Economic protectionism and the tyranny of taxation with representation

Economic protectionism, much like the populist tradition of which it is often born, involves the exportation of need. Individuals are not primarily responsible for securing, or often even defining, their own needs, but task an intermediary figure, in whose goodness they place their trust, with doing so.

Even as a certain type of grasping, malevolent elite becomes the archetypal bogeyman in the populist’s dichotomous morality play, the downtrodden masses champion their own elite: a modern-day Lancelot whose strength of will and purity of heart are a force of virtue against which no other political jousters stand a chance. But, if the populist Lancelot is to prevail, the masses chaffing under the exploitative thumb of one overlord must cede yet more of their autonomy; a malevolent ruler is exchanged for a malevolent one.

But there is very little of the objective to distinguish virtue from vice in the populist epistemology. Belief, itself a product of the most powerful of emotions — those related to self-survival — drives the populist faithful. Because there is no accountability for the chosen elite — any contradictions are explained away by roadblocks thrown up by bitter clingers-onto-power — there is really nothing to stop a benevolent elite from pursuing the same policies of a malevolent one.