MAX BORDERS ｜ Will a New Revolution Cure What Ails Us？
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Summary
Max Borders is the founder and executive director of Social Evolution, a nonprofit organization dedicated to liberating humanity through innovation. He is also the co-founder of the Future Frontiers Conference and Festival, and his books include The Decentralist, The Social Singularity After Collapse, and of course, his latest book, Underthrow: How Jefferson's Dangerous Ideas Will Spark a New Revolution.
Transcript
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All of us agree that the current political system is not working and it doesn't matter
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where you sit on the political divide. With the federal government consolidating and amassing
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power, it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how they're serving the people instead of
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the beast that it's become. But what's the answer? Is there a solution that moves closer to what
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America's founding fathers had envisioned nearly 250 years ago? My guest today, Max Borders,
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joins to talk about the concepts of his newest book, Underthrow, how Jefferson's dangerous ideas
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will spark a new revolution. We talk about what it truly means to be free, the idea of a quote-unquote
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national divorce, where socialized services work and where they go too far, the power of
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decentralization, how innovation is an act of subversion, and the difference between an overthrow
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and an underthrow to change the world. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest,
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embrace your fears, and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up
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one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.
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This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day,
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and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on
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today? My name is Ryan Michler. I'm your host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and
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movement. Welcome here today. This is a big two weeks for us. We opened enrollment to our exclusive
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fraternal organization called the Iron Council and want to extend an invite to you. We're going to be
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open until the end of this month, September, and would love to have you join. I could go on and
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on about the benefits, but I want to share a quick testimonial before we get into the conversation
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today. This comes from one of our members of the Iron Council. It's Marcus Segura. He says,
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when I think about the work that needs to be done each birthday, I've wondered how I've got to where I
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am and how it's been possible. To be honest, it comes down to the men that have served me over the
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past two years and who continue to have focus that aligns with me, building lives of service,
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whether this is to ourselves, to our men in our circle, our family, workplace, et cetera,
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allows for a by-product of personal growth and development to occur beyond our natural
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and selfish abilities. When you surround yourself with men that have a mission to show up, who you
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can lean on no matter the circumstances and who will mentor you, guide you, or hold the line of
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accountability, the achievements are unparalleled. In the spirit of Memento Mori,
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I choose to work beside these men to serve and to be served so that I can rest having had a life of
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value, meaning, fulfillment, and peace. My why the Iron Council is one of the greatest impacts of my
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life. So a quick testimonial, I'll share one with you a little bit later in the episode, but again,
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I don't want to just ramble at you all the benefits. There's so many men, over a thousand men now being
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served inside the Iron Council and who are serving others. And if you're interested in learning more
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about what we're doing there, head to order a man.com slash Iron Council. That's order a man.com
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slash Iron Council. Guys, let's get into the conversation today. I've got Max Borders on. He
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is the founder and executive director of Social Evolution, which is a nonprofit organization,
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and they're dedicated to liberating humanity through innovation. He's also the co-founder of
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the Future Frontiers Conference and Festival. His books include The Decentralist,
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The Social Singularity After Collapse, and of course, his latest book, Underthrow,
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How Jefferson's Dangerous Ideas Will Spark a New Revolution. Enjoy, fellas.
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Max, good to see you. Glad you could join me on the podcast today.
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Yeah, I'm always intrigued when, obviously, we're talking a little bit about, or we will be talking
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about politics in this and government specifically. And I'm always intrigued when
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there's interesting and fascinating ideas that I don't know if I necessarily agree with 100%,
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but I'm so glad that we can have these types of conversations, whether we agree or not,
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so we can come to some sort of conclusion. Because I don't think what we're doing right now seems to be
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Right on. Couldn't agree more with that. Who knows what's before us. But yeah, I totally agree
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Well, you talk a lot about the concept of decentralized systems as a way to minimize big
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government. I think most people are probably familiar with it when it comes to state sovereignty,
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for example, over federal sovereignty. But it seems to me like you're talking about something
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even more decentralized than a state level. Am I understanding you correctly?
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Certainly. Yeah, that could be the case. Texas, for example, is a big state.
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And Texas might want to be able to break up into further or other jurisdictions, depending on
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where someone lands and what they want their communities to look like.
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And the kind of the kind of rules and laws they want to instantiate in their communities
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What is how would you define community? Because that could be my neighborhood of, you know,
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five to 10 houses, or it could be a community of 100,000 people. So at what level are you
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advocating for with regards to the community level of of governance?
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Well, if you think about the stuff that we we want to talk about as being in our community,
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we're talking about land and what sits on land. So some of the stuff in terra firma,
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on terra firma, it's important to think, what, how do I want to live? And how do we want to
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instantiate, you know, roads, lights, schools, local things, right? And how do we maximize
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everybody's participation in this at the most local feasible level? That is, of course, important
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in that that's where there we're talking about territorial goods. But most of what we talk about
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when we think about a constitution is not territorial goods at all. So it kind of doesn't
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make any sense that I have to oblige my neighbor to live the exact way I do. And this is a crazy idea
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from this Belgian thinker named Dupuit, who wrote this in 1860. He's basically like, instead of you being
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a monarchist, a Republican, a Democrat, a whatever you like, why can't you just subscribe to your own
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sort of civil association? So we can have one sense of community, which is, hey, I need to get to know
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my neighbors, we need to look out for each other. And we can make collective decisions about what we
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want to see in our communities at a local scale. But the other sense of community is there are a bunch
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of people around the world who think maybe that people ought to be more sovereign in general,
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and treat that as a mission, right? And those sovereign people, people who are into the idea
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of self-sovereignty, might be a sprinkle here and a handful there, but together, they can self-organize
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under their own species of law. And they might not all be in the United States. Some might be in
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Canada, some might be on the other side of the world, but they share those values. So it's getting
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people to think about this idea of decoupling law from conquered territory, which is the way history
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is borne out. This would be a significant change from that. Yeah, I'm wondering about, like, if we were
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to take this to the nth degree, it would be me deciding how I'm going to basically live my life and
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lead myself. And although I can certainly make the case for that, there's also an inherent risk in
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that I could be a potential danger to the society, right? Or in this case, my neighborhood, you know,
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if we're coming down to a small area, I could say, well, you know, I want that my neighbors,
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you know, whatever. So I'll just go ahead and walk into his house and grab his TB off the wall,
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and I'll go ahead and take that. Or I might have an issue with the junker that's, you know,
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sat out in my neighbor's yard for the past two years. I think there is some sort of consensus,
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and I'm not sure what level it's at, where we decide, hey, collectively, we're going to decide
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what's good for us as a whole. And that's the question I'm really trying to get at is,
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at what level or what degree do we start enforcing some of what we think will be good for the collective?
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Right. And that's a really great point. The way I would describe this, at least under my
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conception, and other people are going to have other conceptions. That's totally true.
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We have this thing called the law of torts, okay? The law of torts being a part of the common law.
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And what it says is, hey, you can't make anybody worse off by taking their property or hitting them
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in the face or throwing them in jail if they're innocent. The only way you could do that is if you're
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defending someone or defending your own property. The problem is there's an asymmetry there with
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respect to the federal level of government in most countries. They take your stuff all the time.
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It's called taxation, right? Now, that's not to say that we might always in every case not want
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taxation. But what we're saying is that the level of government, maybe it's the state level,
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maybe it's the community level, that taxation, if taxation is necessary, it should be necessary
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Who gets to determine that? I mean, I think that's the point of the question.
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Well, sure. But if you get two people, you and I are going to, even if we agree on 99% of the things,
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we're not going to agree on 100%. So if you and I are in this community, for example,
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and by the way, I happen to agree with what you're saying. I'm just trying to see this from
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all perspectives and see what degree it's taken. But if you and I agree 99% of the way about the
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way that our money pulled together should be spent, let's say we want to bring a third party in and
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say, hey, you know what, Max, you and I, we're neighbors. You've got your family. I've got mine.
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We really care about our safety. So we're going to go ahead and hire a security force to make sure
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that it's protected between you and I. And I want to hire security force A, and you want to hire
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security force B, who decides? Right. So the question is, and this would be resolved in courts,
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right? What level of government does that need to be determined? Right. Correct. It may be that we
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each want to hire our own protective associations and that they police our neighborhoods or look after
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us in whatever fashion they can and customer focused way. It may be that there's, it's good to
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have a market in protective associations. And that, that, that brings about the same level of
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competition that the market usually provides. Now, others might say, we don't want that. And we want
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to engage in an association where we, this is a shared or public good. And that's okay. If there
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are tensions between those, between and among those associations, those can be resolved in courts.
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But in advance, you have to, once you are a signatory to a constitution of consent like this
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or something where instead of law being imposed, you're part of a multilateral contract, you would
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have, you would then be able to, you would be able to sue an, a counterparty or someone who is
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opposite you, who agreed to the same thing. Or if they're outside of your jurisdiction, there of course
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could be courts for resolving those disputes and they would be at a higher level of government.
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Like the Supreme court. So it's not all, it's not all just like crazy anarchy, right? It's about
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people self-selecting into their particular, first their particular cultural or moral tribes,
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and then having that be wrapped in law that makes sure that there is dispute, peace of dispute
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resolution. Because right now what we're living in is in a case where everybody's fighting over the
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same set of authorities to try to impose their will on everybody else.
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And we know, you and I both know that that ain't working. So even if you can poke holes in what
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I'm trying to do with this constitution of consent contest, even if we landed on something that is
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more like Switzerland, which is a very peaceful country, has a long, has a really good, you know,
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long history of, you know, relative peace where the cantons, which are their version of a state,
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they're, they're, they're, they're as powerful as the federal government. Most of the action is at
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the level of canton. And if you don't like it within Switzerland, you can vote with your feet.
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And that's sort of, that's sort of the American tradition that has been lost. We call it the
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10th amendment, right? In America, where everything is supposed to be carried out at the state or at
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the level of the state or the level of the people, which is exactly what it says in the 10th amendment.
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And yet how much of what the federal government does contravenes that almost everything.
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So what we have now in the, in the constitution that I cherish is simply not being respected and
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power is acting with impunity. The sovereign men out there who are listening to this podcast
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know they can do better. And they were guaranteed it not in the constitution, but in the declaration
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of independence by Thomas Jefferson's pen, where Thomas Jefferson said, we have a right to life,
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liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And to the extent that government doesn't,
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doesn't allow us that we have a right to abolish it. That is the consent of the governed passage
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in the declaration of independence. I've had a lot of, a lot of folks question my patriotism for even
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doing this contest. Um, this constitution of consent contest, which we can talk about in a moment.
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And I just, I just say, Hey, I'm a Jeffersonian. Don't question my patriotism question what this
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constitution, even though I respect it, I venerate it almost as a sacred document. It's not working
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anymore. Maybe we need to start over in some fashion. And this just gets people. So even if we got
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something that where we respected the 10th amendment again, and the constitution we have again, and
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restrained federal power to the constitution's mandate, that would be awesome. And if my, my little
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project had some hand in making that happen by changing people, the way people think back to the
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original ideals of the Republic, I think that'd be awesome. But I also want to say that I want to
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extend that to people in other countries. If you have Canadian listeners, absolutely. If you have Mexican
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listeners, absolutely. There are sovereign people all over the world who believe in the original project
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of the American founding. I'm taking some notes here. Um, I like the concept. I want to get back
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to, to your, uh, your constitution of consent, uh, challenge or, or competition, but I liked what you
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said with regards to voting with your feet, because I think that's what we're beginning to see. Now you
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see a max X a mass exodus, for example, from California, New York into places like Florida, um, and some of
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these other more conservative areas we're seeing that now. And I think it isn't until the relative ease of
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modernity with regards to travel and commerce, digital commerce that has paved the way for us to
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say, Hey, if we don't like where we are, we have the opportunity to move. I think that was pretty
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restricted up until relatively recently with again, transportation with digital technology and the
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internet. Uh, and, and I see, I can see us going down a path of, uh, civil disunion. Uh, and I hope it
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doesn't, I hope it doesn't turn violent. That's certainly not what I would want, but I can see,
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uh, I could see certain States or territories rallying around certain concepts. And if you
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don't like it, you're welcome to leave and go to the neighboring state. What, what are the downsides
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of something like that? Cause right now where we're a quote unquote United States of America,
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it seems to me that the, the biggest benefit of that is, uh, the, the power that we have with
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the dollar, which is weakening, uh, especially in light of, uh, relatively recent developments
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with countries deciding to use other currency amongst themselves. Uh, and then of course,
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just our, our physical safety and defense, but I, I'm not sure I see any other downsides than that,
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but I'm curious what you think. A downside to a dissolution of, uh, of a more United States
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in favor of a more decentralized one. Yeah. I think there are some potential downsides.
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Um, if it weren't held together, I mean, and that's the reason I'm doing this project. You've
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probably heard the term national divorce, right? Right. It's sort of like this project is a way
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of talking about a national divorce done right instead of a national divorce done wrong. So let's
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say you have a national divorce done wrong. You could have a breakup of the Republic where it degenerates
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into warlordism or, or even, you know, stuff like, uh, theocratic States forming. I, I used to live
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in Texas. Uh, I'm originally from North Carolina, what was living in Texas, uh, in Austin, which is
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its own little enclave, uh, for, for 12 years and, or for 13 years rather, and now have just come
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moved back to the Carolinas. I live in South Carolina now, which weirdly speaking was the state
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that first seceded in the, during the, you know, in advance of the civil war started in South Carolina,
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right? Right. Yeah. And someone who talks like me, you can hear my accent. I have that North
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Carolina accent. Someone who talks like me talking about baking secession into the constitution
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sounds kind of crazy. Like this guy must be some sort of, you know, guilt by association,
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racist or whatever, uh, which is not true at all. I definitely want at the, at the federal level,
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something like what we talked about tort law, you don't harm other people or their property,
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life, liberty, and property to be baked in at the highest level of this particular regime.
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If you don't have that, you're going to have people saying, well, you, you in this state,
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you're going to join our state religion, which might be Protestantism, Catholicism,
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or whatever the majority is in that state. It could be something outlandish in some of these blue,
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blue states, right? Um, or red states. It could be outlandish. It could be outlandish anywhere you
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cut it. You could have a theocracy in the red states and you could have crazy social justice
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thinking in the, in the blue states and each of them trying to, to self-organize in
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anti-social ways, I guess you could say, or ways that don't hold together the integrity of a union at
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all. That could be bad. So you'd have, you'd be able to vote with your feet, but you might have
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to escape with your, your feet. And that would be a hellish situation. We don't want warlordism
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and we don't want internecine conflict. The point of this would be to create a situation of peace
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where we're not constantly fighting, crying our teardrop in the voting booth every four years
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to hope that the tide will turn. It never does. Instead, the special interests and politicians
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collude to shaft the rest of us. And then we fight each other. That's the situation we have now and
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everybody knows it. So what are we going to do about it? And I think the answer is if it's not
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this thing that I'm describing, at least what I'm doing could inspire somebody to do something else
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that, that returns us to a state where we have more local sovereignty. So we don't have to fight so
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much about what gets rammed down everybody's throat from Washington.
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What do you feel then is the purpose of a federal government? I'm assuming,
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maybe I shouldn't assume, I guess I'll ask, is there a purpose for a federal government?
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I mean, I think, you know, the original interpretation of the constitution gets a lot
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of things right. I don't think the purpose of the federal government from, you know, like the 16th
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and 17th amendments can go, which is, you know, a tax that's, that not only taxes your income,
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but takes the states out of the way for, for getting that income. Because when you have states
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being able to take, take income in and give it to the federal government for its purposes,
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then you have another check on power. If they're violating their mandate, the states can say,
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nope, we have the sovereignty to say, you don't get any more of our tax money until you resolve that.
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So there's stuff like that, that is already in the constitution that makes it great.
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Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Even if you enter my contest,
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know that there's a lot of value in the constitution, but some of the amendments that
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have been added, like income tax that takes the states out of the equation and the introduction
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of senators instead of state legislatures are crappy. And they have helped create the beast,
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the federal beast that we have now. Now, your original question was, remind me again.
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Are you referring to the purpose of the federal government? That question?
00:21:25.980
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Thank you. That's, that's where I was getting to. So the federal government
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does do a lot of important things, but in what it does and is supposed to do versus what it does are
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two very different things. What it is supposed to do in honoring the constitution, particularly amendment 10,
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is to restrict all of the things that the government can't, or the government authorities at that highest
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level cannot do. It is, it should oblige itself to obey its own rules, which it doesn't do.
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Well, I mean, have anything to, where in the constitution do you see anything about healthcare?
00:22:10.940
Hmm. Right. That should be a state level phenomenon. The, you know, if, if you, you know,
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if you want to have some alternative systems of healthcare that are more similar to places like
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Singapore, where, you know, you oblige people to, instead of, instead of giving, you know, FICA taxes to
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pay for Medicare, Medicaid, and social security, people are obliged to set aside money in medical
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savings accounts and purchase. Even if you, even if you were a little authoritarian about it at the
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local level, you could experiment with different kinds of measures based on the cultural communities
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of which you're a member. And those experiments can be replicated. The more we try to impose blanket
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policies, one size fits all the one true way on everybody, the more we conflict with each other
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about what that way is, because we all have different ideas of it. So the federal government,
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if it were to realize its mandate is really to protect the sovereignty of the states and of the
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people. That's, so that's one thing. Maybe one could argue that it's also to protect the totality
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of the Republic in terms of our land, but I might even argue that polycentric defense would be better
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than because it would, you could start to inject market mechanisms right now. We have a bloated
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empire around the world and an executive power to go to war that's contravenes the constitution
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every single day. War powers lie with Congress, not the executive. And yet when's the last time we
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declared war on another country, our military veterans are getting shafted left and right by this
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military industrial complex and the politicians that feed off of it. Sorry, I didn't mean to go crazy
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on you, but, um, I get, I don't feel like I get passionate. Yeah. I don't feel like you did. I feel like
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you're, you're sharing things that are like you said, passionate to you. Um, I actually wrote this down
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before you mentioned it. And I said, you know, even in the constitution, we talk about the separation of
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powers, executive, legislative, and judicial. Uh, you know, I get frustrated when Biden signs executive
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orders, just as much as I got frustrated when Trump did it just as much as I got frustrated when Obama
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and Bush and Clinton signed executive orders. That's not how the constitution works. So my question
00:24:35.300
then is if we have these checks and balances currently in place with our constitution, uh,
00:24:41.840
and they're not being followed, then why creating a new constitution? Would we expect any different?
00:24:47.280
Well, this is, um, this goes back to the question about Jefferson, right? Um, Jefferson
00:24:54.460
realized already after his first term that there was a serious constitutional crisis developing and
00:25:04.940
he warned about it before he was in France when the constitution was ratified in, uh, 1789,
00:25:10.740
but he warned, he was like, you got, you have this general welfare clause, you have these other clauses
00:25:15.840
that are going to allow power to make a bunch of mischief. Okay. And of course he had written the
00:25:22.020
declaration and I already talked about the things that he said in the declaration. And that of course,
00:25:27.160
all the, the American founders signed, um, and we're scared they were going to get hung for it.
00:25:32.440
Right. Um, but the thing is, if you can opt into law, right? Like if you can be an actual signatory,
00:25:42.040
you're signing the contract, which is to say you are making a commitment that is enforceable,
00:25:47.400
then every single person who is a signatory to that contract is legally liable for, um,
00:25:56.860
not holding up your end of the bargain in terms of responsibilities and has recourse in terms of
00:26:03.220
those who've been charged with the, with protecting your rights. So my belief is that we will,
00:26:09.600
we will, um, we will trust the institutions we build and use together. And if we, if someone
00:26:17.500
were to enter this contest that I'm running and try to win $20,000 or maybe 3000 or 2000 second and
00:26:24.540
third, you could take the constitution we have now, take out all the, take out all of the bad stuff
00:26:30.360
that's been added and all of the original stuff that maybe wasn't working so well, like general welfare
00:26:35.020
clause or interpretations of the comp commerce clause and things like that. And, and do some
00:26:42.220
fixes. That's the kind of thing we're looking for. It's a means of changing our mindsets around how
00:26:48.280
this could be better because otherwise we're just sitting here and going, well, it doesn't work now,
00:26:53.160
but I get how, how could having a new constitution work better? I don't know. It just means let's sit
00:27:00.240
on our hands or try to go up against, uh, you know, the most powerful regime in the world as,
00:27:07.140
you know, people with pistols and AK-47s or whatever. I mean, like, um, you know,
00:27:15.520
Joe Biden made fun of people who, you know, who are, who are in militias and things like that,
00:27:22.240
who are deeply, deeply wedded to the constitutional, the original notion of the constitutional Republic
00:27:28.540
and are worried about the accretion of state power. And he, he made fun of it in a speech. He was like,
00:27:33.260
what are you going to do? We have F-16s. I would remind him that, um, we would probably do the same
00:27:38.920
thing that the Afghanis did when they ran his ass out of, uh, Afghanistan. Um, and, and our, you know,
00:27:47.260
our military was in a 20 year meat grinder to try to make that nation build over there. But, um,
00:27:53.500
I think that if people are dedicated to, to the ideals that I believe a lot of Americans hold
00:28:00.640
dear, that they would, uh, guard, jealously guard that new constitution. And in time that might wane
00:28:07.940
in time, there might be another need, but going back to Jefferson, Jefferson actually thought that
00:28:13.040
you might need to reconstitute the Republic every 20 years and turn out the, the power with that level
00:28:19.740
of frequency. I don't know if that's the case, but empires fall. We've seen it in Rome. We've seen
00:28:26.100
it in Britain. The way the, the Indians overturned the British Raj in 1945, I think was, uh, was through
00:28:36.160
peaceful means Satyagraha. Now what they instantiated afterwards, wasn't that great. The Nehru regime was
00:28:43.220
terrible and they all got poor very quickly, but that's not to say they weren't right to over,
00:28:48.660
to underthrow power the way they did. And I use underthrow instead of overthrow because
00:28:52.580
overthrow is violent, underthrow is peaceful. That's the distinction between the two for you.
00:28:58.360
Yes, sir. Got it. What happens to those individuals who decide, cause you're talking
00:29:03.300
about signing this quote unquote legal binding contract in this new constitution of consent.
00:29:07.940
What happens to those individuals who say, no, I'm not interested in that.
00:29:11.640
They'll have basic rights afforded to them. Um, in the, in the, and that would be covered on
00:29:17.980
stuff like the common law. Um, so it, you, there would be a kind of, uh, a unilateral
00:29:25.100
granting them basic rights. You can't run roughshod over people and expect not to,
00:29:30.820
not to be sued or not to be, have some sort of recourse, but there would be certain provisions
00:29:36.560
that they would not have to, uh, there would be certain provisions that they would not be able
00:29:41.400
to expect. So it would not be imposed. It would be chosen. Yeah. This, this kind of reminds me a
00:29:47.260
little bit of a, uh, uh, uh, union, for example, where you have a worker who decides, well, I'm not
00:29:52.100
going to join a union, which I can certainly understand why. Uh, and, but the advocate for
00:29:58.280
the union says, well, this individual is going to reap all the benefits without having to, uh, uh,
00:30:03.180
make any of the sacrifice. And, and that's a whole other conversation. I'm not advocating for
00:30:07.620
unions by any means, please do not misunderstand me, but this is the potential argument is you have
00:30:13.360
an individual who's like, I'm not going to sign that I'll reap all the benefits of what you guys
00:30:16.380
are doing, but I'm not going to be held liable for any of that. Well, it's easier to do something
00:30:21.520
like that when you have local stuff. And that's why local, you know, sort of like municipal rules or
00:30:29.100
laws will be, may look differently or have a different character than national stuff. Um, because
00:30:37.460
it's easier to free ride locally than it is nationally. Um, but that's all going to depend
00:30:43.780
on how that, how that original social contract, you'll, you'll hear a lot of people talk about
00:30:49.520
the social contract and it's almost never a real contract, right? It's something that they've
00:30:55.700
dreamed up in their mind and thinks sounds wonderful. The social contract. And it comes out
00:30:59.780
of a, a very fine tradition going back to lock in Thomas Hobbes, but, um, real social contracts
00:31:09.340
are an artifact of people's choice and consent. And that makes it a lot stronger.
00:31:15.180
We have people who sit on neighboring States all the time and, and there are conflicts and those are
00:31:21.580
resolved in courts. I see it as very much the same way. Courts can resolve these and build it in
00:31:27.300
to precedent. The way you resolve these kinds of frictions between and among those subsidiary
00:31:33.740
jurisdictions, even if someone is not a signatory to the constitution, but in some sense, affording
00:31:39.560
people, basic rights is kind of like a thing you want to do anyway, man. Let me just step away from
00:31:46.960
the conversation very briefly. As I mentioned earlier in the conversation or the podcast, the iron council
00:31:51.820
is open for enrollment right now. Uh, many of you know that the thousand plus members are working
00:31:58.040
hard inside the iron council to grow in every aspect of their lives. But if you're unfamiliar
00:32:02.020
with what we're doing, let me shed some light because we're having focused directed conversations
00:32:07.600
that are going to drive your growth. We have structured accountability to ensure that you're
00:32:12.060
hitting the goals that you identify for yourself and also powerful networking. So you can build out
00:32:17.560
your own band of brothers of high caliber men. Uh, this is a powerful testimonial from Jose Vela.
00:32:24.160
He says, since joining the IC, I have become a better man than ever before all my life. I was
00:32:29.780
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00:32:35.360
what I thought a man should be. Now I've learned with the brotherhood, how much information and learning
00:32:39.680
curves I've never experienced. And I'm not being what society wants us to be. I've learned why I was
00:32:45.440
overweight most of my life and becoming the athlete. I always wanted to be not to be passive
00:32:49.900
anymore with pleasing others, deal with a bad and standing my ground for myself. But most importantly,
00:32:55.060
finally have plenty of male role models to look up to. I am able to focus on me for the first time
00:33:01.220
ever. Again, that comes from Jose Vela. So, uh, guys, if you've been on the fence about joining
00:33:06.140
iron council or don't even know what it is and you're interested, head to order a man.com slash
00:33:10.240
iron council. That's order a man.com slash iron council. Now let's get back to the conversation
00:33:16.060
with max. Well, I don't, I don't think we even afford them. If I think we, we decide collectively
00:33:23.300
we're going to preserve them because no individual can grant me a right. We can only work to protect
00:33:28.720
those rights. They're given to me through God. So you can't afford me anything. You can just work
00:33:33.800
to protect it. I appreciate the spirit of that. Um, and yet at the end of the day, pragmatically
00:33:42.120
speaking, the, the powers that be in collusion with corporations and special interests, uh, are
00:33:51.040
taking away our rights every day systematically. I agree, but that doesn't undermine my argument
00:33:56.700
that the right is derived from God, but you're, you're absolutely right. Is that there are those bad
00:34:03.000
actors who are deliberately and intentionally for their own selfish pursuits working to strip those
00:34:08.660
rights from me? So I don't think, yeah, I don't think we're far apart in our agreement. Maybe just
00:34:13.980
the semantics we're using about where rights are derived from. Yeah. And look, I returned to the
00:34:21.100
declaration, uh, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is, uh, based on Lockean's, uh, we're
00:34:28.120
doubted by our creator, it says, right? So that as a body of law, if you think of the declaration of
00:34:38.020
independence as being a dual charter with the constitution, then you're absolutely right.
00:34:43.760
Whatever your theological perspective, that's what the law says. Even if you don't believe in God,
00:34:50.180
this is the way we're doing things. Does that make sense? So I'm not, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even
00:34:56.500
want to get into a theological discussion about the purpose, about where rights come from, except to
00:35:02.200
acknowledge what you're saying and saying, yes, as, as far as we're concerned right now, if you're an
00:35:07.000
American, that is the law, the declaration of independence ought to be considered part of the
00:35:13.020
body of law. I think it's important to the degree that we recognize that where it comes from and that
00:35:19.760
it's objective and that there's a standard, and then we can work to administer it how best we can as
00:35:25.660
flawed humans. Uh, not that it's our, not that it's our purpose or even our place to issue rights to
00:35:35.100
other individuals or say what they can and can't do. I, I just don't have the authority to do that.
00:35:41.140
Exactly. That on that, we agree. I, all I'm saying is that's the way the powerful think is that they
00:35:48.820
allocate rights and we've got to, and we've got to do something about that. And if you're to the extent
00:35:56.180
that you're, you know, you have religious listeners, um, I hope that we can all collectively become
00:36:05.340
instruments of God's will, instantiating rights and freedoms again in this country and, and indeed the
00:36:13.980
world to the extent it's possible. And that's the cool thing about this, a constitution of consent is
00:36:19.780
it's not just our, our, our God-given rights aren't just for Americans anymore. It's for anybody who
00:36:26.600
wants to live under its auspices. And we can have a constellation of people all over the world who live
00:36:32.420
by and through the original charter of human rights, which is the declaration and thus also the
00:36:41.160
constitution. Well, I like that. Yeah. And I like that you're talking about this because I I've seen
00:36:47.820
a tremendous problem. We'll say with, I spent some time in the military as in Iraq and in 2005 and 2006.
00:36:55.680
And you know, what I get really frustrated with is, is the West specifically America trying to dictate
00:37:01.160
what other countries and other people should do. It's not my responsibility to instill or install
00:37:07.660
democracy or a republic in some foreign country that just isn't interested in it. That's not my
00:37:12.520
responsibility. That's not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to take care of our own.
00:37:17.900
And that's not to say that we can't go out and do missionary work and proselyte and, uh, you know,
00:37:22.420
share concepts and ideas, which even our founders did as they traveled outside of the United States to
00:37:27.300
foreign countries to, uh, you know, spread the message, spread the word, share and learn,
00:37:32.220
but it's not our place to forcefully go somewhere and instill or install something that people aren't
00:37:38.660
interested in. I absolutely agree. Not only that, but coming from the mouth of a, of a former service
00:37:46.500
member of a vet, it becomes all the more powerful what you're saying. And, um, and I wish more people
00:37:54.680
would listen to you. Well, it's a hard thing to say, especially for a lot of veterans, because,
00:37:59.620
uh, veterans derive as, as they should, uh, derive a lot of their, their value from their service to
00:38:08.900
country. And, and I think it's noble work. I think it's honorable. I think there's sacrifices that need
00:38:13.620
to be made. And I think for the most part, the work that's being done is, is good. Uh, but also
00:38:20.120
there's some places we need not be involved and we need to learn to protect and take care of our own
00:38:25.880
before we start forcefully executing these types of things on other people.
00:38:31.160
Amen. Couldn't agree more. And I'm telling, I'm on, I'll tell you, I was a cheerleader for the Iraq war
00:38:36.380
at first. I believed, uh, I believed what came out of the national security establishment. And, um,
00:38:43.720
and I was all too willing to send guys like you into that meat grinder. And I have deep regrets about it,
00:38:50.940
honestly, but I still appreciate your service. And, um, and everybody who undertakes that they swear
00:38:59.900
and they swear a, uh, an oath to the, to uphold the constitution. The problem is the people,
00:39:06.340
the powers that deploy, um, guys like you were and are, are not there. They're, they're,
00:39:15.300
they're violating their oath to the constitution almost daily. Tell me a little bit about this,
00:39:22.140
uh, this, this contest that you have going on. So the constitution of consent, I'd like to know
00:39:27.160
a little bit more specifically about what that is and some of the parameters that you're looking for
00:39:31.560
and even who determines what is accurate and what is not, you know, what is, what is the best
00:39:36.940
constitution crafted? Who, who gets to decide that? Yeah. I mean, me, me and a couple of my buddies
00:39:43.220
get to decide because that's just some guys get together, like, like draft over fantasy football
00:39:48.980
or something, or there's some actual parameters here. Yeah. It's sort of like, I mean, I'm not
00:39:54.080
going to sit here and pat myself on the, on the shoulder. It's your money. You can do whatever
00:39:57.940
you want, right? You're the one. I got, I got, I got, I had, I was able to raise the money, um,
00:40:04.760
from a, from a donor, uh, from a couple of donors actually. Uh, so it's $25,000. You, the top prize
00:40:11.180
is 20,000 and then second and third are 3,000 and 2,000 respectively for second and third prizes.
00:40:18.520
Um, but yeah, um, the, the, the, the first, the first thing we want to do is get people to think
00:40:26.560
about the idea of what it means to be free, right? What it means to be free. Just to remind ourselves
00:40:33.820
of that. We don't live in a state of affairs anymore where we, we are anything, but the timid
00:40:40.740
herds being, being shunted around, poked and prodded by the powerful. Everybody has become
00:40:48.640
acutely aware of that. It doesn't matter what side of the, the fence you're on unless, and let, well,
00:40:53.200
a side of the political aisle you're on. Everybody is, is acutely aware of this. So, you know, this,
00:41:00.600
the idea behind this contest is first, I was like, let's get people to think about constitution
00:41:05.600
craft again. Let's get people to think about not only the original meaning of the constitution that
00:41:11.900
has been almost wholly abandoned, but about the, the, the ideas that animated the declaration at all.
00:41:19.180
So it is a way of being a pamphleteer like Tom Paine or like Thomas Jefferson to be a pamphleteer
00:41:27.360
again, to, to burn, to help people burn fires in the mind with these ideals, returning to our core
00:41:36.000
doctrine, if that makes sense. What does it really mean to be an American is what it means to be free.
00:41:44.240
How do we engage not in politics? Politics is like waking up in the morning, opening up your smartphone
00:41:51.780
and finding two apps, red app and blue app. And which am I going to get to use for the next four
00:41:59.400
years? That is not a social operating system worth having anymore. If that's what, if, if,
00:42:04.980
if democracy is the golden calf, I I'm not about it anymore. Right. Um, so it's getting people to,
00:42:13.900
to fully to confront the fact that that's kind of the, the state of affairs we're living in now,
00:42:20.060
which we're getting shunted into these occasional elections that are red versus blue, which is
00:42:25.560
politics. When we need to be able to think in meta politics terms, again, where meta politics is
00:42:31.680
understanding the dynamics that make our society, what it is with all its pathologies and all of the
00:42:39.120
accretions of power at the highest echelons. Why is that happening? If I can get people to think about
00:42:45.380
that by getting them to think about what a more perfect union would look like, or what a more
00:42:50.900
perfect society would look like, it has to originate in morality and good rules.
00:42:58.640
And that is the point of the contest is, and even if all I ever did was inspire someone to come up with
00:43:08.000
a single constitutional amendment that allowed us something of a reboot of the Republic,
00:43:13.020
I'd be over the moon. I'd turn backflips. So this is not a way, excuse my mouth to shit on the
00:43:21.100
constitution. It is a rather a way to honor it and get people around the world to think about the
00:43:27.140
question, how are we to live together? And what does it mean to be free? And by the way, yeah,
00:43:34.000
sorry, just really quickly, by the way, this is also not partisan because at the most local feasible
00:43:39.740
level, you might want to put together a kibbutz, a commune, a religious organization, whatever it
00:43:48.260
is. And as long as that's not contravening, you know, some enumerated like, right, like, you know,
00:43:55.720
religious freedom, if you want to self-organize into some religious community and pull your resources
00:44:01.420
and have a commune like a kibbutz or like the Mennonites do already in this country,
00:44:07.220
then why not do that? That's your conception of the good. It, it facilitates people self-organizing
00:44:13.680
into their conceptions of the good. And that can be on the left, it can be on the right,
00:44:17.260
and it can be everything in between. Well, I'm glad you're saying this because you used a couple of
00:44:21.780
phrases that, that I wanted to mention. You said for morality and good rules, you almost spoke as if
00:44:27.380
it's truth with a capital T. Now, I believe it is because of our previous conversation. It's derived
00:44:32.520
from an objective source that is, that is unshakable and flappable. A lot of people don't
00:44:38.140
believe that. So what I think is good, or what I think is a quote unquote, good role rule or morality,
00:44:44.100
not everybody's going to agree with. That's a subjective term for a lot of people.
00:44:48.860
That's right. And there's nothing I can do about that, but hope to persuade them
00:44:52.220
that there is a sense that we, what, what I'm trying to do is say, okay, at the end of the day,
00:44:58.760
you might be right. Maybe it isn't objective, but for, for, for, as of this guy's subjectivity
00:45:06.200
and Ryan's subjectivity, we can find inner subjective agreement about the fact, about the idea
00:45:12.440
that life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness are core ideals to our very existence.
00:45:21.400
And we are going to form a moral political community together. And you don't have a say
00:45:27.640
about that if you disagree with it. Right? So yes, we want to persuade as many people as possible
00:45:35.680
to adopt these ideas, these negative rights, if you will. But to the extent we can't, they can't,
00:45:41.380
they become people of another country, like the Iraqis that you encountered on a day-to-day basis
00:45:47.800
when you were over there who may not want this stuff. Right. But the framework that,
00:45:54.360
that we would establish is to say there are multiple, multiple peaceable kingdoms that live
00:46:02.300
together harmoniously. And if there are frictions between and among them, they go into the common law
00:46:08.440
courts. And that is a way of having to not, uh, be involved in the, in this culture wars and other
00:46:19.120
kinds of political warfare that we've read versus blue stuff that we've been living in for ages.
00:46:24.680
And all of us purple and yellow and other kinds of people, the way we think about things is,
00:46:29.840
hey, the system we have politics, as we know, it does not serve our evolution as people. What
00:46:39.280
would serve our evolution as people is to give us the right to self-organize in the communities of
00:46:44.900
practice with people we love and respect with rules that we want to adopt within a framework of
00:46:52.780
rights and freedoms where these groups can't go to war with each other. That that's it.
00:46:58.460
A lot of what you're talking about sounds like powerful thought experiments. Is, is there a place,
00:47:05.480
a pragmatic approach to underthrowing what we currently see, or is, is there a path rather than
00:47:12.360
just a thought experiment? Is there an actual path to redemption with our current system or
00:47:17.280
underthrowing our current system in order to replace it with something that might be more effective
00:47:22.360
which all kinds of ways subject to interpretation, but what, what, what is the path forward?
00:47:28.380
That is a, such a, such a great question. Thank you. Cause it allows me to talk about underthrow
00:47:33.540
again. Uh, right first. Um, yes, absolutely. There might be something as simple as, okay, we want to not,
00:47:41.640
we, we have, um, we have some national crisis, maybe it's an economic crisis. And this represents,
00:47:51.340
I hate, I hate, I hate to say this. This is, this sounds like, uh, the old mayor of Chicago who used
00:47:55.420
to work for Barack Obama, whose name is escapes me, but, um, he said, never let a crisis go to waste.
00:48:02.240
Right. And that's how you got some of the, um, some of the garbage that came out during the Obama
00:48:09.060
administration. Um, but the idea here, but there's a sense in which that is right. So if we had some sort
00:48:16.080
catastrophic collapse where the federal government no longer had the funds or the means to use debt
00:48:23.620
spending, to do what it does, um, we would then have the opportunity to become self-sovereigns again.
00:48:29.980
So here's, here's a, here's an example of underthrow that is just one narrow vector. Okay. Remember in
00:48:37.560
about 2012, um, you would have, uh, it would have been illegal to hitch a ride with somebody
00:48:46.420
and all of a sudden some subversive innovator is what I call him comes up with this idea. Okay.
00:48:53.280
What if we, what if we patch together GPS, um, some sort of identity that's associated with a credit
00:49:01.720
card and this and that, and paired drivers together with riders in a reputation system that looks like
00:49:11.960
you, something you would find on, um, Amazon say, then all of a sudden hitching a ride was not only
00:49:21.660
taboo, but S in some respects overturned taxi medallion cartels, right? Yeah. Taxi medallions
00:49:30.160
no longer held their, their government instituted cartels. Yeah. They went, they, they were completely,
00:49:36.620
that is a vector of underthrow called subversive innovation. So the thing that I try to do with
00:49:43.300
underthrow, my, my, um, substack, which you can find it underthrow.org. I'd love for your listeners
00:49:49.860
or to check it out is to think in these kinds of terms, what are the legal gray areas in which we
00:49:56.020
can operate to do one simple thing? Another is, well, this is not a simple thing, but another is
00:50:01.600
Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto was probably three or four guys who were corresponding. And, um,
00:50:09.960
eventually they patched together a system that allowed a sovereign store of value, a digital
00:50:18.480
commodity that could compete with the dollar that is losing its value. Now there's this thing called
00:50:25.680
Gresham's law that makes it so that it's, you have incentives not to spend Bitcoin and to spend your
00:50:31.300
dollars. And that creates sort of economic distortions on net. But the, but the idea is
00:50:37.660
Bitcoin became a proof of concept where sovereign individuals could, could enter into a collective
00:50:45.080
arrangement around something they agreed to and agreed upon, which is a set of rules, the code of
00:50:51.760
Bitcoin to forge an alternative in a permissionless way to the fiat currency system. And they did it and
00:51:01.660
they're still doing it 14 years later. It's a, it's a 15 years later, I guess now. And it's, it's a,
00:51:08.180
it's an amazing advance that is under throw that is subversive innovation. It could be, um, a, um, a man
00:51:16.120
like Bob Luddy, uh, out of North Carolina who started a chain of, or a franchise of schools called
00:51:24.160
Thales Academy, where he offers school children, top quality education for $5,000 a year.
00:51:30.940
20% of his students have scholarships so they can afford to go there. Despite the fact that we have
00:51:36.840
a free system of public education that fails over and over again and doesn't change. They add more
00:51:45.100
money to the public education and hire more administrators and nothing ever changes. The
00:51:51.200
outcomes have been the same. Luddy says, go with God, do your thing. It's unfortunate that we have to do
00:51:58.540
this, but I'm going to create this thing over here and my kids are going to excel. And they do,
00:52:03.700
they have a tremendous rating for success because they brought an entrepreneurial lens to it. And it's
00:52:11.700
about, for me, it's not about politics, policy, and punditry anymore. That stuff doesn't work. It's
00:52:17.640
about creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation. And that's what the kind of men and I, I,
00:52:24.780
and women too, but particularly your listeners are mostly men can hope to, to do for this country
00:52:31.840
is become subversive innovators. They use their creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation
00:52:37.480
to make social change around and outside the political process. And this contest is just one
00:52:44.200
example of that as legal innovation. No, those are great. Those are some, some really great examples.
00:52:50.280
I'm glad you should. I, that, when you talked about it, did you say Gresham's law? Gresham's
00:52:54.420
law? Yeah. G-R-E-S-H-M-H-A-M apostrophe S. Gresham. Okay. Got it. I'm going to look into that
00:53:03.360
because I have been curious. I, I personally own, uh, uh, Bitcoin and I have been curious as to why
00:53:12.040
it hasn't taken off to the degree that I thought it would. That's to your point or this law, nobody spent,
00:53:17.320
I don't spend it. I leave it, I leave it there. I leave it alone. I spend my dollars,
00:53:21.180
you know? So that's kind of an interesting concept. Yeah. It's a, there's a, there's a term
00:53:27.480
that comes out of Gresham's law, which is bad money chases, chases bad money. What is it? Bad money
00:53:35.140
chases away good money or something like that. But essentially the idea is, um, you want to use the
00:53:41.080
crappier money first because it's losing its value. Whereas the, the, the, the state, the more
00:53:47.140
stable, it's not, it's, it there's volatility because of the interactions. But if you had a,
00:53:52.860
a basic Bitcoin standard, which we can argue about all the Bitcoin maxis, I'm a Bitcoin, mostly there
00:53:59.700
people called Bitcoin maxis maximalists, and they can argue about this stuff all day, um, all day long,
00:54:06.020
but there are dynamics in the interplay of the different types of money that create these sort
00:54:11.600
of strange distortions. But if, if everybody were to use sort of Bitcoin as its base money,
00:54:16.940
you wouldn't see so many of these type of phenomena. It'd still have deflationary effect,
00:54:21.840
but I, but you wouldn't have so much volatility. Yeah. It'd be a wider adoption. Yeah.
00:54:28.160
Uh, the gentleman you were talking about earlier is, uh, I'm not sure I'm using gentlemen very
00:54:33.720
liberally, but Rahm Emanuel is who you were suggesting earlier. So thank you. You were
00:54:38.160
talking about. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. You bet. Uh, well, Max, why don't you tell the guys where
00:54:43.660
to connect with you, where to learn more about what you're doing, obviously look into the contest,
00:54:47.660
uh, and how to get more information. Sure thing. Um, under throw.org is my publication.
00:54:56.380
Most everything there is free. Um, obviously I would love to have free subscribers.
00:55:01.980
It's sort of like the kind of stuff that rattles around in my, my mind and the minds of those
00:55:08.040
guys, you know, people I love and, and admire. I'll publish other people's work sometimes on
00:55:13.200
the site that's called under throw.org. You can also find the contest there right at the top in
00:55:18.900
the nav bar. It'll say contest, click on that. And it'll give you specifications for how that'll put
00:55:23.800
you in a better position to win the contest. I'd love to see that too. And finally, I would love,
00:55:30.120
honestly, Ryan, I'm kind of inspired by doing this podcast because of your focus on men and sort of
00:55:38.100
reconstituting the idea of what it means to be a good man. That is something I've been thinking
00:55:43.680
about doing with my kids. So, um, if, if any of your listeners want to reach out to me and say,
00:55:50.020
like, um, does it make sense to reconstitute something like the fraternal system where fraternity
00:55:57.060
is really a brotherhood of men. Um, I'm, I'm really interested in that at the center of that can
00:56:03.240
be our patriotic ideals as Americans, but also the cultivation of proud, courageous, and effective
00:56:12.280
men in the society who are getting crap from, for every, from every turn. I feel like.
00:56:17.800
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that fraternal, I mean, that's part of why we called this order of man,
00:56:23.140
order fraternity, you know, and it's, uh, so, so I'm with you on that. We got to talk more about
00:56:28.640
that maybe offline. Awesome. Max, we'll sync it all up. I appreciate you. I love, uh, new ideas,
00:56:34.920
new ways of looking at things, um, even controversial approaches. It's like, all right,
00:56:39.600
well, let's, let's, let's talk about it. Let's uncover it. Let's figure it out. Let's weigh the pros
00:56:43.320
and cons and hash through it and debate and do whatever we need. Cause I I'm with you. I'm sick
00:56:47.860
of the status quo and I don't think it's working. So I appreciate men like you who are willing to put
00:56:52.200
it out there and try something and, um, put it on the line a little bit. I'm sure you get a lot of
00:56:57.560
flack for what you're talking about. And I'm sure you're under the scrutiny of certain watch lists.
00:57:02.620
Um, we'll go ahead and leave that right there for now, but, uh, I do appreciate you, Max. Thanks for
00:57:07.100
joining me today, man. Thank you so much, Ryan. I just want to thank you not only for your service
00:57:11.920
from before, but your service. Now you're doing a good stuff. You're doing really good stuff. So
00:57:17.080
thank you, man. There you go. My conversation with Max borders. I hope you enjoyed that one.
00:57:23.800
Uh, interesting ideas. I'm not sure the, uh, how feasible these ideas are personally. This is my
00:57:30.740
thought, but I always like an interesting idea. Maybe it gets us to broaden and expand our thinking
00:57:35.420
and consider new ways of looking at life and our approach to society, politics, culture,
00:57:40.480
all the things that frankly, we should be looking into. If we're going to be men of value,
00:57:45.060
we have to be in the know on these things. So I would love to hear your thoughts, good,
00:57:49.640
bad, and different. Let me know what you're thinking about the conversation today. Uh,
00:57:53.120
and also if you're interested, pick up a copy of Max's new book under throw, how Jefferson's
00:57:57.820
dangerous ideas will spark a new revolution. And the last thing, uh, Marcus Segura and also
00:58:04.420
Jose Vela, uh, gave us testimonials for the iron council. And I read those to you guys. If you're on
00:58:10.120
the fence about joining our brotherhood, get off the fence, join us. Even if you just joined for
00:58:14.860
a month, I usually don't say that because we want guys who are committed, but sometimes just
00:58:19.080
testing it out, just seeing how it is for a month, you'll find that there's a lot of powerful tools
00:58:25.460
and resources in there to help you take your life to the next level. Check it out at order of man.com
00:58:29.960
slash iron council. All right, guys, we'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything until then go
00:58:35.320
out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order
00:58:39.920
of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life to be more of the man you were meant to be.
00:58:45.020
We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.