In the Republic of Buryatia, in southern Siberia, the funerals come in a steady cadence. Since February 2022, Buryatia has supplied combat soldiers to the war in Ukraine at a per-capita rate among the highest of any region in the Russian Federation. Buryatia is also among the poorest regions of the federation. The young men who die in this war come from the internal periphery, far from Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Russian state has chosen to spend them rather than invest in them. That is the politics of tribute.

Tomorrow as Tribute argues that across more than a dozen contemporary democracies and pseudo-democracies, voter populations have agreed to trade the material future of their political communities for the maintenance of a fantasy past. The trade is voluntary. The costs include dead soldiers, dismantled institutions, scientific apparatus destroyed across decades, public health systems collapsed, climate adaptation foreclosed, and democratic procedures captured by movements that openly oppose them. Voters know the costs. They have decided that the costs are worth it.

The book names this trade the politics of tribute, in the ancient sense of tribute as what a subordinate polity pays to a dominant one. In this case the dominant polity is the fantasy past itself, which collects payment in the currency of children's futures.