The Sovereign Individual
James Dale Davidson & Lord William Rees-Mogg · 1997
"The Information Age will dissolve the nation-state's power and empower mobile, digitally-sovereign individuals."
Written in 1997, this prophetic book argues that the information age will destroy the nation-state. Just as the printing press destroyed the monopoly of the Church, cryptographic technology and the internet will destroy the state's monopoly on violence and taxation.
The authors argue that the nation-state is an artifact of the industrial age, where physical factories and standing armies were necessary for wealth creation. In the information age, wealth is purely digital. Encryption makes capital highly mobile and impossible for a state to confiscate. This creates a new class of 'Sovereign Individuals'—highly skilled knowledge workers who can move capital instantly across borders, forcing governments to compete as service providers rather than acting as coercive monopolists.
According to 'The Sovereign Individual', what technology fundamentally undermines the power of the nation-state?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- The Sovereign Individual (1997) — vision and critiqueThe Conversation (academic analysis)
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