What kind of Politics is Consistent with Consent of the Governed?

 

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.

What can Libertarians Learn from Foucault?

 

Before reading Mark Pennington’s recent book, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom, it would not have occurred to me that libertarians could learn anything from the social theories of Michel Foucault. Pennington has persuaded me that some beliefs associated with Foucault, and postmodernism more generally, are not devoid of merit. As will be discussed below, however, the beliefs that he identifies as postmodern differ somewhat from the collection of beliefs that I have hitherto associated with postmodernism.

Pennington claims that liberals who are concerned about over-government can learn from Foucault about “multiple sources and potential forms of this ‘over-government’ in modern societies and how these threats to freedom have been neglected by, and in some cases resulted from, the dominant strands in liberal thought”.

The author aims “to enunciate the elements of a postmodern liberalism, and to show how this perspective might engage in a productive conversation with Foucault in ways that expose the illiberalism of contemporary societies and the dominant forms of social science and political philosophy that contribute to this state of affairs”.

Before considering Pennington’s claims about what liberals can learn from Foucault and the potential for liberals to engage productively with his ideas, I need to clarify how Pennington is able to argue that some of Foucault’s views are worthy of consideration and what Pennington means by “postmodern liberalism”.

Foucault’s views

 The main problem I have with the postmodernist movement is its disrespect for reason, truth and knowledge. Stephen Hicks suggests that Foucault’s views illustrate the direction and tone of the postmodern intellectual world:

“Michel Foucault has identified the major targets: “All my analyses are against the idea of universal necessities in human existence.” Such necessities must be swept aside as baggage from the past: “It is meaningless to speak in the name of—or against—Reason, Truth, or Knowledge”.” (The sources of the quoted passages are cited in Hicks, 2004.)

Hicks explains that Foucault reduces knowledge to an expression of social power and urges that we play the brutal power politics game on behalf of the traditionally disempowered.

Pennington recognizes that Foucault has often been accused of undercutting the basis of his own critical analysis:

“If all knowledge is reflective of an arbitrary ‘will to truth’, then what of Foucault’s own truth claims?” 

More specifically:

“If all truth claims are understood as merely a way of exercising power over others, then how are people to know which if any of the ‘intolerable’ practices they find themselves in are worth challenging or resisting, let alone what might replace them.”

However, Pennington observes that there are many Foucaults, “reflected in the shifting emphases, styles of analysis and reinterpretations of his own words”:    

“Towards the end of his life … notably in essays such as ‘What Is Enlightenment?’, Foucault softened the power/knowledge coupling, adopting a stance that does not deny that there are better and worse forms of argument or that there are some more or less valid forms of knowledge; rather, he emphasises the importance of uncertainty, of keeping all truth claims under scrutiny, and of being aware of the routinised social processes that might block that very scrutiny.”

If postmodernism is characterized by the idea that truth claims merely reflect the exercise of social power, perhaps it could be said that towards the end of his life, Foucault’s views became somewhat less postmodern.

 Postmodern liberalism

In outlining the elements of “postmodern liberalism” Pennington notes:

“This ‘postmodern’ liberalism has not previously been coherently articulated, but strands of it are detectable in the writings of F. A Hayek, those of Deirdre McCloskey, and elements of the contemporary Austrian school of economics, as well as in the context of political philosophy apart from Hayek in the works of Michael Oakeshott, Gerald Gaus, and Chandran Kukathas.”

I have considerable knowledge of the views of some of those authors and great respect for all of them. I am not comfortable with their views being labelled as postmodern, even though some of them might not object to that label.

Pennington seems to me to be distancing “postmodern liberalism” from postmodernism when he acknowledges that it is possible to assess “the comparative plausibility of competing narrative explanations” and “social scientific truth claims”.

In his concluding chapter Pennington notes that the elements of “postmodern liberalism” include, among other things, a “philosophy of social science sceptical of socio-economic positivism and the efforts of conscious control it fosters”.

It seems to me that Pennington’s philosophy of social science could appropriately be labelled “unpretentious liberalism”. It stands apart from the pretence of knowledge and scientism associated with socio-economic positivism, without endorsing postmodernism’s disrespect for reason, truth and knowledge.

I hope the book will attract many readers who identify as postmodernists and that they will be captivated by the concept of postmodern liberalism. However, those who (like me) are allergic to postmodernism, may find the book easier to read if they substitute the words “unpretentious liberalism” whenever they see “postmodernism liberalism”.

Should libertarians attempt to influence culture?

Before considering what libertarians can learn from Foucault, it seems appropriate to acknowledge that there is nothing new about the idea that libertarians should take an interest in culture.

That is apparent in the consideration of interactions between culture and political institutions in a discussion between Chris Matthew Sciabarra and me entitled, “Should Libertarians be Attempting to Influence Culture?” which published on this blog in September 2024. The discussion began by considering John Stuart Mill’s concerns about the “tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling” and moved from there to considering Sciabarra’s interpretation of Ayn Rand’s view of power relationships. Sciabarra presented a Tri-level Model of Power Relations which was first derived from his reconstruction of Ayn Rand’s critical analyses of social problems, outlined in Part Three of Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical (Sciabarra, 2013).

In introducing his discussion of Rand’s view of power relationships, Chris Sciabarra commented:

“Winton suggests that Enlightenment humanism has been preoccupied with reason and reality, while postmodernism has been preoccupied with the use of power. Hence, it is startling that Rand, who most certainly placed herself in the reason and reality camp, also emerged with a critique of power relations.”

The question under discussion provoked responses from several libertarians and classical liberals. The response of Douglass Rasmussen, joint author of Norms of Liberty (Rasmussen and Den Uyl, 2005) is pertinent to this essay:

“Is there not a difference between saying libertarianism qua political philosophy should attempt to change culture and saying that a libertarian concerned in advancing libertarianism should attempt to change culture? The former concerns what the political/legal order should do, and the latter concerns what individuals should do.”

As I see it, attempting to understand the consequences for liberty and individual flourishing of interactions between culture, markets, social movements and government regulation does not obviate or preclude attempts to define the nature of a political/legal order that can ensure that individuals can flourish in different ways without colliding.

Foucault’s liberalism

 From my perspective, one of the most interesting aspects of Foucault’s philosophy, as discussed by Pennington, is his account of discourses as a kind of spontaneous order phenomenon.  Foucault challenges the role of individual or collective agency in the operation of power regimes. Power works through chainlike or network effects. As people adopt certain discourses they influence the actions of others.

Power does not emanate from a single point in a network. It emerges from diverse and at time contradictory attempts by actors to assert their place in society. There is no identifiable author of power relations. As Pennington puts it:

“The discourses and disciplines producing people’s patterns of thought, positionality and interests are largely unintended consequences of the multiple attempts to affect the conduct of others.”

 Thus, while power relations may appear to have a coherent structure, there is no single purpose, intention, or meaning that underlies that structure.

States of domination arise when a set of discourses align or crystalize with each other and with the juridical power of the state. Scientific discourses can pose a problem where people come to be classified relative to various norms (e.g. as deviant, perverted, insane) and subjected to discipline (which may include social punishments). In addition, bio-power operates through interventions to change social, economic or environmental conditions in the name of improving population health or providing security.

Pennington suggests that “it is with Foucault’s concept of bio-power and especially its economic manifestations where the most significant possibilities for a dialogue between the Foucauldian and postmodern liberal perspectives lies”. Late in Foucault’s career he “seems to favour an environment that preserves a ‘pluralism of rationalities’ so that people might remain alert to the possibility of multiple ways of their being governed and not being frozen into a particular classificatory grid and the roles and positions it creates”.

In my view, Foucault’s decentred account of power relations is often more plausible than theories which reduce the exercise of power to holding of positions in political office. A decentred account is consistent with the conclusion of my recent series of essays on political entrepreneurship. Even though it is possible to identify the policies adopted in some countries with the ideologies of authoritarian political leaders, I suggest:

“The problem of ensuring adoption of government policies that more consistently advance economic and personal freedom cannot be reduced to the question of how to elect better political entrepreneurs to national leadership positions. Institutional change is a complex process involving social movements, media organizations, and interactions between individual citizens, as well as local and national politics.”

I concur with Pennington that Foucault’s view of power relations provides support for an unpretentious liberalism which is deeply skeptical of economic and philosophical approaches which presuppose that the welfare of the population can be secured by a form of expert rule.

In Part II of his book, Pennington uses his theoretical lens to examine complex networks of institutional, physical, and administrative mechanisms and knowledge structures associated with social justice, public health, ecological sustainability, and crime and punishment. He critically examines various overlapping systems of power - some focused on managing populations and others focused on guiding individuals. (In this paragraph I have relied on Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, to help translate the technical Foucauldian phrasing in Pennington’s summary – words including “dispositifs”, “bio-political” and “pastoral” - into plainer English.)

These systems share three features: (1) an excessive faith that social and economic life can be understood and controlled with scientific precision, (2) a belief that some central “steering” intelligence can identify and fix deviations from expected patterns, and (3) a bureaucratic, top-down way of handling risk. The author demonstrates that these features tend to shrink the space in which individuals can act freely.

Conclusion

So, what can libertarians learn from Foucault? Pennington's answer, as I read it, is not that libertarians should adopt postmodernism's skepticism of reason and truth - that skepticism, taken to its logical end, undercuts the very possibility of arguing for freedom over domination. Rather, what is valuable in Foucault is his decentred account of power: the recognition that domination need not flow from a single source or a deliberate design, but can emerge from the unintended convergence of discourses, institutions, and expert classifications. This is a lesson that liberals have sometimes neglected, having focused their concern about over-government on the formal power of the state while overlooking the more diffuse mechanisms in social justice, public health, ecological policy, and criminal justice that narrow the space for individuals to govern their own lives.

What Pennington calls postmodern liberalism – I prefer to call it "unpretentious liberalism" - captures what is worth taking from this encounter: a liberalism skeptical of the pretence of expert knowledge and socio-economic positivism, without embracing postmodernism's disrespect for reason and truth. Pennington's Foucault, particularly the later Foucault of "What Is Enlightenment?", is compatible with this project because he does not deny that some truth claims are better than others - he simply insists that we remain alert to the ways power can masquerade as expertise, and that we preserve a plurality of ways of being governed rather than being frozen into a single classificatory grid. That, it seems to me, is a genuinely liberal insight, however unfamiliar its Foucauldian packaging may be to libertarians who have, like me, generally kept their distance from postmodern thought.

References

Hicks, Stephen R. C., Explaining Postmodernism (Scholargy Publishing, 2004).

Pennington, Mark, Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Rasmussen, Douglas B., and Den Uyl, Douglas J, Norms of Liberty (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005).

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, Second Edition (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013).

Why Bother Considering Whether Government is Necessary?

 

Before my most recent trip to India I had to choose which of two recently purchased books I should take with me: Aeon Skoble’s Deleting the State, or Salvatore Babones’ Dharma Democracy. I chose Dharma Democracy (which I have since written about here) because I didn’t like the idea of trying to explain to an airport official that Deleting the State is a philosophical treatise rather than a manual for the violent overthrow of governments.

At that time, I would not have been able to point to pages 107-8 where Skoble argues explicitly against violent action to remove a government in any “nominally liberal democracy”. In the Afterword of the recently published second edition of his book, the author takes the opportunity to emphasize his opposition to violence by giving reasons for eschewing it and reiterating that deleting the state means “deleting the idea of the necessity of the state”.

The subtitle of the book is Requiem for an Illusion. The illusion Skoble refers to is the Hobbesian Fear that in the absence of a government “to keep them all in awe” people would find themselves at each others’ throats - in a war “of every man against every other man”.  I will discuss later the author’s reasons for considering the Hobbesian Fear an illusion.

Skoble regards the neo-Aristotelian conception of human flourishing provided by Douglas Rasmussen and Douglas Den Uyl as providing the best defense of a theory of individual liberty. He notes, however, that in Norms of Liberty the Dougs leave open the question of whether a political/legal order defending individual rights necessitates the existence of a state. Skoble points out that the difference between a state and a political/legal order is not trivial.

What is the point of philosophical anarchism? 

In the Afterword Skoble writes:

“If deleting the state means deleting the generally held notion that we need to have a state, and the only way to do it is to make philosophical arguments, we’re in a lot of trouble. Philosophers have a poor track record of being persuasive to large majorities. So what, one might ask, is the point of philosophical anarchism?”

The author goes on to answer that question cogently. However, before considering his response, I want to present a contrary argument.

Is the existence of government an issue that should occupy the minds of those who believe that liberty supports human flourishing? As far as I know, there is no country in the world in which citizens are currently faced with a choice between having a minimal state or no state at all. In liberal democracies – the countries that currently enjoy the greatest personal and economic freedom – liberty is being threatened by political movements with authoritarian tendencies. Authoritarianism is presented in the wrapping of different varieties of collectivist idealism which offer citizens the opportunity to attribute personal and social problems to immigration, foreign competition, the greed of the wealthy, systemic discrimination, environmental degradation or anything else that appears to justify a larger role for government. Shouldn’t libertarians be focusing their attention on supporting the political/legal order – democracy, or representative government - that has been most successful in promoting personal and economic freedom?

Readers who doubt that the countries with greatest economic and personal freedom are liberal democracies should take a look at the graphs shown in an essay I wrote last year. There may be serious errors in common measures of personal freedom for some countries - as noted in my recent essay on Indian politics – but the weight of evidence suggests that representative government has hitherto been more successful in defending individual rights than any other contemporary form of politico/legal order that currently exists in the real world.

So, how do I justify spending time thinking about utopian concepts such as philosophical anarchism instead of spending all my efforts opposing the advances of authoritarianism?

The first defence that comes to mind is that I find it interesting to think about the question of whether government is necessary. I think that is sufficient justification for a human to spend some time thinking about any topic.

However, I have reasons to be particularly interested in the potential for utopian thinking to play a useful role in considering public policy issues. I have claimed in the past:

“We are more likely to improve opportunities for human flourishing if we approach public policy issues with a view to both (a) upholding ideals that ought to apply and (b) the real-world constraints that should not be overlooked.”

I made that comment in a short essay considering Chris Sciabarra’s discussion of the anti-utopianism in the methodology of Marx and Hayek in Marx, Hayek and Utopia.

Skoble argues that anarchist arguments can help people to think about the limits of state power. He suggests that they can be used to clarify that getting a different group of office-holders into power will not resolve problems that are attributable to institutional structures. He cites mass incarceration and business regulation that stifles innovation as examples. He sums up:

“To make the case against the state is to undermine the idea that coercion is necessary for social order or that it is beneficial to human society. It is to point the way toward the continual need to scale back the scope of state power. It is to affirm the priorities of liberty and its necessary connection to human flourishing, and to keep us mindful of the ways in which the state, and our often-unthinking obedience to it, hinders that flourishing.”

Allaying the Hobbesian Fear

Those who argue that a government is necessary to maintain social cooperation often refer to the prisoner’s dilemma in game theory. Players can obtain a greater payoff if they both cooperate than if they both defect. However, each player has an incentive to defect in the hope of obtaining a greater payoff at the expense of the other player. On that basis, it is claimed that in the absence of a coercive intervention to enforce cooperation both players will end up defecting.

However, Skoble observes that defection is only the winning strategy in a one-shot game - social cooperation emerges spontaneously when the prisoner’s dilemma game is repeated over long periods. In support of this argument he refers to Robert Axelrod’s book The Evolution of Cooperation, which found that a tit-for-tat (reciprocation) strategy gave players higher payoffs than constant defection. The author notes that strategies that allow for the possibility that a defecting player may have made a mistake offer higher payoffs than tit-for-tat.

It may be worth adding that the utility maximizing assumptions of game theory tend to be less conducive to social cooperation than are real people engaged in trust games in a laboratory setting. As Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson noted in Humanomics, anonymously paired people are “predominantly caring other-regarding, independent actors in the personal social exchange context of trust games in the laboratory”.

Skoble makes the point that law ought to be construed as a natural consequence of attempts of people to live and work together rather than as something requiring a coercive monopoly power. Among other things, he notes that enforcement of property rights requires “a society that in fact recognizes the practicality of recognizing property rights” rather than a “monopolistic coercive authority”. In that context he discusses the history of spontaneous evolution of civil law conflict resolution drawing upon works by David Friedman and Murray Rothbard.

The author devotes a chapter to providing an extended example of the potential for disaster relief to be provided via voluntary cooperation rather than a centralized political authority.

In his final chapter, Skoble discusses the question of whether disagreements between libertarian anarchists and minimal-state libertarians are radically incommensurable, or capable of being resolved by dialogue. He argues that there are “no fundamental premises or values that separate anarchists from libertarian minimum-statists” that would prevent the differences between them being resolved by dialogue. There is even potential for dialogue between libertarians and welfarist liberals. Political philosophy can explore relevant questions such as the circumstances, if any, under which the will of the majority should override individual liberty.

Additional considerations

One argument that is sometimes advanced in opposition to philosophical anarchism is that a written constitution helps to protect liberty. Perhaps that is true of the United States, but it is not difficult to find examples of countries where constitutional provisions have failed to protect liberty. The former Soviet Union comes to mind. There are also notable examples of countries which have maintained a relatively high degree of liberty without written constitutional protections. Britain comes to mind.  

Roderick Long has suggested that those who believe government is necessary are being misled by a metaphysically illusive picture of what constitutional restraints are and how they work:

“The metaphysical illusion I referred to is the habit of thinking of constitutional restraints (checks and balances, separation of powers, etc.) as though these structures existed in their own right, as external limitations on society as a whole. But in fact those structures exist only insofar as they are continually maintained in existence by human agents acting in certain systematic ways. A constitution is not some impersonal, miraculously self-enforcing robot. It’s an ongoing pattern of behavior, and it persists only so long as human agents continue to conform to that pattern in their actions.” (Long, 2008)

I have previously discussed similar views of the nature of constitutions by Sheldon Richman (here) and Douglass North (here).

A more difficult argument to contend with is that the free rider problem would prevent adequate provision of national defense. I think John Hasnas has advanced an appropriate response to that argument. He suggests that an inability to raise sufficient capital to engage in foreign military adventures or pre-emptive warfare without resort to coercion proves nothing about the potential for defense against outside aggression to be funded voluntarily.

Hasnas acknowledges that he doesn’t know whether sufficient funds could be raised by voluntary means to fund protection against outside aggression. He suggests:

“No one believes that we can transition from a world of states to anarchy instantaneously. No reasonable anarchist advocates the total dissolution of government tomorrow. Once we turn our attention to the question of how to move incrementally from government to anarchy, it becomes apparent that national defense would be one of the last governmental functions to be de-politicized.”

That seems to me to be a sensible position to adopt. It does not preclude the possibility that a society that moves incrementally to reduce coercion of some by others will one day end up not requiring coercion to ensure appropriate provision of any goods currently provided by governments.

Conclusion

This essay has been prompted by my reading of the Second edition of Aeon Skoble’s book, Deleting the State.

Early in the essay, I posed the question of whether the existence of government is an issue that should currently occupy the minds of libertarians in the light of current threats to liberty by political movements with authoritarian tendencies. Skoble provides an appropriate response in his defense of philosophical consideration of the possibility of anarchy. In particular, he suggests that such philosophical endeavours help libertarians to make the point that getting a different group of office holders into power will not resolve problems that are attributable to the existence and scope of state power.

A central concern of the book is to allay the Hobbesian Fear that people will be unable to obtain the benefits of social cooperation in the absence of a government to maintain order. In my view, Skoble provides strong arguments to allay that fear.

I endorse Skoble’s view that law ought to be construed as a natural consequence of attempts of people to live and work together, rather than as something requiring a coercive monopoly power. Constitutional restraints are not self-enforcing. It cannot be assumed that they would continue to offer protection of the rights of citizens if enforcement of them did not have broad community support.

The question of how national defense could be provided without coercive taxation is probably the most challenging obstacle to attempts by philosophical anarchists to persuade minarchists that anarchy is a viable option. In my view, it makes sense to acknowledge the difficulties that would be encountered at present in ensuring adequate voluntary provision of defense resources. That doesn’t mean, however, that it makes sense to assume that coercive taxation will always be required to fund defense. Libertarians who have the objective of reducing coercion “as much as possible in society”, should leave open the possibility that at some stage elimination of the state could become a viable option.  

References

Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (Basic Books, 1984).

Babones, Salvatore, Dharma Democracy: How India Built the Third World’s First Democracy (Connor Court Publishing, 2025).

Hasnas, John, Common Law Liberalism: A New Theory of the Libertarian Society (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Hayek, F. A. The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960).

Rasmussen, Douglas B. and Douglas J. Den Uyl Norms of Liberty: A Perfectionist Basis for Non-Perfectionist Politics (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). 

Long, R. T. “Market anarchism as constitutionalism”, in R. T. Long & T. R. Machan (Eds.), Anarchism/Minarchism: Is a government part of a free country? (Ashgate Publishing, 2008). pp. 133–154.

Sciabarra, Chris Matthew, Marx, Hayek and Utopia (State University of New York Press, 1995).

Skoble, Aeon J. Deleting the State: Requiem for an Illusion, Second edition (Independent Institute, 2026).

Smith, Vernon L., and Bart J. Wilson, Humanomics: Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Are there no policies worth retaining to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia?

 This is a guest post by Geoff Edwards.

Tasmania-raised, Geoff has held economist positions at the Productivity Commission, La Trobe and Melbourne Universities, the Australian Treasury and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. His research has focused on public policy for energy, water, agriculture and industry. Geoff's research has been published in The Economic Record, The American Economic Review, The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, The American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Australian Quarterly and elsewhere, including “Freedom and Flourishing”. (Geoff has previously published here about gas price policies.) 

In this post, Geoff discusses one of the policies announced by Angus Taylor, leader of the Opposition, in his recent budget reply speech in the Australian parliament.

The Opposition leader's budget reply often serves as an opportunity for the Opposition to present the narrative that it proposes to take to the next election. Angus Taylor’s recent budget reply speech has special significance. Since this was his first budget reply speech, it provided an opportunity for Taylor to point out the shortcomings of the Government’s economic policies and to propose a radically different approach. The political context surrounding Angus Taylor's budget reply speech added urgency, as the Liberal-National Party coalition faces an existential crisis, with competition from Teal Independents, on its left flank, and more intense competition from One Nation, on its right flank.

The Government’s budget, the fifth delivered by Jim Chalmers, seeks to address chronically low productivity growth and perceived generational inequity with policies that are anticipated to result in a higher public debt burden to be serviced by future generations. Taylor outlined a platform centred on "generational tax reform" through indexing income tax brackets to inflation (the "tax back guarantee"), cutting net overseas migration, and restricting certain welfare services to Australian citizens only. As Geoff notes below, Taylor also foreshadowed a radical shift away from policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Geoff Edwards writes:

Opposition leader Angus Taylor said a government he led would stop targeting net zero greenhouse emissions. It would increase use of fossil fuels, running coal-fired power generators "as long and as hard as possible". Mr Taylor wants "cheap energy". He blamed  the renewables push and the energy bureaucracy for high energy prices. The reality is that the impact of high world prices for oil, gas and coal on electricity costs are also relevant. 

There is a certain irony in Mr Taylor's rejection of net zero 2050. It was he as Energy and Climate Minister with then  Prime Minister Scott Morrison who, in October 2021, first announced Australia's commitment to net zero. Subsequently, in opposition, the Liberal Party followed its smaller coalition partner, the Nationals, in walking away from net zero 2050.

Australia generates about one per cent of global greenhouse emissions. It cannot  influence climate perceptibly, domestically or globally. But a majority of Aussies according to surveys see it responsible for doing its bit to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse emissions, so the atmosphere is more conducive to good living conditions for humans and other species. And I want my grandkids to grow up in an Australia that has policies and a culture that take seriously caring for the global commons that is the atmosphere.

Yes, remove subsidies on solar electricity, household batteries and EVs—-though I don't see that reducing electricity prices. And credit to Mr Taylor for the rational initiative of removing the ban on nuclear energy in Australia, so long as any investments in nuclear are made through unsubsidised, technology-neutral competitive processes.

But the Safeguard Mechanism, a de facto tax on carbon emissions, attacked by the Opposition leader, is the right way to go. It is a price directly on the pollution that harms the habitat of humans and other living things. 

Under the Safeguard Mechanism, the country's largest industrial firms have a baseline level of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions they can make without penalty. The baseline is reduced each year. Emissions in excess of the baseline need to be offset by purchasing approved carbon credit units; these are accredited emission reductions made in such ways as soil carbon sequestration, vegetation management and energy efficiency gains.

Yes, the Safeguard Mechanism increases prices a small amount; appropriate for efficient pricing when producers are made to pay a real cost. The Productivity Commission and others, focusing on efficiency in the energy sector and beyond, and on cost-effectiveness in reducing emissions, recommend extending the Safeguard Mechanism so disincentives to pollute the atmosphere are experienced by more of the polluters.  It is especially incongruous that individual electricity generating facilities are not subject to an emissions tax. 

 

Geoff Edwards

Kew, Vic.

Can the rise of populism be explained as a reaction to the rule of experts?

 

In an essay written over 15 years ago I observed that we were beginning to see a populist reaction to the rule of experts in the United States and (to a lesser extent) in Australia. In more recent essays, however, I have tended to see populism as a manifestation of interest group politics. These explanations are not mutually exclusive, but it may be useful to consider how the rule of experts and populism are both entangled with interest group politics.

My 2010 essay

The essay was entitled: Does Australia also have a ruling class? It was prompted by an article by Angelo Codevilla which suggested that Democrat and Republican office-holders in recent governments in the United States had shown “a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits and opinions ... than between both and the rest of the community”. He claimed: “They think, look, and act like a class.”

Codevilla discussed several characteristics of this “ruling class”. For example, he suggested that they believe themselves to be “the best and brightest while the rest of Americans are retrograde, racist, and dysfunctional unless properly constrained”. They view the common people’s words as “like grunts, mere signs of pain, pleasure and frustration”.

I concluded that while Australia also had a self-appointed ruling class which could be identified with the public service and the political left, I didn’t think the conservative side of Australian politics was as closely identified with that ruling class as in the United States. That explains why populist politicians were not particularly popular in Australia at that time.

In retrospect, however, I think I also displayed some “ruling class” attitudes in my essay:

“In my view the words of non-experts on complex economic issues do have little more value than a grunt. Whether we are talking about economic policy, brain surgery or plumbing, I think it should be self-evident that the views of experts count for more than those of non-experts.”

I still think that the views of experts should count for more than those of non-experts, although these days I try to avoid being offensive. Apart from the tone of my comment, I should have made clear that there are reasons to doubt that some of those who claim economic expertise know what they are talking about. The claims that some economists make about the potential to regulate complex market systems to produce better outcomes deserve no more respect than the similar claims of non-experts.

In his book, Expert Failure, published in 2018, Roger Koppl brings an economic perspective to “the problem of experts”. I will briefly consider Koppl’s line of argument in the following section.

Expert Failure

Koppl acknowledges that we must rely on experts even though experts may not be completely reliable and trustworthy sources of the advice we require from them.

 He defines an “expert” as anyone paid to give an opinion. That definition leaves open the question of whether experts are reliable or unreliable.

 Koppl adopts the Hayekian view that knowledge is generally emergent from practice, often tacit, and embodied in our norms, habits, practices, and traditions. His comparative institutional approach leads to the conclusion that expert error and abuse are more likely when experts have monopoly power, and less likely in a “competitive” market for expert opinion.

I expect most economists would view that as commonsense, but it is far removed from standard practice in many fields which rely on expert knowledge. Based on his study of the use of expert witnesses in law, Koppl observes that it is common to encounter the view that it is scandalous for the opinions of men of science to be challenged, even by other scientists. It is often held that the knowledge of expert witnesses is or should be uniform, unambiguous and certain. Experts are often encouraged to come to a common understanding rather than to offer competing views.

Koppl observes that the division of knowledge makes it impossible for anyone to avoid a limited and partial perspective, which implies a parochial bias in our perceptions and judgments. That kind of bias cannot be eliminated by blinding protocols – such as the double-blind requirements used in testing of pharmaceuticals.  It can only be mitigated by multiplying the number of experts and putting them in positions of genuine rivalry.

The book contains an interesting discussion of epistemic systems design in an experimental economics laboratory. In that setting, the experimenter is in the god-like position of defining unambiguously what the truth is and examining how close experimental subjects come to it in different institutional settings. The knowledge gained of which institutional structures promote the discovery and elimination of error is relevant to the real world. Experimental systems design studies offer opportunities to test the role of network structure in producing reliable knowledge in scientific fields.

Koppl comments:

“Rather than attempting to instruct people in how to form true opinions, we might reform our social institutions in ways that tend to induce people to find and speak the truth.”

However, at the end of the next chapter, after considering the problems arising from the monopoly of expert opinion in government -  referred to as the rule of experts or the entangled deep state - the author suggests that the experimental approach of “piecemeal institutional reform (which is mostly borrowed from Vernon Smith) does not have an obvious application to the entangled deep state.”  He concludes:

“If my diagnosis of the deep state is at all correct, reform is urgently required. I freely confess, however, that I have no specific ideas on how we might attempt to roll back the deep state with a reasonable prospect of success.”

Nevertheless, Koppl offers useful insights into the nature of the problem arising from the rule of experts. His conclusion that the problem of experts “mostly boils down to the question of knowledge imposition” is highly relevant to consideration of institutional approaches to determination of public policies.

In the introductory chapter to his book Koppl explains that he values pluralistic democracy and is as much opposed to populism as to the rule of experts.  He argues for pluralism on the grounds that each of us has at best a partial view of the truth:

“In a pluralist democracy, competing partial perspectives on the truth have at least a chance to be heard and to influence political choices. Decisions in a political system – be it populist, elitist, or something else – that override or ignore plural perspectives will be based on knowledge that is at best limited, partial, biased.”

In the process of developing that view Koppl refers to an article by Christopher Bickerton and Carlo Accetti (“Populism and Technocracy: Opposites or Complements?” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 20(2), 2015) which describes populism and technocracy as two organizing poles of politics which are both opposed to “party democracy”. I will now discuss that article because it raises the question in my mind of whether party democracy has more in common with interest group politics than with pluralism.

Party democracy, interest group politics and pluralism

 Bickerton and Accetti argue that whilst populism and technocracy are usually assumed to be opposed to each other, there is also an important element of complementarity between them. Both populism and technocracy are predicated on an implicit critique of party democracy. The authors suggest that “if we accept the idea that politics is increasingly structured in terms of this conflict between populism and technocracy, then we find that even the very possibility of articulating a defense of party democracy is excluded from the political spectrum”.

I have no difficulty agreeing with Bickerton and Accetti if they are just using different words to say that both populism and the rule of experts are opposed to pluralistic democracy. Technocracy seems to correspond closely with rule of experts, but “party democracy”, as the authors describe it, seems to me to corresponds more closely to interest group politics than to the role of encompassing political groups in a two-party pluralistic democracy.

The authors define party democracy as a political regime based on two key features: the mediation of political conflicts through the institution of political parties; and the idea that the specific conception of the common good that ought to prevail and therefore be translated into public policy is the one that is constructed through the democratic procedures of parliamentary deliberation and electoral competition. The role of political parties in “mediation of political conflicts” is the focus of my concern.

The authors suggest that an important function performed by political parties is that of “integrating a plurality of particular interests” and moulding them into “an overarching conception of the common good”. When political parties aim to do such things, it seems to me that they end up cobbling together coalitions of interest groups which seek to obtain benefits for themselves at the expense of others. That is essentially what interest group politics is about.

In my view, better outcomes are produced when political parties take on the role of encompassing political groups in two-party pluralistic democracies. In discussing the importance of encompassing political groups in a two-party system of government, Mancur Olson asserted that the leader of a party “whose clients comprise half or more of the society naturally is concerned about the efficiency and welfare of the society as a whole” because this affects the party’s electoral prospects.  (See further discussion and reference here.)

 As I have explained elsewhere (for example in a recent essay on the consequences of path dependence) the growth of interest group politics has tended to contract economic freedom, constrain economic growth and increase public debt levels. As a result, voters have tended to become increasingly disenchanted with conventional politics.

It seems to me that as party politics has increasingly focused on pandering to particular interest groups it has helped to bring about a situation where more people have become more willing to listen to populists who tell them that they are being disadvantaged by the policies of conventional political leaders. Unfortunately, most of those populist leaders advance policies that are likely to produce even worse economic and social outcomes.

The ubiquity of populism, rule of experts, and interest group politics

Looking at recent politics in the United Sates, it might seem appropriate to identify the Democratic Party with rule of experts and the Republican Party with populism. However, that assignment understates the extent of populism in the Democratic Party, which tends to seek popular support by attributing economic woes to the wealthy 1% of the population in much the same way as economic nationalists in the Republican Party attribute economic woes to import competition and immigration. It also understates the extent to which the current Administration relies on commercial expertise – dealmaking – in running the government. It seems that the rule of one group of experts has been replaced by rule of another group with different expertise. The problems arising from the monopoly of expert opinion have changed their character but have not disappeared.

Roger Koppl’s reference to the “entangled deep state” reflects his awareness that the rule of experts is not immune to interest group politics. He notes that participants in the American deep state “have a variety of competing and parochial interests”. More generally, interest group politics is strongly associated with the entanglement of entrepreneurs and interests in private and public sectors.

Interest group politics seems to have attended to the pleas of increasingly narrow groups in recent years. As well as seeking support of broad economic groups such as unions, industry groups, and groups with differing social and environmental attitudes, political parties have increasingly sought the support of narrow interest groups by engaging in identity politics. The progressive side of politics has favoured groups that have previously been disadvantaged by ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. The conservative side of politics has pushed back against what they label as wokeness, while seeking support from some groups, e.g. young men, who perceive themselves to be disadvantage by it.

Another interesting development in interest group politics in the United States is the emergence of an alliance between conservative populists and the high-tech community. It is not easy to comprehend how populists who claim to be concerned about economic and social impacts of competition from imports and immigration could be complacent about the economic and social impacts of AI. Action by the U.S. government to facilitate rapid development of AI has been accompanied by a change in the economic nationalist narrative away from its populist roots to emphasize the importance of retaining technological leadership in AI in the face of increasing competition from China.

The warning of President Eisenhower, quoted in the epigraph, might now be relevant for reasons that he could not have foreseen. Public policy is not only at risk of becoming the captive of a scientific-technological elite supported by the administrative state, it is also at risk of becoming the captive of a scientific-technological elite controlling the development of powerful AI models.

However, I don’t think we should assume that a future in which AI models will have an increasing influence on social and economic outcomes will necessarily be worse than a future in which the entangled deep state retains its current influence.  It is possible that rivalry between different AI models will ensure that their social and economic impacts are relatively benign and consistent with pluralistic democracy. Even now, greater use of truth-seeking bots has potential to lessen the problem of rational ignorance, and thus to reduce the susceptibility of voters to populists peddling false narratives.

Conclusions

The rise of populism in the Western liberal democracies can be explained to some degree as a reaction to the “ruling class” attitudes of experts within governments.  I have recently tended to see populism as a manifestation of interest group politics, but it is worth considering how the rule of experts and populism are entangled with interest group politics.

The essay has outlined the views presented by Roger Koppl in his book, Expert Failure. Koppl offers the useful insight that the main problem arising from the rule of experts is knowledge imposition. Expert error and abuse are more likely when experts have monopoly power and are less likely when experts are placed in positions of genuine rivalry. Koppl argues that pluralist democracy is superior to both the rule of experts and populism because it enables competing partial perspectives on the truth to have a chance to be heard.

I have also considered the view of Christopher Bickerton and Carlo Accetti that both populism and technocracy are predicated on an implicit critique of party democracy. I suggested that party democracy, as the authors described it, seemed to have more in common with interest group politics than with pluralistic democracy. In my view, interest group politics is largely to blame for the poor economic and social outcomes that have encouraged the growth of populism.

My main conclusion is that the rule of experts, populism, and interest group politics are currently ubiquitous on both the progressive and conservative sides of politics. Populism is certainly not confined to one side of politics and populist governments don’t eliminate problems arising from the monopoly of expert opinion. In the U.S. a populist executive has continued to discourage rival views, while attempting to substitute expertise in commercial deal-making for expertise in statecraft.

The emergence of an alliance between the current U.S. Administration and the high-tech community poses a risk that public policy may become captive to a scientific-technological elite controlling the development of powerful AI models.  We should not assume, however, that a future in which AI models have an increasing influence on social and economic outcomes will necessarily be worse than one in which the entangled deep state retains its current influence. Rivalry between AI models may even have potential to produce better outcomes.