The Sovereign Individual Book Review
The Sovereign Individual is a book written in 1996 by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. The book was a macro-scale attempt at predicting the future — the impact on the effects of what they coined the “information revolution”.
They begin by arguing that all transitions in history have involved some form of revolution, some examples being the agricultural or the industrial revolution. The authors compare these historical examples to what is currently occurring in the world and draw on these comparison to predict that the information revolution will be the most rapid and expansive yet.
One of these comparisons is of “institutions”, which compete to survive by leveraging capital, violence, and information. These competitions may be intra-institutional, such as nation states competing with each other, or inter-institutional, such as nation-states competing with religion.
The book looks at the institutional transition made during the industrial revolution and compares that to the transition occurring right now, during the information revolution. Whereas the industrial revolution characterized a transition from the church and religion to a fidelity to the nation state, the information revolution has seen a transition from the nation state to the prioritization of the sovereign individual.
While the book goes on to explain the methods of these transitions — capital, violence, and information — the book focuses on this macro transition. The main consequence the authors make as of 1996, was that there would be a decrease in the nation state’s power and influence over man.
The nation state is being replaced by information-based aggregators, like Google, Facebook, blockchains and memes. The emphasis is places on people themselves. The aggregation theory, as it is known, describes how these platforms will dominate the competition in any given industry.
The authors also predict the affordances of digital technology in aggregating data and information. Essentially, the authors describe how the technological advancements in the next decade would completely change the way we live, especially as it relates to relationships with and between countries. We have the privilege of analyzing the book almost two decades after it was published. We can see how these changes made by the technological era have proven true over time.
This leads to the authors maintaining that wealth will no longer be measured by the amount of money in your bank account, but instead in your capability to structure your wealth in a way that gives you as the individual complete autonomy of freedom. In short, the new wealth is becoming financial independence through means of diversification.
The main recommendation made as a result to the readers is to hoard their wealth by placing it in tax havens. They also acknowledge that a form of cybereconomy, which we have come to recognize as cryptocurrency, will be the greatest road to revolution as it will give power to the individual, forcing governments to recognize the people’s financial freedoms.
With the world expanding, and the capability of earning and storing money anywhere, people are not obligated to live or work in high-tax jurisdictions. Nation states (countries) will drive away their best customers, as high-net-worth individuals begin to flock to countries where they are treated better.
Overall, Davidson and Rees-Mogg do a good job of predicting the current world. They essentially describe citizenship by investment, a way for affluent and international individuals to gain citizenship, and as a result, access to economic diversification of another city.
By assistant of https://jhmarlin.com
JH Marlin Law is a law firm that specializes in citizenship by investment and residency by investment. We help clients implement many concepts in this book to live a more global and free lifestyle.
