degrees the highest and most distant summits assumed a delicate, fleshlike rose color, and the red sun appeared behind the ponderous giants of the Bernese Alps.
Below is the best I could get from DALL-E after I provided “him” with the passage and at least an hour of explanation effort on my part. Many times, I repeated the bot that the valley must be dark and forbidding, and that only the summits can be pink. Its drawing remained very far from Maupassant’s picture in words:
A dangerous pass in the Alps, by DALL-E (trying to imitate the style of Maupassant in The Inn)
READER COMMENTS
Scott Sumner
Dec 31 2024 at 11:47am
Excellent post. I see too many libertarian types expressing sympathy for far right nationalists in various countries. It’s fine to praise politicians when they make the right decision on a given policy issue, but that should not bleed over to unconditional support for the illiberal political movements now sweeping the world. (A recent example was Musk’s support for Germany’s AfD party.)
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 31 2024 at 12:19pm
Scott: You are totally right. Some days ago, I started drafting a post mentioning Musk’s support for AfD in the context of the frequent political naivety of businessmen. This is an important topic about which your ideas would of course be most welcome.
Jose Pablo
Dec 31 2024 at 1:35pm
It’s fine to praise politicians when they make the right decision on a given policy issue, but that should not bleed over to unconditional support for the illiberal political movements now sweeping the world.
“Right decision”? … to whom?
Are you equating “right decissions” with “decissions in agreement with your opinion”? That sounds pretty “iliberal” to me. In fact doing that (equating this two things) is what all the tyrants in the world do. Maybe you think the tyrany of your oppinions is both very well informed and benevolent. But this is what all tyrants in the world also think.
Is the only significant mistake in today’s world politicis not electing an extremely well read and intelligent person as President of all Americans and Europeans? With all due respect, I very much doubt this.
I would be surprise if anybody will know what are the righ political decissions to me.
The problem with “politics” (as in “the art of making collective decissions”) is much more profound that what specific decissions are made (weather correct or not according to any particular opinion) or that who to pick as colllective decission maker.
As far as there are individuals making decissions in the name of other individuals who haven’t explicity agree on that particular decissions, “politics” would be “iliberal”. Even when you support the particular policy being implemented.
Being “liberal” is not about advancing (only) the collective decissions that I favor. It is about completely avoiding collective decissions (and if not “completely” yet, to the maximum possible extend).
The most horrendous tyrany can be “liberal” if every single subject in that tyrany agrees (unanimously) with every specific one of its policies.
It is not about taking the “right decission in any given policy”.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 31 2024 at 4:58pm
Jose: I interpret Scott as saying that we (we, libertarians) may agree with a political decision that will likely reduce the domain of politics.
Jose Pablo
Jan 1 2025 at 8:43pm
Hear, hear!
David Seltzer
Dec 31 2024 at 12:34pm
Pierre: “Clownery.” I will happily add that term to my limited vocabulary. With your permission of course.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 31 2024 at 5:02pm
David: Language is a public good and we will have, I fear, many occasions to use the word “clownery” in the near future.
I hesitated between “clownery” and “buffoonery” because, in my (sometimes defective) English intuition, the former was closer to what I wanted to convey.
Jose Pablo
Dec 31 2024 at 1:17pm
Another sort of catastrophe would be war.
Nah! … don’t worry. Doging military draft using his father’s contacts in his 20s only to send now other 20 somethings to a different senseless war, would be an act of incoherence and cowardice too big even for this character.
Craig
Dec 31 2024 at 3:23pm
I don’t see him as a war monger.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 31 2024 at 5:07pm
Craig: I fear alas he has everything to be a warmonger, except perhaps efficiency, but including an oversized view of his dignity, seriously enlarged by the deep impression that he is “the people.” Any insult to “the people” is an insult to him, and vice-versa. In my view, that was already obvious in 2026 but fortunately, he then had in his entourage some people to filter his idées de grandeur.
Roger McKinney
Dec 31 2024 at 1:23pm
I’ve tried for a decade to understand what people mean by populism and still don’t get it. For the most part, it seems to be a synonym for SOB, a slur.
I read The Impossibility of Populism. Boiled down, it seems you think if populism as direct democracy. If so, populism has existed only in ancient Athens and no one today is a populist, least of all Trump.
As for politicians like Milei, it seems many academics aren’t familiar with the real world of politics. Even in a dictatorship, the ruler faces many coalitions that oppose him. To get anything done, he must prioritize objectives because he will need to compromise some lessee goals to achieve more important ones. No dictatorship, no matter how ruthless, can get everything he wants.
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 31 2024 at 5:11pm
Roger: Does what I responded to David below help? According to Hayek, it seems to me, what made Athens great was the rule of law, not democracy as such. And it is only when the rule of law was corrupted by the idea that the people must rule that the rule of law disappeared.
Roger McKinney
Jan 1 2025 at 1:30pm
Sorry! But no. It seems to me that by your definition every politician is a populist. It’s hard to get elected without being popular and appealing to the majority. Mises wrote that even dictators must bow to the will of the majority most of the time. It seems people merely use the term as a slur for politicians they don’t like. Has anyone ever referred to a politician they liked as a populist? BTW, even in a republic, the winner of any election is assumed to speak for the majority of voters, often referred to as the people.
Mactoul
Jan 1 2025 at 2:07am
Populism is just appreciation of political nature of man. That mankind is politically divided such that any man has certain neighbors and others, thus excluded are strangers.
In Western context, it manifests as inadequate enthusiasm of Third World immigration, committed by likes of Orban and AfD.
Jose Pablo
Jan 4 2025 at 12:29pm
That mankind is politically divided such that any man has certain neighbors and others, thus excluded are strangers.
We should be ashamed of the persistence of these divisions. We “humans” have more things in common than divide us. And certainly more relevant. We all face certain death and we all share the painful consciousness of this future event. We are all capable of appreciating beauty. We are all aboard the same giant ship roaming endlessly through space and time.
And yet, despite all this, a group of pathetic, not fully evolved monkeys, lacking the imagination to “create” helping the advancement of all humankind, still crave power and the leadership that divides us.
That’s a shame. We should have overcome that stage of human evolution long ago.
Roger McKinney
Dec 31 2024 at 1:27pm
PS, what Milei has accomplished in such a short time is extraordinary! But he may accomplish little more because of the fierce opposition he faces. His election surprised the socialists. But it won’t take long for them to reorganize and mount a major counter assault.
Monte
Dec 31 2024 at 1:33pm
At the moment, Trump’s re-election feels more like a welcome respite from the failed policies of an enfeebled president and his cadre of Wormtongues, rather than a fait accompli on the road to perdition. We can assume the worst – a further erosion of our democratic institutions and ideals – with this current brand of populism. However, I remain confident in our system of checks and balances, coupled with the sometimes latent, but thus far resolute, vigilance of Americans and their commitment to holding power accountable. We’ll always be a sleeping giant against the enemies of liberty, both foreign and domestic.
In reading this post, I’m reminded of the quote by Teddy Roosevelt: “The mass of the American people are most emphatically not in the deplorable condition of which you speak.”
David Seltzer
Dec 31 2024 at 7:18pm
Monte: Teddy Roosevelt: “The mass of the American people are most emphatically not in the deplorable condition of which you speak.” That is my belief as well. Voices in the wilderness such as yours, the authors and commentors buoy my guarded optimism. I’m curious as to the silent voices who will become vocal when their precious liberty is threatened.
Monte
Jan 1 2025 at 4:53am
Amen, brother!
Jose Pablo
Dec 31 2024 at 1:42pm
balanced the budget
You mean reduced the expending, don’t you?
If he keeps the same expending but increases taxes to the point of balancing the budget, how is the sucking of additional resources from taxpayers’ (which are collectively very efficient allocating money) pockets to the politicians (a proved disaster as far as money allocation is concerned) supposed to benefit the economy of the country?
Craig
Dec 31 2024 at 3:19pm
Interest rates would fall.
Jose Pablo
Jan 1 2025 at 8:40pm
A proof of capital missallocation
Craig
Dec 31 2024 at 3:18pm
“But Milei has also fallen in with bad company.”
Indeed, right now TODAY woukd you trust the Argentine peso as a store of value such that you would take seriously a 30 year NPV analysis at some reasonable discoubt rate? Ie would you want to invest with it?
“For example, if Trump were to follow up only on his tariff promises, we can expect a recession to follow the supply shock.”
Let me preface this by saying that I tend to agree with you, I do smell Smoot Hawley here, but for me at least it does beget a question. Why don’t the current taxes, as imposed on Americans local, state, federal such that they don’t impose a permanent malaise?
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 31 2024 at 5:25pm
Craig: Taxes create an unambiguous supply shock only if they push the whole production possibility frontier downward, and the shock is only visible if it happens rapidly, as opposed to overtime compared to what the PPF would otherwise be. Moreover, the supply shock may be more (not only, but more) a demand shock. You have $1 less to spend or invest but the person to whom the government transfers it has $0.90 more to spend: more Coke is demanded and less wine, and if taxes are not too high, investors will continue to invest in Coca-Cola, which will produce more Coke (at a higher relative price).
David Henderson
Dec 31 2024 at 3:18pm
I finally read your piece in The Independent Review and I still don’t know what you mean by “populism.” You say that it’s impossible. But if it’s impossible, then we don’t need to worry about it. But you do worry about it. So what is the “it?”
Pierre Lemieux
Dec 31 2024 at 4:56pm
David: If populism is a regime where the people rules, it (a populist regime) is impossible because individuals are different, and because “the people” will prefer both A and non-A (Condorcet, Arrow, etc.). Because of the first reason, populism (as an ideology) can only produce a regime where part of “the people,” that is, the true, pure people rules (against the “enemies of the people”), and even then it does not work if the individuals in “that” people are not identical. Therefore, some ruler must embody the people and realize “the will of the people”–a regular claim of populists. Note that a ruler who embodies the people cannot lose an election, by definition. When Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lost the 2006 election in Mexico, he claimed that he could not lose and thus “there must have been a conspiracy.”
David Henderson
Dec 31 2024 at 6:39pm
You write:
I still want to know what populism is. You say that the idea that the ruler embodies the people is a regular claim of populists. So who are populists? Are they people who say that the ruler embodies the people? Is so, then almost all politicians are populists. You often hear major Democratic and Republican politicians claim that they speak for the people. So are a large percent of Democratic and Republican politicians populists?
Also, the major totalitarians of the 20th century–Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao–claimed that they embodied the people. Were they populists?
steve
Dec 31 2024 at 11:32pm
Populism is a bit hard to define but I think Pierre has given it a decent try. (Same is true of fascism.) I would note that all of the people you cite above certainly appealed to populist themes and some political scientists think they were populists at certain times in their careers. Populists generally claim to represent the people but more specifically the downtrodden, ignored people who claim or think they have no power. They almost always set themselves up as opposed to the elites, with the definition of an elite usually pretty fluid and basically meaning anyone they oppose.
So everyone claims they represent “the people” but a populist is claiming to represent a specific group. Typically as I noted it is people who feel they are the downtrodden or the ones losing out in society. (This doesnt have to be true, people just have to feel that way ie they are victims of something.) Everyone claims to oppose certain ideas and people in the opposition party(s) but populists also oppose ideas that they claim are supported by the elites. This usually goes along, though not always, with not valuing or trying to invalidate expertise and education.
Steve
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 1 2025 at 12:22pm
Steve: I basically agree, except that one statement needs to be heavily qualified:
This is generally true for the populists of the left but not for the populists of the right. Sometimes, the distinction between the “pure people” and the “enemies of the people” is an economic class distinction, sometimes an ethnic or racial division. Giorgia Meloni (or Sylvio Berlusconi) must feel more at home with a rich ethnic Italian than with a poor foreigner (say, Bulgarian) working in Italy.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 1 2025 at 12:10pm
David: Consider the following. The central concept in populism is “the people” (“el pueblo”). You can think of populism as illiberal (unconstrained) democracy (a corruption of democracy) or as different forms of dictatorship in the name of “the people” (ultimately conceived as a singular noun). Note that “speaking for the people” is not the same as “embodying the people.” About the now standard definition of populism in political science and economics, see the Funke et al. paper cited above as well as Cass Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, Populism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2017). The latter write: “We define populism as a thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” (pp. 5-6) Viktor Orban, Donald Trump, Juan Peron, and Nicolas Maduro, for example, are classified as populists; Stalin, Mao, and Reagan are not.
The names I just referenced figure among those of the “consensus” definition of populism, that is, of the five databases used by Funke et al. (see their online Appendix D). In the latter’s own database, roughly half the names are populists of the right and half of the left. (The authors may not be clearly aware that collectivism of the left and collectivism of the left are very similar as to the supremacy of collective choices over individual choices.)
Roger McKinney
Jan 2 2025 at 11:32am
By that definition all politicians challenging an incumbent is a populist. Reagan definitely was a populist who challenged the Republican establishment and claimed to be anti-government. Of populist exist on the left and right, then the term becomes a weasel word like social justice or Christian nationalism. It means something different to everyone who uses it and is mostly just a slur.
David Henderson
Jan 2 2025 at 5:48pm
Ok. That helps.
So you do have kind of a definition and I thought you didn’t. Score one for you.
I’m still troubled, though. Part of my reason is that I share Roger McKinney’s concern. The other part is that we get so hung up on trying to figure out who’s a populist and who isn’t that we get distracted from analyzing policy proposals. If a populist wanted to shift our income tax system to a flat tax rate system, I would favor it independent of whether he’s a populist. Or, to take an example currently in the news, if a populist wanted to double the number of H-1B visas without reducing other kinds of visas, I would favor doing so.
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 3 2025 at 11:25am
David and Roger: A related and convergent approach to the issues you raised can be found in William Riker’s 1982 book Liberalism Against Populism. Three paragraphs from my Regulation review:
Jose Pablo
Jan 4 2025 at 9:51am
If a populist wanted to shift our income tax system to a flat tax rate system, I would favor it independent of whether he’s a populist. Or, to take an example currently in the news, if a populist wanted to double the number of H-1B visas without reducing other kinds of visas, I would favor doing so.
What difference does it make that you favor a particular policy?
From a political point of view, it makes the same difference that Mr. Smith from Chatanooga (Tennessee) favors a progressive tax code or a reduction in the number of visas.
The relevant political debates are not about the policies that should be implemented, but about how collective decisions (policies) should be made (or, even better, if they should be made at all).
The only political system compatible with individual liberty and freedom is the government of the individual. Any collective decision should require the individual’s consent (whether this particular decision pleases Mr Henderson or not. A fact that gives no right to the collective decision-maker to impose that policy on individuals who disagree).
Any departure from that golden rule, for practical or historical reasons, will be fraught with moral and philosophical hazards and the risk of tyranny down the road. Very high “democratic towers” have crumbled because people were convinced that all was about imposing “the right” policies under the tyranny of the majority.
Mactoul
Jan 1 2025 at 2:00am
Was Reagan a populist or an acceptable leader? He wanted to takeover Panama Canal as well.
The funny anthropomorphism that Trump used is generally used by your co-bloggers as well.
By talk of future expansion of American territory, Trump is continuing in American tradition, including in the glory days of 19c classical liberals. Those classical liberals, here or elsewhere were always in the mood for territorial expansion. That’s how America got so big.
Milei presumably knows his friends. You would have him endear himself to EU (non-populist) leaders and bureaucrats but I doubt Milei’s classical liberalism appeals to that demographic.
Roger McKinney
Jan 2 2025 at 11:38am
I like Wikipedia’s take on the term populist. It can mean anything and is mostly used as a pejorative.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism
Pierre Lemieux
Jan 3 2025 at 11:19am
Roger: Look up Britannica instead if you don’t want to follow the other references I provided.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Jan 4 2025 at 10:37am
A difference in Left and Right populism is that Left populism claims to want to achieve “good things” (higher wages for workers or less poverty) but uses unnecessarily costly means (or counter productive means) to achieve them. Right populism claims to want to evil or meaningless things (racial purity, “national greatness (again!)” which are often pursued with the same costly and counterproductive measures as Leftist use.
Jose Pablo
Jan 4 2025 at 4:05pm
Interesting way of looking at it!
Although it can be worded completely upside down.
A difference in Left and Right populism is that Right populism claims to want to achieve “good things” (individual freedom, preservation of national culture, protection from foreign invasions) (…). Left populism claims to want to evil or meaningless things (neglecting meritocracy, the sucking of the rich, extending the realm of collective decisions) (…) .
[The fact that both use costly measures to achieve those goals derives from the fact that they are both using other people’s resources to achieve things they like. Overspending is well known to be unavoidable when this is the case]