In a post published on Marginal Revolution on August 23, 2026, the author republishes a passage from a 2015 post discussing Joseph Heath's book Enlightenment 2.0. Heath is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto; the book appeared in 2014 under the subtitle Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Markets, and Lives, and the 2015 post — as its address, “heath-responds-to-tabarrok,” indicates — came out of an exchange with Heath. Marginal Revolution is the economics blog co-founded by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, both economists at George Mason University. In that passage, he argued that the pathologies of democracy drive public demand not toward rational, technocratic government but toward Caesarism — a term borrowed from Napoleon III's plebiscitary rule in nineteenth-century France and used to describe strongman executives who claim a direct popular mandate and govern around legislative checks.

The 2015 passage reads in full:

One of the reasons that I oppose the extension of democratic politics into every aspect of modern life is precisely that in trying to do too much, democracy delivers incoherence, gridlock and frustration, forces that eventually undermine its own legitimacy. I worry about democratic legitimacy because I see democracy as a check and balance on Leviathan (while Heath sees it as a check on government by experts). The legislature has become a sideshow. But I worry, because the more Congress is held in contempt the greater the support for a bold executive that takes charge, makes decisions and gets things done. Under these pressures, executive power has grown not just in the United States but also in Canada and Great Britain (on this theme see F.H. Buckley's The Once and Future King.) But for all its faults, the legislature and the rule of law are more conducive to liberty than the executive and the administrative state. Legislators are satisfied with reelection and a bit of pork but executives hunger for greatness and in so doing they promote the real dangers, idolatry, the centralization of power and war. In short, I worry that the pathologies of democracy drive the demand not for rational, technocratic government but for Caesarism.

The author notes that the passage was written before Donald Trump was a Republican presidential contender, let alone a candidate for office. The original post dates to April 2015, roughly two months before Trump formally announced his presidential campaign in June 2015, so the passage predates both his candidacy and the 2016 election that followed. The book cited in the passage — F.H. Buckley's The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America (2014) — makes the companion argument that power in the United States has shifted decisively from Congress toward the presidency, a system Buckley calls “crown government.” Republished eleven years later, the passage returns that pre-2016 argument to circulation.

Addendum: markets versus politics

In an addendum, the author directs readers to his review of Enlightenment 2.0, published at the online book review The New Rambler under the title “Is Capitalism Making Us Stupid?” — “It has some good lines!” — and quotes a passage contrasting the propagandizing messages of markets and politics:

The propagandizing messages of markets and politics are also very different. Market messages are largely inclusive and cosmopolitan. Coca-Cola advertises “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” because they’d like the world to buy a Coke. Firms do try to build brand affiliation but they rarely do so by promoting hatred of their competitors. Pepsi doesn’t tell the Pepsi Generation that Coke drinkers are stealing their jobs and spitting on their gods.

Hat tip: @kingofthecoastt, who recently tweeted about the original post.

Source: Marginal Revolution.