These are notes from reading the book, mostly paraphrased, but contains some direct quotes. Published Aug 26 1999, on Amazon
Explore the death of the industrial society and it reconfiguration in new forms. The emergence of a new form of freedom, the Sovereign Individual, and expect to the see complete liberation of productivity.
In contrast, we expect the death of the nation-state and many of the characteristics of equality that 20th/21st Century envisaged. Representative democracy will fade in favour of electronic cybermarketplaces. Politics will be more random and inconsequential than we've grown accustom to.
There is another industrial revolution afoot on Earth. The Information Age is going to bring about radical changes in the political establishment. Our 21st century comforts will morph into post-modern reality where bandwidth trumps borders and the sovereignty of the individual will usurp the State.
Increasingly autonomous individuals and bankrupt, desperate governments will confront each other across a new divide. We expect a radical restructuring of the nature of sovereignty and the virtual death of politics before the transition is over.
Information technology will erode the ability for the state to charge more for services than they are worth, as privatization of service provision rises.
Tech enables a dramatic extension of markets by altering the way assets are created and protected.
Citizenship will go the way of chivalry.
Denationalized citizens will no longer be citizens as we know them, but customers. Sovereign Individuals will bargain for whatever limited government they need and pay for it according to contract.
Like the Knights of Malta, aka The Sovereign Military Order of Malta, a modern Rome-based continuation of the medieval Knights Hospitaller. They operate a sovereign entity issuing money, creating laws and maintaining a military. An old example of what could arise in great mass all over the globe as mega-sovereigns (modern developed economies, like G20) disaggregate into smaller entities.
As virtual communities gain coherence they will insist their members be held accountable to their own laws, rather than those of a nation-state which they happen to reside.
Power of government will be eroded as newer alternatives appear. For example, YCombinator is about to start its minimum income experiment in Oakland. It's easy to see how large, powerful private entities like YC can influence communities, and attract people into its sphere of influence by providing something people love. Money, security, community, all from a private establishment...
Big picture writing on transition of society would not be complete without acknowledging the role of violence. History has a long track record of human profiting from violence, mainly because it often pays well.
For every paper written on the role of violence in history there are a dozen on wheat prices, and hundreds more on obscure monetary policy.
There are few examples of violence and macro politics that are helpful, one was written 200 years ago and the other published in an economic journal shortly after WWII is behind paywall.
Lane was a medieval historian, with a focus on the trading city of Venice. He concluded that violence is organized and controlled, and have a meaningful impact on the allocation of capital, or:
"... what uses are made of scarce resources."
While the attention of the world is riveted on dishonest debates and wayward personalities the meanderings of megapolitics continue mostly unnoticed.
while the average American has spend 100x more attention on OJ Simpson or Monica Lewinsky than the latest microtechnology trend designed to take their job and subvert the political system they rely on for unemployment.
We discount the role of violence in favor of more vain pursuits and interests.
Intelligent forecasters often explain major historical events as if they were determined in a wishful way: by plan execution rather than happenstance. Many forecasted that mega-political entities or a single global government would emerge prior to 2000, and even before the EU came into existence. But the logic was flawed.
How would deeply flawed independent nation-states agglomerate into a harmonious whole? They cited the failure of nation-states to control economic forces as the reason to form alliances...
to suppose that one specific form of governance will emerge because another has failed is fallacy.
Violence disrupts an Since the formation of the EU it's been hugely problematic culminating in financial crises (2012-2016) and #Brexit (2016).
Rather the opposite, micro-government, is more likely in the future.
We expect the advent of the Information Society to utterly transform the world. For simplicity use 2000 as an inflection point. Out goes the era of Industrialization and Computerization, towards the Singularity we race.
Large command and control systems inherited from the Industrial Era may break down.
Technology is unique in that it creates a new branch of science with each information technology discovery that occurs. Paul Graham describes this as spreading out like a fractal stain.
This is a highly dynamic, non-linear evolution of an industry that produces faster, better, cheaper for the past 110 years.
DB: this is an interesting look at how human life changed as we evolved from hunter-gatherers into relatively sedentary farmers.
- AN INQUIRY INTO THE PERMANENT CAUSES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF POWERFUL AND WEALTHY NATIONS by William Playfair
- Economic Consequences of Organized Violence by Frederic C. Lane.