Slopulism Is Taking Over America

Author: Noah Smith (Noahpinion) URL: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/slopulism-is-taking-over-america One-line: A proposed New York law requiring a 10% self-checkout discount would get cashiers fired rather than hired — the type case for “slopulism,” policy that looks populist but produces the opposite of what its supporters want.

[PARTIAL] This capture is the free email preview only. The post is paywalled at the “Accidental versus ideological slopulism…” section heading — Smith’s development of that distinction is NOT in this capture.

Key claims

• The trigger case. New York Democrats introduced a bill requiring 10% discounts on all items at self-checkout, justified as compensating customers for the “unpaid labor” of scanning and bagging their own groceries.
• It sits inside a broader anti-Automation push. Rhode Island was first to enact statewide self-checkout restrictions — the Restrictions on Self-Service Checkout Stations Act, effective January 1, 2027 — requiring at least one human-operated station for every three self-service stations during peak hours. Similar legislation has been introduced, enacted, or considered in California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington, and Ohio.
• The honest version of the debate is Technocracy vs. Populism. Smith concedes the standard objection (self-checkout savings already reach consumers as lower prices) is “correct as far as it goes,” but that it reduces to protecting a few cashiers’ livelihoods against very slightly lower prices for many consumers — “no simple or easy conclusion.”
• The New York bill is worse than that tradeoff, because it inverts its own goal. Take the policy to its extreme: a mandated 90% self-checkout discount is identical to forcing stores to charge 10x for a human cashier. Nobody would pay it, so every store would drop cashiers entirely.
• Competition is what forces the perverse outcome. Grocery margins run 1.5%–2.8%, very low versus the average industry, and new stores enter constantly. So stores can’t absorb the discount — they raise sticker prices across the board. Any store that tried to keep only human cashiers and charge more would be undercut by one offering self-checkout discounts.
• The Skippy/Jif analogy. Forcing stores to charge 10% more for one brand means less of it on shelves, because “consumers tend to win out when an industry is highly competitive.” Same reasoning: forcing higher prices for human-scanned purchases gets cashiers replaced by machines.
• The definition. Slopulism is “stuff that seems like populism, but wouldn’t achieve the results that people want from the policy” — “snake oil that sells well based on people’s inability to see the consequences of what they’re being sold.”
• It’s an inevitable outgrowth of Populism. Once people decide technocrats, elites, experts, and gatekeepers aren’t worth listening to, they become vulnerable to policy scams. Two categories: accidental (the policymakers don’t understand what they’re doing) and ideological (ideologues sell an ideologically-driven policy on benefits it doesn’t deliver).
• The ideological kind is the more dangerous. Accidental slopulism yields to “patience, education, and reason” — and Smith suggests AI may help a lot. But when smart people with ulterior motives promote it, slopulism can become a “bipartisan equilibrium,” with each party’s ideologues staging a coup against reasonable moderates.

Notable quotes

“The idea of a 10% discount on self-checkout as a way to incentivize human employment is pure ‘slopulism’ — stuff that seems like populism, but wouldn’t achieve the results that people want from the policy. It’s snake oil that sells well based on people’s inability to see the consequences of what they’re being sold.”

“Slopulism is an inevitable outgrowth of populism. Once people decide that technocrats, elites, experts, and gatekeepers aren’t worth listening to, they become vulnerable to all sorts of policy scams.”

“This is exactly the same as forcing stores to charge 10x for using a human cashier. Who would pay 10x for groceries, just to use a human cashier? Basically no one.”

“Consumers tend to win out when an industry is highly competitive.”

“As policies go, this example isn’t particularly hard to explain, or to understand. If you ask any economist, or any good AI, they’ll give basically the same answer, in different words. It would be a good question on an undergrad microeconomics exam.”

“There’s the danger that slopulism becomes a bipartisan equilibrium, with each party’s ideologues executing a coup against the reasonable moderates by appealing to slopulist instincts.”

How it connects

• Slopulism — the coinage this piece introduces; concept page holds the definition and the two-category taxonomy.
• Populism / Technocracy — the axis Smith argues the honest version of the debate runs along.
• Automation — the self-checkout fight is an automation-policy fight; the piece’s claim is that anti-automation rules can accelerate automation.
• Noah Smith — author; writes as Noahpinion.

Provenance note

This copy reached Kyle through the Contrary Research Google Group (research@contrary.com), per the email footer — not a direct personal subscription.