Underthrow

Every day, strangers are in your ears. They come through your phone, your television, your group chats, your feeds. They speak with conviction. They speak with urgency. They talk as if they are telling you the truth. Most of them are not—and not always lying, either. They are performing.The first step to thinking clearly in this century is learning to tell them all apart. There are ten major voices competing inside your head.1. The Truth TrackerThe truth tracker is rare. The truth tracker is someone who tries — genuinely, awkwardly, sometimes unsuccessfully — to make sense of the world as it actually is, not as their priors would flatter it to be.You can recognize them by a specific discomfort they’re willing to endure. They will say things their own tribe punishes them for saying. They will admit when the other side has a point. They will update in public, which looks to everyone else like weakness or betrayal.But it isn’t either. It is the only intellectual posture that ever gets anywhere. Real understanding only ever comes from someone willing to follow the evidence across the line their community told them not to cross.Truth trackers are not always right. They are something better than always right — they are correctable. When you find one, hold on to him.The other nine will wear similar costumes.2. The Political AuthorityPolitical authority has a formula: they need you to think X so that they can do Y, and you will do Z.They need you to think there’s a crisis so that emergency powers can be granted, and you will not object when they’re used. They need you to think that a group is dangerous so that they can be controlled or silenced, and you will cheer. They want you to think that the situation is under control—so that nothing has to change and you’ll go back to sleep.Authorities are not always lying about the facts. They’re engineering a mental state in you that serves their agenda. The claim is downstream of the goal. That is why their stories shift without embarrassment when conditions change. The story was never the point. The state it produced in you was.Every government, every party, every institution with power does some version of this. It is not unique to your enemies. Even your closest friends and family are vulnerable to it.3. The Special InterestBehind every political authority stands a special interest—often many. These are the people who benefit concretely from whatever the authority is doing. The contractor who gets the contract. The industry that gets the subsidy. The guild that gets the license. The firm that gets the regulation written in its favor—which it will then call a “burden” in public.Special interests aren’t villains in a cartoon. They are usually just ordinary people with strong incentives to pursue special favors. That is exactly what makes them so patient and so organized. They care about a single issue far more than you care about any hundred issues.When a policy seems inexplicable—when it serves no one you can identify—you are not looking hard enough. Someone always benefits. Follow the money, and you’ll find the special interest.4. The Tribal PartisanThe tribal partisan believes whatever their tribe believes—not because they’ve examined it, but because believing it is what membership demands.You can test this. Ask a partisan’s position on a specific issue—trade, say, or executive power, or free speech—and then watch it reverse smoothly, without strain, the moment their team comes to power. They will not notice the reversal. If you point it out, they’ll explain why this time is different. The explanation will be fluent, but entirely post hoc.This is not a character flaw. It’s a human default. We are tribal primates who evolved to sense who is with us and who is not. The partisan isn’t broken—they are operating at factory settings. The work of a wise person is to override those settings, at least sometimes, at least on the things that matter.5. The Group ThinkerThe group thinker is the partisan’s quieter cousin. Where the partisan believes because their tribe believes, the group thinker believes because everyone else seems to. They are not defending a flag—they are riding a current.You can recognize the group thinker by their certainty on subjects they’ve never examined. They know the approved position on a scientific controversy they can’t explain. They know the approved position on a conflict in a foreign country they couldn’t find on a map. They know which decent people think what—and they are vaguely uneasy around anyone who doesn’t fit the pattern.Group thinkers aren’t stupid. In fact, credentials are a powerful vector for groupthink. Credential-granting communities have their own consensus and reward fidelity to it.The group thinker’s mistake is assuming that a cascade of agreement is evidence of truth. It isn’t. A cascade of agreement is evidence of a cascade. A bandwagon.6. The Clickbait CapitalistNow we descend into the voices that do not care whether you are informed at all.The clickbait capitalist makes money when you click. That is the entire model. Your belief, your understanding, your eventual emotional state—none of it matters to them. Only the click does.Any system that pays for attention will, over time, be optimized by the people inside it to capture attention. And the content that generates attention is not the content that informs. It is the content that outrages, titillates, flatters, or frightens.The capitalists did not decide to degrade your epistemics. The market selected, from a thousand possible headlines, the one that made your finger stop. Repeat that selection a billion times a day for twenty years, and you get the information environment we now inhabit.7. The Fact CheckerThe fact checker is a relatively modern creature, and a particularly dangerous one—because they wear the truth tracker’s uniform.A careful, lowercase fact-checker is a fine thing. The Fact Checker, capitalized, is something else: a partisan masquerading as a truth tracker to reinforce a preferred narrative. You can spot them by what they check, but especially by what they don’t. Notice which claims get a magnifying glass and which slide through untouched.They use elastic definitions: “mostly false” for a technically true statement that cuts the wrong way; “missing context” for something inconvenient; silence for something devastating to the home team.The fact checker weaponizes the appearance of rigor without its substance. This is worse than open propaganda, because propaganda announces itself. The Fact Checker launders a narrative through the prestige of verification and leaves their audience more confident than correct.If you ever need to locate the narrative someone wants to project, find what the Fact Checkers refuse to check.8. The Meme WarriorThe meme warrior has one objective: the narrative must be simple, sticky, and dominant. Not true. Not nuanced. Not fair. Dominant.The meme warrior understands something most people never do: in a noisy environment, the idea that wins is not the idea that’s most accurate. It is the idea that is most transmissible. A lie that fits on a bumper sticker will beat a truth that requires a book—every time—until the book readers wake up and learn to fight on this terrain.Memetic warfare is not new. Every successful religion, ideology, and revolution has been, among other things, a triumph of memetics—of compression. What is new is the speed of transmission. A meme can now colonize a hundred million minds in a weekend. By the time the careful people have finished their careful response, three more memes have replaced it.The meme warrior doesn’t argue. They infect.9. The Virtue SignalerThe virtue signaler is a cousin of the meme warrior, but with a different engine. The meme warrior wants the narrative to win. The virtue signaler wants to be seen as good.These two often look identical from the outside—same slogans, same hashtags, same confident public positions. The difference is internal. The meme warrior is willing to lose status for the cause. The virtue signaler is not willing to lose status for anything; the cause is the vehicle.You can identify virtue signalers by their risk profile. They are loud about positions that are safe inside their social bubbles, and silent about positions that would cost them. They perform courageously on questions already settled in their salon. Ask whether they still believe what they believe when only their own circle is watching, and the answer changes.Virtue signaling is not hypocrisy, exactly. The virtue signaler may genuinely hold the position. But the position is not what they are optimizing for. The optimization target is to be perceived as good. Everything else is secondary.10. The MetamongerWe end with the subtlest of the ten, because they are the hardest to see and the most likely to be admired.The metamonger speaks in abstractions, lofting language to appear intelligent, nuanced, and above the fray. They rarely take a position. They prefer to frame positions. They’ll tell you what kind of thinking is required to approach some more elusive truth.The metamonger is often educated, well-spoken, and genuinely thoughtful—and this is what makes them so easily mistaken for wisdom. Their refusal to commit reads as maturity. Their inability to be wrong—because they have said nothing specific enough to be wrong about—reads as judgment.But watch carefully. A metamonger will leave you dizzy. You will have learned no fact. You will have updated no belief. You will have been told, in a hundred elegant ways, that s**t’s complicated. Things usually are. But that’s not a substitute for saying something conclusive—even if it’s wrong.The punchline…The Hall of MirrorsTen types of voices are in our heads every day, and only one of them is trying to help you see clearly. The other nine are not necessarily evil. Most of them are just ordinary people responding to ordinary incentives.* The authority wants compliance.* The interest wants the favor.* The partisan wants the win.* The group thinker wants to be on the bandwagon.* The capitalist wants the click.* The fact checker wants to protect the team.* The meme warrior wants the meme to spread.* The signaler wants to be seen as good.* The metamonger wants to seem wise.Only the truth tracker wants the true, the beautiful, and the good.It’s a strange hall of mirrors we create for each other. But we can learn to tell the voices apart—in others, certainly, but also in ourselves. Because the uncomfortable fact is that all ten of these voices are probably in your head every single day. You put them there.The question is: which one do you let speak the loudest? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Support and subscribe at Underthrow.org.H.L. Mencken said it best: “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” The old satirist wasn’t just being clever. He was being precise.Here’s the thing: We elect representatives. But those representatives have a giant credit card. They have maxed it out and sent us the bill. We pay through taxation and inflation, but get almost no say in how the money gets spent. “Our democracy” is just theater—the illusion that we’re in control.Sure, a handful of congressmen talk tough about fiscal responsibility. But their actions say otherwise. The incentives are too great. To stay in power, politicians have to auction power off to special interests. To stay in power, they have to horse-trade. And to horse-trade, they spend money we don’t have. They keep spending and spending—as the national credit card smokes.Then the central bank prints more money. And for every dollar printed, your purchasing power shrinks. That’s inflation. And inflation is just taxation by other means. While politicians wheel and deal to keep their seats, the rest of us work harder for the same gallon of milk. A small circle of insiders gets richer. Then activists fight over the scraps.Most people don’t see it. So, for relief, voters turn to the people causing the pain. The politicians offer programs, subsidies, stimulus—short-term painkillers that deepen the debt. Voters want goodies! Special interests want goodies! But nobody wants to admit we’re broke. The interest we have to pay on the debt is bigger than our military budget–and spiraling fast.Our celebrated democracy quietly becomes a vast debtor’s prison attached to a giant treadmill. We’re all running on it. Taxes go up, or inflation goes up. We run faster and faster, going nowhere fast. Everyone screams to tax the billionaires. Yet economist Antony Davies ran the numbers: if you confiscated every dollar from every American billionaire, you could fund the federal government for only 9 months. Nine months. Then what?Getting tired yet? More pain is coming. The only question is what form it takes—a slow bleed of rising prices, or a sudden collapse. Reality doesn’t negotiate. So we’re left with a choice. Do we stay in a system where everyone has their hands in someone else’s pockets? Or do we build something different—a system where you keep more of what you earn, where technology drives prices down, where money is worth saving again? The incentives are powerful. The debtor’s prison is entrenched. Honestly, only a crisis will force real reform. Unless, that is, we can finish building the exit before the walls close in. A parallel system. Outside the debtor’s prison. Off the treadmill. Some of us are tired of running just to stay in place. So what do we do?Here’s a strange thing about people who actually change the world: they mostly didn’t fight the old system. They just quietly built a better one until the old one became irrelevant.We’ve been trained to think that change requires permission—a vote, a regulation, a movement with enough mass to matter. But the real disruptions in history came from tinkerers, innovators, and bold communities doing something novel but modest—until suddenly it wasn’t.What if we’re in one of those moments right now?That’s the moment Underthrow is built for. Where every innovation is an act of subversion—where building something better is the argument, and the alternative to broken systems isn’t activism, it’s action.This is what we were born for. Thomas Jefferson made freedom a dangerous idea. It still is. Not because it’s violent or extreme—but because we have to trust one another to build our future together without waiting for anyone’s permission. He called this the “consent of the governed.”Once inside that frame, something shifts. Those who sign up to Underthrow aren’t signing up for content—they’re choosing the world they want to live in. If that resonates—you already think this way and looking for a home—give yourself permission to go all in.Subscribe to Underthrow.org, where we criticize by creating. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and Support: Underthrow.orgWhen it comes to generating content, the producer usually has to make a tradeoff. Staying on top of trends in the news cycle is good for clicks, but the cost is the loss of opportunities to deliver more timeless messages. Produce something evergreen, and you might offer a message humanity needs, but they’re not interested in hearing. Society’s profound need to rediscover morality can come across as moralism. So content like this is always risky. Still, I hope you agree that the West was built on the practice of virtue and the eschewal of vice.Virtue is disappearing. Recently, we talked about seven virtues that are desperately needed today—and I’d go as far as to say that if everyone practiced them, we’d see an overwhelmingly positive transformation of society. Those seven virtues are: Nonviolence, Integrity, Compassion, Toleration, Stewardship, and Rationality.But we didn’t talk about their ugly mirrors: the vices.It’s not just that we lack virtue. It’s that too many people are actively practicing its opposite. And in the world of politics and activism, we’re witnessing a genuine moral inversion—young people are being raised to think that vices are virtues, and that evil is good. To see why civilization is rotting from within, we need to look each of these vices in the face.Vice One: ViolenceViolence always deprives people of happiness or causes suffering. Entrepreneur Chris Rufer put it simply: violence is like gravity—you cannot escape its consequences. The more violence exists in society, the less people can pursue happiness.Here’s the uncomfortable truth: governments are monopolies on violence. We tell ourselves that lawmakers and law enforcers are in the business of protecting us—but they’re fundamentally in the business of threatening us. If Rufer is right, suffering scales with the expansion of the state. The more it demands of us, and the more it takes from us, the worse off we become.Vice Two: CorruptionCorruption isn’t just the absence of integrity. It’s the active practice of deception, fraud, and breaking promises.And it appears to be contagious. We used to think of corruption as a sickness of the developing world—desperate people using whatever authority they have to extract from innocent people. But corruption has come to the wealthy West. It shows up in minor ways: ghosting a commitment, missing an appointment without a word. But it eats through civilization in catastrophic ways: mass Medicaid fraud, partisan money laundering, money printing, and institutional betrayal dressed up as policy.Vice Three: CallousnessCallousness is not a failure to be compassionate—we all fall short of that sometimes. Callousness is the cultivation of an inhumane disposition. It is cruelty worn as a badge of honor.It’s one thing to look away from suffering. It’s another thing entirely to cheer for it—to make cruelty fashionable. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, the person who cultivates cruel thoughts, cruel words, and cruel deeds becomes malevolent. And when malevolence becomes contagious, cruelty gets normalized.Vice Four: MonomaniaToleration is a healthy respect for peaceful differences. Monomania is its opposite: the way of the ideologue.The ideologue believes everyone should conform to her vision of the good—that all the world’s problems can be solved by forcing that conformity on everyone else. How many people do you know whose first instinct, for any problem, is that there ought to be a law? A policy? A universal program?Monomania is the vice of the activist class. It short-circuits experimentation. It forecloses other ways of living. And it trades genuine bottom-up solutions for the satisfaction of total control.Vice Five: NegligenceNegligence is the abdication of stewardship—sometimes adolescent indifference, sometimes a serious failure of duty.It tends to emerge in two predictable conditions: when there’s no real incentive to care, or when no one is watching. That’s why the political class thrives on failure. Programs that don’t work don’t get cut—they “need more resources.” Rental property deteriorates in ways owned property rarely does. City-scale negligence means more graffiti, more trash, more decay. And professional negligence almost always means either no accountability or no consequences. But it always starts within the person holding the office.Vice Six: CasuistryIf rationality is the active pursuit of truth, casuistry is its perversion: the art of arguing away from truth—constructing clever-sounding justifications for conclusions you’ve already decided to reach.Social media has turned casuistry into an arms race. Instead of reasoning together toward what is true or good, people trade talking points and narratives like weapons. Sophistry replaces inquiry. And politics? Politics is the natural habitat of casuistry. These are people who, in many cases, lie for a living. We shouldn’t be surprised when their reasoning reflects it.Vice Seven: InjusticeJustice is fair dealing—equal treatment before shared standards, rules, and laws. Injustice is the deliberate subversion of that. And people practice it, often enthusiastically.Whether through policies that explicitly privilege certain groups over others, or through punishment meted out on grounds unrelated to the actual rules, injustice erodes the foundational promise that everyone stands equally before the law. Politicians have come to believe that whatever law gets passed IS the rule of law. And so-called social justice offers no justice at all—it trades individual rights for group privileges, and calls that progress.I stand by the belief that everyone practicing those seven virtues would have a profound and positive effect on society. But we cannot get there without first confronting something harder: the spreading belief that vice is virtuous.And a recurring pattern runs through all seven of these vices—politics is where they get normalized. Where they get celebrated. Where they get institutionalized.If that’s true, then we’d better start thinking seriously about what a post-political world can look like. We need to overcome our failures of imagination and get busy building something better.But before any of that, we have to practice what we preach.We have to be the example. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and support at Underthrow.orgWhen we put together this week’s video, I had the next generation in mind. The message fits nicely with the launch of The Chrysalis Project, a community and course for men under 30. You see, all the evidence says young men are struggling, whether drowning in digital currents or falling behind in their lives and careers. Thanks to my co-founder James Harrigan's inspiration, we decided to do something about it. If you know a promising man under 30 who is ready to become a gentleman of the twenty-first century—committed to virtue, excellence, and freedom—share The Chrysalis Project with him. And if you’re a man over 30, you can sponsor a man under 30 and join for free.A lot of people are saying, “It feels like society is coming apart.” Or, “something’s definitely wrong.” When you press them on why, they’ll say we’re more politically polarized, that gas and eggs cost more, that social media is scrambling our brains, or that the politically powerful are taking advantage of us.They’re not wrong.But I want to argue that we’ve lost something deeper—something that great civilizations depend on: Virtue. Specifically, the practice of virtue.Thomas Jefferson once wrote that ‘there is a natural Aristocracy among men; the grounds of which are Virtue and Talents.’ With all this change, we’re going to need each other. So, we’d better become more virtuous.Here are the seven virtues we should all start practicing right now.I. NON-VIOLENCE. First, never threaten or do harm to innocent people, whether in their bodies or property. I mean, this is pretty basic. Most of the world’s wisdom traditions include some variation on this, such as the Golden Rule. But a virtue is not JUST a rule. It’s a practice, which means we have to keep doing it until we get good at it, like music or martial arts. And that means we have to practice it every day in thought, word, and deed. (And that means no violent protests or political assassinations.)II. INTEGRITY. Start with the idea of structural integrity. We know that the more weak joints or foundation cracks there are in a building, the more likely it is to collapse. Society is no different. The more people in society lack integrity, the more likely society will come apart. Of course, practicing integrity means being completely honest with yourself and others, honoring your commitments, and keeping your promises. In short, do what you know is right. Seek the truth. And live in truth. And practice integrity even if you think no one is watching. (Yeah, I know. It seems like politicians are disqualified.)III. COMPASSION. The practice of compassion isn’t throwing some group a pity party. Nor is it voting for more government programs. It means actively looking out for the people around you. Are they suffering? Can you reasonably help? And what is the right way to help? Some people confuse compassion with throwing money at someone’s problems, with taxpayer money or their own. But compassionate community members know that, sometimes, the best help comes from connecting people with opportunities or sharing wisdom they can use. (You know, like: Teach a man to fish or Quit drinking like a fish.)IV. TOLERATION. Look, we have to acknowledge that people are different from one to the next. If we were all exactly the same, life would be boring, and we wouldn’t get much of anything done. (I mean, I can write a decent sentence, but you don’t want me fixing your car.) We also want to live different lives in different kinds of communities. Call this the fact of pluralism. When we practice toleration, we orient ourselves respectfully towards others, even if they’re different. That doesn’t mean we have to tolerate threats, calls for violence, or lies and deception. But we have to find the right boundaries and respect others within those boundaries, whether they practice a different religion or associate with different people. As long as we don’t threaten each other, mutual toleration makes for social coherence. (And no, that does not mean we have to put up with Sharia Law in the West.)V. STEWARDSHIP. This one’s easy. Stewardship is just the practice of leaving any property or offices you have better than you found them. In other words, take care of your stuff. Take care of your employees. Take care of your responsibilities. People will know whether you’re a good steward by what you leave for the next person. Members of Congress are not good stewards because they are leaving $39 trillion in debt for our kids to pay for with higher taxes and inflation.VI. RATIONALITY. Rationality is the steady method of truth-seeking. It means training your mind to follow evidence wherever it leads, rather than feelings, tribal loyalties, or convenient narratives. A rational person questions her own assumptions, updates her beliefs with better data, and admits logical errors or fallacies when they’re exposed. This virtue is essential because without it, everybody just engages in deception or narrative arms races. In an age of media spin and echo chambers, rationality acts as civilization’s intellectual immune system—disciplining thought, word, and deed toward what is actually true.VII. JUSTICE. Real justice requires protecting individual rights, honoring contracts, and applying impartial rules and standards under the law. Lady Justice is blind because she doesn’t see color, creed, or group favoritism. So, justice includes fairness as proportionality, not fairness as equal outcomes. Rewards or punishments should align with actions, merit, and responsibility. Forcing equal outcomes means treating people unequally and unfairly. And that breeds resentment. Practicing justice means holding ourselves and others accountable within a framework of equal freedom and the rule of law. “Social justice,” as commonly used, is no justice at all, because it substitutes group-rights for equal treatment. Imagine a game where the best players had to hop on one leg, and the worst players got free points and played by different rules. Yeah. That’s why social justice is no justice at all.Now, there are more virtues out there to practice. But if every person could master these seven, society would improve by leaps and bounds. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that if everyone lived according to these seven, positive transformations would flow. The civilization of tomorrow could be built on foundational practices that start within each of us.E pluribus unum. Ex uno plures.Be good, and thanks for listening. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

You love freedom. You respect the rule of law. But over the years, the political class has eroded your freedom and enacted laws that are at odds with these. Political elites have also set the conditions under which freedom and the rule of law will continue to erode. They pass laws that serve their interests and those of their favor-seeking donors. That means power goes on the auction block. This is the rule of cronies.We tell ourselves that elections are the means by which we oblige the political class to make necessary changes for the good of all. But this means we have no choice but to appeal to a corrupt political class that promises not to be corrupt. And that’s silly. Yet we try to vote harder every couple of years, then wonder why things never improve. So, our free republic has mutated into something else—an extractive managerial empire.No matter which party is in power, the political class has every incentive to continue attacking freedom and the rule of law. Each claims they’re going to protect “our democracy” or hold power accountable. Both are deceitful. Neither respects our founding ideals. Neither seeks to restore institutions of lawful freedom. Combine perverse incentives with perverted ideologies, and you get a country run by sociopaths.Therefore, we can no longer count on democratic elections to oblige the political class. We must turn to other means… What are the available means?It would seem as if patriots are on the horns of a dilemma: a Second Revolution or a Patriotic Caesar.A Second Revolution is costly, dangerous, and unlikely. It’s not just that revolutionaries would have to risk everything to restore a free republic. It’s that there are probably not enough virtuous revolutionaries to pull it off. At least not enough with balls. Even if you could pull together a hundred thousand people with guns and good ideas, it would be exceedingly difficult to organize them in such a way that would work to some positive effect. The media would howl about the “insurrectionists” as sure as night follows day. Men flying drones and Apache helicopters would jail them, mow them down, or send them into the hills…So what about a Patriotic Caesar? This would have to be a president—someone with the strength and power to do what needs to be done to restore freedom and the rule of law. Yet this president would indeed be a threat to “our democracy,” because this is just doublespeak for the managerial state—you know, the status quo. Paradoxically, the Patriotic Caesar would have to circumvent the law to restore the rule of law.So a Patriotic Caesar is risky and nigh impossible. The political class is too strong. A change in presidents is a change in caesars. We can’t count on a Patriotic Caesar to be patriotic enough never to get drunk on the power that working with the political class affords. The Patriotic Caesar, like the Members of Congress, would have to sell his soul piece by piece to get anything done. Yet anything he might get done by such means would never be enough. If there is an ideal mix of Patriot and Caesar, our current President is wildly out of balance.But there might be a third way—a way out of the Patriots’ dilemma. It’s called underthrow. If overthrow is a violent revolution, underthrow is a nonviolent one. Ever heard the saying “Ask for forgiveness, not permission”? Underthrow means creating permissionless networks that quietly build transparency, track the truth, attack unjust power, and build parallel systems of our own. We’ll not ask for forgiveness.We are living in an era where it’s easier to adopt our own currencies, join our own communications networks, and avoid the inflation, taxes, and tyrants of the political class. We must migrate to new jurisdictions, develop our own mutual aid associations, and build our own startup societies outside the auspices of the political class.If freedom lovers leave with one lofty idea, it’s this: Ideology is impossible because change happens within the adjacent possible. What’s that, you may wonder? Imagine you’re in a room with four doors. You can’t see what’s behind them yet, but opening any one reveals a new room—with new doors you could not have reached before. That’s the adjacent possible. It is the set of next steps available to you right now, based on where you already are. You can’t skip rooms. You can’t skip to utopia. Just as a world without the internet couldn’t have invented social media, a world without parallel institutions doesn’t get us any closer to our ideals. But once you’re in a new room, entirely new doors appear. Progress—whether in ideas or in your own life—moves by opening one door at a time. Underthrow is the only way through. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and support at Underthrow.orgI don’t care for the term ‘futurist,’ but whatever minor fame I have enjoyed in my life has been due primarily to being a forward-looking optimist. But in recent years, I’ve had a drearier outlook. The pace of liberatory change has been slower than I hoped, and I’m coming around to the view that we have lost our unifying creed, our basic principles, our civic religion. Whatever one thinks about the promise of technology or trends in decentralization, there will be no splendid renaissance if we shear away our roots.For Americans, the two most important sentences in the English language were published 250 years ago. That is why we are all supposed to be celebrating. But this year shouldn’t be your typical party of fireworks and potato salad. If we are going to move forward together as a people, this must be an intellectual and spiritual awakening.So what are those two most important sentences in English? Let’s dive in.The first one gets the most attention. It goes like this:We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.Believe it or not, Americans are divided about this, just when we need to be united.Indeed, some argue that without a Creator, there can be no Rights, that is, that rights come from God.Others say that appeals to God do no earthly good if we’re living under the yoke of a political class that treats us like herd animals to be milked for their power and pet projects.Yet a third group splits the difference, saying, while it’s true that tyrants don’t care about theological justifications for equal freedom, we respected rights more when more people believed they came from God. Therefore, maybe we should believe in God-given rights, even if they’re a myth.I’m gonna put on my Old Testament hat and offer to split the baby—with all respect to Solomon and Thomas Jefferson. We can either encourage people to sacralize the original formulation of God-given rights, or we can flip the justification on its head. Like this:Those of us who want life, liberty, and the freedom to pursue happiness had better find those who agree and come together in solidarity to form a compact to respect and defend such rights.Respecting those rights, of course, means pledging to refrain from harming the innocent and then endeavor to protect the innocent from harm. With or without God talk, we are looking out for each other’s rights. This way, Believers and Agnostics alike can share the same creed and form a compact.Now, the very idea of that compact brings me to the other most important sentence in the English language to Americans. It’s a long one, but equally vital....to secure these rights, 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, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.This long, compound sentence can be broken down into important highlights.First, start with the idea that government officials derive their JUST powers from our consent. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t granted my consent to all this crap since I was old enough to know better. And if you agree, we need to find each other.Second, based on that first important sentence about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have a right to alter or abolish any government that no longer serves us or respects our other rights.Some people think we have to contrive some near-unanimous election or stage a violent rebellion. And that’s not crazy if we’re being honest. But that doesn’t mean we can’t underthrow power. We who still believe in Jefferson’s project can form our own distinctly American compact and begin to “institute new Government” while this one collapses under its own weight.It starts with something as simple as joining a club.Okay, that brings us to the third bit of this very long but important sentence. We can and should institute new Government based on principles of good governance. The federal government has obviously abandoned such principles–despite the noble efforts of the Framers.It’s time to fork the code.Once we fork the code, we can start by coming together in solidarity as people who value freedom. We can then refine our principles, and therefore our laws, to prepare for an American Renaissance. It won’t be easy, but we’ve got to do it. It’s not for us, after all. It’s for our kids. They are worth inheriting lives of liberty as they pursue happiness.Instead of arguing about the finer points – let’s get started.America is 250 years old. Share this with somebody who wants to start over with a significant set of upgrades. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and Support at Underthrow.orgHumans Reorganize: A to BGame A vs. Game B is the conceptual heart of the second half. Game A is our current operating system — 10,000 years of agriculture, science, democracy, and financial markets, with profit as the sole pruning rule for what gets built next. Game B proposes replacing that pruning rule with two rules focused on human flourishing and ecological health. MembranesThe practical pathway, Jim explains, runs through membranes—small, self-governing communities and organizations that experiment with different rules, share learnings through a “horizontal information bus,” and grow (or don’t) based on whether people actually want to live in them. It’s libertarian communitarianism: strong sauce inside the membrane, zero imposition on other membranes.Minimum Viable MetaphysicsJim’s framework rests on four pillars: the reality principle (the universe is real, even if we can’t prove it), built-in asymmetry (something had to cause clumpiness after the Big Bang), lawfulness (causality runs all the way back), and emergence (the real magic—traffic jams, stars, life, consciousness—none of which violate causality, but none of which are reducible to it either). His nearest thing to a religion: treat complex systems as sacred, approach them with epistemic humility, and experiment modestly. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and Support: Underthrow.orgThis week’s guest is Jim Rutt — technology veteran, former CEO of Network Solutions, longtime board chairman of the Santa Fe Institute, and chairman emeritus of the California Institute of Machine Consciousness. Jim is also the host of the Jim Rutt Show, one of the sharpest long-form podcasts for serious thinkers.Our conversation today ranges from the hard problem of consciousness to existential AI risk to his vision for redesigning human civilization from the ground up.Consciousness and Conscious MachinesWhat would it mean for an AI to be conscious? Jim offers a functional definition centered on the sensorium—an integrated presentation of multimodal sensory information coupled to memory. He sidesteps the “hard problem” (the philosophical puzzle of how physical processes give rise to subjective experience, like the redness of red) not by dismissing it, but by suggesting that a sufficiently well-executed sensorium with memory might simply dissolve the problem rather than solve it.We may not know until we’ve built one.Hierarchy of RiskJim gives a thorough airing to the AI risk hierarchy by walking us through the full stack: from near-term threats like AI-assisted cyberattacks and bioweapons design, all the way up to artificial superintelligence (ASI).Imagine systems potentially a million times more capable than Isaac Newton — that could render humanity irrelevant or worse. He discusses the geopolitical multipolar trap (the “if we don’t do it, China will” problem), the difficulty of collective action, and his provocative proposal for a priesthood of electricity — human monitors stationed at power facilities who can literally pull the plug if AI systems go rogue.Brains + AIThe brain-computer interface (BCI) path (à la Neuralink) comes up as a possible middle road—creating human-AI chimeras that preserve human lineage in the next generation of superintelligence — but Jim is clear-eyed about the race dynamics: if the pure server-robotics path to ASI takes 8 years and the BCI path takes 30, the former wins by default unless we choose to slow down.Whether humanity can make that choice, given competitive and geopolitical pressures, is very much an open question.Enjoy a rich conversation with one of the most genuinely original thinkers working today. Next week: Jim Rutt returns to talk humane self-organization, a minimum viable metaphysics, and sacralizing complexity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and support us at Underthrow.orgEconomist and commentator Peter St Onge joins host Max Borders for a wide-ranging conversation covering the current economic outlook, monetary policy, healthcare reform, tariffs, and the long-term implications of AI and automation. Here are the key takeaways.The Economy Is Better Than the Headlines SuggestSt. Onge opened with a surprisingly optimistic near-term read. GDP and productivity growth are among the strongest since the 1980s, driven not by domestic government spending—as was the case under Biden—but by foreign investment. Trillions of dollars in foreign and domestic capital commitments are flowing in, partly prompted by Trump’s trade negotiations. The rule of thumb, he noted, is that a trillion dollars in investment generates roughly a million jobs—though the lag between groundbreaking and hiring can stretch on for years.On inflation, the official CPI sits around 2.4%, but the private-sector tracker Truflation—which scrapes roughly 15 million prices in real time—is running below 1%. “That’s about as close to zero inflation as you can get in a central bank regime,” St. Onge said.Why the Fed Will Never Allow Deflation (Even Though It Should)St. Onge offered a crisp Austrian-school explanation of why the Fed is constitutionally allergic to deflation. The Fed’s own models conflate two very different phenomena: the destructive debt-deflation that follows a boom-bust cycle (which the Fed itself causes) and the benign, productivity-driven deflation that characterized America’s economic golden age from roughly 1870 to 1900—a period that saw real wages double and produced the foundational inventions of the modern world.“The only deflation that’s bad,” he argued, “is the one the Fed creates.” The institution, he suggested, uses deflation as a convenient boogeyman to justify keeping the money printer running—a posture that happens to serve Wall Street handsomely.The Most Hawkish Fed Chair Since Volcker?About the incoming Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, St. Onge was cautiously optimistic. Warsh’s signature idea is a “Robin Hood” monetary stance: cut rates for Main Street while simultaneously selling down the Fed’s $6.5 trillion balance sheet to soak up the inflationary pressure. In theory, this means cheap credit for ordinary borrowers without gifting Wall Street an inflation windfall.The catch? Selling trillions in assets would hit bondholders and banks hard, and there’s a finite amount of quantitative tightening the system can absorb before bond markets crack—as they did briefly in 2019 and more dramatically in the UK in 2022. “I love where his heart is at,” St. Onge said. “The question is whether he can actually follow through.”Healthcare: Captured by the Cartel, Unreformable by CongressOn the Affordable Care Act and healthcare reform more broadly, St. Onge was blunt: Congress will not fix it. Every serious reform must pass through veto gates held by the AMA, hospital conglomerates, pharma, and insurers—all of whom have both parties on retainer. The filibuster requires bipartisan agreement, which is impossible when the “Care-tel” is buying on both sides of the aisle.The only reforms that have moved the needle, he argued, are executive orders — like Trump’s most-favored-nation drug pricing rule, which would never have survived a congressional vote. This points toward a broader tension: in a system this captured, can anything meaningful happen through normal democratic channels?The Big Beautiful Bill: A Missed OpportunitySt. Onge graded the recently passed budget legislation as decent on tax cuts—extending business and corporate rate reductions that he views as among the most economically productive changes possible—but a significant disappointment on spending. DOGE identified roughly $1.5 trillion in waste and fraud, approximately equal to the entire annual income tax take. Congress trimmed a fraction of that, then offset even those savings with border security and military spending.“After 50 years of promising to cut spending, they did not cut spending,” he said flatly. His preferred alternative: slash taxes on small businesses (which generate five to ten jobs per dollar compared to large corporations), enact a sunset clause on all regulations, and pass the REINS Act to require congressional approval for major new rules. That combination, he believes, could push sustainable GDP growth to 4–6%—enough to gradually outgrow the debt burden even without meaningful spending cuts.Tariffs: Bad in Theory, Defensible in PracticeAs a free-market economist, St. Onge is philosophically opposed to tariffs—they’re taxes, and lumpy ones at that. But he offered two pragmatic defenses of the current approach. First, they’re working as negotiating leverage: Canada’s 90% tariff on American dairy, Europe’s barriers to U.S. goods, and similar arrangements represent genuine discrimination against American companies. Several trading partners have already reduced barriers in response.Second, the reshoring strategy has historical precedent. Reagan-era pressure brought Japanese automakers to U.S. soil—today, most Japanese cars sold in America are built here. The trillions in announced investments from Korean, Taiwanese, and European manufacturers suggest the same dynamic is underway. “Once they move here, they tend to stay,” he noted—particularly European manufacturers, for whom U.S. cost advantages over Germany are substantial.AI, Robots, and the Future of WorkSt. Onge pushed back on both utopian and dystopian AI narratives. His core argument: AI and robotics will reshape the economy at very different speeds. AI software is effectively free at the margin—a company already paying for ChatGPT can replace junior lawyers or customer service staff with minimal additional investment. Robots, by contrast, require enormous capital deployment: “You need one AI for 8 billion people, but five robots for every McDonald’s.”His reference point is electrification. Electricity was proven superior to steam power around 1890. Half of American factories weren’t electrified until 1920. Installed base and capital costs create enormous inertia even when the superior technology is obvious.The longer-term picture, he argued, is likely to follow the pattern of every previous automation wave: temporary dislocation followed by the creation of more and better-paid jobs. The Industrial Revolution eliminated roughly 90% of existing occupations—nearly everyone in 1800 was a farm laborer—and replaced them with something far better. The AI transition will likely do the same, with a particular expansion in human-to-human services: personal training, childcare, elder care, bespoke craftsmanship, experiences that people want precisely because they’re human-made.“Humans love humans,” he concluded. “That’s what’s going to save us all.”On Bitcoin, Gold, and the Political HorizonOn the recent divergence between gold (up) and Bitcoin (down), St. Onge offered a simple explanation: Bitcoin investors expected more from the Trump administration—particularly a strategic Bitcoin reserve—and didn’t get it. Meanwhile, gold, silver, and AI-adjacent assets are currently competing for exactly the same investor profile: skeptical, technically minded, Fed-hostile. “They’ll be back,” he said of Bitcoin holders.Asked for his magic-wand policy, he didn’t hesitate: abolish the income tax, end the Federal Reserve, and pack the Supreme Court with justices willing to enforce the Tenth Amendment and dismantle the post-New Deal administrative state.Peter St. Onge publishes daily economic commentary at @profstonge on X. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and Support: UNDERTHROW.orgWhat does it actually take to become a mature, resilient, self-aware human being—and why does it matter so much right now?This week, Max Borders sits down with Michael D. Ostrolenk—master coach, psychotherapist, and founder of Resilience Optimized. They explore some of the most pressing questions about personal development, masculinity, and what it means to show up well in the world.The Broken-People ProblemThe conversation opens with an uncomfortable observation: there seem to be a lot of people trying to fix the world who haven’t done much work on themselves. Ostrolenk identifies two telltale markers—emotional dysregulation and what he calls “tunnel blindness,” an inability or unwillingness to engage with worldviews outside one’s own ideological bubble. His prescription isn’t to stop caring about the world, but to do the inner work before focusing on the world’s problems.How Change Actually HappensRather than dwelling on why people behave the way they do (the psychodynamic “my mother, my father” approach), Ostrolenk focuses on how—specifically, how people physically and emotionally experience their own reactions. By developing somatic awareness of what anger, anxiety, or defensiveness actually feels like in the body, people can begin to create a crucial gap between stimulus and response. That gap, he argues, is where freedom and maturity live.The Problem with Modern TherapyMax raises the provocative thesis of Abigail Shrier’s Bad Therapy—that a lot of contemporary therapeutic practice makes people worse by locking them into a victim identity organized around their wounds. Ostrolenk largely agrees. He describes his own four-part framework (wound healing, self-regulation, evolution of consciousness, and physical optimization) and argues that therapists too often get stuck on the wound piece, keeping clients cycling in a merry-go-round of pathology-as-identity rather than moving them toward healing and growth.Resilience 2.0Together with former Army Ranger J.C. Glick, Ostrolenk has developed what he calls “Resilience 2.0.” While Resilience 1.0 is the David Goggins model—hard training, mental toughness, discipline—2.0 integrates that with something harder for many men: the capacity to sit with one’s own inner experience without reaching for a distraction. Porn, alcohol, overwork, endless scrolling—these are all ways of avoiding what’s actually going on inside. And what’s going on inside, Ostrolenk insists, is valuable information.Victimhood and the External Locus of ControlThe conversation turns to the cultural epidemic of victimhood mentality—the way social media amplifies and rewards the performance of grievance. Ostrolenk connects this directly to a weak internal locus of control. True sovereignty, he points out with a certain dry humor, isn’t what a man thinks it is when his wife can push his buttons at will. Real self-mastery means being able to observe your own psychophysiology and choose your response rather than being at the mercy of whoever last said something that triggered you.Smiling at AdversityBad things happen. That’s not a flaw in the design. It’s the design. Ostrolenk’s approach draws on both the psychological literature on post-traumatic growth and ancient wisdom traditions (he and Max spend a wonderful few minutes on the Tibetan Buddhist story of Milarepa, inviting his demons in for tea). The key shift is from “why is this happening to me?” to “what is this happening for me?” This is not toxic positivity, but a mature orientation toward adversity that enables growth.Healthy and Unhealthy MasculinityOn the question of masculinity, Ostrolenk frames it as a continuum rather than a binary. At one extreme: withdrawal (”taking your toys and going home”). At the other: hyperaggression. The healthy middle is genuine assertiveness—knowing what you want, expressing it clearly, and doing so without either shutting down or blowing up. Aristotle would recognize this as the golden mean; Ostrolenk just works with couples who haven’t found it yet.The Virtue of CuriosityAsked for his single most important piece of relationship advice, Ostrolenk lands on curiosity. Most relationship conflict is ignited by misinterpretation—assuming the worst intent behind a partner’s words or actions and then reacting to that interpretation rather than checking it. Being genuinely curious (not strategically curious, not lawyer-curious) before you act is, he says, one of the most powerful tools available for defusing conflict before it starts.Michael Ostrolenk is the founder of Resilience Optimized and co-leader of Team Fudoshin, a men’s development group integrating warrior discipline, somatic intelligence, and depth psychology. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Subscribe and support Underthrow.orgEditor’s Note: At root, I am committed to a doctrine of Respect for Persons. To the extent that we must live with a violence-monopoly government, law enforcement agents should be trained to respect the life, liberty, and property of every person they encounter. To the extent that citizen protestors seek to exercise their right to express themselves or protest, they have a responsibility to engage peacefully or reckon with the consequences of civil disobedience. Therefore, authorities and activists alike should take all reasonable measures to stay within the bounds of morality and law. This should go without saying.Of course, reasonable people can disagree about the justice of existing laws and the manner in which they should be changed. But adherence to any principle of reciprocal nonviolence is difficult to maintain when human beings consistently cross these lines, whether in the service of strategy or enforcement. Multiple dangerous interactions will almost certainly invite trouble—not ‘good trouble,’ but deadly trouble. This video essay is not intended as tu quoque or a partisan screed. Instead, I invite viewers to consider the issue in its totality and ask whether any descent into tit-for-tat violence is worth people on either side becoming pawns on power’s chessboard. If not, what should we do? —MBIn this video essay, I present a dark theory about the intersection of immigration policy, demographic change, and political power in America.The SetupUnder President Obama, aggressive deportation policies (2.7+ million removals) drew little protest from the American left. Meanwhile, blue states like New York, California, and Illinois were hemorrhaging population to red states, which meant losing congressional seats in the 2020 census—seats that translate directly to electoral college votes and House representation (apportionment).The TheoryWhat if the dramatic shift in border enforcement under Biden (10.8+ million encounters from 2021-2024) wasn’t just a policy change, but an integrated strategic response? Since census apportionment counts the total population—not citizens or voters—importing populations to blue states could preserve congressional seats regardless of voting eligibility.The PlayersThe video essay traces funding and organizational networks through George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, John Podesta’s involvement in the Transition Integrity Project, and socialist sinophile Neville Roy Singham’s activist funding operations.The EscalationAs Trump promises deportations, street confrontations between protesters and ICE agents intensify. My theory suggests these volatile situations are strategically orchestrated—creating martyrs, delegitimizing enforcement, and turning public opinion in crucial midterm cycles and future census counts.The QuestionWhether accurate or not, the underlying facts remain: blue states lost seats, Biden-era border enforcement dropped dramatically, millions entered and were transported to key states, and isolated political violence is escalating.I ask readers to consider whether this represents a merely organic policy evolution or a series of calculated strategies in a partisan competition for political power. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Underthrow.org: Subscribe and support!In today’s episode, Max sits down with screenwriter and co-founder of The Story Incubator, Erin O’Connor, for a fascinating exploration of how storytelling can bridge political divides and repair our fractured culture.O’Connor argues that America has “shattered into warring factions” and entered what political scientists call “lethal mass partisanship.” But rather than accepting this doom loop, she offers an alternative—strategic storytelling that works on the brain in ways political arguments do not.The Neuroscience of Story. When we engage deeply with narratives, our brains literally merge with the characters. fMRI studies show we don’t just observe characters—we become them, experiencing their lives and emotions as our own. This unique cognitive process allows stories to enlarge our sense of who we are and reduce barriers between different groups.Real-World Impact. O’Connor shares compelling examples of stories that changed society: Will and Grace softening attitudes toward gay marriage, The X-Files inspiring the “Scully Effect” that drove women into STEM careers, and Dallas Buyers Club sparking the bipartisan Right to Try movement that became federal law.Beyond Preaching. The conversation tackles why preachy messaging fails. When confronted with arguments that challenge our worldview, our brains experience it as a physical threat. Stories offer an “end run” around this defensive response, allowing us to explore new perspectives without triggering tribal reactions.The Miss Virginia Case Study. O’Connor discusses her work on this film about school choice, demonstrating how to frame a politically explosive issue in terms of universal values—a mother’s love, civil rights, and equal opportunity. By transcending partisan talking points, the story made space for people across the political spectrum to find common ground.The Dallas Buyers Club Research. In a groundbreaking study, O’Connor and her team tracked the neurological responses of liberals, moderates, and conservatives while they watched Dallas Buyers Club. The research explores whether diverse viewers were watching “one movie or three movies”—and how the same narrative allowed each group to anchor themselves philosophically while reaching the same conclusion.Practical Methodology. O’Connor reveals principles for creating high-impact stories: respecting characters across the political spectrum, creating moral complexity, allowing space for competing viewpoints, and understanding that storytelling is “not a game—it’s power.”The episode concludes with a discussion of the challenges facing storytelling in our short-form, scroll-through digital environments, and how creators might adapt these principles for an age of fragmented attention.This is essential viewing for anyone interested in bridge-building, cultural change, narrative strategy, or the intersection of neuroscience and storytelling.Guest—Erin O’Connor, Screenwriter and Co-founder of The Story IncubatorHost—Max Borders, Underthrow Podcast This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Garrett Baldwin writes at “Me and the Money Printer” on Substack, where he analyzes liquidity flows, insider behavior, and the mechanisms of modern finance that traditional media ignore. For anyone saving for retirement, this is a must-see.Subscribe and support us at Underthrow.org.For most Americans, the financial system operates like a black box. We hear about interest rates, inflation, and stock market valuations, but the real machinery driving our economy remains hidden from view.In this wide-ranging conversation, financial analyst Garrett Baldwin pulls back the curtain on how modern markets actually work—and why everything we learned in Econ and Finance might be dangerously outdated.The Shadow Banking System Few DiscussBaldwin’s journey to understanding finance took him through three graduate schools and 17 years of study, ultimately leading to a shocking revelation: the banking system today operates nothing like it did before 2008. The key insight? Markets don’t run on fundamentals anymore—they run on liquidity.“Liquidity is not just money,” Baldwin explains. “It’s the idea that you’re going to have money in the future.” When that confidence evaporates, markets don’t gradually decline—they collapse violently, as we saw in August 2024 and April 2025. These weren’t driven by poor earnings or economic fundamentals. They were collateral crises in the shadow banking system that most people don’t even know exist.The mechanism is complex but crucial to understand: Hedge funds buy Treasury bills, use them as collateral in the overnight lending market (repo market), borrow more money, and repeat the process 6 or 7 times. A $1 million position can balloon into $2.5 billion in leveraged exposure. When liquidity tightens, this unwinds catastrophically.From Manufacturing to FinancializationSince 1971, when America left the gold standard, the economy has undergone a fundamental transformation. Manufacturing has fallen from 25% to 11% of GDP, while finance, real estate, and insurance have jumped to 25%. This isn’t just a statistical shift—it’s a structural curse.In a financialized economy:* Homes aren’t places to live; they’re speculative assets* College becomes a lending product* Healthcare becomes a billing product* Corporations buy back stock instead of investing in productionThe strong dollar benefits consumers but devastates domestic production. Economic growth now depends on credit creation and asset price inflation rather than building things. And those closest to the “money printer”—the hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, and shadow banks—capture the gains before inflation hits Main Street.This is the Cantillon Effect in action: those nearest to newly created money benefit most, while everyone else pays through higher prices down the line.The Perpetual Bailout MachineSince 2008, we’ve experienced multiple “K-shaped recoveries”—where top shareholders get bailed out while everyone else runs in place. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet exploded from essentially nothing to $9 trillion, then “normalized” to $6.7 trillion.Baldwin predicts it could exceed $10 trillion by 2027-28.The Treasury Department now finances 22% of federal debt with short-term bills (under 12 months), up from just 11% in 2017. This provides the collateral that shadow banks need to create leverage, but it also makes the system dangerously fragile. As Baldwin notes, we’re no longer asking if the system will hit a wall, but when—likely 2026 or 2027.The Fed’s actual mission has shifted: “I don’t believe the purpose of the Federal Reserve anymore is to manage inflation and manage the labor markets. I think it is to provide stability to global markets at all given times.”What Wealthy Families Have Known for AgesWhen Baldwin studied historical crises—from 60 AD Judea to the French Revolution to Weimar Germany—he discovered something remarkable: wealthy families always own the same things.The pattern holds across millennia:* Gold and silver* Land and toll roads* Infrastructure that controls movement* Choke points in the economyToday’s equivalents are companies like Prologis (last-mile delivery infrastructure), pipelines, digital infrastructure, and electricity generation. These are exactly what sovereign wealth funds prioritize—not currencies, but hard claims on physical assets.The investment principle is elegant: If it moves, invest in it. Money flowing through payment systems, goods moving through supply chains, data moving through networks—these represent the modern toll roads that generate perpetual cash flow regardless of currency debasement.Practical Signals for Everyday InvestorsBaldwin offers several actionable insights for retail investors navigating this treacherous landscape:Watch insider behavior. CFO purchases have outperformed the market since 1968. When multiple executives buy their own stock simultaneously (cluster buying), especially at companies with economic choke points, pay attention. Insiders collectively called the bottom of every major downturn since 2008.Track the insider buying-to-selling ratio. When this spikes alongside accommodative policy changes (even if they’re not called “QE”), markets typically recover.Follow momentum, not hope. Use the 20-day moving average. If a stock trades above it, and the average is ascending, consider buying. If it drops below, step aside. Buy dips at the 100-day moving average when momentum is positive.Listen for policy clues. When the Fed announces new lending programs—whatever they call them—it’s money printing by another name. Combined with heavy insider buying, this signals an opportunity.Preciousssss MetalsSilver represents a particularly compelling case. It’s both a monetary metal and a critical industrial input for AI, EVs, missiles, and advanced electronics. China is hoarding strategic commodities while export controls tighten global supply. Meanwhile, the paper markets show signs of stress—there may not be enough physical silver to meet delivery obligations on major contract expirations.Baldwin holds both physical metals and ETFs such as PHYS (Sprott Physical Gold Trust) and SLVR, which represent direct claims to vaulted metal. But he emphasizes patience: “This can go on a lot longer. This could go on another 15, 20 years.”Hitting the WallMultiple forces converge toward a reckoning in 2026-27:* Record Treasury rollovers at elevated rates* Accelerating entitlement obligations* Waning foreign appetite for US debt (China isn’t buying, Japan has its own problems)* Shadow banking requires constant collateral expansion* Passive investing now represents over 50% of market flows (up from 5% in 1997).Two catastrophic scenarios loom: foreign capital fleeing US markets, or short-term Treasury rates spiking as confidence erodes. Either could trigger the cascading liquidations that leverage creates.The solution won’t be pretty. It likely involves the Fed’s balance sheet exploding past $10 trillion, new forms of monetization, and continued extraction from those furthest from the money printer.What You Can ControlBaldwin’s advice echoes through the conversation: focus on what you can control.Control your health. Control your wealth through strategic positioning in real assets and companies with genuine competitive moats. Control yourself by avoiding the panic that causes retail investors to sell at bottoms.The system is complex by design, opaque by necessity, and rigged by structure. But understanding its mechanics—liquidity waves, insider signals, and the primacy of real assets—provides a framework for navigating the storm ahead.As we face an increasingly bifurcated world, with the US taking the Western hemisphere and China the Eastern (echoing the Spain-Portugal division of the 1500s), the old rules dissolve. The question isn’t whether change comes, but whether you’ll be positioned to survive it.The wealthy families of Rome, the merchants of the Renaissance, and the sovereigns of today all learned the same lesson: own what moves, own what’s scarce, and own what’s real.Everything else is just paper promises in a world running out of credibility. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

The conversation continues with Brian Rivera and Mark McGrath—The Whirl of Reorientation—explaining John Boyd’s OODA Loop framework (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) and its application to organizational performance and decision-making. Then Brian and Mark discuss the influence of Marshall McLuhan on their work as organizational consultants. Key Themes: John BoydBoyd’s Core Question: How do we win in a world moving faster than we can process it? Boyd addressed a fundamental challenge: How do we win in a world moving faster than we can process it? His framework describes what successful people and organizations inherently do—those who understand it explicitly can achieve geometric advantages over competitors who don’t.Orientation is Everything. The guests emphasize that orientation—not observation—is the critical starting point. Orientation is a “world model” or “controlled hallucination” shaped by genetics, culture, language, and experience. It acts as a filter, determining what we see, how we interpret information, and, ultimately, how we decide and act. Better decisions are products of better orientation, not standalone skills.Inattentional Blindness and Weak Signals. Research shows roughly 17 percent of people in any group see things differently due to varied orientations. Organizations often suppress these “weak signals” because the majority doesn’t perceive them. Leaders must create psychologically safe environments that leverage cognitive diversity and neurodivergent perspectives to capture novelty and detect early trends.Connection to Austrian Economics. Mark connects Boyd’s work to Ludwig von Mises’s praxeology, arguing they describe the same reality from different angles. Both explain how humans envision desired end states and purposefully act to achieve them—constantly reorienting in a world of flux, uncertainty, and incompleteness.Embodied Learning Over Prescriptions. The consultants reject “pills and quick fixes,” instead helping leaders subscribe to deeper understandings. Real mastery requires embodied practice—like athletes training in game-realistic simulations rather than abstract drills. They use “Flow Learning Labs” that simulate complex environments where teams can develop intuition, mutual trust, and adaptive capacity through constrained experiential learning.Decentralized Decision-Making. Those closest to problems have the best orientation for decision-making. This mirrors why centralized political decision-making fails—politicians are furthest from the action and have the poorest orientation to ground truth.Key Themes: Marshall McLuhanOvercoming Institutional Bias. Mark addresses a common barrier: organizational prejudice that dismisses military-derived concepts as less valuable than prestigious business school frameworks from Wharton or Harvard. Once leaders recognize that these principles apply universally to human behavior and complex systems, they can achieve breakthrough results.Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up. When organizations master orientation-based thinking, leadership alignment (top-down) naturally converges with frontline insights (bottom-up). This creates mutual trust, focused direction, and competitive advantages that leave competitors unable to understand or respond effectively.Orientation is Fractal. Mark’s key insight: orientation exists at every scale simultaneously. An individual has an orientation. Two collaborators develop a shared orientation. Teams, divisions, and entire organizations have orientations. This fractal property means the same principles apply whether you’re working with a single person, a small team, or a Fortune 500 company.Interconnected Thinking. By integrating Boyd with McLuhan, Hayek, and other interdisciplinary thinkers, leaders gain a fractal lens that reveals patterns and opportunities invisible through conventional business frameworks. This enables organizations to thrive rather than merely survive.Universal Application. The conclusion reinforces that these aren’t just military concepts or academic theories—they describe fundamental realities of how humans and organizations interact with complex environments, making them applicable across all domains. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

This is a special edition of the Underthrow podcast. Too many things are happening in the world for this episode not to get out to you. —MBMany of our readers have wondered what “underthrow” means. It’s like overthrow, only more gradual, peaceful, and processual. But sometimes bad people in power get what’s coming to them. And it ain’t pretty.مرگ بر دیکتاتورها —The Iranian PeopleRight now, we are seeing significant world events characterized by overthrow. That is, repressive regimes are being ousted in Iran and Venezuela, only through two different means: endogenous and exogenous. The former is a popular uprising that heats up enough to blow the lid off. The latter is the result of outside help.None of this is a strict binary, of course. Iran is probably crawling with spooks from Mossad and the CIA. Consider that, after ten days, Iran still has Internet access, which should be impossible, given that the IRGC usually has kill switches. Yet, the Iranian People are a hair’s breadth from ousting the mullahs and restoring a constitutional monarchy in Iran. Bizarrely, the most significant event in that country since 1979 has been featured on page seven of most Western mainstream outlets, if at all. And we have to wonder why.The case of Venezuela is more clear-cut. The Trump Administration sent an intervening force to collect Maduro and left the country to a puppet who, though still a socialist, is apparently willing to play ball. While we might celebrate Maduro’s ouster—I turned backflips—we still have to ask about the constitutionality of such a move, followed immediately by, “Okay, what’s next?” (Surely not nation building, for God's sake.)Of course, the mainstream press is all over this one.Join James Harrigan and me for a roundup of these events, plus our takes on the prospects for peace, freedom, and abundance in these transitional countries.Big props to TousiTV and Goldie Ghamari for the amazing indie coverage of Iran. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Today’s conversation features Brian “Ponch” Rivera (CEO of AGLX Consulting) and Mark “Moose” McGrath, co-authors of The Whirl of Reorientation, discussing how they apply insights from Austrian economist F.A. Hayek and military strategist John Boyd to help Fortune 500 companies build decentralized, high-performance teams.Key Themes of Part OneAustrian Economics in Practice. The guests explain their preference for Austrian economics over mainstream approaches, criticizing traditional mathematical models as disconnected from reality. They particularly value Hayek’s insights on decentralized knowledge, spontaneous order, and the limitations of central planning—concepts they find directly applicable to organizational consulting.Decentralization vs. Central Planning. A core focus is helping large organizations shift from centralized decision-making to distributed approaches. They emphasize that knowledge is “tacit and dispersed”—leaders cannot centrally plan for complex human systems the way they might engineer a machine. The bigger the organization, the more critical this insight becomes.Taylor’s Scientific Management Problem. They critique Frederick Winslow Taylor’s early 20th-century management philosophy, which removed agency from workers closest to problems. This connects to modern “agile” movements that emphasize distributed decision-making with centralized intent rather than centralized planning.Boyd’s OODA Loop Misunderstood. Mark highlights a common mistake: treating John Boyd’s OODA framework (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) as a linear template rather than as Boyd intended: a way to understand how our orientation shapes perception and decision-making in complex environments.The conversation emphasizes interdisciplinary thinking, authenticity to original thinkers, and applying complexity theory to real organizational challenges. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve begun work on a serious project. I’ll be helping to pilot a fellowship society for men ages 18-28. The idea is to help the most promising men find solidarity with other men and mentors, not just so they become more virtuous, excellent, and successful. They will also pursue paths of mastery and adopt a code. If you know of a promising candidate, please feel free to send them this link or contact me directly. There’s more to come.TranscriptYou grew up hearing that your kind is toxic. The implication was that it’s better to feminize yourself. You should express your feelings more, they said. You should be more “vulnerable.” Otherwise, they told you it’s time to step aside and let the girls be the heroes for a while, which wasn’t in your nature. Still, you suppressed your masculinity.You were allowed to be an onlooker, a well-wisher, or an “ally.” Otherwise, you were asked to stay in the background as part of a grand social engineering experiment in which time, attention, and resources were lavished on female empowerment. More girls were portrayed as protagonists. More boys were portrayed as oafs or villains. I’m sure all this must have had some effect on your emerging self-concept.As you withdrew from this collective castigation—the original sin of being male—you found comfort in a pair of rectangles, one big, one small. They would always be there for you: Call of Duty on the big screen; YouTube on the little screen. Each experience was a drip of silliness or ragebait or empty distraction: Dopamine, adrenaline. Dopamine, dopamine, adrenaline. On and on, and you were hooked. My generation let it happen.Influencers who stayed afloat in that ocean of brain rot are more contrarians than role models. Some of you found Andrew Tate or Andrew Wilson and thought they were cool. Andrew Huberman was better. Nick Fuentes and his incel army? Not so much. Jordan Peterson got a few of you to stand up straight and clean your room. But others wanted you to become exactly what the social justice types always said you were. Sadly, much of the manosphere that developed in the early twenties was a response to that great wave of social justice fundamentalism. But that became a self-fulfilling prophecy as this grotesque wave spread through the institutions. You should never allow them to define you, neither for cynical reasons nor out of spite.Instead, ignore all of it. You have a job to do. You have to save the world. I’m not kidding. You have to save the world, and you won’t be able to unless you have your head on straight, your heart in the right place, and your s**t together. So before you can save the world, here’s what you need to do:First, dump your therapist. If you find yourself unable to cope without digging up your traumas every week, you are probably just enriching someone who benefits from your wallowing. People who tell you you’re a victim, whether of society or systems, are robbing you of your agency.Second, find your footing. You are a man. You were born to build, and this requires the confidence of one standing solidly on two feet. You must be capable of looking in the mirror and seeing your entheos—your inner god. Unleash that god by becoming more sovereign in your spheres of influence. Start with yourself, then move to your friends, then your community, then the world.Third, find your philosophy. Not just any philosophy. You need the kind that best answers the question “How are we to live?” Not relativism. Not nihilism. It should be philosophy that inspires and guides you to make meaning out of every precious grain of sand that falls through life’s hourglass.Fourth, practice the virtues. There are social virtues like nonviolence, integrity, and compassion. And there are personal virtues, such as centeredness, courage, and resilience. Virtues are not abstract ethical reflections. They are moral practices. And that means you have to practice them as you would music or martial arts.Fifth, find your fellowship. Surround yourself with others who are ready to spiral up and out. Spiraling up means continuous improvement. Spiraling out means exploring the edges of possibility. You want not only to become better but also to find wonder in your becoming. It’s crucial to seek out others willing to do the same. Personal growth can be stressful, but stagnation will leave you far worse off. Find the sweet spot between anxiety and ennui and draw strength from your brothers. And never stagnate.Just know that men with grey in their beards have a lot to share with you, whether their wisdom or their scars. You can learn from our failures, seize your success, and then save the world. This is your calling.I won’t talk much about relationships today, except to say that demographics in the West are not looking good. We need the best among us to make families. I realize dating can be a minefield. Some guys are just out to put notches in the butts of their guns, while the rest swipe to rejection. But stay the course. The human race depends on it. Find someone with whom you can make a life. Be the man who commands respect and admiration, and seek the same in her.Now, when it comes to saving the world, I’ll leave you with the most important advice I can think of: Find your mission. Then pursue it. If it’s a mission you share with others, that’s even better. Then you can form a fellowship to serve that mission. My chosen mission is pretty audacious. I want to liberate humanity from those who would manipulate, coerce, or control us. I want to help build a consent-based social order. You might have a different mission, but if you don’t, you’re welcome on the battlefield with me.You see, the world’s problems are best solved when people are left free to solve them. It’s too easy to outsource our problems to faraway officials. It’s lazy and corrupt. Men of substance, virtue, and excellence build civilizations. And I hope you are one of those men. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

I’m Niklas, the guest on this week’s Underthrow podcast.Max Borders asked me to reach out because he thought this would resonate with you as a reader, especially if you’re already familiar with Prospera, the free city in the Caribbean.I’ve spent the last 3.5 years in Prospera building a VC fund and now leading Infinita—a biotech-focused district that hosts events and pop-ups. We’ve welcomed Naval Ravikant, Bryan Johnson, Balaji Srinivasan, Tim Draper, Brian Armstrong, and Vitalik Buterin—all of whom have become strong supporters.After the crucial Honduran election in a few weeks, we’re optimistic about 2026 and want to celebrate liberty and human enhancement with friends old and new.That’s why we’re hosting the Infinite Games 2026—a series of competitive and recreational tournaments designed for athletes, biohackers, and anyone who values freedom and progress. Bring your team, your family, or come solo.The setting? Roatán, a tropical paradise just two hours from Miami or Houston. It’s perfect whether you want to explore what living here could look like or simply want a quick getaway.Hope to see you there. —NikEpisode OverviewIn this engaging discussion, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Niklas Anzinger speaks with host Max Borders about his work building Infinita City within Prospera, Honduras—a startup city experiment that’s redefining governance and innovation in Latin America.TopicsLayers One and Two FrameworkAnzinger describes Prospera as “layer one”—the foundational governance and legal infrastructure—while Infinita City operates as “layer two,” focusing on bringing people, industry, and community together. Prospera provides the common law-based legal system and special economic zone framework, while Infinita specializes in biotech startups and community building. Multiple layer two projects are emerging, including Bitcoin, wellness, and fashion-focused districts.Survival and Growth Against the OddsDespite a hostile socialist government that campaigned on shutting down the project, Prospera has maintained an impressive 80 percent year-over-year growth in new businesses. Anzinger attributes this to focusing on early-stage startups that benefit from regulatory advantages and a supportive investment community, including Tim Draper, Brian Armstrong, and Balaji Srinivasan.Building Culture and CommunityThe conversation explores how culture emerges organically rather than through rational planning. Anzinger describes various cultural touchstones that have developed naturally—from biohacking experiments to “electric knife fights” in the “Infinita Dome.” The community maintains a roughly 65-35 male-to-female ratio, which is healthier than that of many tech-focused environments.Local Integration Success Approximately 50 percent of residents and businesses in Prospera are Honduran, and Anzinger’s own team reflects a similar draw of home-grown talent. He emphasizes working with over 100 local businesses and creating more than 1,000 jobs directly and indirectly—a level of local involvement he believes is unmatched in the competitive governance movement.The November Election Honduras faces critical elections with three major candidates—two favorable to Prospera, one opposed. Anzinger estimates 60-80 percent odds of a positive outcome. A friendly government could unlock 27 pending zone applications that were blocked by the current administration, potentially bringing billions in foreign investment within a year.The China ParallelThe discussion touches on China’s special economic zone model, particularly Shenzhen’s transformation from a fishing village to a manufacturing hub. While acknowledging the differences between political systems, Anzinger sees parallels in how economic liberalization in designated zones can drive national prosperity.Competing with Established HubsWhen asked about competing with places like San Francisco, which benefit from built-in network effects, Anzinger focuses on serving founders at the margins—those for whom regulation is the primary barrier. Rather than competing head-to-head with established centers, Prospera targets entrepreneurs whose innovations are stifled elsewhere, particularly in biotech and crypto.The Infinite Games 2026Anzinger announces a two-month event (February 1 - March 31, 2026) with a broader cultural appeal than previous pop-up cities. Infinite Games 2026 will feature athletic competitions, longevity challenges, poker tournaments, a STEM olympiad for teens, and a biotech residency program culminating in a demo day.Notable SupportersThe project has attracted prominent figures, including:* Tim and Adam Draper* Naval Ravikant* Balaji Srinivasan* Brian Armstrong (Coinbase)* Brian Johnson (longevity entrepreneur)* Vitalik ButerinKey InsightsOn Incentives and Ideas. Anzinger emphasizes that successful movements require more than ideological commitment—they need concrete benefits that make adopting new ideas economically rational, as Bitcoin did by educating millions about monetary theory through financial incentives.On Starting Cities. Building from scratch requires accepting “venture risk” with uncertain returns. Success depends on coordinating early adopters willing to make irrational individual bets that become rational collectively if enough people participate.On the Movement. Anzinger believes Prospera’s success or failure could accelerate or delay the competitive governance movement by 5-10 years, making the upcoming election critically important for similar experiments worldwide.ConclusionThis conversation reveals the practical challenges and strategic thinking required to build a new city and governance model from the ground up. Anzinger’s approach combines entrepreneurial pragmatism with long-term vision, focusing on margins, building genuine local relationships, and creating value propositions that make the “irrational” decision to relocate increasingly rational for pioneers willing to help write the next chapter of human flourishing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Ernst Jünger’s Anarch represents a figure of radical inner freedom who maintains sovereignty over himself while outwardly conforming to certain social conventions. Unlike the anarchist who rebels against external authority, the Anarch acknowledges no fundamental obligation to any ideology, state, or collective cause. He simply chooses his own course while strategically navigating the world’s power structures. Introduced in Jünger’s novel Eumeswil, the Anarch achieves autonomy through detachment and self-mastery, observing society with the cool gaze of a historian or naturalist rather than a participant. He serves systems when convenient but reserves his deepest loyalty for himself alone, maintaining an inviolable inner citadel that no external force can penetrate. This concept represents Jünger’s vision of individual sovereignty in an age of mass politics and technological domination. One preserves human dignity and freedom not through direct confrontation, but through a kind of spiritual emigration. —MBAs we close the book on 2025, I want to talk about what this year has meant—not so much as a series of events, but as an inflection point in how we see ourselves. It has become clear that so much of the West has fallen victim to cultures of victimhood. Each sought to deny or suppress the individual’s internal locus of control.When we surrender that agency to a narrative, it’s too easy to find scapegoats and villains around every corner. 2024 had been a time of collective scrutiny, a year when we pulled back the curtain on many of humanity’s evils, revealing the contours of depraved power syndicates. I believed 2025 would be—I thought it would be—the year we seized control, not of others, but of ourselves, in a renewed sense of efficacy. But it hasn’t happened. Not yet, anyway.The path of least resistance constantly tempts us. It’s too easy to chase comfort, whether one more bite, one more video, or one more degree of recirculated air. It’s too easy to blame the partisans, the corporations, the healthcare system, the education system, racism, sexism, or MAGA.It’s too easy to withdraw into the digital world and become a society of human house cats—lazy, weak, and quick to yowl demands of others. It’s too easy to forget what virtues are, much less how to practice them. And when we forget to practice the virtues, we treat politics as morality. It’s not.It’s too easy to outsource core responsibilities to functionaries, middlemen, or people making promises they can never keep. And in our inevitable disappointment, we whine, but fail to act. 2026 must be a year of action. Throughout 2025, most thought some politician, celebrity, billionaire, or influencer would deliver salvation. But that’s just waiting on the powerful.And those who seek power will always be among us. We must therefore learn how to become counterpower. But first, we have to engage the process better, to assess, deliberate, and act. This is central to our spiritual annealing.And here’s what I’ve witnessed throughout 2025. When we engage this process, we naturally find one another. We organize ourselves. This becomes our means to an exodus. And as we moved through this year, a lesson emerged. Time is our master, and we must be its humble servants.Everything we do echoes into the future for those we leave behind. If our civilization is to enjoy a renaissance, we must look to the past and its accumulated wisdom to learn from those who failed and succeeded before us. And we must use that wisdom to be discerning in the now. We must create the future through a more highly developed internal locus of control and form networks.That’s where our power lies. Standing here at the threshold of 2026, we face the same choice we’ve always faced. We can see ourselves as cut adrift on oarless boats, helpless and at the mercy of currents we didn’t choose. Or we can look inward and see our fates as red-hot steel waiting to be pounded into shape. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

A lot of my friends won’t talk about healthcare because it’s so complex and thorny. Few understand the system, much less the problems that are worsening in the system. This week’s guest helps to cut through some of the thorns.In this week’s conversation, Max Borders sits down with Michael F. Cannon, a prominent health policy expert, about the implications of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—Obamacare—and the current state of the U.S. healthcare system. Cannon discusses the adverse effects of the ACA, including rising premiums and the ‘death spiral’ in health insurance markets. He explores the role of government mandates and subsidies in maintaining the ACA market, as well as alternative insurance options available outside of the ACA framework. The discussion also turns to the influence of special interests on healthcare policy and the need for pragmatic reforms to improve access to healthcare for low-income individuals. Cannon emphasizes the importance of reviving market mechanisms to drive down healthcare costs and ensure better access for all.Keywordshealthcare, Obamacare, Affordable Care Act, health policy, insurance, subsidies, market dynamics, healthcare reform, government role, special interestsTakeaways* Michael Cannon discusses the implications of the Affordable Care Act.* The ACA has led to increased premiums and adverse selection.* Mandates were intended to prevent adverse selection but faced political backlash.* Subsidies have kept the ACA market afloat despite rising costs.* Alternative insurance options exist outside of the ACA framework.* Government control in healthcare leads to inefficiencies and high costs.* The healthcare industry is heavily influenced by special interests.* Reforming the tax code could improve healthcare access and affordability.* Market mechanisms can drive down healthcare costs and improve access.* Pragmatic solutions are needed to ensure healthcare for low-income individuals.Chapters00:00 — Introduction to Health Policy and Obamacare04:54 — The Affordable Care Act: Impacts and Consequences09:52 — Mandates and Market Dynamics14:50 — Subsidies and Their Role in the Market19:42 — Alternative Insurance Options and Market Solutions24:39 — The Future of Health Insurance Reform33:46 — The Intractable Nature of Healthcare Reform38:43 — The Role of Special Interests in Healthcare43:43 — Comparative Healthcare Systems: A Look at Singapore50:11 — Republican Healthcare Plans: A Lack of Direction53:47 — Proposed Reforms for a Better Healthcare System59:10 — Market Solutions for Universal Healthcare Access This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Max Borders sits down with Swedish philosopher and techno-seer Alexander Bard to explore the human transformation from industrial capitalism to the digital age—emphasizing decentralization, freedom, and the role of AI in society.Alexander Bard argues we’re experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift driven by communication technology—from spoken language to written text to the printing press to the internet with its AI layer. * Oral * Printed* Broadcast* Internet* AIBard introduces the concept of “netocrats” (information-controlling elites) and warns against both technological tyranny (as in China’s surveillance state) and naive implementation of AI in workplaces and personal life.The discussion moves through nationalism’s return in Europe, the dialectical process as a philosophical method, the superiority of religion and philosophy over therapy and politics for wellbeing, and Bard’s concept of “chronomics”—organizing life around time rather than money once market capitalism’s economic questions are resolved. The two explore the Persian-Hebrew axis as foundational to Western philosophy (not just Greek), Zoroastrianism as reformed paganism, and archetypology as an evolutionary framework for understanding human personality types. Throughout, both emphasize decentralization, individual liberty, and the importance of community and authentic spiritual practice in navigating technological transformation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode of the Underthrow Podcast, host Max Borders interviews Georgetown University law professor John Hasnas, author of Common Law Liberalism. Hasnas critiques the U.S. Constitution as a document that established a powerful national government, contrary to libertarian ideals of liberty. He argues that the Bill of Rights merely addresses problems created by this centralization, and true freedom lies in shrinking power rather than constitutional frameworks.The discussion centers on the distinction between common law and statutory law. Common law, Hasnas explains, emerges organically from human interactions in non-state societies, evolving through trial-and-error to foster peaceful cooperation. It begins as customary practices that resolve conflicts effectively, repeated over time until formalized in courts, as seen in post-Norman Conquest England. This includes core areas like contract, tort (personal injury), and property law, which enable prosperity without top-down design. Statutory law, by contrast, is intentionally crafted by politicians through legislatures, overriding common law and often favoring powerful interests. Hasnas portrays the “battle” between the two as one-sided: statutes always prevail, leading to a world dominated by them. Yet, he contends, reviving common law would resemble our current society but with reduced political strife. The underlying cooperative fabric—contracts facilitating business, torts providing compensation—stems from common law, while statutes exacerbate divisions on issues like abortion or free speech, pitting groups against each other in power struggles. Illustrating with tort law, Hasnas notes how 19th-century railroad cases in casebooks reflect common law’s adaptation to new technologies through lawsuits and precedents. Unlike politicians, who lack foresight and are swayed by biases, common law learns via diversity: multiple jurisdictions experiment, and successful resolutions spread, akin to Hayekian market processes. It depends on cultural variety, not embodying any rigid theory of justice, but nudging toward peaceful outcomes. Borders examines how common law evolves in light of cultural priors, such as conceptions of justice in arbitration. Hasnas likens it to markets: ineffective “mousetraps” (rules) fail, while cooperative ones persist. The medieval Law Merchant, facilitating international trade, exemplifies this—compelling enough that England’s Lord Mansfield incorporated it into common law. It’s not consent-based like libertarian contracts but coercive yet emergent, resistant to rent-seeking since precedents aren’t fixed like statutes.On transitioning from statute-heavy systems, Hasnas admits limited expertise as a philosopher-lawyer, not a political scientist. He suggests government gridlock, as in the 1990s U.S., allowed common law to resolve issues like “junk science” in courts without tort reform legislation. Constitutions, he warns, are “terrible ideas” for creating power; even multilateral contracts risk rationalism over emergence. History shows that common law or customary systems existed in places like ancient Iceland, Ireland, and England—until power was centralized.Common Law LiberalismHasnas outlines his book’s theses. The moderate thesis. View common law as regulation, often superior to government versions. Businesses lobby for tort reform because plaintiff’s lawyers enforce safety inescapably, unlike capturable politicians who enable rent-seeking (e.g., subsidies). Frivolous lawsuits indicate over-regulation, underscoring no need for more statutes. The radical thesis. Society can thrive without government, via evolved governance—true anarchism, not chaos. Closing on anarchism, Hasnas affirms his stance: no government, but rules from cooperation. History’s upward trend toward freedom, despite lows like McCarthyism (broken by a tort suit), offers hope. Technology and existing commercial law could unleash prosperity if power were to shrink—perhaps through restricting executive authority or embracing “political nihilism” toward centralized systems. He quips that “way too much democracy” erodes limits, but peeling away abuses could revive freedom’s progress. This dialogue champions common law as a pragmatic, emergent path to human freedom, urging a shift from idealistic power structures to real-world cooperation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Socialism is back, and it’s hot. It’s the ideology that won’t die. Now, when I say socialism, I’m not talking about capitalism plus a top-heavy welfare state. We already have that, as do the Scandinavian countries. No, I’m talking about worker-controlled means of production-style socialism favored by college humanities departments, Zohran Mamdani, and the Gen Z voters who support him. TranscriptReal socialism has never been tried, socialists are fond of saying. My question has always been: Then why don’t you try it? In other words, socialists always talk about seizing the means of production. Even “democratic” socialists concentrate on seizing wealth. But why do they have to seize anything? If their system is so great, why don’t they build it?Take Neville Roy Singham—an admirer of Mao. Singham has donated millions to anti-capitalist organizations, street rioters, and other socialist causes like Antifa. All want to take or destroy. But how did Singham make his millions? He founded Thoughtworks, an IT consulting company that provides custom software and consulting services, which he sold to a private equity firm for $785 million. So Singham knows how to build an organization. Why doesn’t he invest in socialist experiments?For example, instead of running for Mayor, suppose Zohran Mamdani wanted to start a chain of no-profit, co-op grocery stores. If this were a sustainable model, people would freely come and patronize the co-op, and Maoist millionaires like Singham could subsidize any losses—for a while, anyway. If the co-op couldn’t run without tax subsidies, why on earth would any socialist want it to exist? Revenue in excess of costs indicates sustainability. Losses show resources are being wasted. The socialist might think that wasting resources is okay as long as they’re taken from rich people. But in a fully socialist society, there would be no rich people to subsidize the failures. It’s equality of outcome, right? This is why there were so many Soviet bread lines.Here’s another example. Imagine a group of idealistic champagne socialists pooling their resources to acquire some land or a multi-unit building. They decide to operate it as a commune or a rent-controlled building, as the case may be. Why not? Show us what you’ve got! Why does their ideological paradise depend on expropriating the property or funds of people who actually build and run firms sustainably? If the socialists’ preferred system is so awesome, they ought to be able to just do it. Instead, they get PhDs in radical activism and poison the minds of a generation.Doesn’t this prove that most socialists just want to take to consume? They don’t build. It would be a sad indictment if socialism couldn’t exist without the productive capacities of private businesspeople. In short, socialism would just be parasitic on capitalism.But wait—there’s more! According to the latest comprehensive data from the 2023 Worker Cooperative State of the Sector Report, about 750 egalitarian worker cooperatives operate in the United States. This figure represents a 20% increase from 2021. Well, I’ll be. It looks like there are people out there just doing it! So if worker control of the means of production is possible without having to seize anything or ban other forms of organization, why isn’t socialism taking over the economy?If more successful egalitarian co-ops emerge, it should become increasingly clear that socialist enterprises are the way to go. Criticize by creating. More and more people can freely migrate away from traditional corporate forms into these worker-owned co-ops. Personally, I doubt that democratically run co-ops are the best-run organizations, because I’m not sold on the idea that the median voter is in the best position to make decisions. But at least worker co-ops are voluntary. Funny how capitalist societies allow for socialist enterprises, but socialist societies don’t allow for capitalist enterprises.Indeed, most socialists opt for the political means, which—at the end of the day—are violent. That’s because most socialists are Takers, not Makers. But if I’m wrong, show don’t tell. Better yet, don’t threaten, build. Because if socialist enterprises work sustainably, more power to ‘em. But if your model depends on seizure, once you run out of everybody else’s stuff, there will be nothing left but an oppressive dystopia and the detritus of a once-prosperous civilization. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

According to this week’s guest, Michael Strong, the institutions meant to serve humanity—particularly academia and public schooling—have become obstacles to our flourishing. But instead of dwelling on criticism, Strong offers a compelling alternative vision grounded in voluntary action, entrepreneurship, and living the mantra “Criticize by creating.”The Indictment of Higher EducationStrong pulls no punches in his assessment of modern academia, calling higher education “the world’s leading social problem.” His reasoning is twofold and damning. First, he argues that most of academia remains hostile to free markets despite overwhelming historical evidence that economic freedom, property rights, and the rule of law create prosperity. “Seven billion people are unnecessarily miserable because of the anti-capitalist ideologues in academia,” he states bluntly.Second, Strong contends that academia propagates a victimhood narrative that undermines individual agency. While claiming to help the disadvantaged, universities instead damage students by teaching them to see themselves primarily as victims rather than as empowered agents capable of shaping their own lives. This victim mentality, he suggests, has metastasized from universities down into primary and secondary education, creating what he calls “a cancer in society.”The Youth Confinement CenturyStrong’s critique extends beyond ideology to the very structure of modern schooling. He traces a historical arc showing how what began as modest common schools teaching basic literacy devolved into an all-encompassing system that confines young people during their most energetic years. The statistics he cites are sobering: teenage suicide increased 300% between the 1950s and 1990—well before social media—suggesting the problem lies not primarily with technology but with the institution of high school itself.Drawing on historical context, Strong notes that the concepts of “teenager” and “adolescent” are 20th-century inventions. Throughout history, young people at puberty transitioned to adult responsibilities—hunting, gathering, working, contributing. Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, and Thomas Edison all began working at thirteen. Forcing these “incredibly powerful, active young people into 30 students in a room, passive all day long, was a recipe for disaster.”He references the famous rat park experiments: rats caged and offered cocaine became addicted; rats in an enriched environment ignored the drugs. The parallel is unmistakable.Soul DestructionBut the problem runs deeper than mere confinement. Strong identifies what philosopher Alistair MacIntyre called the collapse of virtue cultures. Until the 20th century, societies worldwide raised young people with clear standards of excellence, shared norms, and templates for becoming admirable adults. Cultural relativism, championed by elites and academics, deliberately undermined these norms under the banner of fighting “bourgeois morality.”The result? A generation ping-ponging between standardized institutional warehousing by day and “digital prisons” by night, their moral formation left to “pop culture, porn, social media slop, and stupid TikTok videos.” Strong characterizes the period from 1950 to 2050 as “the dark century” when most students were trapped in public high schools that destroyed their souls.Socratic AlternativeAgainst this bleak backdrop, Strong offers a radically different model. His approach centers on Socratic dialogue, aristocratic tutoring, immersion in intellectual milieus, and freedom to explore. He’s been conducting weekly Socratic dialogues with a young woman named Alana since she was four; now thirteen, she’s written three books, is taking Harvard’s computer science course, and engages in sophisticated discussions of Homer and Richard Dawkins.This isn’t about cramming information or teaching to tests. It’s about nurturing intellectual curiosity through meaningful conversation, much as John Stuart Mill developed his genius not just through his father’s tutoring but through dinner table conversations with leading philosophers. Strong emphasizes that alongside structured learning, children need freedom to explore—the very freedom that fuels entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity.Educational RenaissanceStrong sees cause for optimism in what he calls an educational renaissance driven by Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs). In Arizona and Florida, fewer than half of students now attend zoned public schools. He predicts that within 20 years, roughly 20% of U.S. students will be in some form of personalized, high-agency learning environment.Models are proliferating: Alpha Schools with their two-hour intensive learning blocks combining AI tracking, human coaching, and apps to optimize focus; Montessori variants; religious schools; military academies; microschools; and homeschooling. The key is competition and experimentation rather than standardization—letting “a thousand schools bloom.”Strong is particularly excited about Alpha Schools’ approach of ensuring students are “totally focused for two hours a day on these apps that optimize their learning with both humans and AI.” While their claim that students learn “twice as fast” might seem modest, he notes it’s actually significant given how little most students learn in traditional settings.From Education to GovernanceStrong’s philosophy of “criticizing by creating” extends beyond education to economic development through what he calls “zoning for prosperity.” Poor countries are poor because of bad law and governance, not lack of resources or entrepreneurial spirit. His wife, Magatte Wade, a Senegalese entrepreneur, embodies this principle as she works to create special economic zones in Africa with high-quality rule of law—essentially providing governance as a service.The model has precedent: Dubai created the Dubai International Financial Center in 2004, hiring common law judges to operate within Sharia-dominated Dubai. Twenty years later, Dubai is a top-ten global financial center. Similarly, Prospera in Honduras and other zone projects aim to create Hong Kong-quality governance within countries that otherwise have stifling regulatory environments.This isn’t colonialism—it’s entrepreneurship. African countries, Strong notes, are the most regulated in the world, with literally millions of regulations stifling economic activity. Wade doesn’t want charity for Africa; she wants the legal infrastructure that allows Africans to create prosperity themselves. “Africans just want to be rich,” Strong quotes his wife. “They’re tired of being poor.”The Masculinity QuestionThe conversation touches on concerning trends among young men, who are increasingly rejecting the “woke” establishment that constantly tells them they’re inherently problematic. While Strong celebrates this rejection of victimhood ideology, Borders raises valid concerns about some young men gravitating toward “tyrannical father” archetypes—figures like Andrew Tate who offer unhealthy visions of masculinity.This highlights the vacuum left by institutional failure: when schools don’t form character and culture doesn’t transmit virtue, young people will find mentors somewhere—and not always good ones. Strong’s vision of mentorship through Socratic dialogue offers a healthier alternative, albeit one that requires significant adult investment.A Voluntary WorldStrong’s parting message returns to his core mantra: criticize by creating. Rather than getting consumed by political hatred and the “endless civil war,” people should take initiative to improve their own lives and the lives of others. “In a voluntary world, all of us would wake up all day, every day, and we would make a living by adding value to the lives of others.”This isn’t naive optimism. Strong acknowledges that the political battles may sometimes be necessary. But he insists that individual happiness, community flourishing, and global prosperity come not from winning political wars but from building alternatives—whether alternative schools, alternative cities, or alternative ways of organizing human cooperation.The young people Strong finds most inspiring aren’t activists or politicians but entrepreneurs drawn to the special economic zone movement because “they see that it’s creating prosperity... plus careers.” They’re not waiting for permission or political victory. They’re building the future they want to inhabit.ConclusionStrong’s vision is simultaneously radical and traditional: radical in rejecting the totality of modern institutional education and government-dominated development, traditional in seeking to restore virtue cultures, apprenticeship, meaningful work, and voluntary cooperation. His optimism stems not from faith in reform but from evidence of alternatives already working—homeschoolers thriving, zones creating prosperity, entrepreneurs solving problems.Whether discussing a thirteen-year-old’s intellectual development, the regulatory stranglehold on African entrepreneurship, or the poison of victimhood culture in universities, Strong returns to the same insight: human flourishing requires freedom, responsibility, and the space to create. Institutions meant to enable these have instead become barriers. The solution isn’t to capture and reform them but to build new institutions that work—one school, one dialogue, one zone at a time.As our wick burns down, Strong suggests, the question isn’t whether we’ve won political battles but whether we’ve lit other wicks—whether we’ve created alternatives that allow others to flourish. In education, governance, and life itself, the path forward isn’t through the institutions but around them, toward a more voluntary world where value creation replaces political combat as the organizing principle of human cooperation. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

In this week’s episode of Underthrow Podcast, Gabriel Delgado offers a compelling vision for how innovative governance can unlock human flourishing. As co-founder of Próspera—a special economic zone in Honduras—Gabe represents a rare combination of visionary thinking and practical building, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Muso, who founded Universidad Francisco Marroquín (UFM) in Guatemala.What is Próspera?At its core, Próspera is a reset button for taxes and regulations. Operating under Honduras’s ZEDE framework (Zones for Economic Development and Employment), it’s a special jurisdiction that layers in governance best practices on previously undeveloped land. The genius? Instead of attempting the near-impossible task of deregulating existing systems with entrenched interests, Próspera starts fresh and builds up only what works.The platform offers entrepreneurs a way to “build faster, cheaper, get to market quicker” by providing governance as a service—treating law itself as a competitive product rather than a static imposition.Revolutionary Legal InnovationsPróspera introduces several groundbreaking mechanisms:Regulatory Choice Companies can select their regulatory framework from the top OECD countries. Want to practice German medicine alongside French pharmaceutical standards? Próspera makes it possible, creating a one-stop shop for global best practices.Insurance-Based RegulationRather than relying on government bureaucrats, Próspera leverages market forces by requiring industry-specific insurance. Insurance companies—with capital at risk—become the de facto regulators, aligning incentives toward actual risk reduction rather than bureaucratic box-checking.Industry-Proposed LegislationOperators can propose new regulations for their sectors, which go through a rigorous approval process before becoming law for everyone. This keeps regulations evolving with technology and market realities while preventing cronyism that keeps laws locked in amber.The Singapore Model for Latin AmericaGabe’s vision extends far beyond Honduras. He sees Próspera as potentially replicating Singapore’s transformative effect on Southeast Asia—becoming so successful that neighboring countries will be compelled to adapt or fall behind. The goal isn’t just creating one prosperous zone, but catalyzing a “constellation of Prósperas” worldwide that demonstrates how governance reform can leapfrog developing countries into the top tier of ease of doing business.This matters because reform is tough. As Gabe learned from his grandfather’s failed attempt to reform Guatemala’s constitution, those who benefit from existing systems—even broken ones—resist change. Special zones offer an alternative path characterized by voluntary participation, competitive pressure, and demonstrated results.Dangerous OppositionThe journey hasn’t been easy. Despite bringing investment and jobs to one of Honduras’s poorest communities, Próspera has faced opposition from business elites fearing competition, politicians worried about power, and a hostile national government in the capital. The current administration has withheld critical services, generated hostile rhetoric that has deterred investors, and raised genuine physical security concerns for the team.Yet Próspera survived through unwavering commitment to a vision of human flourishing through freedom and voluntary cooperation. The team developed expertise in “statecraft”—building relationships with stakeholders, countering misinformation, and demonstrating value on the ground. Local residents who initially viewed the project with suspicion became its advocates as jobs and opportunities materialized.Why This Matters Beyond HondurasPróspera’s model addresses problems plaguing wealthy countries, as well. The United States struggles to reshore manufacturing amid regulatory thickets. Europe faces economic stagnation. Even successful reform efforts, such as those in Argentina, encounter walls of entrenched interests.Regulatory sandboxes—whether in developing nations or established democracies—offer a way forward. They allow experimentation, demonstrate what works, and create competitive pressure for improvement without requiring wholesale political revolution. They’re the Hanseatic League reimagined for the 21st century: small, nimble jurisdictions that can compete and innovate rapidly.The Path ForwardWith over 325 businesses established and banking access now solved, Próspera is poised for “hypersonic” growth. The digital-first approach means anyone worldwide can create legal entities and begin transacting without physical presence in the zone.More importantly, Próspera demonstrates that Bob Heywood’s quiet work in lifting millions out of poverty through institutional reform can be replicated. Governance innovation—not just technological innovation—remains humanity’s most powerful lever for progress. The future doesn’t require imposing “one true way” on everyone, but instead allows voluntary experimentation and competitive discovery of what works.As Gabe reflects on moments when Divine Providence seemed to intervene, saving the project from existential threats, one senses this is more than entrepreneurship—it’s becoming a movement. A movement returning to principles that generated unprecedented prosperity: freedom, responsibility, voluntary cooperation, and the recognition that the best solutions emerge from experimentation rather than central planning.Whether Próspera becomes the Singapore of Central America remains to be seen. But the vision it represents—that governance can and should serve rather than dominate human flourishing—may prove as revolutionary as any technology emerging from Silicon Valley. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

In a wide-ranging discussion, libertarian philosopher Matt Zwolinski and political theorist Max Borders tackle a fundamental question that has divided the movement for human freedom:How should advocates of limited government approach the practical task of rolling back the state?The Core DisagreementThe debate centers on whether freedom advocates should embrace rapid, "chainsaw" approaches to cutting government or pursue more measured, theoretically grounded strategies.Borders advocates for seizing political windows when they open, even if the cuts appear "willy-nilly," arguing that the state grows through well-understood processes explained, in great measure, by public choice analysis.Zwolinski counters that how we shrink government matters as much as whether we shrink it, warning against approaches that could undermine the rule of law or concentrate power.DOGE vs. Milei: A Tale of Two ApproachesThe conversation highlights stark differences between Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Argentina's proposed reforms by Javier Milei. Zwolinski expresses skepticism about DOGE, viewing it as partisan theater rather than genuine libertarian reform. He contrasts this with Milei, whom he sees as a committed libertarian economist with both the knowledge and authority to implement systematic changes."DOGE was never really a libertarian reform movement," Zwolinski argues. "It was never about fundamentally shrinking the state."He criticizes the focus on waste, fraud, and abuse, noting that while $100 billion in faulty Medicaid payments sounds significant, such inefficiencies represent a small fraction of total government spending and don't address broader regulatory overreach.The Problem of Selective EnforcementA central tension emerges around the question of equal treatment under law. Borders uses a vivid metaphor: if someone is "covered in ticks and leeches," why object to removing only the ticks while leaving the leeches? He argues that partial victories are better than no progress at all.Zwolinski acknowledges this pragmatic point but raises concerns about "arbitrary or selective enforcement" that could undermine the rule of law. He distinguishes between normal political selectivity—Republicans prioritizing tax cuts, Democrats favoring environmental legislation—and more troubling patterns that appear designed to consolidate power or target political opponents.State Capacity and the Minarchist DilemmaThe discussion reveals Zwolinski's evolution toward valuing "state capacity"—the idea that if government has legitimate functions, it must be capable of performing them well. This creates a dilemma for libertarians: simply "stripping functions from the state willy-nilly" might undermine its ability to perform essential tasks like policing or national defense.This perspective puts Zwolinski at odds with more anarchist-leaning thinkers, such as Borders, who advocates for "asymptotic anarchy"—gradually subjecting government functions to market competition rather than maintaining monopolistic state provision.The Challenge of Reasonable ExpectationsPerhaps the most complex issue the duo discuss is how to handle programs like Social Security, where people have been forced to pay in for decades and have built retirement plans around the expected benefits. Zwolinski's concept of "reasonable expectations" suggests that abruptly ending such programs, even if they violate classical liberal principles, creates moral complications that pure rights-based analysis might miss.Borders pushes back on this framework, arguing it creates endless justifications for maintaining the status quo. He contends that those who benefit from rights violations shouldn't have their expectations privileged over the rights of those being violated.The Political Reality ProblemBoth participants grapple with the harsh realities of political change. Borders argues that moments for significant reform are rare and must be seized aggressively, even imperfectly. The alternative—waiting for ideal conditions or perfect theoretical frameworks—may mean never achieving meaningful change.Zwolinski doesn’t entirely disagree but emphasizes that sustained reform requires more than just cutting programs. It requires building systems that resist the natural tendency toward government growth that public choice theorists like Mancur Olson have documented.Moving ForwardDespite their disagreements, both thinkers share fundamental goals: reducing government overreach, protecting individual liberty, and creating more flourishing societies. Their debate highlights the ongoing challenge within classical liberal circles of balancing principled idealism with pragmatic politics.The conversation suggests that effective state reduction might require multiple approaches: seizing opportunities when they arise while also building theoretical frameworks and institutional safeguards that make reforms durable. Whether through Milei-style "chainsaw" methods or more gradual approaches, the urgent question remains how to reverse what both see as the inexorable growth of government power.Click here to watch the episode on YT. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation with philosopher and social scientist Avi Tucker, who explores two opposing ends of the political spectrum: the suffocating grip of totalitarianism and the liberating potential of panarchy.Totalitarianism DecodedTucker draws crucial distinctions between totalitarianism and authoritarianism that most people miss (the Arendt Thesis). While authoritarian regimes rely on military force—"people with bigger guns have more power"—totalitarian systems operate through a far more insidious mechanism: anonymous surveillance networks. In Stalin's Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany, the secret police recruited up to 10 percent of the population as informants, creating a society where "you don't trust me and I can't trust you" because anyone could be reporting to the authorities.This system proved more potent than tanks or armies because "anonymity is stronger than guns—you're fighting shadows." Totalitarian regimes systematically eliminated all social elites—not just political opponents, but ballet dancers, priests, or successful businesspeople—anyone people might look up to. The result was a complete restructuring of society, where survival depended on anonymity, risk aversion, and deceit.Panarchy: Governance by ChoiceOn the opposite end lies panarchy, a radical reimagining of political organization based on voluntary, non-territorial governance. Imagine choosing your government like you choose your insurance company—based on services offered, price, and quality, rather than where you happen to be born.Under panarchy, you and your neighbor could have different "states" while living side by side. If your government disappoints you, you simply switch to another one, just as you might change cell phone providers. This creates intense competition between governing bodies to attract and retain citizens as customers.Tucker traces this idea back to 1860s Belgian philosopher Paul-Émile de Puydt, but shows how variations have emerged independently throughout history—from late Habsburg experiments in multi-ethnic governance to modern digital nomadism and network states.The Path ForwardBorders and Tucker explore practical implementation challenges: * How do you build panarchic institutions within existing nation-states? * What role might technological surveillance play in both totalitarian control and panarchic coordination? * And how do we prepare alternative governance structures for potential state collapse scenarios?Tucker advocates for starting small—voluntary associations that gradually bundle more services until they begin resembling states, competing to serve citizens better than monopolistic nation-states ever could.This episode challenges fundamental assumptions about political organization. It offers a vision of governance based on choice rather than coercion, competition rather than monopoly, and voluntary association rather than territorial accident of birth.If you prefer the YouTube version, watch here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe

- Support Underthrow with Max Borders at Underthrow.org- Apply for Human Respect Labs at humanrespectlabs.org- Learn more about the Grey Robes at greyrobes.substack.com"If overthrow means to bring down unjust authority through violence, underthrow means to topple it through peaceful yet powerful means."In the debut episode of Underthrow, host Max Borders sits down with James Harrigan, political scientist and co-host of Words and Numbers, to confront the economic and cultural challenges facing America.Max and James discuss rising debt, inflation, and the future of the U.S. dollar, while exploring whether bold reforms could avert collapse.The conversation turns to controversial issues such as immigration, assimilation, and the pressures on a liberal society—exogenous and indogenous. The duo wonders how a culture of freedom can endure in the face of shifting circumstances and errant ideologies. Thoughtful, candid, and not afraid of hard truths, Max and James set the stage for a podcast that challenges assumptions and reimagines the future.Our apologies if you’re seeing the same post today. It turns out it’s better to post video natively here so that new people can discover it. It also lets you watch video in your email.To repeat:"We’re going to test each episode like SpaceX rockets, knowing that some will explode on the launchpad. Still, we’ll make marginal improvements as we go, learning from our mistakes while not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.In any case, this podcast will offer you a new way to engage with Underthrow. The written word will still feature prominently; we’re simply expanding into video to provide you with even more value for your subscription.To the supporters who make this possible, thank you kindly. If you’ve been on the fence but want to provide some rocket fuel, help us make it into the stratosphere."Amen.My son, James S. Borders, executed the production, editing, and sound wizardry. Thanks also go to Grace Collins for graphics and social media promotion. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe