The Sovereign Individual, written by Lord William Rees-Mogg & James Dale Davidson, is one of the most insightful books I have read on the implications of technological evolution on the organization of social, economic and political life.  In their previous book, The Great Reckoning, written in 1989, the authors predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tokyo Stock market crash.  At the time, they were dismissed by corporate and government "experts" as entirely off the mark.  The events of the 1990's proved them to be right on.

What is surprising about The Sovereign Individual is the perspective it lends, and which is illustrated through a review of social transformation going all the way back to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, of how it is not so much ideas that organize our lives, but rather our capacities to interact with our world in new ways which engenders ideological revolutions and social transformation.  The intricacies and implications of this understanding are surprising and amply backed with historical examples, leading to our present era and the title of the book. 

What Rees-Mogg and Davidson posit is that, with the increasing range of choices available to individuals fully availing themselves of already-existing possibilities in the age of the cybereconomy, more and more of these individuals are making market choices when it comes to which governments they want to pay taxes to, which ones they want to obtain their nationality from, own property in, have their corporate or business entities headquartered in, and educate their children - and today our range of choices allows us to choose a different country for each one of those choices, not just one political jurisdiction.

Governments are monopolies on legalized violence and confiscation.  Their present-day prominence throughout the world is a historical novelty, especially the notion of a national government.  It is a fiction that has imposed itself as a reality through the widespread use of violence.  Crisis is the sine qua non of the state.  The state uses and generates crises to justify its expansion and our present-day industrial model form of government mimics the antiquated industrial model of production which financed it:  centralized power in the hands of distant "experts;" megalithic bureaucracies, the human being as a cog in a production machine, collectivist mentality (be it the unions, or labor syndicates, the "corporate mission statement" that employees are expected to memorize, the "Pledge of Allegiance," etc., the industrial model of education with standardized testing subjecting individuals to the educational pogroms of the state, etc.)  Anyone born in 1920 forward has been thoroughly indoctrinated in the industrial worldview and even much of the so-called environmental movement, social change movements petition and appeal to coercive institutions to "do better."  Though the younger generation of today in the West has been born into a post-industrial world, the education and institutions that they are subject to (and Subjection is a profound requisite of the industrial economic and political model) is still modeled upon industrial presumptions and dictates.

The crux of The Sovereign Individual is to point out that for more and more of us other options to opt out and opt in are becoming available.  Sovereignty - premised on self-ownership and liberty (check out this link, it is one of my favorites on the web) is increasingly within reach of increasing numbers of people worldwide. 

The implications of this are HUGE as far as the megalithic nation-states are concerned.  We've heard plenty about the "off-shoring" of all kinds of jobs from the Western world to Latin America and Asia.  The industrial paradigm assuages the frustrations, oppressions and degradations of the working class with certain "entitlements." And this culture of "entitlement" has become ridiculously pervasive in the United States, engendering a culture of "infinite victimization." The classic case is the lady who sued McDonald's after driving off with a hot cup of coffee between her legs and scalding herself.  Less-acknowledged is the culture that indoctrinates people to think that because they are black, hispanic or some other minority, they are "oppressed." The notion of Individual Rights, which are precisely what made the American Revolution revolutionary, have been disregarded in favor of seeing individuals as simply part and parcel of a group and thus a party to the "privileges" ascribed, legally or through social fiction, to that group .  Individuals are reduced to an expression of a category and derive their rights and privileges from belonging to a category.  So if you're "black," or "African-American," as the state evolves new vocabulary to dignify the debasement of individuals, you get special state funding for two kinds of education:  pediatric day prisons called public schools which will form you perfectly for admission to the adult prisons called the United States penal system funded, legislated and profiteered in by such unlikely bedfellows as the Bushes, the Clintons and the Gores,  the Bechtel Corporation and the Harvard Endowment Fund- the right and left wings of the state apparatus of  "crisis."

What is happening today is that, as individuals, we have greater choices for no longer funding state mafias such as the United States government and others - which is why the U.S. especially is promoting all sorts of online surveillance and spying.  But because our governmental systems are rooted in fraud and violence, whether we're talking about Bush's Terrorist State or Chavez's dictatorial "Bolivarian Revolution," people around the world are moving their assets and their lives out of oppressive jurisdictions.

The result of this is that some intelligent, nimble, creative nation-states are beginning to act more as service providers rather than as feudal regimes who lay claim to their citizenry's lives, earnings, property, health, etc.  And intelligent, nimble, creative individuals are migrating their affairs to the jurisdictions that most resemble, encourage and support them. 

Many people can't conceive of a government, for example, not taxing income, however there ARE governments, such as that of Singapore, that don't tax income but have chosen to create businesses and to fund themselves out of economic creation rather than economic predation.   It is likely that increasing number of micro-governments will emerge - offering different services, cultures, and economic structures - and compete in a global market for infrastructure, legal and protective services, courting people from around the world who best respond to each particular model of social organization.  As a result, the funding for state-provided social, welfare and protective services will erode. 

In societies, such as the United States, where there isn't much depth to the cultural process that "Americans" share and over 40% of the population derives their income from state funding, the disintegration of the nation-state apparatus will leave a vacuum in the market for violence that is inherent to state-run enterprises.  Already police entities have had their powers to predate upon the citizenry expanded.  It is now possible for police to confiscate property and sell it, and to imprison people without any due process of law.  The nature of coercion-based government-as-mafia is increasingly showing its true colors.  Corruption is deepening and infiltrating the culture at large and what will happen is that free markets in violence will evolve too. 

As we gain increasing access to expertise from around the world in a global marketplace available to you at places like www.elance.com - where you can hire a personal assistant for as little as $4/hr, fewer and fewer people are going to want to fund non-competitive Americans who somehow think that they're entitled to a job as a personal assistant at $12/hr.  What options does that leave?  Increasingly skills in violence, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking and other underworld activities will find broader markets - as they have in places like Colombia and Venezuela where trust in the state as a protector of rights has eroded rapidly, thus opening up huge markets in violence.

The Sovereign Individual is a masterpiece.  It is solid reading, not light.  It is the history we DON'T get taught in school.  I highly recommend it and look forward to your feedback.

Y'all,

In the spirit of keeping it funky,
mixed in with the proctological explorations
of Babylonian machinations

I propose to you some ministrations
from the musty, dank and dark
transterrestrial explorations
of humanity's syncopations
of transmigratory underground

Dig the beat, feet!

How to really work your tongue back into the love pocket behind the ear lobes and the neck when you're gettin' down to titillating the joy that births new universes in orgasmic wet laughter and that which surpasses all understandings in the perkaliciousness of Being.

This is perhaps the best intro. I've seen to the mechanism of debt-based currency creation.  The idea that we can restore health to our society without addressing the monetary system which, every time that we use it, puts us in a predatory relationship with our entire world and each other.  I don't at all agree on the author's proposal to have governments create fiat currency without linking it to debt, but nevertheless this is an excellent presentation in cartoon form that makes debt-based currency easy to understand while clearly shining light on how it works.

The best investments I've made so far in Life have been taking the Path less traveled, to quote Robert Frost, and engaging in "the discipline of always following desires," to quote Gary Snyder - and these come with a caveat:  that often the value of unusual, courageous choices, beyond fear and into the heart's true opening and calling forth, do not necessarily gift us with a cheering section, and the worth of such choices is revealed in the Long Path of truly shedding all that is comfortable but not blissful, time after time after time, willing to show up both seasoned and Not-Knowing, daring to touch Life directly without remedies, formulas and certainties.

Fascinating documentary on Monsanto's bid to patent the entire food supply, plants, animals, all of it!  If you wonder why there is such a proliferation of reproductive problems, cancers and sterility worldwide, this film will give you some interesting insights.

Please note, Monsanto is sueing and viciously attacking any website that has documentaries on its corporate practices.  This video will probably not be available for very long.