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... 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).