"the sovereign individual" by davidson/rees mogg

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

interesting new book out on the shelves, (c) 1997, by
James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg called
"the sovereign individual". many cpunk themes in this
book and I highly recommend it to people on the list.
from the back cover:

they predict:

- collapse of the welfare state and the death of nations worldwide
- overhaul of the US Tax system, based on consumption instead
of earnings
- governments will lose power to arbitrarily regulate
economies
- banks will go through larger crisis than the 1980s
- US government will diminish to the size it was in
the 19th century
- US government- IRS, CIA, NSA will declare war on
groups that try to circumvent the income tax through cyberspace
- organized crim ewill grow as central economies break down
- central banks will lose power to inflate and control
the money supply as paper money is supplanted by cybercash
- individuals will gain more autonomy and financial capability 
- morality will make a comeback.

interesting ideas on the role of violence in what makes
different government and social systems "viable" and the
idea as the government as being in the "protection" business
with a monopoly on the use of violence. ideas about digital
currencies that compete with each other on the free-market
bases. inviability of the "new world order" of worldwide
government.  lots of neat ideas on cyberspace. role of
cryptography in securing private transactions.

from p. 324, on cyberspace:

"massed armies will mean little in such a world. efficiency will
mean more than ever before. because microtechnology creates
a new dimension in protection, individuals for the first time in
human existence will be able to create and protect
assets that lie entirely outside the realm of any individual 
government's territorial monopoly on violence. these assets, therefore,
will be highly susceptible to individual control. it will be perfectly 
reasonable for you and significant numbers of future Sovereign Individuals
to "vote with your feet" in opting out of leading nation-states
to contract for personal protection with an outlying nation-state or
a new minisovereignty that will only charge a commercially
tolerable amount, rather than the greater part of your net worth."

an interesting theme near the end of the book is the idea that
morality/trust will play a more important role in cyberspace because
people will be depending on each other's reputations to conduct
business transactions in cyberspace.

some of these ideas I've written on here before, and seen much dialogue
here. think this will be an influential book that will frame future
debate for a long time.

the authors verge on what consider "conspiracy theory" at times when
they even get into Clinton's drug connections in mena, arkansas.

they advocate going to alternative sources of news other than the
mass media which will be unable to recognize or report on the
reality of the changing world because they are caught up in
their own reality distortion fields, very much like those who,
at the fall of the roman empire, still believed it existed.