/XMR/ general weekly book club - WEEK 2

This is the second week of the book club. This week we continued by read chapters 4-6 of the book "The Sovereign Individual" by Sir William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson. The first chapter teased us with the Informational Age, and now book has laid the groundwork used for the justify its conclusions and further elaborate.

Now onto brief description of the chapters and questions for discussion:

>Chapter 4: The last days of politics, Parallels Between the Senile Decline of the Holy Mother Church and the Nanny State

>To speak of the coming death of politics is bound to seem ridiculous or optimistic, depending on your disposition. Yet that is what the Information Revolution is likely to bring. [...] Yet politics in the modern sense, as the preoccupation with controlling and rationalizing the power of the state, is mostly a modern invention.

Continuing from where the previous chapter left off, this one discusses which megapolitical factors contributed to the fall of the medieval Church, the main one being rising returns on violence and its scale. It also draws numerous paralells between the Church and the modern democratic welfare state pointing out how misguided the common interpretation of these concepts are. As the Church became an ever growing and substancial drag on the economy, so is the modern nation-state, thus radical changes in the structure of the State will happen.

>Chapter 5: The life and death of the nation-state, Democracy and Nationalism as resource strategies in the age of violence

>When the walls of San Giovanni fell, it was a stark demonstration that the economic returns to violence in the world had risen sharply. The fall of the Berlin Wall says something different, namely that returns to violence are now falling. This is something that few have even begun to recognize, but it will have dramatic consequences.

This chapter mainly tackles the rise and fall of the modern nation-state, the rise mainly being driven by gunpowder setting the megapolitical stage of "magnitude over efficiency". This in turn created governments of employees, one of chronic deficits and ever expanding revenue and power. Alongside with large companies vulnerable to extortion by unions.

>Chapter 6: The Megapolitics of the Information Age, the triumph of efficiency over power

>The fortunes of governments will follow those of their counterparts, the unions, into decline. [...] Technology is precipitating a profound change in the logic of extortion and protection.

The last chapter read discusses the shifting dynamics of protection and extortion, using unions and governments to display their effects. It also makes some outlandish by 90s, but more and more reasonable predictions going into the 21st century, "virtual companies" operating with contractors and videoconferencing, and the overall down-scaling of firms with them becoming dynamic, non-linear, and overall more resistant to extortion, whether by that be governments, unions, or other parties. Interestingly enough, it even goes as far as to predict mass-use of voice synthesizers and AI assistants. Afterwards it goes on to discuss the monopoly of State protection and its evolution.

Questions:

1. Even more to the modern nation-state than the medieval Church, societal welfare was their de-facto job. On a smaller scale, would new manners of providing welfare arise/have already arisen in the Information Age? Would they be/Are they non-profit or profit, and would they/are they just a fading artifact?

2. Chapter 6 mentions individuals now being able to "act after death" thanks to technology. In the current day and age we call these "dead-man switches". Will the progress of technology allow for even direct murder to not be a 100% stop to the activities of an individual?

3. What are your thoughts on authors' description of the incoming Information Age, cybereconomies, the shifting balance between protection and extortion, etc?

But as always, feel encouraged to share your own thoughts and opinions.

At the usual pace, chapters 7-9 by the 30th of April. The site will be updated Monday morning with this post and discussions.

>54700145

Well its a 50/50 the book provides defense vs offense analogys, if offense is better then nation states win if defense is better then smaller communitys/individuals win, everything will depend how technology keeps developing if we reach a quantum AI capable of breaking cryptography that favours nation states at the same time ai is a tool that probably gives higher gains to the individuals than gains to the state, robotics is another topic that would favor the state in the short run because you can mass produce killer robots but as they become cheaper they will favour the individual for example someone defending their farm over an intruder, another factor that will win in the long term is inflation, if governments cant win against cryptocurrency they will lose their ability to print money and consecuently they would lose the ability to mass produce Killer robots, also i didnt mention 3d printing which favours the individual.

>54700145

damn i'm behind on this already, good post though, infinitely more interesting than refuting the same worn out zec fudders on repeat

>>54701209

The whole premise behind their prediction of nation states failing is that modern tech and the cyber-economy make it much easier for entities to protect themselves from extortion. So if one country is unleashing killer robots like you say, or forcing ridiculous taxes and ideology down peoples throat, or banning certain technologies, then thanks to those same technologies and others, entities can leave for a place that treats them better with minimal disruption to their livelihood if they are truly an intelligent sovereign individual.

Dr. Daniel Kim touched on that in the monero redpill video, saying that if countries start banning Monero, it will incentivize sovereign individuals to move to other countries which are monero friendly. That's the reality now where you can just get up an go where you're treated best. I know that a lot of Americans are moving to Latin America because while the governments there are corrupt, they are much less overbearing and able to extend control/influence over their population. And some countries, like El Salvador, are beginning to catch on and are trying to be tech friendly and attractive to digital nomads. I think this trend will continue, especially if covid-esque events live climate lockdowns will be a thing now, and certain countries are able to disregard these event and allow their populations to live normally. The cyber economy enables people to earn their money location independently which is a massive megapolotical force that hasn't been seen before and will continue to have huge implications, which according to the authors of sovereign individual, include the fall of nation states as a relevant concept.

Look at the berlin wall example used in the book, how people were literally trapped inside a territory by an overbearing government, only for the government to crumble and fail, their wall ultimately useless.

>>54701227

More good stuff to come, such as the discussion on neo-luddites.

>>54701209

I'd argue there is a much more profound shift rather than just a simple collection of technologies getting introduced each altering these factors. Even if nation-states can institute CBDCs or manufacture killer robots nudging up their offensive capabilities, the means of protection and in turn fighting back have moved onto another plane.

Just taking your example, setting up the large scale manufacture of killer robots would be immensely resource intensive as opposed to 3d printing an EMP gun or an exploit to possibly shut down entire cohorts of robots. Not only that, but fighting back against a killer robot factory itself is increasingly easy due to their nature of being an Industrial Age structure in the Information Age, kind of similar to trying to enact a subsistence farming on an industrial country. Any nation-state attempting a killer-robot factory will have a positive/negative reactions from their allies, enemies, trade partners, other numerous governmental/non-governmental alliances. Alongside with the people themselves required to construct, defend, and run such an operation gives rise to innumerable weak points from intelligence leaks, software exploits, plain old raiding the warehouse/worker strikes, or any one of their many supplies and contractors refusing/made to refuse their orders required for construction.

>>54701606

Eastern Europe and other "2nd world" countries had that trend for some decades now. Young people who actively seek to be more productive or take a look at the livelihoods of older people around them simply start moving out in very large numbers with no regards as to "nationalism" or "homesickness" as they are now able to enjoy staying in contact with what they actually need. For example, family and friends can be talked with online and products can be shipped cheaply and plane travel is now incredibly more affordable than it was. As barriers for migration fall with tech the vision of the book will become more of a reality.