Interrogating Underthrow

Here's a rich foreshadowing of my interview with one of the "Politics Guys," Michael Baranowski, a generous, whip-smart professor who also read Underthrow, the book.

Isai Ramos

Michael Baranowski is a political scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky who focuses on American political institutions, public policy, and media. He’s also one of The Politics Guys. I got to sit down with Professor Baranowski on his podcast, but he sent me excellent pre-interview questions before I went on. Here are those Qs and my As, many of which we couldn’t get to on the show. These differ from the show's final cut but are valuable in their own right.

1) Let’s start with the very beginning—the title of your book. What’s “underthrow”?

• The French Revolution was overthrow. Gandhi ending the British Raj is underthrow. 

• Underthrow is thus the sum of peaceful human choices arrayed against unjust authority.

• And today, I believe underthrow can be carried out partly through technological means. 

2) How does Thomas Jefferson fit in?

Jefferson had this great idea, which he wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

This is Jefferson’s dangerous idea which we have lost.

And, for what it’s worth, I just don’t accept that majoritarian rule is “consent.”

3) You split your book into three sections: Absurdities, Alternatives, and Actions. In considering the absurdities, I found what you have to say about the “church of state” really interesting -- explain what you mean by that.

As an unbeliever, I still think there are three big holes left behind as people have left their faith traditions: moral practice, community, and mutual aid. I think too many people on the left and right have adopted a replacement religion, which is the Church of Politics–or Church of State.

Briefly, The Church of State obliges people to outsource their responsibilities and sacred values to people in distant capitals. This form of worship helps centralize power and concentrates authority that should stay local.

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4) You suggest that there are three articles of faith in this Church of State, meaning things that are fundamental and essentially unquestioned beliefs. What are they?

1. Prosperity is Immoral, which is to say material abundance is somehow the product of sin; 

2. Society should be Designed, which means elites should administratively order society, and

3. Brute Authority is Necessary, which means a few enlightened souls should impose a singular conception of the good on a benighted population.

5) Explain how these three articles of faith intersect with what you term the “Big Three Problems”.

Admittedly, the Big Three Problems refer to the preoccupations of those currently in power, so this is more “of the era.” In so far as they justify technocratic authority, the Big Three Problems currently are:

A. Wealth Inequality. It is horrible (sinful) that some should control more resources than others

B. Climate Emergency. Entrepreneurship and energy consumption causes runaway warming

C. Social Justice. There is a cosmic scoreboard of identity groups, which mean some groups are oppressors while others are oppressed—by default. 

When the Articles of Faith are crossed with the Big Three Problems, you get a matrix of justifications for the rise of authoritarians in the managerial state.

6) Is this critique directed mainly at the left or the Democratic Party or do you see this Church of State as a bipartisan absurdity?

The Church of State is definitely a bipartisan absurdity, though I will mention that the major tribes seem to be decoupling from coherent principles. Still, I wish I had written more about how being a reactionary can give rise to right-wing variants.

I can see how MAGA, for example, creates its own “Big Problems,” such as Invasion by Foreigners, Exporting ‘Our’ Jobs, or the Culture-War’s Other. 

7) Plenty of people on the left – myself included at times – would argue that there’s also a church of commerce, which is also founded on certain articles of faith. I felt like, at times, readers might see you as a congregant in that church, especially when you suggest it’s better for people to relate to each other as customers, as opposed to relating as citizens. Can you talk about that?

Sure, I knew I’d raise eyebrows with the trope of citizens as customers, which seems kind of gauche at first blush. My view is not so much that we ought to worship in the Church of Commerce so much as we should worship in the Church of Choice. I use the customer trope to evoke two important ideas:

1. John Stuart Mill’s idea of “experiments in living,” and 

2. The common-sense idea that monopolies are generally bad.

Experiments in living imply a set of rules that facilitate one’s choice of community or civil association, which comports with her ideas of the good life. Monopolies are bad refers to the fact that governments are monopolies too, and they restrict choice, raise prices, lower quality, and limit experimentation–just as with private monopolies.

8) You argue that elites used to distinguish themselves from the unwashed masses through conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, but that this has now been supplemented by the adoption of luxury beliefs – not just by elites but others as well. What are luxury beliefs and why should we be concerned about them?

With credit to the social psychologist

Rob Henderson

, luxury beliefs are opinions that confer status on the rich and educated but often have harmful consequences for the less fortunate. Recent examples include: 

• NIMBYs push back against the construction of new housing that would ‘alter the character of our fair city.’ 

• Climate activists demanding we “end fossil fuels now!” without considering the effects such a policy would devastate the world’s poorest people.

• People in wealthy low-crime neighborhoods suggest that police be “defunded,” which most affects poor victims in high-crime areas.

While leftwing elites shroud themselves in luxury beliefs, lately, right-wing versions might include the idea that prison is the answer for every social problem under the sun, or failing to consider that severe tariffs or trade restrictions with China could affect the poor in both countries. A libertarian sloganeering to “End the Fed” might qualify as a luxury belief without any credible transition that addresses our collective dependence on central banking.

9) I’d say that most people more or less assume that the system we have is essentially our only option, with the progressive left duking it out with the conservative right for dominance in a society in which nearly everything is, in some way, government’s business. You clearly don’t believe that, so let’s talk about plausible alternatives—how else might we structure things, and why do you think that would be better than what we have now?

That’s right. I think if we look carefully at our system as it’s currently constituted, we will discover all sorts of absurdities. One tendency is for people to think in terms of either/or rather than in terms of yes/and. Partisan politics engenders either/or thinking, which stifles reform.

Metapolitics, forgive the term, requires that we evaluate status quo dynamics and imagine how society might be configured to help people realize a polycentric order–one that instantiates yes-and, or integral, thinking. To a partisan, that vision probably looks like a way we can have our cake and eat it too. Instead, it’s a vision for applying rules that facilitate civil self-organization, pluralism, and self-government. “Metapolitics” sounds highfalutin, and it can be. But it boils down to Jefferson’s dangerous idea in practice: the consent of the governed at scale. Imperfect but better examples include Switzerland, with its canton system and modest federal government. We can extend such thinking to establish more peaceful, pluralistic societies.

10) You write “Our three paths are exit, voice, or loyalty.” Can you explain what you mean by that?

The brilliant political scientist Albert Hirshmann identified these three paths. I steal shamelessly from him because exit, voice, and loyalty is a kind of human algorithm. Whenever you’re in a group, in whatever manner that group is established, you have three basic ways to change things: You can express to the group that you want a change (that’s VOICE), you can leave the group to join or join another or start another (that’s EXIT), or you can stick around despite your displeasure with the lack of change (that’s LOYALTY). These dynamics are at play in every human system–to varying degrees. I kind of want to crank EXIT up to 11! In short, more EXIT means: less fighting and more niches of possibility.

11) Can you sketch out in broad strokes the main elements of the sort of politics and society we should have compared to what we seem stuck with today?

Sure, and I’ll try to not let that sketch turn into an oil painting. The society I imagine:

• Operates according to persuasion rather than compulsion.

• Is one that offers us more choices and fewer directives.

• Is one that better balances diverse communities against federal power.

• Less voting in the November prayer booth and more with your feet.

So, my ideal society has a right of self-determination baked into the law. And my idea society:

• Flows more organically from emergent law than technocratic rule. 

• Really, the society I imagine is not really one I can imagine at all, except in the abstract, because I envision local innovators contriving all sorts of approaches in which we can become a nation of joiners again. (MAMA: Make America Mutual Again)

Finally, all this means there is no ONE TRUE WAY. Instead, society unfolds as a rules-based fractal that facilitates far more polycentricity–a fancy term that means more competing centers of power, sort of like states’ rights on steroids.

12) I’m a big fan of Edmund Burke, in large part because his tradition-rooted incrementalism is based on a certain intellectual humility – an understanding that the world is big and complex, and the most dangerous people are those who suggest that sweeping, revolutionary change that looks great in theory will work in practice. What do you think about that, especially as it relates to the alternatives you propose?

I like Burke, too, which makes me something of a walking paradox. I have a deep respect for the idea of tradition having embedded wisdom. So most of the time, I caution folks not to rip out Chesterton’s fence. But I also have deep respect for the revolutionary who can no longer abide by a grotesque hierarchy he didn’t choose, which mostly benefits the powerful. 

So, I guess I’m trying to stake out a synthesis view.

My synthesis view is something like an upgraded liberalism—by that I mean the more whiggish liberalism of Jefferson. So my proposals are just an extension of America’s Founding Project. I see that project as good protocol design, which facilitates the sort of Burkean incrementalism you favor, only in polycentric form.

Yet I know what Burke thought about the French Revolution with its adjacency to the American Revolution. Is there a synthesis in underthrow? I hope so. I try to be humble enough to imagine new institutions built on the Founder’s scaffolding. But I’m okay with a little revolutionary zeal if it’ll topple this empire.

13) In your book, as in a lot of what I’ll call libertarian writing, I feel there’s an assumption of a high level of rationality and ability to make good choices that may apply to libertarian theorists, but doesn’t necessarily apply to the public in general. It’s basically what I’d call a libertarian article of faith. Any political or social theory that doesn’t get human nature or human abilities right is bound to fail, whether it’s communism or libertarianism. I’m wondering what your views of human rationality are and how they fit into your overall thinking about politics and society.

I’ve certainly been branded with the scarlet L before, and to some degree I’ve earned it. But I don’t consider myself an orthodox libertarian. Sometimes that doctrine includes rigid ideological check-boxes and a narrow view of human nature. For example, I don’t think we’re Benthamite rationality bots who run around maximizing utility, OR that people are always good at making decisions for themselves. I mean, we just talked about luxury beliefs. Most people are plagued by rational irrationality, rational ignorance, or straight-up magical thinking.

But more importantly, I don’t think there exists a special ruling class capable of making “rational” decisions on everyone else’s behalf. The world is too warty and complex for that. Human beings—from the simplest laborers to the educated elites—carry evolutionary baggage. We’re all just cavepeople with computers. Smart people are just better at rationalizing their feelings and grunts. But this isn’t a libertarian problem. It’s a human problem. 

That’s why I’m skeptical of central authorities because I think all people are ignorant and irrational. There are no angelic beings to whom we can outsource all our cares. My redneck dad used to say, “Son, sometimes you’re just gonna have to shit and fall back in it. That’s how you learn.” The protocols I envision let people do just that–locally–so failures aren’t catastrophic, systemwide, or papered over by debt spending. Once tested, we can borrow the best ideas.

14) Let’s move on to actions – plenty of people have big ideas about where we should be, but their roadmaps for getting there are wildly unrealistic, if they even bother to include a plausible path from where we are to where they think we should be. Talk about how you think the United States might realistically move toward your ideal.

To be honest, it’s pretty overwhelming, especially as I resist big, rationalistic schemes. Road maps can be just that. So sometimes I sit with a bit of nihilism, like all I can do is wait for the empire to fall and hope someone reads my books. And with debt at 130 percent of GDP, it might. But I also know the world has been shaped from time to time by pamphleteers like Tom Paine and Karl Marx. So the first thing I try to do is sketch the vision.

But then, I try to inspire subversive innovation. 

Here are a couple of examples: First, an intrepid founder named Travis Kalanik challenged the taxi medallion cartels and punctured taboos around hitchhiking. Uber was born.

In another case, a person or group of cypherpunks got fed up with corrupt central banking, which had created a Cantillon Club of wealthy financial types who could count on unlimited debt spending and bailouts. Satoshi Nakamoto presented a vision of digital, peer-to-peer money with no boss and no single point of failure. Bitcoin was born.

So you see, subversive innovation isn’t a prescription or a plan. It’s an ethos. Despite whatever system the powerful want for us, subversive innovators just do their thing.

And speaking of, I’m running a $25,000 contest in which I invite legal innovators to dream up a new constitution. I offer guidelines, but I expect the contestants to innovate. I hope to find novelty in those submissions. But I don’t expect to march on Washington or London or Moscow with the winner. It’s really a thought experiment that gets people thinking about how a polycentric renaissance could start.

And I REALLY want to challenge the idea that law has to be the product of territorial conquest and accident of birth. I want to open folk’s minds to the idea of Open-Source Law. 

15) What do you see as the biggest challenges to this—what’s most likely to derail the sort of revolution you envision?

Well, I think you guys are dead right to worry about human nature. We are creatures governed first by our fears. So the political scientist James C. Scott thinks governments start as protection rackets. Big scary guys come around and take some grain in exchange for keeping other brigands away. And there’s a cold logic to this predator-prey-protector dynamic: When people are afraid, they tend to subordinate themselves, backing them into a Hobbesian paradigm.

Then, there is a perverse gravity to politics that prevents metapolitics. Not only are most people distracted by partisan spectacles, but they also tend to bask in a failure of imagination. MAGA types, for example, are the most hostile to our Constitution of Consent Contest. But I don’t blame ‘em. They’re the product of a system with strong incentives to put partisanship before principles.

Finally, powerful authorities and their cronies have a deep interest in either protecting the system as it is or doubling down on technocracy. And this reality causes me to mule-kick against my more Burkean sensibilities. That’s why I’m less about politics and policy and more about entrepreneurship and innovation when it comes to social change.

16) How optimistic are you about the future you envision happening, at least in some significant part?

I am optimistic, but mainly for the long term. This is as much due to my disposition as my reflections. Civilizations go through cycles, and I worry those cycles could be outside of anyone’s control. You might recall the great political economist Mancur Olsen showed us how the dynamics of concentrated benefits, and diffuse costs lead to decline cycles. But I also think that once we emerge from the crappier part of that cycle, we have the means to flip Olsen’s logic on its head: In other words, it’s becoming more costly for authorities to enforce the status quo, as the benefits of innovation become more diffuse. In that sense, you might say I am a good Hayekian, or even a good Oakeshottian, after Michael Oakeshott. 

At the end of the day, where many people see a war bubbling between left and right, I also see a conflict between the people and the powerful, which is confusing and dangerous. This could cause us to degenerate into unreflective populisms leading to tit-for-tat escalations, a civil war, OR it can be an opportunity for an institutional reboot, such as I have outlined. Why fight over whether Red or Blue when we can organize ourselves into more modest units of authority—of red, blue, purple, or any color or stripe you can imagine. 

That takes a revolution of the mind.