If liberal orders decay from within, why did liberalism ever work — and what sustains it once it emerges?

Post-liberals claim that the liberal order is self-defeating — eventually it eats itself. But even they have to admit that for several centuries now, the liberal order (defined as one that prioritizes individual freedoms) has seen spectacular success. The question most worth asking isn’t whether liberalism has failed (or will in some near future), but why it ever worked to begin with.

Specifically: what conditions must a society be exposed to for a liberal order to sustain itself, once emerged? 1 1 The question of emergence is intertwined with, but different from, the question of sustenance. Here I am focused on the latter, as the one most immediately relevant to the West.

Main thesis. Sustainable liberalism requires a peculiar selection environment that powerfully reinforces what liberalism cannibalizes, while simultaneously rewarding innovation and individual risk-taking. I argue that this environment is best understood as a frontier.

Preceding assumption. firmly held Critics of liberalism claim that the liberal order inevitably eats away conditions it both requires and cannot itself reproduce. They say also that a liberal order that loses those features does not stabilize at a lower level — it dissolves into something that is neither liberal nor what came before it, and worse, it creates vulnerabilities within the society that houses it. I largely agree with liberalism’s critics here. However, I disagree that the conditions liberalism requires and parasitises are a matter of values or individual choice. Rather, I argue they are structural features of the environment — the broader context the society sits inside or engages with. This means that while liberalism’s decay is predictable, it is not inevitable.

Preceding claim. firmly held Liberalism’s trajectory is often claimed to be a sign of moral decline, material decadence, or some other rot, and that the appearance of “progress” is a mirage. I disagree. I argue that liberalism’s self-defeat looks like societal progress for the most part because it is actual progress. The key to making liberalism work is to find some vehicle that continually forces the replenishment of the structures it requires, not a “RETVRN.”

Mechanism. firmly held Liberal innovation depends on the simultaneous presence of several forces in tension: a practical-commonsensical intelligence that focuses on achieving real goals, and a rationalist intelligence that can produce abstract breakthroughs. Given that liberalism inherently bends towards rationalism, structural forces must keep it grounded in empirical reality. Socially, liberalism bends towards ever greater individual freedoms — over time, these freedoms degrade the spine they stand on (strong communities, national cohesion, an orientation towards the wellbeing of others, all coming together to form mass behavioral coordination). Meanwhile technological progress, itself a product of the success of liberalism, produces alienation as it empowers individuals into greater heights of self-sufficiency. When the degradation is complete, the individual is left in a peculiar position: everything is permitted, and nothing is possible.

A frontier is the environment that allows liberalism to expand itself while preserving the underlying foundation — an integration of two competing drives.

Follow-up. moderately held A frontier environment can be defined as containing: largeness, genuine “unknown-ness,” dual demands of collectivism and individualism, and unremitting intolerance for failure. These features are most cleanly seen in geographic expansion, war, and existential threats. The dynamic is less clean, but it is possible that frontier environments can also be present in segments of society (genuine market competition, high-stakes scientific inquiry, some kinds of entrepreneurship).

Follow-up. moderately held Frontier societies emit a contagion effect on settled societies, which is why the frontier does not have to absorb a society’s entire population in order to alter it sufficiently — a tiny portion of society can be the active pioneers. After this point, cultural imitation and competitive pressure does the rest.

Follow-up. moderately held The mechanism goes one way: frontier-like environments create the conditions for liberalism to continue, in societies where seeds are already present.

Follow-up. loosely held The conditions can be deliberately reproduced. Space exploration, sustained great-power competition, and certain kinds of economic restructuring might restore frontier-like selection pressure in modern societies.

• Can frontier conditions re-invigorate liberalism in societies where it is flailing, or is this a separate case from the initial growth cycle? (In other words: if liberalism is left to decay long enough, does it consume also the seeds of its revival?)
• Is space a genuine contender as the next frontier, or is it too capital-intensive and state-mediated? Is it even viable in the next 100 or 200 years?

• The tension this environment sustains is examined in Liberty Requires Competing Demands, and the frontier reappears as a “floor” in What Reason Cannot Supply.
• Unreasonable Rationality and On Effective Activism and Intellectual Honesty.