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To what degree should the politicians do what the general population wants, when what the general population wants is stupid? The most clear cut case of the general population wanting stupid stuff I think is price controls- the idea of keeping rent or gasoline below a certain hard cap is very popular with a lot of ordinary people. But it of course would be counter-productive- it'll only result in a lower supply of something people desperately want, and force them to start paying with their time in long lines instead of paying just with their wallets. So if 90% of the population say they want a cap on prices of something, does their elected representative have a responsibility to say "No you guys are stupid, I know what you really want" and not implement price controls?
Another example would be nationalism. A lot of times, people will be chauvinistic about their culture, and want to oppress minority cultures. Not really so much in the US recently despite all the fuss about race relations, but there are many extreme cases internationally. The majority will try to inflict on the minority restrictions on using their minority language in schools, prevent access to elected and civil service jobs, take children away from families, forcibly expel people, even execute the minorities with roving firing squads or death camps, in a brief list from least bad to worst actions chauvinism often leads to. Does a politician have any obligation to say, "No, I will not implement this policy. Not only is it immoral, it won't actually make life better for you" to the people who elected him if the 90% majority population wants to inflict those degradations on the 10% minority?
The obvious slippery slope is a politician thinking he knows better in a case where he doesn't actually know better, or deciding laws based on his own personal values instead of the general population's in a case where there is no option that's better on all metrics. E.g, abortion laws always have a trade off between the preferences and health of the mother against the fetus, and where you want abortion laws to be at depends on the ratio of which you value mother:fetus.
I'm not sure what people want are price caps. People want affordable abundant housing and energy. Price caps don't typically achieve this. Politicians promising price caps are frequently popular which is why they persist.
That's kind of my point. The people think they want one thing, but they really want another. I don't think people really want to erase minority cultures or kill a minority population with roving death camps either, they just get tricked into thinking they want it. But what rights do politicians have to bypass what the people think they want?
It would seem that many politicians are unable to deliver abundant affordable housing and energy. They still need to be seen to do something, price controls are something, besides these are totally not price controls. They can blame the greed of companies or producers. The direct or indirect subsidies or policy incentives that might be effective in delivering abundant and affordable energy and housing are frequently untenable for other reasons.
Violence against minority populations can be popular organically. In current year in many western nations it's the political classes calling for calm or obfuscating and minimalizing what are frequently valid complaints about policy failures or the actions and behaviors of a minority cohort. They don't want to risk a revolution that sees them chucked out or hanging from a lamp post. While it can certainly be induced by propaganda, some is the 'natural' clash of civilizations, without a functioning political process to resolve the differing perceptions some amount of violence should be expected.
If there's no political process that can prevent the housing of migrants at hotels in a community, I would predict fires at hotels.
A riot is the language of the unheard.
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