I have been thinking about the kind of politics that is consistent with consent of the governed since reading Max Borders’ book Underthrow: How Jefferson’s Dangerous Idea Will Spark a New Revolution. The book was published in 2023, but I have only recently read it.
The second chapter of the book is entitled “Politics is the Pathology” but Borders' target is contemporary politics. He argues that contemporary politics “brings out the worst in all of us”. He then goes on to argue for social action – a different kind of political activity - which will promote consent of the governed.
A question which the book raises for me is whether underthrow
initiatives can be successful in bringing about substantial movement toward consent
of the governed without some support from within contemporary political systems.
What does consent mean?
Consent of the governed figures prominently in Borders’
book. He quotes from the United States Declaration of Independence, which
asserts that governments “derive their just powers from consent of the governed”
and that when government becomes destructive of individual rights, which include
“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”, “it is the Right of the People to
alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government”.
I understand that the American revolutionaries saw election
of representatives as the primary vehicle for consent. That view of consent appears
to have much in common with the concept of ‘government legitimacy’ as described
by modern political scientists who focus on procedural rules such as the
existence of free and fair elections. It also appears to have a lot in common
with the concept of ‘tacit consent’ as described by John Locke:
John Locke wrote:
“The difficulty is, what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent, and how far it binds, i.e. how far any one shall be looked on to have consented, and thereby submitted to any government, where he has made no expressions of it at all. And to this I say, that every man, that hath any possessions, or enjoyment, of any part of the dominions of any government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that government, during such enjoyment, as any one under it; whether this his possession be of land, to him and his heirs for ever, or a lodging only for a week; or whether it be barely travelling freely on the highway; and in effect, it reaches as far as the very being of any one within the territories of that government” (Two Treatises of Government, ed. Thomas Hollis, London: A. Millar et al., 1764, Second Treatise, Chapter VIII para 119).
However, Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the
Declaration, held
that no generation has a right to bind following generations. On that basis, he
argued that every constitution and law naturally expires at the end of 19 years.
He added: “If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.”
Would endorsement of a constitution by a majority of voters every
19 years constitute consent of the governed? It might come closer to that ideal
than any constitution for any country on earth at present, but a substantial
minority of citizens could still claim that they have not given consent to some,
or all, of the constitutional provisions agreed to by the majority.
Borders argues that consent of the governed means “a real,
contractual civil association that a sovereign person selects in a governance
market”. I will outline his ideal model of consent after considering the case
he makes that we should be concerned about consent.
What is so important about consent?
Borders makes a powerful moral point by asking questions:
- “if you could choose nonviolent means of achieving social goals such as poverty relief, wouldn’t you?”
- “if it is possible to help the poor (and for the poor to help each other) without resorting to violence, isn’t this something we ought to do?”
He also suggests that it is immoral to impose monolithic
systems upon people who prefer to live in a different political, cultural, or
economic niche.
The implication is that if any of the current activities of
government can be undertaken without resort to the coercive powers of the state
(violence) then it is immoral for those activities to performed in a manner
that requires citizens to submit to those coercive powers.
Throughout the book, Borders links lack of consent of the
governed to a set of interconnected problems in liberal democracies. These include expansion of authoritarian
control; partisan tribalism and civil conflict; an unhealthy focus on national
sensationalism; and weakening of community and civil society.
Borders advocates that monolithic systems should be
peacefully underthrown rather than violently overthrown.
So, what does underthrow entail?
Borders has borrowed
the concept of “underthrow” from Michael P Gibson, who suggests: “We can
underthrow the state one contract at a time.”
The approach to underthrow that Borders develops in this
book is based on the framework for utopia that Robert Nozick developed in Part
II of Anarchy, State and Utopia. Borders suggests that Nozick’s
framework – a scaffolding hospitable to pluralism – can serve as a strategic
construct for subversive innovation:
“In reordering Nozick’s premises into a strategic framework of niche creation I call subversive innovation, I look around at the authoritarian powers in our midst. Then, I seek out weak joints or legal gray areas to exploit, in which one might apply a liberatory strategy or recruit new constituencies through entrepreneurial means. Carving niches means experimenting with new governance systems, however modest, hoping that these systems prevail in competition. Such is the delicate dance of dissidence.”
Subversive innovations that Borders mentions in this book include
Uber, Airbnb and Bitcoin. The discussion of subversive innovation overlaps considerably
with that in The Social Singularity (which I discussed here)
and The Decentralist (discussed here).
In Underthrow , however, the author also discusses Balaji Srinivasan’s proposals
for start-up societies and proposes a program to create a “network state”.
Borders ends this book by urging people to join him in creating
a society that will work toward establishing consent of the governed. He views
the Freemasons as providing a model for the values-based association of
like-minded people that he has proposed.
The political context
I wish Max Borders every success in his ongoing Underthrow activities. I admire his
enthusiasm as a political entrepreneur who is seeking “to help people of
conscience become a countervailing force”.
Before going further, I should clarify why I have referred
to Max as a political entrepreneur. The main reason is that I propose to refer below
to a series
of essays about political entrepreneurship that I wrote last year. However,
I think the description is apt because Max’s innovative endeavours encompass
aspects of both economic and political entrepreneurship.
In the epigraph to my essays on political entrepreneurship, I quoted Don Lavoie’s
understanding of the links between economic entrepreneurship and
culture:
“Entrepreneurship necessarily takes place within culture, it is utterly shaped by culture, and it fundamentally consists in interpreting and influencing culture.”
From Lavoie’s perspective, “entrepreneurial acts are the
readings of, and contributions to, different conversations”. In the third
essay, I suggested
that political entrepreneurs respond to public discourse, using it as a basis
for policy innovation.
While developing the line of reasoning leading to his
proposals for establishing a society of like-minded individuals Borders is highly
critical of the contemporary politics in liberal democracies. I share his
concerns about interest group politics (see this
essay about the incentives that political entrepreneurs are faced with, this
essay about the information constraints facing political entrepreneurs, and
this
essay about the erosion of norms of political behaviour).
However, as noted at the outset, I find it difficult to see
how it will be possible to bring about substantial movement toward consent of
the governed without some support from within contemporary political systems. As
Borders recognises, subversive innovators face huge difficulties in competing with
social insurance programs that are funded by compulsory tax payments.
Perhaps substantial public support for economic freedom
(policies that are more consistent with consent of the governed) will return if
the current trajectory of many liberal democracies lead to deepening economic
crises. Deepening economic crises do seem likely but policy change leading to greater
economic freedom will depend on election to government of political
entrepreneurs who support greater economic freedom. In the absence of
enlightened political leadership, economic crises may well result in deepening
authoritarianism.
I concluded my
consideration of what kind of political entrepreneurship is required to
promote greater liberty by noting that, unfortunately, important reforms in the
rules of the game made in some countries during the 1980s and 90s did not
become deeply entrenched. Political leaders obtained
sufficient electoral support to implement market-friendly policies, but there does
not seem to be much evidence that members of the public improved their
understanding of the benefits of free markets in any of the countries in which
reforms were undertaken.
That led me to consider how the anti-market bias of public opinion could be reduced and to note
the historical role of political entrepreneurship in social movements in
promoting liberty. I ended by endorsing the view
of Ed Younkins that it is
through the “numerous interactions with individuals” during their everyday
lives that advocates of liberty can “transmit the freedom philosophy to the
general public”.
Max Borders’ political entrepreneurship seems to me to be a
positive step toward establishing a broadly-based social movement that will
enable substantial steps to be taken toward making consent of the governed a
reality. Hopefully, one day that movement will become sufficiently influential
to enlist the support of political entrepreneurs within government that will be
necessary to enable citizens to opt out of coercive collectivism.
Conclusion
Max Borders makes a compelling moral case that we should
prefer peaceful, voluntary paths to social goals over means that require
citizens to submit to the coercive powers of the state, and underthrow offers a
model for how such paths might be built one contract, one niche, at a time. But
the question I raised at the outset remains: can underthrow deliver substantial
movement toward consent of the governed without support from within
contemporary political systems?
The experience of market-friendly reforms in the 1980s and
90s suggests that action within contemporary political systems can be helpful. The
reforms occurred because political entrepreneurs won sufficient electoral
support to legislate change, but those changes did not become deeply
entrenched, in part because the public's underlying understanding of why free
markets serve human flourishing was never substantially improved. Subversive
innovation of the kind Borders proposes may be one of the more promising ways
of closing that gap: niches that actually work can teach by demonstration in a
way that political argument alone cannot.
Rather than viewing underthrow and electoral political
entrepreneurship as rival strategies, I see them as potentially complementary:
subversive innovation can demonstrate what consent-based alternatives look like
in practice, while political entrepreneurs working within existing systems can
widen the legal and political space in which those alternatives are permitted
to grow.
