EP 160 Curtis Yarvin on Monarchy in the U.S.A.

Jim talks with Curtis Yarvin about his proposal to replace our current government with a monarchy, part of an ongoing exploration of problems with and alternatives to democracy. They discuss a regime-change thought experiment beginning with liquid democracy, the goals of democracy & the feeling of being in charge, why our government doesn’t actually have an executive branch, democracy’s broken steering linkage, the negative characterization of “politics,” optimizing liquid democracy to take & hold power, delegation as power projection, why the French people didn’t revolt against the Jacobins, forces that led to Trump’s election, the relationship between binding & power, the Yellow Vest protests, the problem of finding a philosopher-king, democracy as a claim to legitimacy, our minimal level of political activation, Julius Caesar’s innovation, joyous regime change, monarchy as a unifying force, polarization as a product of institutional design, monarchic regimes in recent history & their relevance, and much more.

• Episode Transcript
• JRS Currents 022: Curtis Yarvin on Institutional Failure
• Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, by Albert Jay Nock
• The Origins of Contemporary France, by Hippolyte Taine (Project Gutenberg) 

Curtis Yarvin is author of the Gray Mirror Substack. He previously wrote the blog Unqualified Reservations under the pen-name Mencius Moldbug. As Moldbug, he was the founder of the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic movement known as Neo-Reaction (NRX).