Underthrow
Newsletter (Digital)
The American Founders made a promise to the world.
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.
Since 1789, the powerful have consistently broken that promise, as Thomas Jefferson warned they would.
So what are we to do? Underthrow is dedicated to the answers. But every answer originates in consent.
“We can underthrow the state one contract at a time,” writes author Michael P. Gibson.
Real communities are the products of real agreements and actual social contracts—you know, the kind the people sign. If we’re right, politics, policy, and presidents won’t drive the next revolution. Technology, community, and subversion will.
“Every innovation is an act of subversion,” writes Underthrow editor Max Borders. And what distinguishes Underthrow is its commitment to showcasing the ideas, innovations, and institutional experiments that challenge authority. Source
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesWhy Can’t You Switch Your Government?
I was having a conversation with my wife recently. “When you say you want to create a consent-based society,” she said, “what do you mean?” I replied that I want all human relationships in that society to be consensual, not compelled. We went round and round for an hour. I didn’t get very far in persuading her. To most people—my wife included—the very idea of a society based on consent is a strange abstraction, even though it’s in our Declaration of Independence.
The Nazi Had a Point
This is a long but necessary post. Let me know what you think. Liberals have a bad habit of describing their hard-won victories as the natural condition of mankind. They have a Whiggish idea of progress. Once the religious wars burned out, they thought, enlightened Europeans had shown the world that people who disagree about the path to salvation can still share roads and a common polity. And that’s not entirely wrong. But somewhere along the way, they downplayed the fact of fundamental disagreement.
Argentina Tried Democratic Socialism. Then Came the Chainsaw.
I don’t care much for politicians. Most of them are just the bosses of a legal mafia. But there are a few exceptions. My current Number One is Javier Milei of Argentina. But first, a trip down memory lane… In 1913, an Argentine bricklayer earned more than a French one. Buenos Aires had electric trams before most of Europe. The phrase “rich as an Argentine” was something people said in Paris back then.
A Special Kind of Person
A special kind of person walks among us. Under the right institutional conditions, she is capable of assembling people and resources to serve others sustainably. If she fails to serve others—say, if enough of them are unhappy with the product or service she offers—she will be unable to continue her efforts. So, her efforts come with great risk, and some risks have clear odds. Hers? Not so much. An insurer will price the chance that her business burns down because businesses have burned down before.
Activism is Empty, Virtue is Practice
You’ve seen the open letters. “Tax me more,” they say. Billionaires at Davos standing with hands over their hearts, pleading with governments to take more of their money. How noble. Here’s what you won’t find: extra canceled checks at the US Treasury. The federal government accepts voluntary donations and has done so for over a century. That means billionaires can pay more any time they want. But virtually none of them does. Economists have a name for this gap between words and deeds.
Eurotrash and Holy Water
It’s called the Fourth Political Theory (4PT for short). It’s gotten the Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin two major fans among throngs of minor ones. The first is Vladimir Putin. The second is Tucker Carlson. Each, in his own way, is important. But together, the three make for a subversive head-heart-gut triad: Dugin the thinker, Carlson the relator, and Putin the muscle.
Let it Flow
“Freedom is good for design,” wrote a man who knows what it means to be unfree. Adrian Bejan grew up in Romania under Nicolae Ceaușescu—a regime that believed it could plan a society as an engineer bolts together a machine. Every factory, farm, and loaf of bread was dictated from the center. The plan was total. The plan was correct. The plan was, in Le Corbusier’s chilling phrase, “the despot.” Bejan got out.
The Universal Exodus
Enemies of freedom and the West are keen to destroy and desecrate our canon. This has already happened in the academy, where the very idea of a Western canon has long been under attack. Our collection of great works, to the extent it is still studied, is being deracinated and deconstructed.
Wash Your Hands of It
Have you ever been to the doctor’s office and thought they were doing more harm than good? In 1847, a Viennese doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis noticed something that should have been impossible. At Vienna General Hospital, there were two maternity clinics. One was staffed by midwives. The other by doctors and medical students—the best-trained men in Europe. But in the doctors’ clinic, mothers were dying of childbed fever at nearly ten times the rate of the midwives’ clinic. The experts were the problem.
Moved by Meaning
A story is powerful. It is, after all, a compressed simulation of life. It follows a beginning, a middle, and an end—where a character’s world is established, disrupted by conflict, and he is transformed in the course of events. At their cores, characters embody competing motivations, values, and visions of what ought to be. We instinctively identify with one side, hoping the protagonist succeeds while the antagonist stands in the way—whether due to his ignorance, temptation, or malice.