 Alternatively, we might amend our theory and justify political authority not by appealing to the fact that we have consented to it, but rather by appealing to the fact that we would, or perhaps should, have consented to it, under some idealized condition—say, if we had been more rational or better informed (Estlund 2008: 117–135). The problem with this move, however, is that in grounding political authority in hypothetical, rather than actual, consent, the view seems to lose much of its appeal. The reason the notion of consent is especially attractive is that it promises to reconcile being subject to someone else’s authority with retaining our capacity to act as autonomous agents. Consent does that because insofar as we have consented to someone else having authority over us, any obligations they impose on us, can ultimately be traced back, although indirectly, to an exercise of our will, namely our decision to consent. In this limited sense, the obligations in question are obligations that we have willingly incurred. None of this is true in the case of hypothetical consent, however. For our will plays no role in generating any of the obligations that the political authority imposes on us if the authority is justified not by appealing to our actual choice to consent to it, but rather by appealing to the hypothetical choice of some idealized version of ourselves. Indeed, some have argued that hypothetical consent is best understood as a version of natural duty view in disguise (Simmons 2005: 117). Ultimately, what justifies political authority here is the fact that we have independent reasons to act as the authority requires. For these are the very reasons that explain why we would (or should) consent to an authority that requires those things if we were more rational, or better informed. If so, hypothetical consent is at most a heuristic device which helps us see what those reasons are (Raz 1986; Sreenivasan 2009; Thomson 1990; but see Enoch 2017).