Book Review: The Sovereign Individual
The Sovereign Individual was very popular book on the Cypherpunks mailing list back when it came out in 1997 (and over the next years), and I read some excerpts and reviews back then, but I don’t think I read the whole book until 2022. I wish I’d read it sooner; it is really very good, and even better for having been so prescient about trends which would unfold almost exactly as described over the following years. I believe we’re midway through the period described, so it’s still predictive.
One of the best books written on the larger (century-long) trends of how technology influences society. Essentially, a focus on how the technology of violence (capex vs. opex, specialist personnel vs. mass armies, materiel vs. human, offense vs. defense) influence structures of governments, and thus overall society. The book goes into agricultural vs. industrial revolutions, changes in European and global structure, but then is primarily focused on the modern era -- the transition from broad-scale mass movement political structures where overall force amount is most relevant, to information-age systems where efficiency is most relevant.
As a consequence, individuals and small groups, which are very efficient but don't have comparable total force levels to existing nation states, will be able to exist as first-class participants in the world. Osama Bin Laden was an example from this book (before 9/11...) of an individual capable of challenging a nation state; plenty of others exist in the commercial and scientific sphere, such as Bill Gates who appears to be more significant in the Covid-19 situation than many governments, and even middle-tier tech companies being more significant than most governments in information/commerce.
The Transition of the Year 2000: The Fourth Stage of Human Society
Megapolitical Transformations in Historic Perspective
East of Eden: The Agricultural Revolution and the Sophistication of Violence
The Last Days of Politics: Parallels Between the Senile Decline of the Holy Mother Church and the Nanny State
The Life and Death of the Nation-State: Democracy and Nationalism as Resource Strategies in the Age of Violence
The Megapolitics of the Information Age: The Triumph of Efficiency over Power
Transcending Locality: The Emergence of the Cybereconomy
The End of Egalitarian Economics: The Revolution in Earnings Capacity in a World Without Jobs
Nationalism, Reaction, and the New Luddites
The Twilight of Democracy
Morality and Crime in the "Natural Economy" of the Information Age
This book was written in the early 1990s and has accurately predicted the past 25 years, and seems on track for the rest of the century. The one area not addressed was the rise of China, although this might just be a nationalist rear-guard action as suggested in the book for Western countries facing this change. Otherwise, a book full of highly specific and highly accurate predictions.
The one thing the book got wrong was at the end -- saying "becoming a programmer isn't necessarily the best way to exploit the change toward computerization" -- this was wrong, as it's a very useful skill (even if not one's primary role), in addition to the general problem-solving skills they advocate. I think this was just because the author isn't a technologist and thus doesn't appreciate the skills of programming beyond just rote coding. Otherwise, the book is full of excellent and highly actionable advice.
The new edition has a preface from Peter Thiel, himself responsible for or involved in many of the changes moving us toward the future as described in the book.